So two yahoos from Southie in my hometown of Boston severely beat up a Hispanic homeless guy earlier this week. While being arrested, one of the brothers reportedly told police that “Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported.”

— Rolling Stone, Aug 21, 2015

Then, further in the article, here is what Trump is quoted as saying:

“I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.”

Statements like these, and movements like these, have often in history been the beginnings of very bad eventual outcomes.

For example, in the 1920s, Germany was not doing very well. The economy was a disaster, people were hungry, humiliated from World War I, and hopeless. Decades of abuse by bad leadership had created a vacuum.

Then came an unlikely little man with a powerful speaking voice. Whenever he spoke, he incited passion in his listeners. He spoke of new hope, of national pride, of honor, of making his country great again. He also started to spread the seeds that much of the economic demise of the country was due to the Jews.

With his upbeat and passionate message, he gathered more and more followers and eventually he managed to get himself elected through crafty and actually illegal maneuverings.

Within weeks of being elected, he outlawed other political parties and systematically took over police and security. Suddenly, those that earlier were just blamed for the demise of the country, no longer had the protection of the system. The police had turned against them. Jews started to flee while they still could.

But the country was “becoming great again.” There were massive public works projects and everyone was employed. Industry boomed. The people were proud. The country hosted the 1936 Olympics. The people were passionately behind their leader, their Führer.

Pretty soon, Jews could openly be abused, beaten, robbed, raped and killed without any recourse. The German Third Reich was supposed to last 1000 years, yet it rose for only about six or eight, and then went down in a spectacular firestorm of world-wide disastrous proportions. As we so say, the rest is history.

But let’s remember how it all started.

There was a man who fired up his listeners. They came to listen to him to beer halls and stadiums by the hundreds first, then by the thousands, and always left with fire in their bellies.

There was a man who said he knew how to make the country great again, and he started cranking the economic engine unlike anything seen before. He kept saying he knew what he was doing.

There was a man who, probably with all good intention, thought he had figured it all out: It was the fault of the Jews. Too many of them were usurping the power and money from the country and its people.

Trump does all those things today. He says that 7.5% of all births in the United States are by illegal parents and he wants to take away the birthrights of those United States citizens. Note that he is already setting himself up to perform illegal acts, all in the name of the country. After all, we’re being “stupid, right?” And his listeners with fire in their bellies applaud.

By targeting illegals, he is creating an atmosphere of making them at least one of the scapegoats of our demise. It’s the Mexicans’ fault. Whether those “Mexicans” are illegal or legal, you can’t tell from the outside. So an entire class of our society is becoming a target of hate without any solid ground. When idiots like the guys in Boston (article above) beat up immigrants, Trump, rather than being outraged like any decent citizen would be, he dismisses it as “passionate” and thus we have it:

A leader is officially condoning violence against an arbitrary subset of the population that he has identified as being “the problem” of the country that we all must make great again. He is encouraging this behavior.

It’s beginnings like these that have paved the road for some of history’s greatest thugs, it’s beginnings like these that have resulted in entire countries of decent, hard-working, pious people being hijacked and forced to commit unspeakable crimes and atrocities, all in the name of country and leader.

This is how it starts.

Just saying.

Full disclosure: I am an immigrant.