Opinion: The similarities are too obvious: Donald Trump thinks like a Nazi

To the editor: As a British visitor in Southern California for a few weeks with family, I am avidly following the election campaign. Max Boot’s fine piece on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s incendiary tweets should have examined further aspects of his record to establish his ideological closeness to Nazism. (“The Nazi echoes in Trump’s tweets,” Opinion, Oct. 17)

Trump has boasted that he will “take out” the families of terrorists and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. He has declared that Mexico will be forced to pay for a wall to seal the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Trump sees the law not as a judicial process but as an instrument of the state. He threatens to send his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, to jail, and he criticizes a judge’s ruling in the Trump University case because the judge has Mexican heritage. Most worrying of all, he insinuates that Clinton was wrong to do her duty as a lawyer in defending a rapist.

In a democracy, the exercise of the rule of law is not to be bent to the will of the leader of the state. Nor is the law there to punish those who do not love unreservedly the Trump-defined U.S., which appears to be Trump’s position. The Republican nominee is clearly not as evilly talented as Hitler, but we should not make the mistake, as many did with Hitler, of underestimating his threat to civilized life in the U.S. and the world.

Andrew McCulloch, Collingham, Great Britain

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To the editor: I did not think that I would ever agree with Boot on anything, but this piece is a fine and frightening analysis of the parallels between the Trump campaign and the rise of Nazism.

Yes, it can happen here, and Americans of all political persuasions must unite to stop it.

Roberta Fox, Costa Mesa

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To the editor: It does seem as though Trump wants to control the media, as the Nazis did in Germany.

However, the notion of a conspiracy or collusion involving the media seems almost laughable given Trump’s own self-aggrandizing statements about his ability to generate huge ratings and CBS Chairman Les Moonves’ comments that Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Profit motive “trumps” conspiracy.

As to vote rigging, the Pew Institute has stated there are about 2 million dead people on voter registration rolls nationwide. For them to vote, you would need 2 million separate live individuals to know the addresses of the deceased, obtain their voter packets and show up at the appropriate polling places across the nation. It should be noted, as dead people don’t vote, after varying cycles across the nation, they are removed from registration rolls and they are replaced by new dead people.

Michael Solomon, Canoga Park

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To the editor: Boot’s op-ed article finally speaks about what should be obvious to anyone with even a smattering of historical knowledge: Trump’s narcissistic personality is very analogous to others who have become dictators in our world.

His constant insistence that he is the only one in the whole country who knows the “truth” and he is the only one who can solve our country’s problems points to his wishing to become a despot rather than the leader of a republic with checks and balances.

Thanks to Boot for finally spelling this out publicly.

Laurie Anderson, Palos Verdes Estates

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