Background Briefing: December 26, 2024

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The Frightening Similarities Between Germany in 1933 and the US in 2024

We begin as this year of 2024 ends in its last few days with a retrospective from a compilation of programs throughout the year starting back in January and February then over the last remaining days of this year we will work back to the present.  We begin with a broadcast of Background Briefing from January 2 of 2024 when we explored the frightening similarities between Germany in the early 1930s and the US in 2024 with Trump and his followers who are about a third of the vote, as Hitler’s Nazi Party was in the last democratic election in 1933 when German democracy died and dictatorship began. Joining us then was Benjamin Carter Hett, a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Burning the Reichstag, Crossing Hitler, Death in the Tiergarten, and The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic How Hitler Took the World Into War. His latest book is The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War and we discussed his article in the The Los Angeles Times “2024 could be the year America fends off dictatorship, or invites it in?”

 

As Trump and Tucker Carlson Work For Putin to Kill Aid to Ukraine, Are They Traitors or Useful Idiots?

Then we go back to a broadcast of Background Briefing from February 7, 2024, titled “As Trump and Tucker Carlson Work For Putin to Kill Aid to Ukraine, Are They Traitors or “Useful Idiots?” Then with Trump killing aid to Ukraine thanks to the MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate, we spoke with Michael Weiss, editor at The Insider, a Russia-focused, independent media outlet, who has reported on international affairs for over ten years with a focus on the Middle East and Russia. He has interviewed ISIS operatives and Russian spies; published and curated a series of still-classified KGB training manuals; reported from rebel-held Syria and war-torn Ukraine; broken major stories about financial corruption; and exposed the Russian intelligence services’ ongoing subversion efforts in the United States and Europe. He is the co-host of the Foreign Office Podcast at New Lines Magazine as well as the author of The Menace of Unreality: How Russia Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money and coauthor of the New York Times Bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He joined us to discuss the extent to which we have Americans in high places from Trump to Tucker Carlson working for Putin, who are at worst traitors or at best “useful idiots.”

Trump’s Grift From God 

Then we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from March 28, 2024 titled “Trump’s Grift From God” when we looked into what Stephen Colbert referred to as “Trump’s grift from God” as the former president hawks bibles for $59.99 that are infused with Christian nationalism as though Jesus was a MAGA Republican. Joining us then was Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications, and her latest book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.