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Author: Irene Gammel, Professor & Director, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery, Toronto Metropolitan University
Born on June 14, 1946, United States President Donald Trump turns 79 in 2025 鈥� the same day that the U.S. Army, founded in 1775, marks its 250th anniversary. To mark the anniversary, Trump proclaimed that 鈥渨e鈥檙e gonna have a big, big celebration.鈥�
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 by many 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鈥檚 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 鈥� 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鈥檓 acutely aware that Hitler鈥檚 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 F眉hrer鈥檚 birthday 鈥� modeLled on the Kaiser鈥檚 鈥� 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 鈥渟uperman鈥� and an ordinary, flawed 鈥渁verage person.鈥� 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鈥檚 spectacles are amplified by digital media鈥檚 participatory culture.
Neo-Nazi groups across North America and Europe still mark Hitler鈥檚 birthday with cakes, cookies, memes and tweets; often disarmingly 鈥渃ute鈥� 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 鈥淲ake and bake #HitlersBirthday #420,鈥� 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, 鈥渟mall units of culture鈥� spread through imitation, often cloaked in play.
Amid mounting pressure on various institutions in the U.S. 鈥� universities, courts and public discourse 鈥� 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鈥檚 birthday parade stages a grand spectacle of power. Key here is the presence of thousands of soldiers in military uniform, which creates a 鈥減ersona and a powerful collective presence,鈥� as fashion scholar Jennifer Craik writes.
Uniforms signal discipline and belonging, but also intimidate and threaten. Fashion writer Colin McDowell calls the uniform a 鈥渟pectacle鈥� 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鈥檚 parade is a show of force. Its sheer scale 鈥� bands, vehicles, helicopters 鈥� 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鈥檛 Hitler 鈥� he never saw him 鈥� 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鈥檚 50th birthday on April 20, 1939, declared a national holiday. German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels staged it as what historian Ian Kershaw called 鈥渁n astonishing extravaganza of the F眉hrer cult;鈥� a visual and military spectacle widely broadcast.
One gift, a model of the FW 200 Condor, later became Hitler鈥檚 official plane. Trump鈥檚 new luxury Air Force One, 鈥渁 gift鈥� 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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.
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Irene Gammel receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/trumps-military-parade-a-big-big-celebration-or-an-authoritarian-ritual-257536
Irene Gammel, Professor & Director, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery, Toronto Metropolitan University, The Conversation
