Flying across the news cycle – an even occasionally garnering a momentary, fleeting mention in the complicit mainstream news media, is the rumor that Donald Trump wishes that he had Hitler’s generals.

Context would certainly help, and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic provides it in this interview with NPR: “Obviously, we know that he has a kind of almost jealousy of the power that people like Putin and Xi in China have. … In 2020, the frustration really grew, and he started talking about – and he still talks about it – he talks about Hitler and Hitler’s generals. He’s been corrected in private conversations with John Kelly and others. He’s been told, you know, A, you’re not supposed to praise Nazis.”

The fact that Trump repeatedly uses Nazi language in recent years does nothing to make his denials plausible. Whether it’s referring to people as “vermin” or claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States, this is straight out of Hitler’s collected speeches.

Of course, I saw this coming 30 full years ago, in my late teens and early 20s, as this functional reconstruction of my early works demonstrates.

But what do people who experienced the real Nazi Holocaust think about MAGA?

“Holocaust survivor on Trump: ‘I’ve seen this before — in Nazi Germany’“: “No matter what kind of outrageous things came out of his mouth, the people waved their hands and loudly cheered ‘Hurrah!’ ” he told me, his eyes growing more serious “I have seen that before — in Nazi Germany in 1933.” He adds, “This man frightens me,” he said. “I watch what is happening. … I can’t believe this is America.”

Neither could a character in this 1947 film by the U. S. War Department, Don’t Be a Sucker, produced in the wake of Nazi Germany after World War 2: “I saw it first in Berlin, in 1932. … … One by one, he attacked each minority, and split them off one from another.”

Then, there is this: “‘I’m A Holocaust Survivor—Trump’s America Feels Like Germany Before Nazis Took Over’“: “Perhaps more alarming than the far-right getting braver is the seep into mainstream politics of their hate, their talking points, their rhetoric. “It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs speculated, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday. “Things that couldn’t be said five years ago, four years ago, three years ago—couldn’t be said in public—are now normal discourse. It’s totally unacceptable.” Here is another story about the same survivor: “Holocaust survivor says Trump’s America ‘feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin’ | The Independent“

From the Forward: “100-year-old Holocaust survivor compares Trump to Hitler“: “In recent weeks, as early voting begins, Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses in November. This is no surprise to Ruth, who told me earlier this month that “Trump is like a dictator. He’s crazy like Hitler was”. Despite the barbed wire and caged children, a detention center in Texas is not Dachau in Bavaria. But when an eyewitness such as Ruth Nussbaum with a century of wisdom and lived experience warns us of the similarities, we ignore her at our own peril.”

I have been warning about this since I was a teenager, over 30 years ago. The chickenshit mainstream news media refused to listen.

Today, we all are in peril because of it.