Adolf Hitler Archives - Public Seminar

Germany Holds Up a Mirror for America

The rise of the AfD, “Alternative for Germany,” now the nation’s most popular political party

October 6, 2025 • by Bruno Heidlberger

On May 2, 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that Germany was “not a democracy, but a tyranny in disguise.” True extremism, he said, lay not in the “popular AfD” but in the “deadly immigration policy of the establishment with open borders, which the AfD rejects.” Rubio's ...

Democracy

How Democracies Die, Fast and Slow

“The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos”

April 10, 2023 • by John Keane

Things are serious: the “great democratic revolution“ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt....

Politics

The Big Lie

When the January 6 Select Committee chose this phrase to headline the second day of hearings they identified Donald J. Trump and his confederates as 21st century fascists

June 13, 2022 • by Claire Potter

The message from Republican politicians and their right-wing media flacks about the televised hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, which have now completed their second day? They don’t matter. “Nothing to see here!” they are all quacking, as they have ...

History

I Read Mein Kampf So That You Don’t Have To

Four aspects of Hitler’s manifesto that matter for us today

June 22, 2021 • by Erich Christiansen

_____ During Donald Trump’s racially charged 2016 presidential campaign, many people started wondering to what extent Trump and his followers could be compared with Hitler and the ideology of the National Socialist movement that he led. One place to start to answer that question would be by reading Mein Kampf, (“My ...

I Read <em>Mein Kampf</em> So That You Don’t Have To

Democracy

Far-Right Populism is Bad Enough

On fascism, populism, and democracy

October 15, 2020 • by Jan-Werner Mueller

From more or less mad Roman emperors to -- of course -- Adolf Hitler, by now it would seem easier to name historical figures to whom Donald Trump has not been linked than ones whom he has been said to resemble. By the same token, there has been a deluge ...

History

Muscovite

An excerpt from “The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time”

October 1, 2020 • by Hugh Raffles

During the years I was writing this book, my mother began to lose her memory, or, as she often said, she started “getting stupid.” I traveled frequently to London at this time, and on one of these trips visited the house in Belsize Park in which Sigmund Freud spent the ...

Race

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

When saying “I’m sorry” is not enough

July 16, 2020 • by Roy L. Brooks

This point is critically important in understanding the duty to apology. So long as the perpetrator or its successor-in-interest is alive (a family or institution, for example), the transgression’s moral stain does not perish with the victims. The perpetrator still has something for which to apologize. It is only the ...

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

Public Health

The Fascist Politics of the Pandemic

Around the world, far-right leaders’ responses to the pandemic feature key elements of fascist ideology

May 25, 2020 • by Federico Finchelstein and Jason Stanley

There is nothing like a pandemic to bring out the fascist ideology in countries under far-right rule. In the world's three largest democracies, national leaders are using the COVID-19 crisis to wage war on immigrants and minorities, while testing the limits of common sense. NEW YORK/NEW HAVEN -- In stark contrast ...

Feature

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

10 Historic Lessons for the Age of Trump

October 8, 2018 • by Jürgen von Mahs

2018 marks the 85th anniversary of the birth of the perhaps the most strident authoritarian regime in Western history: Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power makes this year a good occasion to reflect on the lessons that can be learned from the fateful series of events that unfolded in Germany ...

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

Education

Exile as Haven

On The New School Dorm Room Doors Vandalized with Swastikas

November 14, 2016 • by Julia Foulkes

Those of us at The New School received news on Saturday that dorm room doors had been vandalized with swastikas. The president has acted swiftly, calling it a hate crime and enacting a zero tolerance policy for such actions. Since this may be an act of students -- entry to ...