Let’s discuss a hypothetical situation for a moment, one that in fact may sound familiar to you. It begins with a war weary country in a desperate economic crisis. The banking system has collapsed and job loss is rampant. Home loss is at an all time high, and inflation and taxes are on the rise. People can’t find work, put a roof over their family’s heads, and are often wondering where their next meal will come from. Out of nowhere comes this man whose words convince the masses that he able to save it all. His words are soothing to the pain that the citizens of his nation are feeling, but at the same time he introduces new messages of change that the nation he speaks to has never before considered. But the people are desperate and need something to relieve them of the destitution and fear that they feel over their once great country’s bleak future. This man quickly rises to the pinnacle of power, like a shooting star through the night’s sky. His popularity amongst the people of his nation is staggeringly high and the charismatic words that roll from his tongue are soaked in by his followers like water into a sponge.

This powerful leader begins to make changes to the economic system driving his nation. These changes are unprecedented and unique, but after a short period of time glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel begin to emerge for the people so desperate for relief. He preaches of the abuses of the “aristocratic class” and those in the position of the greatest wealth. He outwardly blames these people for the conditions the nation has fallen into and cites their greed as the main motivation. His words turn his nation against these people as class warfare heats to boiling, allowing him to begin a systematic process of removing the private sector control and replacing it with a nationalized system of government run agencies controlling everything including the media, banking, the economic markets, and the insurance system. He sides with the working man and preaches a message of abuse of trust by those who held the wealth, blaming them for all the woes his country faces. He begins to use his governmental control to limit their power and wealth through regulation, law, and closed door intimidation if necessary.

The popularity this leader enjoys is hardly limited to the people of his country. He begins a campaign to reorganize his nation’s structure of allies and trading partners around the globe. He begins to enter into discussions and negotiations with leaders of nations that his country wouldn’t have previously considered diplomatic relations with. It is his mission to convince those domestically and abroad that his country is being renewed and they will once again hold the torch of greatness they were once known for. The words he speaks are eloquent and charismatic with carefully designed platitudes to give different meanings to different people depending on what they wish to take from it. But most importantly, his words have meaning for everyone. They give a sense of hope for those that previously had none, and a sense of fear for those who once wielded the power of privilege in his nation.

I know you must be thinking that this isn’t a hypothetical situation at all. In fact, it’s simply the feel good story of Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to the Presidency to deal with the current woes our nation faces. Wrong. The story is admittedly not hypothetical, but despite the uncanny similarities it is an incorrect assumption to believe that this story refers to our 44th President of the United States. No, this is a story that can only be found by opening up the pages of history. This is the story of how one of the world’s most cruel and infamous dictator’s, Adolf Hitler, came to power in a desperate post World War I Germany.

Many will incorrectly label this as the rantings of an extremist distorting reality to make a comparison between the current President of the United States and one of the cruelest dictators to ever walk the face of the earth. But that is simply untrue and amounts to a suppression of historical facts that cannot be changed. The fact is these two stories have distinct and undeniable similarities. The comparison is in no way made to insinuate that President Obama will at some point suspend civil rights, resort to violent tactics to gain control over dissent, and begin to open up camps in order to annihilate and dispose of those he has manipulated his people to despise. Yet the similarities between how these two relative unknown figures rapidly rose to power cannot be ignored, and failure to have dialogue regarding the similarities would be irresponsible in a free society. After all, who is Barack Obama? I can’t yet be sure. Can you? The old cliché never falters that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.