When former President Donald Trump first adopted "America First" as a slogan for his movement, nobody could be sure whether he had done so from sheer ignorance of its disgraceful history — or from a knowing malevolence.

But as Trump and his far-right followers voice support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that old phrase resonates with a sinister intensity. Joining with the other global gangsters who oppose liberal democracy and seek to impose authoritarian rule, the Trumpists are serving Russia first against America and its traditional allies.

The lingering question about Trump — and those who line up with him and Putin — is to what extent they are sponsored by the Kremlin or are simply "useful idiots."

Suddenly the disturbing parallels between "America First" during the '30s and the "America First" propagandizing of today are all too clear. Then and now, a global wave of authoritarian movements and governments posed a mortal threat to democracy here and around the world. Then and now, hostile foreign powers reached deep into the United States through political proxies whose influence was at once obvious and subtle. Then and now, those forces would wrap themselves in the American flag and insist that they were super-patriotic, the defenders of hearth and home against "alien" influences.

Of course, not every member or leader of the America First organization, founded in 1940 to oppose US entry into World War II, was a fascist or a Nazi sympathizer; indeed, many were sincere and respectable. But their naivete enabled the enormous Nazi spy agencies in Berlin, which sent agents into America First to take over its local chapters and transform the entire operation into a vehicle for antisemitism, sedition and vile slurs against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Brazenly pro-Hitler organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Silver Shirts and the American Bund (founded as the "Friends of Hitler") directed their members to join America First as a front for their treasonous plotting. They penetrated American institutions, with particular success in the Republican Senate and House caucuses — and at the same time recruited platoons of criminal thugs, not unlike the Proud Boys, into "Christian Front" militia groups that engaged in street violence. Their attempts to undermine the Roosevelt administration only ended after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Axis propaganda apparatus, operating as the "World Service" press agency, looks laughably primitive in comparison with the online services now exploited by Russian intelligence and its proxies. While mass media has advanced far beyond the technologies available back then, the themes exploited by the enemies of democracy are remarkably consistent: not only the dog whistles of antisemitism, but the demonization of minorities, the paranoid attitudes toward government, the populist fury toward "elites," and the promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories and smears.

And as Hitler's war machine began its rampage across Europe, starting with Poland in 1939, the voices of "America First" laid blame on everyone except the Nazi dictator. If America went to war, they insisted, the fault would lie with the British, the Jews, the international bankers and especially Roosevelt, who was disparaged as a liar and worse. Today, as Putin attempts to overthrow an elected democratic government and impose a puppet regime in Kiev, the right-wing noise blames President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, environmentalists, gay people and literally anybody except the Russian dictator.

To students of history, the behavior of Trump and his sycophants is darkly familiar. Across media and politics, the fans of our own fascist demagogue and his admired friend in Moscow are doing Russia's dirty work here. That isn't necessarily because they are loyal to a foreign power, although some of them may be, just as some of the America First shock troops of the '30s were in thrall to Hitler. What they all had in common was hatred of liberal democracy. Standing against them then and now is what it means to uphold real American values.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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