Jan. 24-- Pope Francis has
likened the global rise of populism to the circumstances in 1930s Germany that
led to Adolf Hitler assuming power.
In an interview with El País on Friday, interviewers asked
Francis his thoughts about the rise of anti-establishment or populist movements
in Europe and the United States, where Donald
Trump was last week inaugurated
as 45th president of the United States
"The consequences of a crisis
that does not end, the increase in inequality, the absence of strong leadership
are giving way to political formations that are collecting the discomfort of
citizens," the interviewer said. "Some of them ... take advantage of the
fear of the citizenship of an uncertain future to construct a message of
xenophobia, of hatred toward the foreigner. The case of Trump is the most
striking, but there are also the cases of Austria and even Switzerland. Are you
worried about this phenomenon?"
"It's what they call the populism," Francis replied.
"That is a misleading word ... Of course, crises cause fears, alerts. For
me the most typical example of populism in the European sense of the word is
German."
Francis went on to discuss Germany's economic crisis after World
War I under the leadership of Paul von
Hindenburg amid the
global Great Depression that began in the United States in 1929 and spread
through the world in the 1930s. Hindenburg opposed and defeated Hitler in
Germany's 1932 presidential elections. Months later in parliamentary elections,
Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi, party won
with 14 million votes, or 37 percent of the total popular vote.
Under political pressure, Hindenburg would appoint Hitler as
chancellor of Germany in 1933.
When Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler seized that opportunity to
declare the office of president vacant and to pronounce himself as head of
state.
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