Common Dreams gives us this historical reminder, linking it to the United States today:

By the end of 1933, Hitler had largely neutered Germany’s free press; not by market competition, but by bankrupting writers and outlets with libel lawsuits, unleashing police raids for “slander” claims, vigilante “Brownshirt” militia violence against reporters, arrests of publishers for “publishing anti-German propaganda,” the outright seizure of progressive newspapers, and a sweeping Schriftleitergesetz “Editor’s Law” which criminalized journalism that exposed government excesses.

Nazi loyalists and party-friendly oligarchs took over the press outlets that remained in a massive media consolidation project, ensuring that every headline and every radio news report served the regime much like Fox “News” and rightwing hate-radio/podcasts do today for Trump.

When stories were published about Jews and others being transported, they were couched in euphemisms such as Umsiedlung (“resettlement”) or Evakuierung (“evacuation”) and Arbeitseinsatz (“labor deployment”) in official communications, press coverage, and public speeches.

These terms fit neatly into propaganda narratives about “urban renewal,” war-effort labor needs, or “population transfers” from “overcrowded” and “crime-ridden” cities. There were literally no public reports in Germany about mass killings or illegal detentions between 1934 and the end of the war in 1945.

Today in the U.S., the lack of coverage of Trump’s brutal treatment of immigrants, lack of due process, and hundreds of monthly deportation flights to hellhole countries or foreign concentration camps isn’t due to a Schriftleitergesetz legal ban but rather to billionaire owners sucking up to Trump, partisan political framing, and the media’s tendency to underplay ongoing, systemic human rights abuses once they’ve been normalized.

So what’s being normalized?

How about building a concentration camp in a Florida swamp and calling it Alligator Alcatraz, when it should be Alligator Auschwitz?

How about having a secretary of defense who proudly adorns his body with Nazi tattoos?

How about these far-right cartoons being created for school children to defend slavery?

And how about being in a state where these numbers are considered acceptable:

• Overall poverty rate: 16.4%. 
• Number of people in poverty: Approximately 703,627. 
• Child poverty: 21.3% of children in Kentucky live in poverty, according to Talk Poverty. 
• Working-age women: 17.3% of working-age women in Kentucky live in poverty. 
• Working-age men: 13.7% of working-age men in Kentucky live in poverty. 
• Food insecurity: 13.7% of Kentucky households experienced food insecurity between 2017 and 2019, according to Talk Poverty. 

Especially since the approval rating for the Orange TACO, and by extension his whole regime, is at this level:

In Kentucky, 57% of voters approve of Trump’s performance, according to data from Morning Consult. Here’s what we know about his approval ratings locally and in other states.

Trump’s approval rating is above water in 27 states. That is according to an Aug. 12 update from Morning Consult.

As the image at the top shows, even Germans think Americans are becoming good Germans.