this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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President Donald Trump fired Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown on Friday night, and said he intends to dismiss the Navy’s top admiral and the Air Force’s second in command — an unprecedented shakeup of the Pentagon’s top brass that will trigger ripple effects throughout the military.

Trump, in a Truth Social post, said he was nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to take Brown’s place. Caine is a partner at Shield Capital, a venture capital firm.

Trump also has claimed Caine donned a ‘MAGA’ hat during their 2018 meeting in Iraq, which is against military regulations.

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[–] [email protected] 159 points 4 days ago (2 children)

One month after being elected Chancellor, Hitler began replacing police leadership with members that aligned with Nazi ideals.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 4 days ago

And those of us who study history are doomed to watch idiots repeat it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

If you're in 50501, with a member count like that, yesterday was the time to make preparations for as many to get to the capital as possible. Its Project 2025 for a reason, it will be done by the end of the year. We can't wait any longer or a passage to safety will no longer remain.

[–] [email protected] 92 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I keep seeing the word "unprecedented" to describe Trump's bullshit. I got bad news...

1921 - The Sturmabteilung – More commonly known as the ‘brown shirts’, militant branch of the Nazi party, loyalists who used violence and intimidation against opposing parties and targeted populations. Today we have MAGA or ‘red hats’ who use the same tactics but in a less organized fashion (arguably groups like the ‘Proud Boys’ are a closer match, but those are all just smaller subsets of MAGA). A few recent key highlights were the Jan 6 insurrection and the caravan that ran a bus of Biden supporters off the road; and of course countless individual instances of targeted bigotry.

1923 – Speaking of Jan 6, that was the modern equivalent to the Beer Hall Putsch, which was also an unsuccessful attempt at an insurrection.

1924 – Hitler was sentenced to a 5 year prison sentence for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch, for which he only served 10 months; during that time he wrote his manifesto “Mein Kampf”. Our current president was recently convicted of 34 felonies, for which he faced zero consequences. Around that time, Project 2025 surfaced, which echoes many of Mein Kampf’s key points, most notably a disdain for democratic institutions and a call to restructure the government into a more authoritarian model made up of loyalists. Trump has also directly quoted Mein Kampf multiple times, and borrowed other language from Hitler like "Lügenpresse" (Lying Press) as "Fake News".

1926 - League of German Worker Youth, or “Hitler Youth” – heavy exploitation of teen impressionability, especially teen boys, to woe support from a young audience. Today there are youth groups for just about everything, but leveraging insecurities of young boys played a role in the recent election, with exit poles showing Gen Z males leaning disproportionately to Trump.

1929 – The Great Depression left pretty much the entire planet dreaming of a more economically secure future, which gave opposition parties to the status quo a major point to criticize those currently in power; the Nazis were no exception, and gained a lot of their support promising an improved economy. The modern world economies were recently all hamstrung by covid, and remain weakened, once again giving opposition parties something to blame on their opponents – costs of groceries, housing, etc are a huge part of why people justified support for Trump (and more broadly, a global shift toward authoritarianism).

1933 – Enabling Act of 1933 – The gist of this one is that Hitler used their existing legal framework to completely undermine and rewrite their legal framework. He put out a rapid slurry of legal decrees and took a grand total of 53 days to basically destroy their constitution and grant himself absolute power. Today, we’re seeing a similar rapid-fire of concerning legislation from Trump via his executive orders.

1933 – Hitler appointed Chancellor by German president Hindenburg. Hindenburg was in his mid-80s at the time of that appointment. Trump may be more of a Hitler’s-enabler figure than an actual-Hitler, but it doesn’t take long to spot a younger vocal appointee that’s been handed power without the say of voters: today’s actual-Hitler could be Elon Musk. *as I understand it, voting for a party then appointment to chancellor was pretty standard for the German govt at the time, so this was very much Germany's equivalent to Trump taking the majority vote.

1933 – Book Burnings – Basically material that didn’t align with Nazi ideals was made contraband. Today, we’ve seen a push to remove things like LGBT or civil rights content from public schools and libraries.

v v v You are here. v v v

1934 – The Night of Long Knives – Purging of non-loyalists from government positions by execution. Today’s equivalent is happening right now, starting with the email that was sent to all federal employees essentially bribing them to resign, and threatening firing of those remaining as part of a restructuring of the federal workforce, and continuing with the gutting of non-loyalists from the military.

^ ^ ^ You are here. ^ ^ ^

There's also the seeming never-ending list of examples of minorities who support Trump.

Edit - this is just a list I cobbled together off the top of my head, but I'm no historian or anything, so if you've got any more to throw onto the pile, comment and I'll add it. Also if you ARE a historian with an interest in the period in question, please lay down as much insight as you're willing to hit me with.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Worth reminding people that this is a guy who has admitted in interviews to owning a copy of Mein Kempf, had a cousin that gave him a copy of 'My New Order' (Trump's collected speeches in English) which he kept in his bedside cabinet and was known to his then wife and friends for many years. And that the same cousin used to "frequently greet him" in the 1990s with a casual "Heil Hitler"..

All of this was public knowledge prior to his election wins.

I'm sure the similarities in Trump's actions to the Nazi playbook are all just coincidences though right? And we're all idiots and hyperbolic for calling it out? That's what his supporters have always told me in the past, and what the right-wing media machine told them to say (Fox/Sky/Rogan/Shapiro/etc).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-adolf-hitler-books-bedside-cabinet-ex-wife-ivana-trump-vanity-fair-1990-a7639041.html

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago (1 children)

US media has never been a group that has regularly considered any history other than their own history

It's a bit of that "America, Fuck Yeah" attitude where it's unprecedented in the USA and since only the US is important in our eyes, our media completely ignores history outside of our borders.

Amerocentrism is a huge problem in the USA.

You're right, it's absolutely the same path.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

This 100%, "The Third Reich at War" by R.Evans should be mandatory reading for all sane people.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Unprecedented? Soooo many fascist precedents. Pick a fascism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Do you have anything that doesn't have any fascism in it? I don't like fascism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I would substitute fascist with authoritarian. Not that fascist is wrong, it's just incomplete. Left and center authoritarians have the same playbook.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What centre authoritarians are there?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I guess it depends on who you consider center. That opinion varies greatly. Some might put Nancy Pelosi there, some would call her right wing. Mainstream Republicans would call her a radical leftist. My personal politics are more anti-authoritarian than left or right. And left, right, or center, most of the people in power lean authoritarian. I'm always advocating for the people to tell the government to fuck off, no matter who is in power.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The army is the most likely entity to take out the fascists.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It’s far more likely Trump would use the National Guard, having already leveraged William Barr’s loophole to deploy them against citizens in DC and Portland.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-barr-used-loophole-deploy-national-guard-u-s-cities-ncna1236034

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The army already made it clear it wouldn't do shit back on January 6. This is just being extra.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The US military wasn't ordered to do anything, which was the issue.

An order for them either way to act, or to not act, would have been a point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah. So they'll be ordered to protect the country when it really matters... From trump... By trump.

Also, "they were just following orders" is a choice argument.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No, I mean they were not given any orders, is what I'm saying.

Being given an order to do something, they can choose to obey it, or not. Hopefully, they'll go with the moral choice, whatever it is, in the case of the order being given.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Again: Why would they suddenly be "given orders" next time trump decides to violently overthrow the US government?

I am not sure what you think you are saying but you are actually saying that the US military won't do anything unless they are ordered to. Which doesn't work when it is the person in the POTUS seat shitting all over the constitution and trying to murder congress.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why would they suddenly be “given orders” next time trump decides to violently overthrow the US government?

Being given an order to either aid, to to specifically stand out, or whatever, is a decision point.

but you are actually saying that the US military won’t do anything unless they are ordered to.

Yes, they will react to the order, in some fashion. That's what I'm saying. They likely will not react to nothing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Got it. If nobody tells them to do anything then they will sit and wait to help the winner. Otherwise, they will react to their order, from the person leading the violent insurrection, in some fashion.

Support the troops!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

If nobody tells them to do anything then they will sit and wait to help the winner.

Probably, yes. Because, by its nature, the US Military is not going to involve itself in politics. Trust me, you REALLY do not want the military to be a political entity.

I mean, could you imagine some Generals deciding to set domestic policy for a county, just because they disagree with the County exec somewhere?

Otherwise, they will react to their order, from the person leading the violent insurrection, in some fashion.

Yes. This is accurate. They will either side with the executive, or not. And, at that point, they may side with the opposition. But it's a hard slog to get military leadership to jump onto a side in politics. Like, we're talking "Someone invaded a military installation, and started shooting, and trying to take it over" kind of thing. Or "The president ordered us to round up all civilians in City X"...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago (4 children)

That's the National Guard you're thinking of

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They were ordered not to do anything. The senior officers are indoctrinated to loyalty to the country and constitution. He needs to replace the senior officers to have any chance of establishing himself as a dictator

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 days ago

"would you support me in a coup? Your fired."

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The first of Trump's military blunders. The same one Hitler made.

Putin couldn't wish for a more useful idiot. Eventually he'll be giving direct tactical orders that result in China and Russia not needing to worry about the US Navy presence.

My prediction?

He'll first order Carrier Strike groups to reduce the number of vessels. Maybe keep one AEGIS guided missile destroyer, and one Alreigh-Burke. Remove one of the attack submarines. Cut the Supply-class boats down to a single vessel. ("Just cram it all it one, and fill it up twice as often").

But that's not Hitler level stupid on it's own. He'll have those ships scrapped. He needs to appease the defense industry, so he'll order the procurement of the true king of the fleet: Trump-class Dreadnaught Battleships (because he needs the extra big dreadnaughts!). They should be "nuclear powered" use the latest "laser cannon" a rail gun, and the biggest longest range cannons they can fit.

And that's just what he'll start with in the Navy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The first? I would have thought that would have been his incredibly unpopular and badly though-out rapid withdrawl from northern Syria, which turned the close US allies the Kurds into sworn enemies overnight by allowing the Turkish army to attack them, and handed multiple fully-stocked military bases to (guess who) the Russians - all while he simultaneously declared victory over the very much not-defeated ISIL/ISIS.

But that's just off the top of my head and was in late 2018, so he had probably had major military blunders before then that im forgetting to be honest.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Honestly, 2018 seems like 20 years ago, I had completely forgotten about that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

It's not a wish when you made the idiot useful in the first place .

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago (6 children)

It's not unprecedented though

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

True, but the other two circumstances were very different.

Obama fired McChrystal for criticizing him of poor judgement in a Rolling Stone article.

https://www.bbc.com/news/10395402

Truman fired McArthur for failure to follow directions, prolonging the Korean War.

https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/firing-macarthur

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

O.P. might be referring Hitler ...

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Diversity? Loyalty

Equality? Loyalty

Inclusion? Loyalty

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

Krasnov still at it with the dismantling.

When he's done the 'axis of evil' countries will have a field day with their neighboring countries completely unchecked.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

OK so what are the chances that the military would revolt against the government? Would those in command fired have any power left in the army due to loyalty or simply annoyance of the power grab?

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