Trump calling his unilateral aggression a “police action” is the Gleiwitz doctrine. The explicitly named “Department of War” saying it will punish whomever it wants, whenever it wants, then trying to appropriate the language of law enforcement after the fact?
A German citizen named Franciszek Honiok has been recorded as the first victim of World War II. He sold farm machinery and had openly sympathized with Poland. For this the Gestapo picked him up August 30, 1939, dressed him in a Polish uniform, gave him a lethal injection, shot him dead, and left him at the Gleiwitz radio station as “evidence” of Polish aggression against Germany.
The Nazis called him and others they killed the “Konserven” (canned goods) because they were so well prepared — humans murdered to send a very specific public message that served Nazism.
Hitler made this playbook infamous. Trump is running it again. This is what Hitler said to his generals on August 22, 1939, the week before murdering Honiok:
I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.
Then Operation Himmler (August 31, 1939) used Honiok’s body and staged fake Polish attacks on German installations, including the famous Gleiwitz radio station incident, to fake the appearance of Polish aggression. Nazi SS operatives dressed in Polish uniforms, broadcast anti-German messages, and left Konserven behind.
On September 1, 1939 Hitler broadcast pure propaganda, as he said he would:
This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45 a.m., we have been returning the fire… I will continue this struggle, no matter against whom, until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.
Trump is repeating this Gleiwitz history as the true precedent for his abuse of the phrase “police action” in Venezuela. The criminal espouses the vocabulary of law enforcement and blocks police from responding, while committing the crimes.
That’s abuse, not misuse, of language. It’s Hitler’s stated doctrine of propagandist inversion. The term now means its opposite, to enable crimes against peace, an intentional and very targeted violation of 1945 Nuremberg.
Trump is basically the armed bank robber projecting “strength” by stating he’s the police recovering stolen money. Historian Florian Altenhöner has pondered:
The lie being constructed there is breathtaking. On the other hand, one has to ask why this regime doesn’t rely on its power, but wants to give the appearance of acting morally, that the [Hitler or Trump] offensive war must be justified as a defensive war. A strange notion of strength.
Tom Dannenbaum (Stanford Law) called it:
The action violated international law.
Milena Sterio (Cleveland State) made it clear:
Drug smuggling “does not constitute an armed attack and does not authorize the U.S. to use force in self-defense.” And: Washington “cannot exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction to arrest individuals anywhere it pleases.”
Adil Haque (Rutgers) said it too:
The capture was “an illegal infringement of the inviolability and immunity of a sitting Head of State.”
It’s not complicated. It’s not a mystery.
The East Wing of the White House represented American victory against fascism, and so it was attacked by Trump. The historic symbol of Hitler’s defeat was completely demolished under a plan that had stated it would be expanded without touching it. Get it? Expansion can’t touch the East Wing if it’s not there anymore.
It’s the Nazi Lebensraum strategy, as espoused by Peter Thiel. It’s the loophole of destruction.
JD Vance, funded by Thiel, announced that the U.S. courts no longer constrain its supreme leader, after he gladly accepted the VP role under the man that he had called America’s Hitler.
If you read that right, Vance claimed to be discouraged by the rise of America’s Hitler. Discouraged about what exactly, his chance of success at the polls? Vague. I mean he then called shotgun to ride with America’s Hitler into office and help declare the end of democracy.
The U.S. claiming that Article 51 self-defense is relevant is an inside joke. They know such a claim is laughable on its face. They are mocking the world, by pardoning convicted drug lords to send them back to work, while claiming an emergency War Department self-defense necessity against drug lords.
Drug trafficking is not an “armed attack.” No quoted legal scholar supports it. Drug war is not, and has never been, anything to do with war. But Hitler proved it doesn’t matter, because the U.S. is operating above the law as Hitler did.
Washington is saying it cannot be held accountable for any violation by the U.N. Security Council. It is stating that everything put in place to prevent another Hitler can’t stop… America’s Hitler. JD Vance is no longer discouraged.
The system designed to prevent this crime cannot punish the criminal because the criminal has a veto.