Reichstag fire redux

 Welcome to the Reichstag fire redux.

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy,” Trump said Friday morning on Fox News, where he also announced that authorities had detained a suspect in the case.

“Other senior administration officials spoke of a broad plan to focus on public speech and rhetoric, declaring that those who speak in violent terms about Trump and his allies will face consequences. Some suggested a more expansive campaign, calling out schoolteachers and college instructors who have made public statements criticizing Kirk since his death, and promising to deport noncitizens who do the same.”

--from Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2025, “Trump vows to punish critics after slaying of Charlie Kirk.”

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This echoes Hitler’s post-Reichstag fire actions. It steers the nation toward a campaign supporting a bleak suspension of civil liberties.

Note the vagueness of it all-- the “radicals on the left,” the unspecified “focus on public speech and rhetoric,” the we will pick and choose “those who speak in violent terms about Trump” and that they will “face consequences.”

Most chilling is the wide, self-serving net of ambiguity, which may be used in “calling out” the “schoolteachers and college instructors who have made public statements criticizing Kirk since his death.” The freedom of classroom discussion and analysis banished by threat from on high.

With this in place, Hitler’s post-Reichstag mass arrests will not be needed. Trump’s threats may serve to dampen and suspend criticisms of his administration’s use of executive power and the emotion charged demagoguery of his enablers. Who can doubt that these threats are intended to turn us all into the reprehensible “good Germans” of the World War II era.