Стратег Трампа Стив Шмидт назвал движение MAGA фашизмом и предостерег от повторения ошибок нацистов

Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt laid out the slow, gradual transformation of MAGA into what he sees as an overtly fascist movement in his latest episode of "The Warning" on YouTube, published Tuesday. He opened by noting that today is the 87th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. "It took a long time from Hitler's Munich coup in 1923 to the start of World War II — almost 20 years. It took six years for the Nazi Führer to take power and to start a war that would kill 80 million people." We're not quite there yet, he said — but we're already seeing more and more tolerance of hate in ways that would be unthinkable in past eras. Take, for example, GOP Senate candidate Mike Collins, of whom Schmidt put up a picture. "This young man next to him, in Klan robes, was a staffer. He has other Nazis involved in the campaign. Our country, America, is falling apart. It is divided, and it is weaker than it has been at any point in anyone's lifetime who is watching this. We are at a moment of economic weakness. We are at a moment of military weakness. We are at a moment of profound moral weakness and collapse." Meanwhile, he said, Vice President J.D. Vance is fanning the flames by telling his supporters "you don't have to apologize for being white anymore." "What MAGA is, is a cousin to their fascist, National Socialist forefathers. It is a philosophy built on grievance," said Schmidt. Movements like this, he said, begin small: in the original Nazis' case, "it started with angry men in beer halls, aggrieved men, losers being told that they were not responsible for their failures — that some other, greater, nefarious force was conspiring against them to keep them from greatness. In that case, it was the Jew. And that poison swirls around a great deal — around these MAGA candidates, all around America. The American people can see what's happening." Ultimately, he said, "the world's leaders and the world's nations looked away. They turned the other eye. They pretended it wasn't happening until it was too late." And that's something that could be happening in America right now. "You have to appreciate that to understand the possibilities and the progress in America," he continued. "But we've stopped making progress, and we've headed down a path into the gravest danger. And we should reflect on that. The madness isn't funny — it's deadly, and it's dangerous, and it should frighten you, for your children."