In the new movie “Lee,” Kate Winslet plays WWII photographer Lee Miller, whose photographs of Nazi Germany captured some of the most haunting images of all time. Miller worked for Vogue Magazine in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, first as a model, then from the other side of the camera. Behind the lens in the 1940s, she recorded blood-curdling scenes from Hitler’s death camps, widely discovered only after the liberation of Paris in 1944.
Miller is credited as one of the first photojournalists to document the concentration camps, after she pushed a searing hunch that far too many people had simply gone “missing” during the war. Paris was liberated, but Miller was spooked. She told her editor that something didn’t jive — post liberation, there were still far too many people no one had heard from.
Sitting for an interview in her late years, Miller was asked why influential people — why she and her trendy friends — didn’t do more to stop Hitler. She worked for a successful magazine; why didn’t she act, stand up, do something before it was too late?
They thought Hitler’s hate rallies were a joke
At that juncture, the film flashes back to a young Miller with her friends, laughing at a party. Pre-internet, they were joking about scenes from Hitler’s hate rallies, where he manufactured and sold pure, unadulterated hate. Hundreds of thousands of Germans clapped wildly and lapped it up.
Historians have noted how Hitler drew energy from, and came alive, only before his adoring crowds. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in her excellent newsletter Lucid, writes, “After Joseph Goebbels discovered that Hitler was a wooden and boring speaker in the recording studio and came alive only when encountering the energy and adulation of crowds, he recorded Hitler’s speeches at rallies and other public occasions.” She notes also how Mussolini would often pause during speeches “to let the roar of the crowd wash over him, jutting his chin out” and enjoying the spectacle of being adored. Sound familiar?
Miller and her friends, unaware of what was brewing, laughed at Hitler’s rallies and dismissed the people sucked into them. Surely anyone of moderate intelligence watching these film reels knew how deranged such hatred was; surely people could “see” Hitler for what he really was.
By the time Hitler’s wildly popular cult rallies morphed into Jews, Poles, queers and critics getting shot in the streets or crammed into boxcars, it was too late. Even then, Miller said, when faced with clear evidence of what was happening, it all just felt “surreal.”
If a demagogue consolidates power through hate, no one — no one — knows where it will end
What’s happening in Donald Trump’s America also feels surreal.
Trump’s vision of America has always been dark and dystopian. Abandoning the inaugural tradition of bringing the country together after a contentious race, his 2017 inaugural “American carnage” address revealed a seething darkness, a visceral hatred of Americans who hadn’t supported his candidacy.
Trump’s hatred apparently lingered over the next seven years, festering into a full, raging boil.
Desperate to regain power and stay out of prison for crimes committed during his first term, Trump now wants to deploy the U.S. military against his domestic adversaries. During a Fox “interview,” Kamala Harris managed to interject that Trump has threatened to use violence against his American political adversaries. During the putative “interview,” Fox ran a doctored clip of Trump discussing “the enemy from within” by leaving those words, uttered seconds before, out of the clip.
In the un-doctored version, Trump said on Fox News that the U.S. military should “handle” “the enemies within,” calling people who don’t support him “sick and radical.”
When a snake tells you who he is, listen
Half the country is either ok with Trump’s deranged rhetoric, pulled directly from Hitler’s playbook, or they don’t believe he means it, despite clear evidence that he does.
Like Hitler, Trump calls political adversaries “vermin,” and has claimed that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America with bad genes. Like Hitler, Trump calls the press the “enemy of the people.” Like Hitler, Trump rebounded politically after a failed coup attempt. Like Hitler, he promises to round people up by the millions, to deliver America’s own “bloody story.”
Falsely claiming that America has been invaded and conquered, Trump has explored how to execute political rivals. The first candidate for president to refer to fellow Americans as “scum,” Trump now claims he is worried about what “radical left lunatics” might do on Election Day, even though he is the one who orchestrated the violent J6 attack. He manufactures scenarios of violence from the left to normalize his plans for violence if he loses. Again.
If he wins, a record number of Americans will leave the country before the pogroms start. Pray for those who will stay behind.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, has no paywall.
