It starts with a flicker, almost imperceptible—a creeping shadow stretching across the soul of a nation. Books burned quietly at first, pages curling to ash in bonfires of so-called “unpatriotic” ideas, just as they did nearly a century ago, when German citizens watched words by Hemingway, Einstein, Freud—voices of the free mind—disintegrate into smoke. And the flames grew. Doctors forbidden from healing, journalists from speaking, teachers from teaching, and lawyers from defending the rights of those suddenly deemed “unworthy.”
In Hitler’s Germany, the descent into darkness did not happen all at once. It happened step by step, as rights and voices were stripped away, as neighbours looked the other way, as those in power tightened their grip.
First, people of “non-Aryan ancestry” were forced from government service, then banned from professions, then removed from public life entirely. Soon, there were no opposition parties. No labour unions. No voices, except those that praised the leader’s vision of a purified, obedient nation. The goal, Joseph Goebbels declared, was a country of one opinion, one faith, and one leader. Men would wear uniforms. Women would wear aprons. And no one—not one soul—would think for themselves.
And now, America stands at the edge of that same precipice. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s Project 2025 agenda, crafted by the Heritage Foundation, lays out their administration’s chilling vision for America if elected.
It calls for a purge of “disloyal” federal employees, the dismantling of unions, the deployment of military force against supposed “enemies within,” and the mass deportation of immigrants. Trump’s abortion bans have already stripped women of reproductive rights, but Project 2025 goes even further, mandating severe restrictions on contraception and reproductive healthcare, envisioning a country where women are tied to the home, their freedoms dictated by men who see them as vessels, not equals.
The agenda also includes stripping rights from LGBTQ individuals, defunding public schools, slashing Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits, and demanding that federal employees swear loyalty to Trump alone—or lose their jobs.
These are just some of the measures they have in mind. Like Hitler, Trump is driven by a belief in loyalty over law, obedience over freedom, control over conscience. People who served him—high-ranking military officials like Generals John Kelly, Mark Milley, and Jim Mattis—have stepped forward to warn us. Kelly, a Gold Star father and four-star general who served this country with honour, has said, unflinchingly, that Trump is a fascist and an existential threat to our democracy.
Milley and Mattis echo the warning: this man does not want to lead a republic; he wants to rule as a dictator. In conversations with General Kelly, Trump spoke admiringly of Hitler’s generals, of the “loyalty” they showed, dismissing the horrors of the Holocaust as mere footnotes. “Hitler did some good things,” he claimed. The over seventeen million innocent people—Jews, those with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, political dissidents, and prisoners of war—whose lives were snuffed out in service of one man’s monstrous vision—would not agree.
The 407,316 American soldiers who died and the 671,278 who were injured in WWII, courageously fighting to stop the evil—soldiers Trump has called “suckers and losers”—would not agree. My uncles, Casey and Eugene, barely more than boys when they gave their lives in World War II, never to grow old, build families, or chase their dreams—would not agree.
ANYONE who cherishes democracy, believes in the rule of law, and upholds our Constitution would not agree that “Hitler did some good things.” And yet, as a nation, we are sleepwalking toward that same fate. The German people eventually grew to understand that Hitler was dangerous, even extreme—but they didn’t believe it could come to that.
They didn’t believe they would see families torn apart, rights stripped away, voices silenced, atrocities unfolding before their very eyes. We have no such excuse. Trump has spelled it out, in his own words, in his own actions, his admiration for a dictator who murdered millions. He has told us who he is, and what he wants, and has made it clear he will stop at nothing to get it. We cannot stand blindly aside and do what the German people did—ignore it, rationalize it, hope it will go away. We have the power to stop a man whose vision for America is not freedom, but submission; not democracy, but domination; not unity, but a brutal, bloody return to the darkest chapters of history.
If we allow him to rise unchecked, if we ignore the warnings of those who know him best, we will bear witness to the unravelling of everything generations of Americans fought and died to defend. This is our moment—to choose freedom over fear, democracy over dictatorship. To honour the dead by fighting for the living, and by ensuring that “never again” is not just a phrase, but a promise.
The stakes could not be higher. The future could not be clearer. America, it’s time to wake up—before it’s too late.
Carly Marburger is a mum who describes herself as an aspiring keyboard player and a Karen Carpenter afficionado.
Editor: If you know anyone who doubts exactly what Trump and his backers and ‘handlers’ plan to do, please also listen to this BBC Radio 4 programme, broadcast 28 October and go to see ‘The Apprentice’. Trump learned to live by three rules and that is how he has become the perfect weapon of the far right:
- Attack, attack, attack;
- admit nothing and deny everything;
- no matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.
You think it couldn’t happen here? We all need to be awake and vigilant. Democracy dies when we let it.
