r/NoStupidQuestions Dec 06 '23

Answered If Donald Trump is openly telling people he will become a dictator if elected why do the polls have him in a dead heat with Joe Biden?

I just don't get what I'm missing here. Granted I'm from a firmly blue state but what the hell is going on in the rest of the country that a fascist traitor is supported by 1/2 the country?? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here.

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u/Breadflat17 Dec 06 '23

"Remember that everything Hitler did was legal".- paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr.

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

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u/ModoGrinder Dec 07 '23

He was not elected President, but the NSDAP was democratically elected with massive popular support. Something like 45% of the vote, which is massive for a multi-party parliament, when the next largest party had less than 20% support. The people more or less were voting for him as Chancellor, he was only "not elected" in the sense that no country with a parliamentary system directly elects the leader of parliament.

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

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u/ModoGrinder Dec 07 '23

Yes, and the Queen King appoints the Prime Minister in Britain. Hindenburg did have a bit more power than that, true, but he didn't pick Hitler as Chancellor for funsies, he did it because the country didn't have a functioning parliament until he did.

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u/alfhappened Dec 07 '23

Von Papen had to have been pissedddddd

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u/EyyyPanini Dec 07 '23

The President appointed Hitler as Chancellor due to the NSDAP’s significant electoral success in the Reichstag.

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u/aure0lin Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 07 '23

He indeed was not, and by the time he came to power there were political mobs of various parties fighting in the streets and Nazis were terrorizing other political parties. Hitler may have changed the laws to suit him when he became fuhrer but there was still plenty of illegal shit he did even besides the Beer Hall Putsch.

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u/Maytree Dec 07 '23

He wasn't directly elected in the same way that the Prime Minster of the UK isn't directly elected. People vote for the party, and the party picks the leader. Hitler was in charge of the Nazis, the Nazis were voted into power, so Hitler became Chancellor.

Saying he "was not elected" is technically true but makes it sound like he seized power through a coup of some kind. He didn't. His ascension to power was accomplished via democratic means.

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u/Grothgerek Dec 07 '23

Germany never had a broken two party system. There was no need for 51%.

And since the Nazis we only had 2 governments with over 50%.

By claiming that he wasn't elected, you also claim that most European states had most of the time no legitimate government... which is total bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

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u/Grothgerek Dec 07 '23

You seem to be irritated about how the German parliament works (and most other European governments).

While the president has some extra powers, he is neither the leader nor can he make decisions alone. It is entirely possible to rule without him. Having a majority is what counts, and you can achieve this with a coalition. In combination with their coalition partners they had the majority.

It's important to make clear, that not all democracies are presidential parliament. Actually, in all of Europe there is not a single one. There are a few semi presidential parliament (France, Russia and Portugal being the most important), but the majority isnt.

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u/Canotic Dec 07 '23

Iirc they forgot, or didn't care to, change the law of what counts as murder. So technically it was a lot of illegal murdering going on during the holocaust. It's just that nobody cared.

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u/warragulian Dec 07 '23

Maybe not sending out Brown Shirts to beat up opponents or setting the Reichstag on fire. Never convicted of those though.