Rachel Maddow has been tracking the rise in Holocaust denialism and anti-Semitism in America in the years since Donald Trump first entered the political arena in 2015.
With her podcast "Ultra," Maddow has been able to take a deeper dive into the topic than she can on her weekly MSNBC show on Monday nights. "Ultra" takes listeners back to the 1940s, when a Nazi agent infiltrated Congress and colluded with more than 20 sitting members as part of a plot to overthrow the US government in the lead-up to World War II.
It's far too similar to the MAGA loyalists who now take up far too many seats in the House and Senate. “Demagoguery works," Maddow said back in June, "and has a powerful history in American right-wing electoral politics that we like to forget.”
Maddow has been more recently focused on how people who promote anti-Jewish propaganda also seem to support Donald Trump overwhelmingly.
Maddow continues to make the connection between the perpetuation of anti-Semitic tropes during the 2024 election cycle. She points out the way propaganda and manipulation are effective tactics to spread lies about Jews, using "genocide inversion" to turn the victims into the perpetrators in the public eye.
The closer we get to Election Day, "all the alarms are going off," Maddow said on her Monday night broadcast.
The uptick in Holocaust denialism combined with Trump's other violent rhetoric and his extremist admiration for foreign dictators could spill over into real retaliation from his base, Maddow warns.