Scrape away the brown shirt, the pointy hood, the proud boy t-shirt or the the boogaloo Hawaiian shirt and you find the same thing: the Nazi mentality. This is a mindset of hatred and it advocates violence against any disagreement. It organizes around the idea that one leader gives the orders and all opposed must be crushed. It is worthy of endless repetition that white supremacist is just a longer spelling of Nazi. So much so that Steve Bannon originated the term “alt-right” to unify these groups under one banner, and to attempt to obscure their true heritage and nature.

The depth of the hatred of others by members of this subset of humanity is palpable and generates a primal fear. And it should because death, destruction, slavery and genocide follow when this mindset takes hold of the reigns of authority.

It bears examining closely the individuals who would become part of these groups and movements and happily engage in violence. Hatred is a unifying factor for these people. They are personally rather ineffective in life or even outright criminals. And exporting the blame for their actions or failures to others through hatred brings them into agreement with each other and their icons.

In the case of our country, the largest voice of blame and hatred of others was the former guy. He of course was aided and abetted by other ineffectuals—a new word that should be used to describe the core anti-socials that populate the ranks of these groups. Ineffectuals can be directly contrasted to intellectuals. The former having horribly flawed thinking and action processes and the latter is all about applying intelligence, analysis and correction to situations.

It is actually to our great benefit that ineffectuals have an innate inability to get things done. They are good at noise, destruction and complaint—welcome to the Karens. They are even better at blaming others for their actions, which as it happens is also a great tool for investigation of their criminal and destructive activities.

Of course ineffectuals heap hatred and scorn on intellectuals and target them for their problems. This is not an idle statement. Hatred of intellectuals was a key factor in the slaughter of anyone educated during the genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Intellectuals and intelligent people in general are capable of rapidly recognizing bullshit when they see it. So it is easy to see why ineffectuals hate them and target them with labels like “elites,” “intellectuals,” “liberals” and yes, “Jews.”

If it is one thing that sends a person with a dark heart into terror it is the idea that someone might suspect what they truly have in their hearts. When someone has committed a crime and wonders if someone might have found out about it, the reactions can range from carping criticism of the person they suspect of knowing to verbal or even physical attacks. This is when those “leaders” get truly dangerous.

If this sounds like a description of the former guy and some of his proxies, like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and a host of others—well that is not a coincidence. These people, along with Orange the Menace, are criminals and, by their behavior, we can conclude that not all of their crimes have been found out yet. But boy are they worried about that. Like all people who are factually not that bright, they have not learned the basic lesson of D.C., that everything comes out eventually.

If it sounds like this essay is trying to connect the dots between the mindset of these people to the past where the actions of similar people caused the death of millions—go to the head of the class. This IS what we are looking at with their protests against education of people about history (critical race theory). This IS what we are looking at when laws are proposed to ban books. This IS what we are looking at when we see a black man murdered for running in a neighborhood or killed by a cop kneeling on his neck.

Never forget that Hitler took lessons from us. Our actions as a nation in wiping out and segregating the original population of this land and importing slaves to base an economy on their labor—these actions were emulated by Hitler, Stalin, the Apartheid government of South Africa and others. Those that want to stop the education in history are not the least bit ashamed of that history, they want to repeat it.

Hopefully this will be helpful in recognizing the problems we face. Next year we will be confronted with the 2022 midterms. We need to know what is behind the messaging of hate that will surely flood our screens and inboxes and act accordingly.