Mein Kampf & Trump: A Dangerous Resemblance
When Ivana Trump reportedly disclosed in a 1990 Vanity Fair interview that Donald Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed, many dismissed it as eccentric rich-man trivia—an odd footnote amid gold faucets and designer suits. But for some readers, that detail lingered.
Years later, in the dusty corners of historical archives while researching Mein Kampf & Trump: A Dangerous Resemblance, that anecdote took on new significance.
What began as a study of inflammatory rhetoric evolved into something deeper and more disquieting. It wasn’t just the performative nationalism or authoritarian gestures—it was economic ideology. Most notably, the revival of autarky: an aggressive form of economic nationalism centered on self-sufficiency, isolationist trade policy, and tariff-driven protectionism.
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Germany embraced autarky to reduce foreign dependence, centralize economic power, and neutralize opposition. Nearly a century later, Donald Trump’s 2025 global tariff war, framed as a patriotic defense of American industry, mirrored that same impulse—leveraging grievance into economic warfare and weakening multilateral cooperation.
This is not a cry of alarmist exaggeration. It is a sober warning drawn from the patterns of history. Mein Kampf & Trump: A Dangerous Resemblance is not about equating Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler in some crude, one-to-one fashion. Rather, it explores unsettling echoes—strategies, tactics, and rhetorical devices that recur when authoritarianism threatens to resurface under new guises.
History doesn’t repeat itself verbatim, but it rhymes. Those who have read Mein Kampf—not just skimmed its horrors, but studied its blueprint for authoritarian control—recognize the insidious way power seduces through grievance, division, and spectacle. The book is a manifesto of resentment weaponized into political might. What makes this resemblance dangerous is not that Trump read it (although, according to Ivana Trump, a copy sat by his bed), but that many of its themes are once again shaping public discourse and political action in democratic societies.
One of the most striking parallels lies in the weaponization of grievance. Hitler exploited Germany’s post–World War I humiliation to stir nationalist fury. He offered a simple narrative: Germany had been betrayed by outsiders—Jews, Marxists, weak leaders. Trump, too, built his political rise on the back of grievance. “Make America Great Again” was more than a slogan; it was a diagnosis of decline and a promise of vengeance. The culprits, in his version, were immigrants, globalists, liberals, and the media. This grievance-first politics cultivates a sense of victimhood that is deeply emotional and easy to manipulate.
Both men understood the value of finding an internal enemy. For Hitler, it was Jews, communists, and political dissenters. Trump, in different form, singled out immigrants as invaders, the press as “the enemy of the people,” and protesters as threats to order. When leaders encourage followers to see their fellow citizens as enemies, they undermine not just civility, but the very foundation of democratic life.
Another critical resemblance is the attack on truth itself. Hitler created a closed loop of state propaganda, where contradictory facts disappeared under the weight of repetition and control. Trump, without the machinery of a dictatorship, achieved something similar through social media. “Fake news” became a rallying cry—turning fact-checking into partisanship and expertise into elitism. When truth becomes malleable, power becomes unchecked.
There is also the matter of spectacle. Authoritarians often cloak themselves in grandeur. Hitler had his parades and choreographed rallies. Trump had massive campaign events that felt more like entertainment than civic engagement. These spectacles are not sideshows; they are central to the performance of dominance. When politics becomes show business, accountability suffers.
The parallels extend to the erosion of institutional checks. Hitler used emergency powers to dissolve democratic guardrails. Trump, while not as successful, attempted to stretch executive authority to its limits—from deploying federal forces in cities to pressuring courts and undermining the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.
This book is not a prophecy. It is a mirror. It reflects back what we’ve seen before so we can better recognize what might lie ahead. The danger is not that Trump is Hitler. The danger is that we fail to learn from how democracies unravel—not in a sudden collapse, but in a slow drift, one normalized violation at a time.
Ultimately, Mein Kampf & Trump: A Dangerous Resemblance is not about the past. It’s about what the past is trying to warn us about the present. When we see the echoes, we have a choice: ignore them—or respond before history rhymes again.