What if the Nazi Party had lost or been thrown out, before war broke out?

One of the other extremist parties would have taken over. Look -

John Gardner made a great point in The Art of Fiction that teachers don't teach the best examples of stuff or the most thought provoking examples of stuff they teach the easiest stuff that makes their point. Thus if you want to learn the kids about fascism you throw The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter at them, not Rhinoceros. You whip out Uncle Tom's Cabin because no one is going to criticize you for Harriet Beecher Stowe whereas if you whip out John Brown's Body the social studies department is going to hate you. So we frame our struggle between good and evil as "Truth, Justice & The American Way" against "fascism, genocide and Adolph Hitler" because you know what? He's as close to Satan Incarnate as we can get. Think about it: how much more do you think you know about Weimar Germany than you do about Imperial Japan? Why is that? Were they not also an Axis power?

It's fucking us all over royally right now because our only level of concern is "Break Glass In Case Of Hitler" which means entirely too many people go "Not Hitler? No Problem!" while entirely too many people go "I sense a problem, therefore it must be Hitler!" So now we pay Richard Spencer $5k to schlep his ass from the trailer to a Holiday Inn Express to sit in front of a green screen so we can ask him if he believes that Jews should be sent to the gas chamber and when he says "of course not I love Depeche Mode and they've gotta be Jewish" the press can stroke their chins and conclude that since the Alt Right is not literally Hitler there must be no problem. Meanwhile that guy with too many guns who calls Mexican restaurants "beaner joints" is going to snap from "friend of mine with problems" to "lost cause of the fascist right" the minute you have one too many Facebook convos and your perspective becomes that the racist is calling from inside the house while his perspective is that you're so busy believing in Nazis that you can't see the very real problems facing America today.

Friend of mine stopped talking to me for four months because I observed that Democratic worship of the Kennedys was horrifically overblown, considering they stumbled into Vietnam, almost caused WWIII twice and did exactly fuckall for civil rights because we create these myths so we don't have to think. It's one of the reasons I fucking hate Nick Taleb - he literally intros The Black Swan by arguing no one could have predicted the rise of Hitler despite the fact that Wilson predicted the rise of Hitler, Churchill predicted the rise of Hitler and the international business community held summit after summit to stave off the rise of German authoritarianism.

Hitler rose to power among four political parties. He created a fifth. On the far left were the Communists. On the center left were the Social Democrats. In the center was the Center. On the far right was the German National People's Party and then the Nazis, once the Reichstag permitted them to be a party after they foreswore violent overthrow of the government after the Beer Hall Putsch.

Frankly? Hitler would have risen to power much, much quicker in America because once you take over one party you've got half the playing field. Except that "murder all the Jews" thing would have run into trouble with AIPAC so maybe "murder all the Muslims" which would have run into trouble with the Saudis so maybe "murder all the Shia" except there aren't enough so maybe "murder all the Mexicans?"

Each one of these calls for violence comes with its own dynamic which makes things very different.

The German National People's Party was formed in late 1918 after Germany's defeat in World War I and the November Revolution that toppled the German monarchy. It combined the bulk of the German Conservative Party, Free Conservative Party and German Fatherland Party with right-wing elements of the National Liberal Party. The party strongly rejected the republican Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles which it viewed as a national disgrace, signed by traitors. The party instead aimed at a restoration of monarchy, a repeal of the dictated peace treaty and reacquisition of all lost territories and colonies.

I mean, that shit coulda gone real wrong, too. How many Jews did the Communists murder in the USSR? Fuckin' Stalin wiped out over a million people before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Bottom line? Germany was a monarchy that went for broke to take over the world and forced all of its opponents to do the same. Then everyone was broke but the Germans were broke and losers although they didn't think so and nobody did a fucking thing while they re-armed to take over the world because nobody wanted their payments to stop coming in.

And look - Nazism stopped after WWII. Stopped for a good long while. You keep pointing at the day after the election as if somehow all these guys rallying around the President will rally exactly the fucking same under a different regime. As if legitimacy isn't the very fuel of their fire. All those guys screaming about gay marriage - what did they do when the Supreme Court legalized it?

You really want to believe that Trump causes racism and totalitarianism when really, he authorizes it. Here, make my point for me:

You make a good point that there's no money to be made on vilifying the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free... but the private prisons, police departments, government contractors, and politicians would beg to differ.

Obama abolished private prison contractors. Police departments exist to protect and serve and are legally bound by civil rights laws. "government contractors?" "politicians?" Ours is a country that insists that racism is not okay while actually doing something about racism requires enforcement. And enforcement is being held lax because it's not a priority. "Round up the Mexicans because they're here illegally" is bad. "Round up the Mexicans because they're Mexican" is worse, and the power structures we're dealing with still have to pretend they're protecting law and order, not the Aryan bloodline.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced sway that industry/business/corporations hold over our democratic institutions.

Whites are dwindling demographically, as well as socioeconomically. Industry/business/corporations exist to make money in a maximally amoral way which is why Facebook gives no fucks about racism - their bread is buttered by racists. Make it expensive to cater to racists and they'll profit some other way. It's just business.

Here in These United States the Army used to exist primarily to break strikes. Private security guards used to shoot labor protesters. An entire generation of talent was crushed under suspicion of being communist. And while Germany descended into the Third Reich the United States limped through with the New Deal.

We both agree - Hitler isn't the problem. But Hitler's disciples aren't the problem, either - every time we look through a Hitler-shaped lens we miss a Pol Pot, an Idi Amin, a Hafez Assad, a Moammar Qaddhafi. And every time we break the glass because must be Hitler, we lose all ability to examine the facts of the ground instead of hailing back to our cartoon of history.