Although the modern far-Left of America claims it is anti-fascist, there are some striking similarities between its tactics and those perpetuated by the Nazi Party during its rise to power.

From relying on wanton street violence, erasing history, and harping on class envy and identity politics to achieve its goals of political power, the far-Left of America and the far-Left Nazi Party of post-WWI Germany have more in common than one would expect.

Although the Nazi Party has been portrayed as a far-Right movement by many of today’s history rewriters, the actual truth is the Nazi Party was a socialist organization that belongs on the far-Left end of the political spectrum. For those lacking a thorough understanding of Nazism, the name of the party should explain itself. Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers Party.

When one dives deep into the tactics utilized by the Nazi Party as it gained power in Weimar Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, one should be struck by the stark similarities used by today’s far-Left socialists.

First, throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi Party routinely relied on street riots, property damage, and wanton violence to achieve political power through force and intimidation. That sounds eerily similar to the events that are taking place throughout American cities by far-Left groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matters. The Nazis deployed so-called “brown shirts” to act as street thugs. The modern Left relies on violent thugs dressed in all black to accomplish the same goal.

Second, the Nazi Party was notorious for holding book burnings and destroying anything it deemed degenerate art. The Nazi Party forbade anything in the cultural realm that did not support the party platform. In many ways, the Nazis used “cancel culture” to shut-down anyone and anything that did not align with its ideologies. This sounds much like the “cancel culture” that has invaded America in recent years, courtesy of America’s intolerant radicals on the extreme Left.

Third, the Nazi Party preyed on class envy to stoke tension and resentment within the German population. Hitler and other Nazi leaders repeatedly blamed Germany’s economic turmoil during the 1920s on the “Junker” class, who were Germany’s equivalent of today’s so-called “1 percent.” Just as the modern Left fuels non-stop class envy by blaming America’s problems on the “evil 1 percent,” and the “greedy billionaires,” the Nazis did the exact same thing.

Fourth, racial division was obviously a central component of the Nazi political strategy. The Nazi Party was arguably the most racially obsessed political party in world history. In the 1920s and 1930s, well before the Holocaust, the Nazi Party constantly stirred up racial division. In its most basic form, this is the exact same strategy utilized by the modern Left. Black Lives Matter, although nowhere near as extreme as Nazi racial propaganda, is using the same playbook by pitting Americans against one another along racial lines.

Fifth, identity politics was a primary weapon in the Nazi Party’s arsenal. In many ways, the Nazi Party actually invented and innovated the despicable use of identity politics, which has become all too common in today’s Leftist political dialogue. According to Merriam-Webster, “identity politics” is defined as, “politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.” This sounds part-and-parcel to the modern Left’s strategy of slicing and dicing the population into specific identity groups, and then pushing grievance-ridden policies to placate these specific identity groups.

Sixth, the Nazi Party used ad hominem attacks to berate and belittle any of their opponents. Instead of having policy-oriented debates, the Nazis were notorious for their use of ad hominem attacks against anyone who opposed their philosophies. Although all political parties are guilty of engaging in ad hominem attacks to some degree, the modern Left has taken this to an entirely new level with their never-ending ad hominem attacks aimed at President Trump and anyone who is not a die-hard Leftist. If you need more convincing, just watch a few clips of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Seventh, the use of propaganda by the Nazis to indoctrinate the German population is scarily similar to the tactics of today’s radical Left. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.” This notion has been used to wild success by the far-Left in several areas over recent years. The Left has spouted a plethora of flat-out lies in recent years, from the Russia collusion hoax to all-out mistruths about coronavirus and climate change, that have somehow become “accepted as truth” in Goebbels’ words.

The list of frightening parallels between the Nazi Party during its march to power in interwar Germany and the Left’s quest for power in 2020 are too similar to ignore. Perhaps most ominous, the Nazi Party tried to portray itself as “moderate” during these years, before it unleashed its true intentions on the German people and the rest of the world.

By no means is this meant to insinuate that the far-Left has similar objectives of worldwide domination via a horrific world war, however, one should pay close attention to the commonalities between how a fringe, far-Left socialist party rose to power in a chaotic Germany after the First World War and how a similar fringe, far-Left socialist party is attempting to gain political power in the United States during the chaos of a worldwide pandemic that has left America more than vulnerable to the siren calls of socialism.

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is an editor at The Heartland Institute.