It is well documented, but mostly ignored by history books, that Fascism and Nazism were both products of early twentieth century progressivism.  Mussolini looked to Woodrow Wilson for inspiration when he created an alternate path for socialism in post World War I Italy. The battle for supremacy with his fellow socialist party members was a party civil war, one that ultimately ended in a schism. He saw Wilsonian nationalism and the progressive Darwinian/Scientism style directed state the best path for socialism going forward, with his adversaries seeing old style international socialism as the only true faith. For them, Mussolini was a heretic, for him they were traitors to their country (having refused to support Italy during the war).

With Hitler, the nuances are more worth studying. He was no mad genius, but a populist putting his own stamp on an existing trend. The ideas of eugenics and scientism were already well established in the progressive community at the end of WW I. They were no more popular than they were in Germany, an early experimenter in Welfare State policies under Bismarck. Euthanasia, and forced sterilization, were hot topics born of imported progressive ideas from American Progressives and British Fabian Socialist. For Example, controlling the population of those considered genetically inferior was the inspiration behind Margaret Sangor’s establishment of Planned Parenthood. The Fabians were inclined towards more Orwellian ideas, openly discussing the idea of genocide. It was Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw that first put forth the idea of gassing people who do not measure up, asking the scientific community to create a gas that was “painless, but by all means deadly.” As Hitler sat in jail writing Mein Kampf, what he put to paper was 90% unoriginal, as were the NAZI plans he would later implement, including the Final Solution. All he did was say what was already believed by most at the time. His twist on eugenic dogma was to name Aryan Germanic people the pinnacle of evolutionary progress, and the Jews the genetic cesspool holding society down. Before him, such distinctions were drawn on intelligence or race.

In creating NAZI German policy, Hitler again borrowed from progressive ideology from both sides of the ocean. For example, his Jewish segregation laws were based on those in place for blacks in the American south, the Final Solution/Holocaust plan was based on postulations by British Fabian intellectuals. In short, there is little of what the NAZI’s did that can be considered original, they just followed the path already laid out by the leftest intelligentsia of the day.

The cautionary tale of NAZI Germany to those living today is not the evils of white supremacy or ultra nationalism, which is what the left tries to put forth. The warning is to be wary of intellectuals wishing to segregate people into bad and good groups. This is especially true when they start to talk about killing those that they consider bad.

Today the ideas of euthanizing those whose quality of life is not up to some arbitrary standard is becoming more accepted. While the person on the edge of death and in chronic pain is the poster child for such movements, once implemented the victims of such policies are mostly the depressed and handicapped. In parts of Europe, involuntary euthanasia is practiced (IE: murder) increasingly for purely economic reasons. The acceptance of such practices was unthinkable just a few short years ago, when the intelligentsia first proposed them. Even more disturbing is the increasing calls for mass murder of those whose political views are not in line with what the far left thinks they should be. While these calls by radical professors are looked as inconsequential outliers, the fact the media does not pounce on them as they would a modern eugenicist is telling.

The radical left is becoming more and more mainstream, as is their push for ever more fractured groups of oppressed peoples. This should ring warning bells in the minds of reasonable minded people. The critical mass of revolutions is not when a majority backs the overturning of the status quo, but when a large enough virulent minority is combined with enough apathetic people that reason is overthrown. The United States is well on its way to achieving this state.

While America is not endanger of becoming NAZI Germany tomorrow, but it is possibly within a generation or less of it. The genesis of this transformation is not coming from the so called radical right, but the left. Identity politics in one shape or another is responsible for every genocide that happened in the twentieth century. Despite what some might think, modern society is not beyond that. One only needs to listen to radical students on college campuses, and the mentors within the faculty, to know that it is not true. For the anti-Trumpers warning of fascism, it is not Trump followers calling for violence, attacking peaceful people, or willing to burn down neighborhoods. That honor goes to those calling themselves the opposition.