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Visceral anguish moves me to write. Geographically a distant observer, I write from Australia, yet I am closer experientially to what happens politically and morally in the USA than most Americans.

I lived under the spell of Hitler’s voice in my youth. Later, I endured firsthand the calamitous hardening of a nation’s heart towards fellow human beings when it succumbed to the seductive propaganda of “making Germany great again,” or in Nazi-speak, of the Thousand Year Reich, not to mention the trauma of its collapse in 1945.

Today, eighty years later, I must witness a replay: millions of Americans, predominantly Christians, have surrendered their conscience to one of the most egregious demagogues in history, like the German Christians back then.

 
The unshakable loyalty of white evangelicals to Donald Trump is more than just a political oddity—it is a chilling echo of the 1930s, when the German people, through democratic means, ushered in the Nazi regime. 

History does not merely repeat itself; it evolves, adapts, and reemerges under new banners. Today, the evangelical embrace of Trumpism is paving the way for an American catastrophe, one that bears a disturbing resemblance to the road that led to the Holocaust.

The Christian Betrayal of Conscience
Just as the German church largely capitulated to Hitler’s rise, white evangelical leaders in the U.S. have abandoned moral discernment in favor of raw power. They have traded the Sermon on the Mount for nationalism, compassion for institutionalized cruelty, and truth for propaganda. Their churches echo the rhetoric of allegation, dominion, and supremacy, rather than humility, love, and justice.

In 1930s Germany, the church became an instrument of the state, baptizing its genocidal ambitions with theological justifications. Today, American evangelicals wrap Trumpism in a flag and a cross, recasting their faith in the image of authoritarianism. They invoke divine ordination to justify xenophobia, voter suppression, and political violence. It is the same dark fusion of religion and nationalism that once enabled unspeakable horrors.

A People Prepared for Atrocity
The Nazis did not seize power overnight. Hitler’s rise was methodical, exploiting economic despair, cultural anxieties, and latent bigotry. He reassured the majority that they were victims, that they were entitled to supremacy, and that the “enemy”—the Jews, the outsiders, the dissenters—were to blame for their struggles.

Trump’s movement thrives on the same playbook. It fosters white reclamation, demonizes immigrants, and redefines democracy as an instrument of exclusion rather than representation. The January 6 insurrection was not an anomaly but a warning: when a mass movement sanctifies violence and dehumanization, the next steps are all too predictable.

In a polarized society, resentment toward the ‘other’ always runs high; in venting it, weapons of choice are scapegoating, blame language, vicious name-calling, and disinformation. With this genie out of the bottle, the spiral toward extremes, in the age of social media and robotic content production, can only accelerate.
The Nazi Playbook in America

Today, book bans, voter suppression, and the scapegoating of minorities signal that the authoritarian project is well underway. History warns us that genocide does not begin in gas chambers; it begins in rhetoric, in policy, and in the willingness of religious institutions to rationalize evil.

 
White evangelicals are not merely complicit in Trump’s resurgence—they are its engine. They have created a moral universe where democracy is expendable, empathy is a sin, and where a new American Reich is not just possible, but conceivably inevitable. 

It is worth recalling the words of Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to Hitler’s willing enforcers during the Nürnberg war crime trials (1945-46). After working with the defendants, he summed up his findings: “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

 
Fighting the New Fascism
History demands that we resist. Silence in the face of rising fascism is complicity. The church must reclaim its prophetic role, not as a servant of empire but as a voice for the vulnerable. True Christianity does not sanctify nationalism—it defies it. Do we recognize the precipice ahead? The question is not whether history will repeat itself. The question is whether we will stop it. 

From what I perceive, many Australians, Christians included, would have voted for Trump had he run for office in Australia. We are not immune. Already now, right-wing extremism is gaining support while brazen antisemitism is raising its ugly head. Let us read the daily news with open eyes. Let us also remember that in Germany, too many, even pastors, turned a blind eye: “As long as my patch is not affected, I am not responsible,” until it was too late. 

Lastly, let us overcome the indifference, a.k.a. compassion fatigue, and respond with empathy to minorities and traumatized victims of white supremacy, poverty, economic dislocation, and institutional failure. Only a heightened sensitivity to collective pain and an intensified, forward-reaching life will deliver healing and broad-based, humane answers, immunizing a nation against seductive propaganda—left or right—in a world crying out for a unifying planetary vision.

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