This just shows how really, really smart people (Sean Carroll) can be really, really dumb (Sean Carroll).
The differences between prewar Nazi Germany and today's United States are too numerous to mention.
One will be enough: in pre-war Germany the Brownshirt followers of Hitler were rampaging around the country and they oppressed Hitler's opponents. And the media was pro-Hitler.
In the United States, it's the exact opposite. The media is almost all anti-Trump; it is Trump supporters who have to be careful, silenced, in public. Today's "brownshirts" are the blackshirts and black balaclavas of Antifa, the so-called anti-fascist organisation, who are all anti-Trump.
The opposite, in short, of what would be needed for even the beginnings of a Nazi-like movement.
Then there's the media, the US Constitution, the three branches of government -- so much else that's different in the US from Nazi Germany.
To be frank, Carroll's take on this makes me very disappointed in his judgment. To claim that Nazism “can happen here” in the US is delusional. (At least with Trump; no saying what if it’s fascism of the Left...).
"It can happen here", New York Review of Books. Except, no, it can't.
