Ministry of Truth
I AM YOUR VOICE!
I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION!
I ALONE CAN FIX IT!
(Liz Garbus,
American Carnage,
The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 3, 2018)
American Demogogue
Well, Doctor, what have we got:
- a Republic, or
- a Monarchy?
A Republic, if you can keep it.
— Mrs Powel of Philada & Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 90), Constitutional Convention, 1787.
America for Americans.
The government must not interfere with business.
Reduce taxes.
Our national debt is something shocking. …
What this country needs is a businessman for President.
— John Ford (1894 1973), Stagecoach, 1939.
When somebody's the President of the United States, the authority is total.
And that's the way it's got to be.
— Donald Trump (1946)
In the Trump era, there’s no room for disagreement.
The era where the senators, the members of Congress, asserted their prerogatives, their power, would stand up to a president, seems largely to be over in the United States today.
— Stephen Schmidt (1970)
Demogogue:
A political agitator appealing to popular wishes or prejudices.
— The Oxford Reference Dictionary
Even after the attack that would leave five people dead and many injured, 147 Republican members of Congress stood with the president, voting to overturn the election results.
Mike Pence (1959) [48th Vice President of the United States]:
President Donald Trump has been fighting for you, and now it’s our turn to fight for him.
Donald Trump (1946):
All I want to do is this:
I just want to find 11,780 votes.
So what are we going to do here, folks?
I only need 11,000 votes. …
Give me a break.
(Phone call to Brad Raffensperger, 29th Secretary of State of Georgia)
We will never give up.
We will never concede.
It doesn’t happen.
You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.
Evan Osnos (1976) [Staff Writer, The New Yorker]:
[Donald Trump] came out of [the first impeachment] convinced, not only that he had total impunity … but that he also had the support of almost every Republican leader in Congress behind him. …
It was a kind of moment of permission.
[All] the guardrails fell away.
He had nothing to be afraid of … he could do whatever he wanted.
(Michael Kirk, Trump's American Carnage, PBS Frontline, 2021)
Michael Kirk & Mike Wiser:
The Trump strategy:
- Make it TV drama.
- Play to the base. …
Using conflict and outrage, Donald Trump had galvanized an angry base and won over the reluctant Republican establishment. …
Charlie Sykes (1954) [Conservative Commentator]:
[It’s] not so much that Trump took over the Republican Party; it’s that the Republican Party completely capitulated to him.
They’re all united in believing that in order to survive politically, and not lose in a primary, they have to stick as close to him as possible.
Even when he puts out racist tweets, you cannot criticize him in public.
Even when he engages in the most reckless behavior, you cannot break with him in public. …
Peter Baker (1967):
He is about division.
His presidency is predicated on that.
He wants division; he craves it.
He enjoys finding seams and driving right into them.
There's no fight he doesn't want to be part of, and there are plenty of fights he'd like to start.
The fight is the goal.
[There's] no reward, from his point of view, in unity. …
Frank Luntz (1962) [Republican Strategist]:
We were far more divided in the Civil War, far more divided during the Great Depression.
But we've always had hope in the future.
And that hope, we're losing it with this division. …
Joshua Green (1972):
Nunberg had realized that this issue of immigration has real salience with Republican voters.
The problem they had was they couldn’t get Trump to stay on topic.
Famously short attention span.
And so Sam Nunberg came up with this idea, essentially a mnemonic device to keep Trump focused on the issue of immigration.
Sam Nunberg (1981) [Political Consultant]:
So I said:
Well, why don’t we say you’re going to build a wall, because it’s bigger.
You’re going to build a wall, and you’ll get Mexico to pay for it.
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
The Good Old Days of American Fascism
I love the old days.
You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this?
They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. …
I'd like to punch him in the face …
If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?
Seriously. …
I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. …
And you had some very bad people [at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.]
But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. …
These are my people.
— Donald Trump (1946)
We must secure
- the existence of our people, and
- a future for white children.
— David Lane (1938 – 2007)
(
The 1940s,
America in Color, Episode 3, 2017)
(
Rally by the German American Bund funded by the German Nazi Party, Madison Square Garden, 20 February 1939)
(Danny O'Brien, America,
Hitler's World, Episode 1, 2018)
(Julian Jones, The Rise of the Nazis,
BBC, 2019)
(
Adam Thompson,
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville,
PBS Frontline &
Pro Publica, 2018)
Donald Trump (1946):
I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.
People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.
John Kelly (1950) [White House Chief of Staff to Donald Trump]:
[German generals] tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.
Donald Trump (1946):
No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him. …
Hitler did some good things: [he] rebuilt the economy.
(Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’, The Atlantic, October 2024)
Mark Milley (1958) [Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff]:
[Trump] is now the most dangerous person to this country..
A fascist to the core.
(Martin Pengelly, Mark Milley fears being court-martialed if Trump wins, Woodward book says, The Guardian, 11 October 2024)
Jennfier Mercieca: What makes Trump a 'fascist'?
Wikipedia:
There is evidence that the government of Nazi Germany took inspiration from the Jim Crow laws when writing the Nuremberg Laws.
(Jim Crow Laws, 5 January 2025)
Michele Grossman [Professor, Research Chair in Diversity and Community Resilience, Alfred Deakin Institute]:
There are really three common elements that you find across all modes of politically or ideologically inspired extremism …
- The first is a narrative around [imminent] peril or threat …
That if people do not rise up to counter it, you're simply going to be trampled to death. …
- [Then] you've got grievance. …
The idea that people who saw themselves at the top of … the social order are now feeling that they've been displaced …
- And the final element … is the adoption of being the victim.
(The rise of the far right, ABC Big Ideas, 20 June 2019)
Arthur Goldwag:
Paleoconservatives like the former Nixon speechwriter … Pat Buchanan hearken back to the anti-New Deal, America First ideologues of the 1920s and 1930s, such as:
(pp 49-20)
George Wallace's presidential campaigns of the late 1960s and early 1970s and Pat Bucanan's in the 1990s all incorporated tropes from the America Firsters of the 1930s, inveighing as they did against elite academics and the media, globally minded Wall Streeters and multinational corporations, homosexuals, immigrants, and, implicitly, international Jewry.
(p 51)
In 1947, Gerald L K Smith (1898 – 1976) … founder of the America First Party, launched the Christian Nationalist Crusade, which called for the deportation of Zionists and blacks, and the dismantling of the United Nations.
(Isms and Ologies, Quercus, 2007, p 210)
Charles Lindbergh (1902 – 1974):
France has now been defeated.
And, despite the confusion and propaganda of recent months, it is now obvious that England is losing the war.
I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England regardless of how much assistance we send.
That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
(1940)
Wikipedia:
Two future presidents, John F Kennedy and Gerald Ford, supported and contributed to the organization.
(America First Committee, 8 July 2020)
The main requirements [of a mass movement leader] seem to be: …
- a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth;
- faith in his destiny and luck;
- a capacity for passionate hatred;
- a cunning estimate of human nature;
- a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); [and]
- [an] unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness …
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership.
What counts is
- the arrogant gesture,
- the complete disregard of the opinion of others,
- the singlehanded defiance of the world.
Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. …
[The] mass movement leader … draws his inspiration from the sea of upturned faces, and the roar of the mass is as the voice of God in his ears.
He sees an irresistible force within his reach — a force he alone can harness. …
The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present.
They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence
- their recklessness, and
- their will to chaos and anarchy.
They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action.
Thus, they are among the early recruits
- of revolutions,
- [of] mass migrations, and
- of religious, racial and chauvinist movements,
and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation’s character and history. …
The ideal potential convert is the individual
- who stands alone,
- who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. …
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not
- by its doctrine and promises, but
- by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.
It cures the poignantly frustrated not
- by conferring on them an absolute truth, or
- by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable,
but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves—and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole. …
It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by
- the truth of its doctrine, and
- the feasibility of its promises.
What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.
Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. …
The self-mastery needed in overcoming their appetites gives [the frustrated] an illusion of strength.
They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world. …
All active mass movements strive … to interpose a fact-proof screen between:
- the faithful, and
- the realities of the world. …
It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.
He cannot be:
- frightened by danger, nor
- disheartened by obstacles, nor
- baffled by contradictions,
because he denies their existence. …
The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. …
The fanatics of various hues … are ready to fly at each other’s throat.
But they are neighbors and almost of one family.
They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. …
And [so] it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal. …
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad.
We cannot hate those we despise. …
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners.
An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners.
It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country.
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. …
The practice of terror serves the true believer not only
- to cow and crush his opponents, but also
- to invigorate and intensify his own faith.
Every lynching in our South not only
- intimidates the Negro, but also
- invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy. …
The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must either win men or destroy the world."
(
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, 1951)
To an outside observer, an individualist society seems in the grip of some strange obsession.
Its ceaseless agitation strikes him as a kind of madness. …
When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are.
We demand more of them than we do of ourselves, and it is as if we wished to be disappointed in them.
Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect. …
Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means, … it behooves us to remember that man's only legitimate end in life is to finish God's work — to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us.
A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race, or doctrine.
(
The Ordeal of Change, 1963)
Rule of the Red Queen
Alice:
There's no use trying … one can't believe impossible things.
Red Queen:
I daresay you haven't had much practice …
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
— Lewis Carroll | Charles Dodgson (1832 – 98), Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because,
- owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread information, and
- owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Sceptical Essays, 1928.
Carl Sagan (1934 – 96):
Many of those alleging satanic abuse describe grotesque orgiastic rituals in which infants are murdered and eaten.
Such claims have been made about reviled groups by their detractors throughout European history, including:
Ironically, reports of cannibalistic infanticide and incestuous orgies were among the particulars used by Roman authorities to persecute the early Christians.
(Demon-Haunted World, 1997, p 151)
Would you like to know more?
Alex Jones (1974):
And I’ll tell you, it is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word for word hear Trump say it two days later. …
These people are not fricking humans, OK?
Hillary Clinton is a demon damned to hell!
Donald Trump (1946):
She’s the devil. …
It's true.
Alex Jones (1974):
As we’ve been saying for three years, Hillary is the founder of ISIS, along with Obama.
Donald Trump (1946):
He founded ISIS, and I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.
Alex Jones (1974):
"Was Cruz’s Father Linked to the JFK Assassination?
Cuban hired by Lee Harvey Oswald bears striking resemblance to Cruz."
Donald Trump (1946):
You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being shot.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2022)
Ted Cruz (1970):
History isn't kind to the man who holds Mussolini's jacket. …
[Donald Trump] is utterly amoral.
Morality does not exist for him.
If this man were to become president, think about the next 5 years.
The boasting, the pathological lying, the bullying.
Think about your kids coming back and emulating this.
(Michael Kirk, Lies, Politics and Democracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2022)
Ted Cruz endorses Donald Trump for president
Alex Jones (1974):
[A] copy of [Obama's] new fake birth certificate.
Now, we’ve looked at it, we’re going to go over why it’s fake, how it’s a composite …
(Where's the Birth Certificate?, 25 May 2011)
Stephen Schmidt (1970) [Former Republican Strategist]:
[Sarah Palin] is the first of generation of politicians who live [in] a post-truth environment.
She was … a serial liar.
She would say things that are simply not true, or things that were picked up from the Internet …
And this obliteration of fact from fiction, of truth from lie, has become now endemic in American politics.
But it started then.
Stephen Schmidt (1970):
When [Sean Spicer] goes out and says,"This is the biggest crowd size ever" — what he's saying in essence is, "What's true is what the leader says is true."
The obliteration of the line between truth and the lie is fundamental to grasp because it's so elemental to a functioning democracy. …
Kellyanne Conway (1967):
[What you're saying is] a falsehood, and … Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. …
Chuck Todd (1972):
Look, alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods.
Donald Trump (1946):
One thing this shows is how far over they go here. …
This goes all the way down here, all the way down. …
You don't see that in the pictures.
But when you look at this tremendous sea of love — I call it a sea of love — it's really something special.
(America's Great Divide: Obama To Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
(Geeta Gandbhir & Sam Pollard,
Tribalism,
Why We Hate, 2019)
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 75):
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not
- the convinced Nazi or
- the convinced Communist,
but people for whom
- the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and
- the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought)
no longer exist.
(The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 / 1968)
Would you like to know more?
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
— Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, 15 December 1791.
[The] state of men without civil society … is nothing else but a mere war of all against all …
— Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Leviathan, 1651.
Alex Jones (1974):
It’s got "inside job" all written all over it. …
Sandy Hook is a synthetic — completely fake, with actors — in my view, manufactured.
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
Mark Bankston:
From then on it was an absolute quest to destroy [the victims'] parents.
[An avid follower of Jones and InfoWars] began stalking Mr Pozner and his family in south-central Florida, [and] started threatening their lives. …
[She was] sent to federal prison for [5 months.]
Alex Jones (1974):
I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis … where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I've now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged. …
And so, over the years, I’ve … had a chance to believe that children died, and it’s a tragedy.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
Would you like to know more?
(Cathy Wilcox, The Age, 12 January 2021)
(Cathy Wilcox, The Age, 12 January 2021)
(Michael Kirk, Supreme Revenge: Battle for the Court, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
(Freedom Ride, Anniston, Alabama, 14 May 1961)
