The Enabling Act of 2024

Those who know me realize that I am a “RINO” Republican, someone in the tradition of people like Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes, or for Grand Rapidians Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Congressmen Paul Henry and Vern Ehlers. I could not stand Trump so my hand shook in 2016 as I voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in 2020.

When Trump won in 2016 I had reasonable faith in the strength of the American system. When various observers saw Trump as a fascist who would destroy the American system I was not alarmed. Congress, the Supreme Court, a lively press, would restrain his worst impulses. Besides, I viewed Trump not as a fascist, since Hitler had principles — bad principles, but principles nonetheless. I thought, and still think, that Trump’s guiding principle is doing what is good for Donald Trump.

And I was right. Although Trump’s misdeeds were many, including encouraging the revolt of 6 January 2021, by and large the system held. Trump lost the election in 2020 and slinked away from the White House. His numerous attempts to nullify the election failed, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

He was finished, I thought. A lot of people thought the same about Hitler after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Hitler was not only convicted, he went to prison.

But I was wrong.

Many Americans voted for Donald Tump not despite, but because of everything they knew about him, just as Germans voted for Hitler despite all they knew about him.

Why? This will be long discussed, but I think the basic reasons are the same reasons that led many Germans to support Adolf Hitler. They felt the political system had failed them. They didn’t want to improve the system, they wanted to demolish it and start over. The fact that Hitler was a convicted criminal was a plus, not a minus. He had only tried to save the country.

The Nazis got few votes in the 1928 Reichstag election. Germany seemed to be on an upward trajectory. The future seemed promising. In 1930 the Great Depression had arrived, and it was considerably worse in Germany than in the United States. The existing parties had had 12 years to work things out and they had failed. There seemed to many Germans little point in trying to repair a broken system. Better to began again.

The Nazis had a major victory, going from 12 to 107 seats in the Reichstag.

Many of Trump’s supporters are of the same mind. There are people in rural areas who feel ignored and disparaged by those on the coasts and big cities, men unsure of their future (there are fewer good jobs that will enable them to support a family), Christians who feel threatened by an increasingly secular country, people for whom the confusions of modern culture are deeply unsettling, these and others.

I occasionally visit the most disputable social media site, Gab. It is filled with people who are not only unhappy with the status quo, but bitterly eager to destroy it. Most are convinced that the world is controlled by vast conspiracies out to poison them with vaccines, subject them to the slavery of a new world order, take away their guns, corrupt their children in public schools, and on and on. They are deadly serious, full in Auden’s words of “passionate intensity.” Many are Christians nationalists. Some almost worship Donald Trump, the “Lord’s Anointed.”

Now comes Trump and says: “I will bring back the good old days. I will protect the faith. I will do what you think needs to be done. I will make the country great again.” This was a popular message in 1930. It is a popular message today.

Hitler’s basic principles of propaganda can be condensed to these principles:

1. Make the message simple.
2. Repeat it incessantly.
3.Appeal to emotions.
4. Say what the audience longs to hear, not what is true.

Trump is simply a master at applying these principles. He speaks to people unhappy with the existing system and promises to demolish it and build anew.

And that brings me to the title of this essay: “The Enabling Act of 2024”.

Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933. His position was insecure. He was surrounded by traditional politicians who were confident they could control him. The aged Chancellor Hindenburg had appointed Hitler and could depose him. The guardrails were in place.

They did not last long. The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 provided Hitler with the ability to persuade the Reichstag and President Hindenburg to agree to the Enabling Act, which granted Hitler dictatorial powers. He used them immediately. Using his new powers, he destroyed the old system. He abolished political parties. He got rid of independent labor unions. He made over the press to his liking. He moved to control the Protestant church. He proceeded against the Jews. There were no more guardrails.

The guardrails were in place in the United States in 2016 and they worked. The country survived his four years.

2024 is different. There are now no guardrails. Trump will be president again. He has a craven Senate, and almost certainly a craven House. He appointed three Supreme Court members, and will likely have opportunity to appoint one or two more. That court ruled that the powers of the president are almost unlimited. And Trump has made his intentions perfectly clear (as, indeed, Hitler had done). He is going to destroy the old system.

I take him at his word.

Germans in 1933 increasingly felt unsafe expressing contrary views. They spoke of the “German glance,” a quick look around to see if anyone was listening. The Nazis spoke of Gleichschaltung, coordination. And people readily coordinated. Just one story from March 1933: A mother is walking through town with her young son and sees her sister across the street. “Go over to Auntie Berta and make your ‘Heil Hitler,’” she told her son. It was safer that way.

Trump has plans this time to move fast from his first day. There will be a raft of executive orders. The Justice Department will go after his enemies. People will quickly realize that there is safety in silence.

Even before the election I read several mentions of people adjusting to a prospective Trump victory. See, for example, an article in the Columbia Journalism Review titled “On anticipatory obedience and the media.” Such behavior will only increase.

Germany survived Hitler, but only barely. Whatever Trump’s flaws, he is unlikely to start a genocidal war and with time, I hope, the evils of his policies will become evident even to many of his supporters, but before that happens I fear great miseries will visit us.

To use Lenin’s phrase, “What is to be done?” I don’t know. But lots of people are thinking about it, and I hope good ideas will emerge. I will be looking for them.

The Bible and Propaganda

This is a tad different than my usual posts. Religion is often part of propaganda. Indeed, religion often uses propaganda. My friend Richard Houskamp and I decided to have a little fun with current perversions of Christianity.

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A Modest Proposal

by Richard Houskamp & Randall Bytwerk ____________________________________________

The head of our local library system says that he gets regular requests to remove books with authors ranging from Homer to Dr. Seuss, and from all political directions. Almost any book can trigger or offend someone for some reason.

That got us thinking. Surely one of the most offensive books on any shelf is the Bible. It has something to upset almost anyone. Something has to be done. We need a way to render the Bible safe.

Now, this has been tried in the past. The Catholic Church for hundreds of years tried to keep Scripture out of the hands of the common folk, justifiably fearing it could give them noxious ideas. Thomas Jefferson’s version of the Bible, made by literal cutting and pasting, removed those implausible miracles. The “Slave Bible” omitted awkward passages about slavery.

Most readers today find things in the Bible they do not like. It is sexist, or racist, or too Jewish, or outdated, or hard to understand, or anti-gay, or narrow-minded, or contradictory, or implausible, and so on.

And, of course, the Bible is just too long. Who needs all that repetition in Numbers 7? The Reader’s Digest gave seven editors three years (under Bruce Metzger’s supervision) to reduce the Old Testament by 50% and the New Testament by 25% but still left in things that people would rather not read.

To edit or abbreviate the Bible takes a lot of work. Someone actually has to read it (often dangerous) and decide what should go and what should stay — and people will disagree. In the past this was a problem. Today there is a solution: The Personalized Bible. There is no longer any need to suffer through long genealogies or be offended by difficult passages. Through the miracle of modern technology, everyone can have his or her own Bible guaranteed to omit any unpleasant passages.

Here is how it works. The full texts of all Bible translations are entered into a database. Each passage, nay, each word, is tagged. The user goes to our internet site (https://yourpersonalbible.com/) and is led through a series of questions with many choices. What is your preferred translation? How long would you like your Bible to be (100 - 800,000 words)? What kind of baptism do you favor? What is your view of predestination? How much do you want to read about sin? What are your political views? Does God have a gender? Do you want any possible contradictions removed?

We estimate that it will take the average user three hours to work through our full questionnaire, but after that each person will have a personal Bible that will support everything he or she believes and provides no unsettling passages. When done, Your Personal Bible will be available on all electronic devices in milliseconds.

Through an arrangement with Amazon, a simple click will order a personalized printed Bible in whatever binding and font the customer wishes. For a small additional fee, people may have the illustrations they wish. Should Jesus look Middle Eastern, Asian, Black, or European? How graphic should the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah be? What does the Whore of Babylon look like? Numerous choices are available.

There are other possibilities. Preachers will be able to develop their own recommended edition of the Bible, confident that everything in it will support their ministry (think of the revenue stream!). Those using the Bible for personal evangelism will know the Bibles they pass out will not elicit awkward responses. The market for a “Republican Bible” or a “Democratic Bible” is sure to be enormous. And, if one changes theological or political views, it will be simple to revise the personal Bible to be consistent with new opinions and order the new and improved version.

Some small-minded souls will object, of course. They will claim that God inspired the whole Bible. That is true, but how many people want to read the whole Bible? Whatever is in The Personalized Bible will be part of the Bible. We add nothing, only subtract. Others might claim that confusion will result if John 3:16 in one version of the Bible is different than in another. How will it be possible to cite Scripture texts consistently? That is easily handled through our computer program. Each personalized version will include internal coding that will automatically bring up the appropriate passage in the computer of someone else (this will require a complicated cookie and tracking system). In the event that John 3:16 is not in the other person’s personalized Bible, the system will provide this message: “The recipient has chosen not to read this passage” (we don’t want people to be exposed to texts they find objectionable).

For answers to other objections, read our FAQ (https://yourpersonalbible.com/faq.html/)

We humbly submit that The Personal Bible may not give people the Bible they need, but it will give them the Bible they want.

Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler

I’ve been wary of Hitler comparisons, cognizant of the danger of Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.” For example, although I consider Donald Trump a shameful excrescence, I think him more like a venial Central American tinpot dictator wannabe than an American Führer (although his actions on 6 January shook my confidence).

But now comes Vladimir Putin. Suddenly the Hitler comparison is justified. One can follow almost every step Hitler took and find Putin doing the same.

Hitler played on the widely-held German belief that Germany had been stabbed in the back in World War I, then shamefully treated by the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles. For Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the same: “The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Just as Germany had been robbed of its territory, so Russia had been robbed of the supposedly independent constituent states of the USSR. Hitler wanted to restore the German Empire, Putin the former Soviet Empire.

Hitler proceeded step-by-step. He rearmed Germany. He regained the Saarland in a popular vote. He occupied the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936. In 1938 he took over Austria and the Sudetenland, and soon after the whole of Czech territory, making Slovakia and other countries vassals. In March 1939 he seized the Memel region, former German territory that had been given to Lithuania by the Treaty of Versailles (with a clear threat of war if he didn’t get his way). At each step many in the world protested, but Hitler judged no one would use force to resist. He was right. He expected the same easy march into Poland in 1939, but by then the British and French had concluded that they had the option of either fulfilling their treaty obligations or encouraging Hitler to go on and on.

Putin built up the Russian military, which had decayed in the years after 1989. In 2014 his minions took control of the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions. Putin correctly judged that there would be wide protest, but that no one would be willing to oppose him with military force. After 1989, afraid of a resurgent Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia. Montenegro, and North Macedonia hurried to join NATO and often the European Union. Their long experience with Russia made them certain that they were forever at risk if they stood alone.

Ukraine, despite its strivings, remains outside both the EU and NATO. No one is bound by treaty to assist it. Putin judged that no one would risk war to save Ukraine.

Then, using the same arguments Hitler used for seizing Austria and the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia he asserted that Ukrainians were persecuting ethnic Russians, that Ukraine was a state that did not deserve to exist, that it was historically part of Russia. He may as well have been translating stories from the German press in September 1939, making only the necessary changes in wording.

Most recently he eliminated any vestige of a free press. Hitler had done the same. The Nazis tightly controlled the domestic press before 1939, but it was possible for Germans to listen to International radio. Hitler cut that off when the war began. It became a death penalty offense during the war to listen to the BBC. Putin has severed Internet links, passed laws that forced international journalists to leave Russia or proceed very, very carefully, and coordinated (a good Nazi word) the domestic press even more tightly than before.

Like Hitler, Putin makes demonstrably untrue accusations about Ukraine, confident that few in Russia will disagree. For example, just as Hitler accused the Jews of being behind everything, Putin accuses Ukraine of being a neo-Nazi state, a strange accusation given that Ukraine has a Jewish president. He denies Russian atrocities, while accusing Ukraine of fictitious misdeeds. The point is to provide reasons to believe, even if those reasons are not plausible. A lot of research shows we need reasons, but not necessarily good ones, to support our beliefs.

He has his version of Mussolini yapping at his heels (Churchill’s phrase) in the person of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, who even bears some resemblance to Mussolini. In a further parallel, just as Mussolini stayed out of World War II until the defeat of France was certain, Lukashenko, despite initial reports, has not sent his forces into Ukraine.

The parallels are not perfect. The majority of of Austrians welcomed Hitler’s arrival, as did many ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland and Poland. Ukrainians didn’t welcome Russian forces, and as I write are carrying out brave and determined resistance. Putin, apparently, had expected quick and easy victory. The world responded more quickly in 2022 than it did to Hitler. There have been significant protests even within Russia, something Hitler did not need to worry about.

How will it end? As of today, 10 March 2022, I surely cannot say. But it is a dangerous time. Dictators like Putin maintain rule by success and fear. Had France resisted German occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler might not have survived. Putin’s military has proven less capable than he, and the world, thought. The longer the Ukrainians resist and the more the world supports them, the more precarious Putin’s situation becomes.

The fear is that he could resort to nuclear weapons, as he has already threatened. My entirely uncertain prediction is that he won’t, just as Hitler did not use chemical weapons in World War II, not because of any deep aversion to them, but because of his fear that the Allies would promptly retaliate with the same. Putin knows that his use of nuclear weapons would perhaps destroy his enemies, but also his nation.

I hope I am correct.

Donald Trump and Saul Alinksy

 In one of those unproductive Facebook exchanges, someone accusing Michigan’s governor of being a socialist (a rather goofy charge) mentioned Saul Alinsky. For those not familiar with him, Alinsky was a leftist social organizer whose career spanned the decades from the 1930s to the 1970s. His most popular book is Rules for Radicals (1971), which outlines rules for community organizers. Alinsky claimed to be a Machiavelli for the have-nots, and at first it seems curious to assert that Donald Trump, the man who claims to have everything (wealth, intelligence, sexual irresistibility, etc.) was following Alinsky’s rule book. 

But the more I thought about it, the more plausible it became. Trump pretended to be one of the “have-nots,” a brave lonely figure fighting the “deep state,” the swamp. As in other areas, Trump is a master of absorbing and transforming things. Let’s work through Alinsky’s list of rules for radicals.

“Power is not only what you have, it’s what the enemy thinks you have.” Throughout his career, Trump claimed to have more money than he in fact did. Many believed him. He claimed to have powers that courts said he didn’t have. 

“Never go outside the experience of your people.” Those who went to a Trump rally knew what to expect. It would be good vs. evil, light vs. dark.  He hardly ever asked people to exercise their intellect, rather favored chants and jeers. No one ever left a Trump rally with doubts or uncertainties (assuming they agreed with him at the start of the rally). As people, we like certainty, It’s unsettling to be unsure. Historian George Marsden cites an old Puritan preacher who said: “I should rather have ten settled opinions, nine of them wrong, than to have none of the ten settled at all.” The divine may have been speaking slightly tongue-in-cheek, but Trump speaks as if he had papal authority (although its worth noting that the doctrine of papal infallibility has been invoked only once).

“Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.” Trump excels at this principle. In the past, politicians at least attempted to seem truthful. Even Joseph Goebbels recommended telling the truth, or at least part of it, whenever possible. Lies have the distressing habit of being found out. Trump’s strategy was to ignore truth. The Washington Post tallied 30,573 demonstrable untruths and exaggerations over his four years in office.  

This was a brilliant strategy. Politicians in general get roasted for dubious claims. Think of Obama’s statement that people could keep their doctors — often, but not always true, as it turned out . It was cited against him repeatedly. But Trump’s lies were so numerous that by the time one was refuted, it was already forgotten in the face of five new ones. A kind of “lie exhaustion” set in. What was the point of refuting one lie among so many? 

“Make the enemy follow his rule book.” I'm still thinking about this one. 

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Trump is the Don Rickles of American politics, except that Rickles was actually a nice guy off-stage. Ridiculing anyone who disagreed with him both angered his opponents and delighted his supporters.

“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” Watch a video of a Trump rally. People are having a fine time. Read social media comments by Trump supporters. They insult others with obvious glee. Their favorite “argument” is often a visual meme, with no source, no evidence, and no sense.  But it’s fun, rather like an insult contest on the middle school playground.

“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Trump’s strategy was consistent, but he constantly invented new approaches, or at least new ways of saying the same thing.  

“Keep the pressure on.” Trump was great at this. Have you noticed how quiet things have been since he left office? Whenever he needed attention, he’d launch a barrage of tweets that kept the opposition perpetually off balance. He never rested.  There were around 25,000 Trumpian tweets during his term, an average of 17 a day. If one line of tweetery didn’t work, he’d try something different. After it was clear he’d lost the election by a landslide, he kept finding new false claims. Refuting one didn’t help, since by the time it was refuted he launched three more. Then he’d come back to the old one.

“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” There is a good Politico essay titled “The Truth at the Center of Trump’s Hollow Threats” that speaks to this point. The article begins: “Donald Trump issues threats with the frequency that other people take out the garbage.” It’s a great analysis, well worth reading. Basically, he kept making new threats that kept the opposition worried, quickly dropping or forgetting those that didn’t have the desired effect.

“Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” What I said two points above applies here. 

“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” Trump is relentlessly negative.  Repetition is a cardinal principle of propaganda and advertising. The most obvious example is his mythology of a stolen election. Despite total lack of evidence and complete failure in the courts, Trump repeated the claim so often and in so many ways that most of his acolytes still believe him.  For those curious, by the way, this blog has done a good job of tracking the various court embarrassments Trump has suffered.

“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Trump did less well here, largely because he was better at attacking than at getting things done. Remember his claims of being the great deal maker? Turns out he wasn’t very good at making deals with people who weren’t marching lockstep behind him.

“Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it,  and polarize it.” Here he excelled. A fascinating particle on Psychology Today found that Trump demeaned people, groups, and countries far more than the average. Over the course of his presidency, Trump insulted almost everyone who didn’t agree with him.

In sum, Donald Trump is the most effective user of Alinksy's principles ever seen. Previous Alinksy followers aimed at getting the city to provide better medical care for poor people or eliminate racist policies. Donald Trump applied them to a whole country.

Self-Propaganda

Propaganda is often thought of as a nefarious art favored by Nazis and communists in the past and the Chinese today.  This has some truth, since democratic societies claim propaganda is a bad thing. Yet as Jacques Ellul argued in his 1965 book Propaganda: The Formation Men’s Attitudes, propaganda has become a necessity for all modern states. Even citizens of the West, he asserted, could become “totalitarian men with democratic convictions” when subjected to unrelenting democratic propaganda.

Things have changed since Ellul wrote that book. Back then, propaganda was largely the preserve of governments and political parties.  Today we have become our own propagandists, feeding ourselves information by our choice. We persuade ourselves.

What happened?  In earlier days, individuals lacked the ability to propagandize themselves.  True, Nazis could immerse themselves in a Nazi echo chamber before 1933 and after that Hitler’s state restricted information flow.  But in democracies people called editors exerted quality control over what people read and saw.  Editors (and publishers) had biases, but leading newspapers, magazines, and television networks generally kept nonsense from reaching a large audience.  There were curiosities like John Stormer’s 1964 None Dare Call It Treason, but wild conspiracy theories usually had restricted circulation. Local crackpots felt isolated, sometimes reluctant to be open with their views for fear of attracting the scorn of neighbors.  

But then came the internet.  Suddenly everyone could be a publisher. Just as in the biblical book of Judges when there was no king in Israel and “every man did what was right in his own eyes,” every person could be an editor. The strangest theory could attract wide and self-reinforcing attention.  The isolated crackpot was no longer isolated, but rather a member of a world-wide group of people who knew what others did not, that Bill Gates is inserting microchips into COVID vaccinations, that the 2020 election was shamelessly stolen, that a sinister conspiracy of pedophiliac Democrats is committing terrible deeds. (I use current examples from the Right not because the Left is blameless, but rather because the greatest nonsense today is on the Right.) Before the internet, few such fantasies became “viral.” Now new ones emerge daily and by strange inversion of the principle of “the survival of the fittest,” the worst often become the most believed. 

Since the profusion of internet sites promoted the development of silos, each its own echo chamber, proponents of peculiar views do not need to be unsettled by the work of doubters.  People restrict themselves to sources that reinforce their opinions, that make them members of an elite far more knowing than the mass of “sheeple.” And nothing they read or see suggests anything else.  

I wish I had a good solution, but at the least editors merit more esteem than they often get. We can ourselves read reliable sources that disagree with us. We can gently (and probably unsuccessfully) encourage friends and family to broaden their media.

Propaganda is bad enough when being done to us; it is even worse when we do it to ourselves.

The Beer Hall Putsch and January 6

There are numerous recent press comparisons of Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch to the events of January 6, 2021. Although there are similarities, differences, and things to be determined. I think the differences are the more significant.

Similarities

In both cases a political leader gave a passionate address to his followers that resulted in insurrection. An observer commented that Hitler had turned the Munich crowd inside out, “as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences.  It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it.” Trump, too, used rhetoric to move his audience to march. Without explicitly ordering the audience to break into the Capitol, he gave them all the encouragement they needed. In neither case would the insurrection have occurred without the leader’s rhetoric. In both cases, the insurrectionists clearly broke the law.

Neither crowd knew what it was doing.  Those marching with Hitler had little idea where they were going or what they were trying to accomplish. Although there is evidence that some insurrectionists in 2021 were planning violent action within the Capitol, most were more interested in taking selfies than in taking over the government.  Most did not expect the break into the Capitol, and indeed the crowd that gathered at Trump’s urging was significantly larger than the group that entered the Capitol. I haven’t seen figures, but will be surprised if more than 5% of those gathered at Trump’s rally entered the Capitol building.

Differences

An immediate difference is that Hitler led the march through Munich and was physically wounded. Trump implied to his followers that he would be marching with them, but instead returned to the White House and watched events on television. Whatever else one can say about Hitler, he had physical courage (and World War I medals to demonstrate it). Trump’s physical courage is open to doubt. For example, if Trump really did not want violence, he could have gone to the Capitol with his followers and told them to go home before they became violent  (as he did after the fact on Twitter much too late to do any good).  I think that the crowd would have obeyed him, but we will never know.

Hitler took explicit responsibility for the Putsch. As he said at his trial: “The judges of this state may go right ahead and convict us for our actions at that time, but History, acting as the goddess of a higher truth and a higher justice, will one day smilingly tear up this verdict, acquitting us of all guilt and blame.” Trump, on the other hand, denied that he had told his followers to break into the Capitol, and some on the far right claim it was a “false flag” operation by groups like Antifa.  

The Beer Hall Putsch came at the beginning of Hitler’s political career (he was 34), while it is to be hoped that January 6 sealed the end of Trump’s (he is 74). Before the Putsch Hitler was not widely known outside Bavaria. Afterwards he was a national figure. Trump was already president (if a defeated one), and his encouragement of insurrection for most Americans was despicable rather than inspiring, even if a significant minority welcomed it. In short, the Putsch built Hitler’s reputation; January 6 for most Americans harmed Trump’s.

Hitler also found the Putsch valuable propaganda. It demonstrated the “revolutionary” nature of the Nazi movement.  Having demonstrated that in 1923, Hitler thereafter claimed to follow a legal path to power, and indeed he did take power in 1933 in a way consistent with the Weimar constitution. At this point, it looks as if the far right is viewing January 6 as the first step in violent insurrection rather than as a one-time event that demonstrated its revolutionary credentials. 

To be Determined

Hitler was tried and convicted for his role in the Putsch.  The court that convicted him said that Hitler “thinks and feels like a German” and gave him a light sentence of eight months, which he served under comfortable conditions. We do not yet know what penalties, if any, Trump will face.  Hitler used the time to write Mein Kampf. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump finds another ghostwriter to develop a book as well. If so, they will be different sorts of books. Mein Kampf lays out in turgid prose Hitler’s ideology. Trump’s book, should he produce one, will be a litany of claimed, if dubious, accomplishments, calumny, and fantasy.

Sixteen Nazis died on November 9; they became  “blood martyrs” of the movement.  After 1933, their remains were dug up and interred in two “honor temples” in the center of Munich. Each year pompous ceremonies were held throughout the Reich.  My German Propaganda Archive has considerable material on those pseudo-religious ceremonies. See, for example, advice for propagandists for November 9, 1942. Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist killed inside the Capitol, was immediately presented as a martyr by a variety of right-wing sources, but one may doubt that there will be a monument in her honor erected in Washington. Still, movements of all kinds have always welcomed martyrs.  Tertullian said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Babbitt will have a place in the mythology of the far right. We will hear more of her.

The Putsch created relics, the most famous of which was the Blutfahne (blood banner), the “holiest” item in the Nazi reliquary. It was supposedly stained with the blood of those who died in 1923. In Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Hitler holds that flag with one hand while allowing its mythic power to flow through him as he consecrates new party standards.  Whether January 6 will leave sacred relics behind is yet to be determined.  Although things stolen by the insurrectionists may come to have a place of honor in right wing mythology, Nancy Pelosi’s missing laptop probably will not grace Trump’s future quarters.

Summary

As I said in my initial post, I am wary of comparisons of Trump to Hitler, since I find Tump dreadful, but not on the same scale of evil as Hitler.  Nonetheless, it is interesting to compare the use of propaganda by both.

In this case, all things considered, I think the differences between the Putsch and January 6 are greater than the similarities. However, the uncertainties of the moment render my conclusion tentative. Time will tell, as it always does.

Donald Trump and the Art of the Little Lie

 Hitler’s discussion of the “big lie” is widely cited, but often incorrectly.  His discussion in Mein Kampf is as follows:

But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Hitler on the face of it is not recommending lying as a part of propaganda, but rather accusing the Jews of it.  Note that I say “on the face of it.” It would be a poor sort of propagandist who admitted that he lied.  The Nazis almost always claimed that they told the truth in their propaganda, and that the other side lied. And, in fact, the Nazis preferred to tell the truth, or at least part of the truth, when possible.  For example, when Goebbels reprinted his wartime essays (six months to a year or so after they were written) he could print them without revision since he was careful when writing them not to say anything demonstrably false or that might prove embarrassing in the future.

When the Nazis did lie, they often lied big.  The clearest example is the myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy, but even there the Nazis could adduce some evidence, however thin, of Jewish depravity.  That is a subject for another post.

Donald Trump, however, is the master of the “little lie.” The Washington Post back in January 2021 carried a story titled “Trump's false or misleading claims total 30,753 over 4 years.” Some of them meet the criteria for the “big lie (e.g., that he won the 2020 election by a landslide),” but many are small, easily disproven lies. The Wikipedia article “Veracity of statements by Donald Trump” includes examples of both big and little lies.

Why is Donald Trump successful at using an unprecedented number of lies?  I still don’t have a great answer to that question.  However, I think one reason is that his supporters view him as an almost infallible source of truth.  For example, 4% of Democrats vs. 84% of Republicans trusted his information on the COVID-19 outbreak according to a CNN piece in May 2020. While looking over a site for Trump supporters, I found a woman who claimed (in January 2021) that Trump had never lied. Trump’s supporters almost worship him with such fervor  that many simply cannot accept the fact that he lies.

A second reason was discussed in a Psychology Today article titled “How President Trump’s Lies Are Different From Other People’s” (2017). The author found that Trump’s lies were different than the norm:

I was right about Trump telling an especially big proportion of self-serving lies. Instead of telling twice as many self-serving lies as kind lies, he told 6.6 times as many.....

As it turned out, though, that was not the most interesting finding. As I read through Trump’s lies in the process of categorizing them, I realized I could not limit myself just to the categories of self-serving and kind lies. I had to add the category of cruel lies — lies that hurt or disparage or embarrass or belittle other people. In the research my colleagues and I did, we found that only 1 or 2 percent of all lies were cruel. That’s why I wasn’t going to bother with them when coding Trump’s lies....

Now let me tell you what I found when I tallied Trump’s cruel lies. Instead of adding up to 1 or 2 percent, as in my previous research, they accounted for 50 percent. When I first saw that number appear on my screen, I gasped. I knew, of course, that Trump likes to mock and denigrate other people (and countries and agencies), but I didn’t realize just how often he was doing that with his lies.

This is interesting and, I think, accurate.  Why would this be? Part of the reason goes back to another point Hitler makes about propaganda in Mein Kampf.  He argues that the masses understand black and white, yes and no, not shades of gray.  Hitler says that once propaganda admits even the slightest possibility of right for the other side, the masses begin to waver in their support.  Trump presents his enemies not only as wrong, but as absolutely, completely, horribly wrong. When discussing the Devil’s workforce, it is not necessary to be polite.  They are so evil that anything one can say about them is not only accurate, but perhaps understated. As humans we have a tendency to like the “dirt” about others, and Trump is a master of insult. Trump’s world is one of absolute clarity, and he tells it to his followers as they would like it to be.

A third point is the sheer number of lies Trump tells.  Politicians who lie or mistake facts at the normal rate can be held accountable for what they say.   Take, for example, President Obama’s famous statement that if people were happy with their doctors they could keep them. That turned out not to be entirely accurate, although it was true for many. That statement was held against Obama over and over again.  Trump, on the other hand, says so many demonstrably false things that a kind of exhaustion sets in.  What is the point of refuting one lie when in the meanwhile twenty others have surfaced? And, of course, it is far easier to lie than refute a lie.  

In short, I think Trump has developed the art of the “little lie” to a hitherto unseen extent.