Watching the Iowa Caucus coverage tonight and thinking about all of the language that has been used at the debates and rallies over the last several months (years). If you listened just a little bit during your history classes in high school, you would be able to link the words and rhetoric being used by the Republican candidates to those used by Mussolini and Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s to gain power.
Rick Steves put together an hour-long program about the rise of Fascism in Europe. Obviously with just an hour, the program can only cover the topic at a very high level, but in that one hour, you will notice a clear linkage between how Mussolini and Hitler duped their countrymen and how Trump has done the same thing.
The main lesson learned by the Italian and German participants in the program? Education, education, education. But think about what has happened in the United States in the last several decades. Civics education is no longer considered mandatory or even all that important in many high schools. The foundation has been set to allow history to repeat itself.
It is not that much of a stretch to see a future where the world must come together to prevent a fascist United States from doing something incredibly heinous. History can and does repeat itself especially when education is minimized and dismissed.
