After Donald Trump’s feed on Truth Social shared a video that heralds the coming of a “unified Reich” if he wins the White House, his campaign spokesperson insisted the video was created by a “random account” and posted by an unnamed staffer. It now appears the tweet has been deleted—no doubt by someone or other not named “Donald Trump.”
The Trump campaign’s initial story about this video may or may not prove true. But as we debate those specifics, let’s not lose sight of a larger point. Trump and his highest-profile allies have plainly embarked on a broader related project—one that seeks to acclimatize the American electorate to fascistic language and far-reaching authoritarian policy “solutions.” They are slowly edging the discourse deeper into that fraught territory, as if painstakingly testing how far they can take this without provoking too much public discomfort over it.
The video envisions a future America led by a victorious Trump, and appears to flash a headline from text copied from Wikipedia’s World War I entry, describing “German industrial strength” after 1871 that’s ascribed to “the creation of a unified Reich”—that is, a unified Germany. The video does not refer to the Third Reich (the German Empire, from 1871 to 1918, was the Second Reich). At the same time, it flashes headlines like “Border Is Closed” and “15 Million Illegal Aliens Deported,” which roots visions of nationalist strength and revival in mass expulsions designed to purify the nation.
But whatever the precise intent of the video, new information emerging about it helps illuminate that larger point—that Trump, his loyalists, and large swaths of his movement are edging the outer boundaries of........