Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

That preceding assertion is no idle talk.

An analogy is appropriate. Analogies are comparisons that bring past and present context into play in assessing any matter.

The analogy is the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the rise of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and fascism.

Now Hitler was rabidly anti-Semitic. The reasons have no explanation. Hate is irrational. Hitler was furthermore a white supremacist who believed in the divine racial destiny of the Aryan race: Caucasian Whites.

These two factors led to the Second World War and the deaths of 70 million people in genocide and world conflict. There were further factors. The defeat of Germany in the First World War of 1914-18 led to the Versailles Treaty that adopted the national humiliation of Germany as Modus vivendi instead of using wise assessment in preventing a future conflagration.

Hitler was the man to bring all the frustrations and anger of the white German population to the fore. He was a rabble rouse and orator at the head of a personality cult.

Today Donald Trump is adopting a similar trajectory. Trump is a showman who holds his supporters in a type of hypnosis. If Hitler had the powers of demagoguery, trump has presence. Wherever Trump appears, he hold people in awe. This is similar power to demagoguery: the ability to hold an audience captive.

The rise of strongmen has been a precursor to wars from the early 1900s. Trump is furthermore authoritarian. He is head of a white supremacist culture in Make America Great Again. The US President is the cauldron for white working class frustration, that like in Germany of the 1920s and 30s led to fascism and war.

The preceding assertion is not speculation. Hitler hated aliens especially Jews to an unusual extent. Any objective observer will see Trump’s anti-migrant actions and his travel bans that target specific constituencies of a darker complexion is similar.