The Frightening Similarities Between Germany in 1933 and the U.S. in 2024
We begin as this year of 2024 ends its last few days with a retrospective from a compilation of programs throughout the year, starting back in January and February; over the last remaining days of this year, we will work back to the present. We begin with a broadcast of Background Briefing from January 2 of 2024, when we explored the frightening similarities between Germany in the early 1930s and the U.S. in 2024, with Trump and his followers who are about a third of the vote, as Hitler’s Nazi Party was in the last democratic election in 1933, when German democracy died and dictatorship began. Joining us is Benjamin Carter Hett, a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Burning the Reichstag, Crossing Hitler, Death in the Tiergarten, and The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic. His latest book is The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War. We discuss his article in the The Los Angeles Times titled “2024 could be the year America fends off dictatorship, or invites it in.”
As Trump and Tucker Carlson Work For Putin to Kill Aid to Ukraine, Are They Traitors or Useful Idiots?
Then we go back to a broadcast of Background Briefing from February 7, 2024, titled “As Trump and Tucker Carlson Work For Putin to Kill Aid to Ukraine, Are They Traitors or ‘Useful Idiots’?” With Trump killing aid to Ukraine thanks to the MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate, we speak with Michael Weiss, editor at The Insider, a Russia-focused, independent media outlet, who has reported on international affairs for over ten years, with a focus on the Middle East and Russia. He has interviewed ISIS operatives and Russian spies; published and curated a series of still-classified KGB training manuals; reported from rebel-held Syria and war-torn Ukraine; broken major stories about financial corruption; and exposed the Russian intelligence services’ ongoing subversion efforts in the United States and Europe. He is the co-host of the Foreign Office Podcast at New Lines Magazine, as well as the author of The Menace of Unreality: How Russia Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money and coauthor of the New York Times Bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He joins us to discuss the extent to which we have Americans in high places, from Trump to Tucker Carlson, working for Putin, who are at worst traitors or at best “useful idiots.”
Trump’s Grift From God
Then we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from March 28, 2024 when we look into what Stephen Colbert referred to as “Trump’s grift from God,” as the former president hawks bibles for $59.99 that are infused with Christian nationalism, as though Jesus was a MAGA Republican. Joining us is Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications. Her latest book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.