By Irene Gammel
Born on June 14, 1946, United States President Donald Trump turns 79 in 2025 — the same day that the U.S. Army, founded in 1775, marks its 250th anniversary. To mark the anniversary, Trump proclaimed that “we’re gonna have a big, big celebration.”
Plans drawn up by the army call for 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven military bands and thousands of civilians. The parade will also reportedly include 34 horses, two mules and a dog.
Dismissed as a costly vanity project by some, the parade invites a deeper question: what kind of political work does a birthday celebration like this actually do?
Far from trivial or benign, Trump’s spectacle draws on a long history of authoritarian leaders who use ritualized celebrations to bind personal power to national identity. The most notorious example, Adolf Hitler, turned his birthdays into massive national events with military parades, mass rallies and highly estheticized scenes of domestic cheer.
These displays blurred dominance and intimacy, fatherliness and force — an approach revived today in the digital era, where curated imagery and social media entangle leadership with affective spectacle.
Fascist birthday culture
I was born and raised in Germany. I’m acutely aware that Hitler’s birthday still casts a shadow and that such dates continue to carry political weight, with the rituals involved doing long-term political work.
During the Third Reich, the Führer’s birthday — modeled on the Kaiser’s — became a mass propaganda event, blending public spectacle with personal attachment.
As German philosopher Theodor Adorno noted, fascist rituals portrayed the authoritarian leader as both a “superman” and an ordinary, flawed “average person.” This duality encouraged intimate identification and awe, much like the dynamic between a patriarchal father and child.
Trump echoes this dynamic through a mix of paternal posturing, hypermasculine bluster and expansive nationalism. Whereas Hitler relied on the latest photograph and film technology, today’s spectacles are amplified by digital media’s participatory culture.
(German Federal Archives), CC BY
Neo-Nazi groups across North America and Europe still mark Hitler’s birthday with cakes, cookies, memes and tweets; often disarmingly “cute” images overlaid with disturbing swastikas and jokes. In his 2017 paper, sociologist Christian Fuchs shows that the most retweeted neo-Nazi post in his study was “Wake and bake #HitlersBirthday #420,” blending cannabis culture with fascist nostalgia to deflect horror through humour.
The blurred boundaries between the national and the personal feed meme culture, where, as communications scholar Limor Shifman writes, “small units of culture” spread through imitation, often cloaked in play.
Amid mounting pressure on various institutions in the U.S. — universities, courts and public discourse — the military/birthday parade is an extravaganza that fuses esthetics and propaganda to cement authority, suppress dissent and consolidate power.
Power aesthetics of military pageantry
By combining a military display with a personal celebration, Trump’s birthday parade stages a grand spectacle of power. Key here is the presence of thousands of soldiers in military uniform, which creates a “persona and a powerful collective presence,” as fashion scholar Jennifer Craik writes.
Uniforms signal discipline and belonging, but also intimidate and threaten. Fashion writer Colin McDowell calls the uniform a “spectacle” steeped in associations with power and eroticism, a garment long linked to theatricality and role-playing.
Nowhere was this more explicit than under European fascism and colonialism. Uniforms were engineered to seduce, often fetishized: streamlined silhouettes, tight jackets and black leather boots. As Craik notes, such imagery was not incidental; it was the visual grammar of domination. As sociologist Klaus Theweleit observes, fascist power had to be seen, desired and even fantasized.
Trump’s parade is a show of force. Its sheer scale — bands, vehicles, helicopters — performs strength and legitimacy, marking who belongs and who does not. But the birthday celebration also turns attention back to the man himself, reminding us that authoritarianism is not only about intimidation but also about the persona of the autocrat.
Authoritarian scripts, then and now
Autocratic regimes work hard to fashion the leader into a man of the people: familiar, relatable and someone to be admired. Think of Hitler in his motorcade, hands outstretched toward the crowd.
My father, just 10 years old, was part of that spectacle at one of these parades on a mandatory school trip, lined up along the street. Yet as the motorcade neared, he was shoved aside in the crush. What stayed with him wasn’t Hitler — he never saw him — but the fanatical woman who pushed him to get closer.
The point was the crowd itself, kept at a fever pitch with ever-new spectacles like Hitler’s 50th birthday on April 20, 1939, declared a national holiday. German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels staged it as what historian Ian Kershaw called “an astonishing extravaganza of the Führer cult;” a visual and military spectacle widely broadcast.
One gift, a model of the FW 200 Condor, later became Hitler’s official plane. Trump’s new luxury Air Force One, “a gift” from Qatar, is also part of his visual narrative. The symbolism is eerie: once again, the personal cloaks itself in national power.
The cult of MAGA
In the end, Trump’s militarized birthday parade solicits not just admiration but political allegiance. Like past authoritarian rituals, it manipulates affect through military pageantry to elevate the leader as both a symbol and supreme commander.
The spectacle demands emotional submission with the goal being identification with the leader. It exchanges democratic freedom for a vision of unity under a single figure. However wrapped in humour or patriotic kitsch, Trump’s parade rehearses an authoritarian script with disturbingly familiar cues.
What appears as celebration is, in fact, a rehearsal. It signals a dangerous shift toward personal glorification and a political culture where pageantry replaces participation and adoration displaces dissent.
As history warns, that is when democracy begins to give way.
Irene Gammel is Professor and Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Bo Peep says
Liberalism is a disease it makes me want to vomit
Laurel says
Erotic? Gross. There is nothing truly masculine about this adolescent brat from my point of view as a straight female. No. I see a narcissistic, egocentric, immature sociopath. The only thing to see there is a train wreck.
Well, it did not end well for Hitler, nor did it end well for Mussolini or Bin Laden, so…
I will not be watching the brat’s birthday parade, paid for by the taxpayers. Instead, I would recommend the maga loyalists to take a trip to the Library and check out a few history books, before they are banned.
This brings to mind, that in college, I had a teacher who had been a part of Hitler’s Nazi Youth. He took to me, I guess because of my German/Nordic looks, and I became the “teacher’s pet.” I liked him, and learned from him, but the sad part was he still had the Nazi Youth training in him. It was still present. I recognized that some 50 years ago. I now wonder if Americans see that same bigotry in politicians, and their backers today.
Maga has me doubt it.
Jim says
I just can not understand what MAGA sees in Donald Trump. I just can’t. If ever someone was parroting the style and actions of a dictator (Hitler comes to mind), this guy fits the bill.
Even having a military parade on his birthday! (I know, it just happens that the Army’s birthday is on the same date. But I would expect most democratic leaders to try to avoid any situation that smacks of authoritarianism, not embrace it!) Fun fact, Hitler did the same thing when he was dictator. And one year, his 50th birthday, was declared a national holiday. Next year Trump turns 80 so maybe we’ll all get a day off….
His over-reaction to the LA demonstrations is also a clear sign he wants to be a dictator. From all accounts (other than Fox), the demonstrations are confined to a small area and mainly peaceful. Not to say there hasn’t been some violence but nothing the LA police couldn’t handle. And the NG will be there for 60 days! Trump’s hoping for some event that will justify what he’s done. It’s being reported that the NG will accompany ICE on raids throughout LA. Well, other than that’s against the law (posse comitatus – look it up, MAGA), the only reason I can see for this provocation is to try to get the populace to resist or attack them. Then Trump will say he’s vindicated and then we’ll see this crap going on almost everywhere.
I don’t expect MAGA to see the light. I just wonder where all this is going to end up. Trump might get surprised by the reaction of the American people. I think we’re getting to the boiling point. And Trump is the one controlling the heat.
Skibum says
I am reposting something that is appropriate to put here for this specific conversation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYsFvZcFOeA
What I am beginning to be more concerned about besides the ignoramus’ stupid parade is how he is turning our nation’s military forces into his own personal political soldiers to do his bidding even on the streets of America. I think the mid-term elections will be a precursor for how unhinged and chaotic he will be for the remainder of his presidential term. Make no mistake – his federalization of one state’s national guard without the consent or requested need from Gov. Newsom, followed by the activation of combat ready marines that he also sent into downtown L.A. without ANY justification whatsoever other than a desire to further incite and inflame the citizens into what the buffoon in the WH hopes will be even more violence, is to see where the courts stand when he wants to try to impose the “insurrection act” against an entire state’s self governance. Call me stupid, but I am of the opinion that as the end of this draft dodging, convicted felon’s presidency approaches, he will once again send out his jack-booted storm troopers in even larger groups, to Dem run cities and states throughout the U.S. to hopefully foment enough violent protests that he can justify not only declaring the insurrection act but also Martial Law, using our nation’s combat military forces to take over civilian policing authorities and suspend the next presidential election in a rogue, military junta protected effort to not have to relinquish his presidential power. Anyone who thinks this is too far-fetched is definitely NOT paying attention to what is happening right in front of our eyes.
John F. Pollinger says
I served in the United States Army. Active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials. Where was the base commander and the Commanding General of the Airborne Troops who allowed this to take place. They were booing and cheering at the behest of tRump’s rhetoric. From the top commander to the lowest NCO, they should have ensured none of this happened. Inch by inch, step by step we are using the military as props and worse to destroy The Constitution. If you want to cheer all of this go right ahead…until it affects you or your family. By then it will be too late.
Just a thought says
The economy is tanking, the stock market is in flux, thousands of government employees are out of a job and yet this dictator wannabe is going to spend millions of dollars on a damn parade. Fascism at it’s best.
Ray W, says
After “crossing the aisle” and thereby leaving the Conservative Party for a seat among Liberal Party members over Free Trade issues, Winston Churchill was assailed for having flip-flopped on certain conservative issues. He replied:
“I admit that I did say so and I admit that it was a very stupid thing to have said. I said a lot of stupid things when I was in the Conservative Party, and I left them because I did not want to go on saying stupid things.”
I will type this over and over again. James Madison, considered one of the most intellectual of all of our founding fathers, wrote of the difference between a virtuous partisan member of faction and a “pestilential” partisan member of faction. One type of member of faction he lauded. The other he decried as dangerous to his Constitutional experiment.
Our liberal democratic Constitutional republic was formed by application of bipartisan wisdom in an effort to solve the manifold problems arising from a failed government framed by the Articles of Confederation, with convention attendees agreeing to set aside partisan goals in favor of public gain. But it should never be forgotten that some of the convention attendees refused to sign off on the experimental document and that others left before it was even put to paper.
As for Jim’s expression of wonder at how people can blindly follow a political scheme, just look to Bo Peek’s comment. Bo Peek may not even know what liberalism truly means, yet she condemns it.
I am reminded of the story of Poimenos in The Songs of the Kings, by Barry Unsworth. Poimenos, a child tagging along with the Greek army that awaited abatement of the winds blocking the Greek fleet from sailing to Troy, attended to a seer of Zeus, keeping fires going, finding water, telling the seer what the soldiers in the camp were saying around the campfires. One day, Poimenos, loitering within earshot of the Singer of the King’s songs, gets caught up in listening to one of the mythical stories. The seer, looking for Poimenos without success, scours the camp.
“He was beginning to make his way back towards his own tent, but before he had gone far it came to him where Poimenos must be. He changed direction and went towards the open space on the shore side of the camp, where the Locrian lines began. As he approached he heard the short twanging sounds of the lyre when the strings are plucked and at once stilled. Then the Singer’s voice came over to him in snatches. He was singing of the eight labor of Hercules, the capturing of the four mares that fed on human flesh. Drawing nearer, he saw Poimenos sitting very close to the Singer, a little behind him. The boy was motionless, listening with head tilted upward in an exact replica of the Singer’s pose. He was lost in the story, spellbound, as sightless in his way as his new master.”
There is a reason Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, and the Oresteia, and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and many other writings from so long ago, were preserved intact, generation after generation, culture after culture, for as many as 2800 years, and that reason is the power of myth, the power of story, the power of self-identity. It matters not that the songs of the kings are myths, refined over centuries of oral retellings by village storytellers until the songs were finally written down. All that matters is that listeners continue to sit close to the storytellers, continue to sit motionless heads tilted upwards in mimicry, continue to lose themselves in the narrative, spellbound, sightless. All political populism depends on this entirely human tendency to lose oneself in story. People will murder in the name of story, destroy in the name of story, hate in the name of story.
The Florida Bar just published an article about the rapidly rising number of death threats, of doxing, of scorn, leveled at Florida judges by individuals caught up in a violent narrative not of their own making.
Time after time I refer FlaglerLive readers to the cautions of C. S. Lewis’, as set forth in his “Abolition of Man”. He wrote in the early 1930s that there would come a time when a super generation of mankind would accumulate sufficient knowledge not only to manipulate genes but to manipulate human thought itself. That super generation, he wrote, if unmoored from God’s spark of the divine, would redefine mankind’s existence into its own limited and imperfect image. In Lewis’ mind, gaining the political power to manipulate human thought would be the lynchpin to the abolition of humanity.
While I question the underpinnings of Trump’s tariff schemes, whatever they might turn out to be, I acknowledge that he may be trying something at a level of magnitude never tried before and that it is far too early to determine the long-term effects of so many constantly changing tariffs on so many nations on the world trade system.
On the other hand, I oppose Trump’s repeated expressions of hate, his repeated expressions of desire for retribution, his constant dissemination of lies. No, gasoline is not selling anywhere among the hundreds of thousands of American gas pumps for less than $2.00 per gallon; it’s average price just recently dropped below the average price it was at on January 20th. No, the Biden administration did not destroy the American economy; it was destabilized by the pandemic and has been recovering in fits and starts ever since. No, foreign leaders are not lining up to kiss Trump’s ass; they have been holding their own in negotiations. While a number of temporary frameworks of concessions on products and categories of products have been exchanged, not a single wide-ranging final trade deal has yet to be negotiated.
Sherry says
Right On Jim! Thank You!