There were people who saw the authoritarian in Trump from day one, and they sounded the alarm. But at that point, we had been crying “Nazi” on the internet for so long, it had become a trope. This inspired attorney Michael Godwin to create Godwin’s Law, essentially saying that the first person to invoke a comparison to Hitler in an argument automatically lost.
Because Hitler can’t happen again, especially not in America.
So when the president banned people from largely Muslim countries from coming into the US, we said, “That’s wrong, but this is America, so ultimately, it can’t happen here.”
He called journalists “the enemy of the people,” and we said, “That’s concerning, but it can’t happen here.”
He had ICE set up checkpoints on random roads more than 100 miles from any US border, and we said, “That sounds familiar, but it can’t happen here.”
He referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries,” and said that immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and we said, “Well, that sounds kinda racist—but it can’t happen here.”
He held events with victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and created VOICE, a segment of the Department of Homeland Security that would “study the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States,” and we said, “But… aliens commit LESS crime than the general population, so that seems like some serious racist bullshit—but again, it can’t happen here.”
He called White Nationalists “very fine people” and amplified their voices on Twitter, and we said, “Well, that seems SUPER INSANELY RACIST, but it can’t happen here.”