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For the titans of industry in Nazi Germany and Trump's America, silence and complicity enable authoritarianism

JL;DR SUMMARY The article draws a parallel between the roles of industrial leaders during Hitler's rise and current American tech executives under Trump's presidency. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Donald TrumpAuthoritarianismNazi GermanyCivil LibertiesAccountabilityAmerican DemocracyDemocratic NormsCorporate InfluenceHistorical ComparisonsTech Executives

Places mentioned

Berlin, Germany
"On a frosty February day in 1933, Adolf Hitler summoned 24 of Germanys leading industrialists to a government palace in Berlin to enlist them in dismantling the last vestiges of democracy."
Washington, D.C., Washington DC, United States
"Last September, at the White House in Washington, D.C., 15 American tech executives sat down for dinner with Donald Trump."
Minnesota, United States
"Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, warned that what we are seeing in Minnesota is a threat to those core tenets and to the promise of America."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 75136
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-02-12 05:31:05 UTC
Curated 2026-02-12 08:31:08 UTC