Listen: What Hitler and the Nazis Learned from American Racism

On the Chauncey DeVega Show podcast: Troubling parallels between Trump, Hitler and Charlottesville.

By Chauncey DeVega / AlterNet

Photo Credit: Chauncey DeVega

The Chauncey DeVega Show is the official podcast of Salon.com politics writer Chauncey DeVega. On a weekly basis the show features a relaxed and free-form conversation with artists, authors, musicians, researchers, academics, journalists, activists, as well as Hollywood actors and directors. 

James Q. Whitman is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, which explores connections between early 20th century racism in the U.S., Nazi ideology, and present-day racism and violence. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and author of the new book Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.

Professor Whitman and Chauncey discuss the connections between American "race scientists" and their peers in Germany, what the Nazis and Adolf Hitler learned from America's racial order, as well as how American anti-miscegenation laws and Jim and Jane Crow were admired by the Nazis. Whitman also shares his thoughts on the troubling parallels between Donald Trump's rise to power, the recent events in Charlottesville, and Hitler's genocidal authoritarian regime.  

DeVega reflects on Hurricane Harvey and what its devastating aftermath reveals about the color line, income inequality and disaster capitalism. Chauncey also ponders the morality of trying to profit from the inevitable rebuilding efforts. At the end of the podcast, Chauncey also "connects the dots" between the high level of support for Donald Trump among America's police, disinformation about the Black Lives Matter movement, and how the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies have now labeled anti-fascists as "terrorists."

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

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