When Adolf Hitler came to power in the spring of 1933, he immediately went about dismantling the fragile democratic system of the Weimar Republic with the intention of destroying its pluralistic ethos. Those who refused to march in lockstep were arrested, many were killed.

This process of Nazification, which forcibly integrated all social, political, economic, and cultural forces under the unified organisation and ideological control of the National Socialist dictatorship has a name in German: Gleichschaltung, or “bringing into line.”

The Trumpian Führerprinzip

History is repeating itself in Trump’s America. In the three months following his return to power, the president has sought to remake the country in his own image, seemingly implementing the “blueprint for authoritarianism” that is the Heritage Foundation’s infamous “Project 2025”, a 900-page manifesto which has been likened to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented migrants whom he has described in words that echo Hitler as “poisoning the blood of our country”, his medieval crusade against DEI, his taking control of state institutions by staffing them with MAGA loyalists and removing those who refuse to bend to his dictatorial whims, they all have the same goal: to transform a work-in-progress democracy that operates under the official slogan of “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one) into a racially pure and ideologically homogenous authoritarian polity.

The staggering number of 100, largely anti-progressive executive orders which Trump signed in his first two months in power, more than any other president has signed in their first 100 days in office, are the Trumpian iteration of the Führerprinzip, the basis of Hitler’s executive authority which placed the word of the Führer above written law and subordinated government policies and officials to his supreme will.

Anticipatory obedience

One characteristic trait of Gleichschaltung in Nazi Germany was “anticipatory obedience” which saw organisations such as the Deutscher Richterbund (German Association of Judges) or the Verband der Deutschen Hochschulen (Association of German Institutions of Higher Education) voluntarily obey Nazi dictates in advance.

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US tech giants have been among the first to adapt to the US’s metastasising political climate under Trump 2.0, conforming of their own accord to his blatant authoritarianism in advance.

Take Meta, for instance: Twelve days before Trump’s second inauguration, CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to end third-party fact-checking across Meta-owned social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram and move the company’s content moderation team from blue state California to red state Texas.

Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and named Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, to its board of directors.

As history has proven, academic institutions are particularly vulnerable to wilfully conforming to the dictates of fascist leaders. Three days after Trump’s inauguration in January, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) put out a statement warning of the new administration’s accelerated attacks on academic freedom and urging the higher education community “not to surrender to such attacks—and not to surrender in anticipation of them.”

Entitled “Against Anticipatory Obedience”, the statement cites an example from Florida where, at the behest of a member of the State House of Representatives, the chancellor of the Florida state university system initiated a review of all course content for “antisemitism” and “anti-Israel bias.”

Bipartisan Gleichschaltung in the service of Zionism

Any analysis of American fascism in 2025 would be incomplete if it didn’t include the bipartisan Gleichschaltung that has been in place for decades with regards to US support for "Israel’s" brutal settler colonialism in Palestine.

The Democratic Biden administration’s proud Zionism as the ideological basis for providing diplomatic cover and military backing for "Israel’s" now over 18-month long campaign of annihilation against Palestinians in Gaza is the sturdy foundation upon which Trump has recklessly escalated US support for "Israel", which has since stepped up both the genocide in what former UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunnes as early as November 2023 referred to as the “world’s largest open-air death camp” and the ethnic cleansing of the bantustanised Occupied West Bank.

Not to mention US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s war on pro-Palestinian campus activism by way of weaponising both antisemitism and immigration law in order to forcibly disappear, detain, and deport foreign-born students and academics such as Mahmoud Khalil or Badar Khan Suri.

Two of the many noncitizens who have been abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs and tossed into the jails of the US’ cruel and traumatising carceral system without due process simply because they dared to oppose "Israel’s" colonial “forever war” on Palestine.

“This is Trump creating his own army of brownshirts right here in our country,” Democratic member of the House of Representatives Becca Balint warned on Democracy Now! when asked to comment on the kidnapping of Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk by masked ICE agents.

Likening ICE to Hitler’s infamous paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) is not where the many parallels between Nazi Germany and Trump’s America will end. 100 days of the demolition crew that is the second Trump administration taking a wrecking ball to the US’ über-flawed democracy and instilling fear in large segments of the population have shown that Nazi-style Gleichschaltung in the self-professed “Sweet land of liberty” is well under way and far from over.