Notices by Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)

Trump is the leader of a movement convinced that this presidency offers the last chance to prevent the wholesale destruction of “real America” at the hands of foreign invaders and an “enemy within” consisting of a leftist, “globalist” cabal. They want the confrontation. They will rule - or ruin.

Two things are true at the same time: The regime is encountering a lot more resistance than they know how to handle, they are vulnerable. Yet they are also dangerous, controlling the coercive powers of the state, fueled by a paranoid, conspiratorial siege mentality that pushes them to escalate.

Creeping Civil War

In the name of defending “real” America, Trump is waging a violent campaign against the majority of the people who live here; claiming to represent the “will of the people,” the regime is at war with American society as it actually exists.

My new piece, for @ZEITONLINE (in German):

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-06/proteste-donald-trump-usa-spaltung-buergerkrieg

Today is officially my last day at Georgetown.

After 18 years of teaching history, and 12 years as a full-time professor in Germany and the U.S., it is the end of my university career.

I will now try to make it as an independent writer and commentator - which is exciting and terrifying. I hope y’all stick with me.

Within weeks of coming to power, the white nationalist regime flew in Afrikaners as refugees from what the regime's leader called an anti-white "genocide" - while at the same time shutting down asylum and escalating their purge of non-white people they declared "alien enemies."

Not very subtle.
https://www.threads.com/@aaron.rupar/post/DJkFG1BpxwZ

ICYMI yesterday - I wrote about the MAGA government siding with the German Neo-Nazi Party. They share the same enemy: liberal democracy. What a moment in U.S. history.

If democracy is to prevail, America needs to establish a robust anti-fascist consensus.

Some thoughts from my new piece:

https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-american-government-sides-with

The American Government Sides with the Party of German Neo-Nazis
 
The MAGA-AfD alliance of extremists is not surprising, but it remains outrageous. If democracy is to prevail, America needs to establish a robust anti-fascist consensus.
 
New piece:
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-american-government-sides-with

The AfD really is the German version of the fully Trumpified Republican Party: A far-right coalition that unites different shades of radical reaction and “counter-revolutionary” extremism – “Make Germany Great Again” in all its nativist, nationalistic, anti-pluralistic ugliness.

Lol. Of course he does! America’s government is openly aligning with German rightwing extremists – who love to snuggle up to the Trumpists.
 
Frankly, they deserve each other. And there is no better way for them to tell the world who they really are than through this MAGA-AfD alliance of extremists.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/02/marco-rubio-germany-afd-00324283

In November 2023, several high-ranking AfD politicians attended a meeting with neo-Nazis and rightwing businesspeople in Potsdam to discuss a plan envisioning the ethnic cleansing of Germany via the forced deportation of millions of people. They euphemistically called it “remigration.”

In May 2021, Höcke yelled “Everything for Germany!” (“Alles für Deutschland!”) at a party rally. This slogan is associated with Nazi stormtroopers. In May 2024, a court found that Höcke was indeed guilty of using a prohibited Nazi slogan; he was fined.

Just a few “highlights” about the people America’s government is siding with here:

The leading figure of the extremist wing of the party, with strong ties to the neo-Nazi scene, is Björn Höcke. In 2017 Höcke called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “memorial of shame.”

According to Trump and his supporters, only the providential leader can guide the nation to its re-birth and former glory – “Only I,” Trump used to say throughout the 2024 campaign. The rightwing base is all in on this, fiercely loyal to Trump personally, bound to him by a cult of personality.

To the Trumpists, the “enemy within” - those forces of radical leftism and globalist elites – are as acutely dangerous as the invaders from without.

In order to restore this declining nation to former glory, to Make America Great Again, it has as to be “purified” – the enemies have to be purged.

In the MAGA imagination, America is simultaneously threatened by outsiders – immigrants, invaders who are “poisoning the blood” of the nation, as Trump has put it – and by the “enemy within.” The core promise of Trumpism is to purge those inherently connected “threats.”

Utterly terrifying.
https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/post/DIby-pap66_

Anyone who dares to object has therefore forfeited the right to be considered “American” in any meaningful sense. And because the Trumpists are manifesting the “will of the people,” they do not feel bound by puny laws or pesky courts.

They really mean it. They are going to keep escalating.

Trumpism regards any opposition to this project of national purification and re-birth as fundamentally illegitimate. It is dogma among Trump’s supporters that he as their leader embodies the will of the true people, the Volk. Trump is the tribune of “real America.”

At every turn, the response to the rise of Trumpism has been hampered by a lack of political imagination – a lingering sense that “It cannot happen here” (or not anymore, anyways), fueled by a deep-seated mythology of exceptionalism, progress gospel, and willful historical ignorance.

There should not have been any doubt about the intention of the Trumpist Right. They desire to erect some form of plebiscitary autocracy, constantly invoking the true “will of the people” while aggressively narrowing the boundaries of who gets to belong and whose rights are recognized.

A serious look at U.S. history would have suggested that there was really no reason to assume some innate democratic national disposition. While it holds no secret key to predict the future, America’s past experience - which includes plenty of state authoritarianism - urges us not to be complacent.