July 7, 2020

The Rise of Trumpism

Ministry of Truth



Sans-culottes

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. …

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God,
never without belief in a devil.

— Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83)



(Barak Goodman, Clinton, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2012)

Hillary Clinton (1947):
[To] be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. …
They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic … you name it.
[But,] unfortunately, there are people like that.
And he has lifted them up. …

But the other basket are … people who feel that:
  • the government has let them down,
  • the economy has let them down,
  • nobody cares about them,
  • nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.
And they’re just desperate for change. …
Those are the people we have to understand and empathize with.
(Amy Chozick, Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers "Deplorables," and GOP Pounces,
The New York Times, 10 September 2016)

Mitt Romney (1947):
There are 47% of the people:
  • who will vote for [President Obama] no matter what …
  • who are dependent upon government,
  • who believe that they are victims …
  • who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them …
  • who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, [and that] the government should give it to them. …
These are people who pay no income tax. …
[My] job is not to worry about those people.
I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
(David Corn, Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He Really Thinks of Obama Voters, Mother Jones, 17 September 2012)

Ross Garnaut (1946):
In the United States … high incomes have risen [thoughout the period since the Great Crash of 2008,] while those of ordinary citzens have fallen. …
[If] living standards for ordinary people continue to fall, this will have large and unpredictable ideological and political effects.
(Dog Days, 2013, p 30)



(Liz Garbus, American Carnage, The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 3, 2018)


Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83)


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)

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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, 2020)

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)

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Sandy Hook

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.



(Michael Kirk, Trump's Divided States of America, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2017)


(Richard Rowley, American Insurrection, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2021)

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)

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Contents


A Well Regulated Militia

Sans-culottes

Rule of the Red Queen

The UnPresident

The Unscientific American

A Show of Force

American Demagogue

Making America Great (Again)

The Enemy of the People

American Fascism

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The UnPresident



Michael D'Antonio [Biographer]:
Donald actually told me in 2013 that he was going to run for president, and I thought he was kidding.
And then he argued that it was based on his Twitter feed and Facebook posts — that so many people were posting on social media that he should run that he thought maybe he should.
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)

John Bolton (1948):
[Trump] creates what he wants the world to be, and then invites you to live in it.
(John Bolton says Trump won't leave graciously, ABC 7.30 Report, 5 November 2020)

Roger Stone (1952) [Political Advisor]:
Now, I understand that the elites say:
Oh that's reality TV!
Voters don't see it that way:
  • television news, and
  • television entertainment
— it's all television.
(Michael Kirk, President Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2017)

Tim O'Brien (1961):
[Trump] was born into a wealthy family; he was protected from his own failings:
  • as a student, and
  • as a businessman.
Then he became a celebrity and he got all of the forgiveness that our society gives celebrities.
And then he became President of the United States and he got these enhanced legal protections …
[All] of these things have always protected him from the consequences of his own mistakes.
So,
  • he never accepts responsibility,
  • he never learns from his mistakes, and
  • he never really grows. …
[The election result shows how much traction Trump] has with a core swathe of American voters that empowers him within the GOP.
[This means] you are likely to see Trump and Trumpism become more embedded deeply in the Republican Party …
(What will Donald Trump do now?, ABC 7.30 Report, 5 November 2020)

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
(The Second Coming, 1919)

George Orwell (1903 – 50):
For quite long periods … people can remain undisturbed by obvious lies, either:
  • because they simply forget what is said from day to day, or
  • because they are under such a constant propaganda bombardment that they become anaesthetised to the whole business.
(As I Please, Tribune, 3 June 1944)


The Unscientific American

This [virus] was sent to us by China, one way or another, and we're never going to forget it.
Believe me, we're never going to forget it. …

Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful, light? …
And then I see the disinfectant.
And is there a way we can do something like that?
By injection inside or … almost a cleaning?

— Donald Trump (1946)



(Cathy Wilcox, The Age, 24 June 2020, p 17)

> (Tracking Our COVID-19 Response, 11 December 2020)

Karey Hanks [Idaho State Representative, 2016–18]:
The fact that a pandemic may, or may not, be occurring changes nothing about the meaning or intent of the state constitution and the preservation of our inalienable rights.
(Idaho Freedom Foundation, October 2020)

Bernheim, Buchmann, Freitas-Groff & Otero [Preprint]:
We investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of COVID-19 by studying the impact of eighteen Trump campaign rallies. …
[We] conclude that these eighteen rallies ultimately resulted in:
  • more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19 [and]
  • likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees) [or 38-39 deaths per rally.]
(The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies, Department of Economics, Stanford University, 30 October 2020)

Donald Trump (1946):
… I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.
It's like incredible.
(Campaign Rally, Sioux Center, Iowa, 23 January 2016)

Erica Werner & Jeff Stein:
The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill …

The administration is also trying to block:
  • billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and
  • billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad …
[Certain] administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely.
Some White House officials believe they have already approved billions of dollars in assistance for testing and that some of that money remains unspent.
(Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill, The Washington Post, 20 July 2020)

Donald Scores 0/5 on Public Health


Christine Gorman & Ryan Mandelbaum:
Trump suggests that "in a time of limited resources," public health spending may not provide "the greatest bang for the buck." …
In fact, studies show that public health efforts typically offer returns on investment of between 125% and 3,900%, depending on the program.
Trump offers no indication that he has grappled with the issue in any detail.
(Grading the US Presidential Candidates on Science, Scientific American, 26 Sep 2016)

Melinda Moyer:
[The] Trump administration’s budget request for the 2019 fiscal year for the CDC slashes: …
  • $704 million from public health preparedness and response … and
  • $60 million from emerging and zoonotic diseases.
(American Epidemic, Scientific American, May 2018, p 57)

John Rasko [Professor of Medicine, Sydney University]:
What Trump told CEOs in January is that he wants to eliminate three quarters of all the FDA regulations which ensure the combination of safety and effectiveness. …
They want to undo regulations that require companies to show whether a medical product actually works before it was sold. …

[It was Milton Friedman] who posited that the market is its own brain. …
[That the] market has a way of judging whether a drug is effective, and the test is if it's sold.
So if a drug's sold successfully on the market … it must be good.

[In fact, in the early 1960s, when the FDA first began] to judge both safety and effectiveness … a thousand drugs were … taken off the register because they [proved to be ineffective;] there was no correlation between whether a drug had been selling and whether or not it was effective [—] it was all about marketing …
(Doctors concerned over Trump pharmaceutical plan, ABC Breakfast, 9 March 2017)

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(ABC News, 24 June 2020)



American Demagogue

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)


Demagogue:
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)

(image flipped)

(ABC Planet America, 22 January 2021)

(The 1940s, America in Color, Episode 3, 2017)

Donald Trump (1946):
I love the old days.
Do 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, I’ll tell you. …
Knock the crap out of him, would you?
Just knock the hell out of him.
I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise.
I promise.

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)

(ABC News, 25 November 2020)


(27 August 2020)

Robert Reich (1946) [Former US Secretary of Labor]:
[We] are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society.
Composed of:
  • a few winners, and
  • a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and disillusionment is easily manipulated.
Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society.
Replacing ambition with envy.
Replacing tolerance with hate.
Today the targets of that rage are immigrants, and welfare mothers, and government officials, and gays, and an ill-defined counterculture.
But, as the middle-class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?
(Jacob Kornbluth & Sari Gilman, Saving Capitalism, 2017)

Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page:
[The] preferences of an average American appear to have a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant, impact upon [1,779] public policy [issues. …]
[The influence coefficients (policy impact) of the preferences of the economic elites (90th income percentile) was 0.78 versus 0.05 for average citizens (50th income percentile).]
[Ordinary] citizens get what they want from government only when they happen to agree with elites or interest groups that are really calling the shots. …
[Indeed, the net policy] alignments of … business-oriented [interest] groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes [−0.10. …]
[By contrast, a few mass-based interest] groups (particularly labor unions) represent average citizens’ views reasonably well. …
[However, the policy influence of business-oriented] groups is nearly twice as large [0.43 vs 0.24] as that for [mass-based] groups. …
When a majority of citizens disagrees:
  • with economic elites, or
  • with organized interests;
they generally lose.
(Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Perspectives on Politics, 12:3, September 2014, pp 564-581)

Philip Pettit (1945):
[When] you look at the different socioeconomic classes; and you look at stable policy preferences associated … with those classes; and then you see how far public policy has been responsive to those preferences over the last 30 or 40 years: what you find is that the bottom 20–25% [have had] zero influence of their policy preferences on government — that's a shocking condemnation of a democracy …
(A Brief History of Liberty, ABC Big Ideas, 8 August 2014)

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Making America Great (Again)




(Michael Kirk, Trump's Divided States of America, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2017)

Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004):
For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a national crusade to make America great again.
(Republican National Convention, 14 July 1980)

This country needs a new administration with a renewed dedication to the [American] dream …
An administration that will give that dream new life, and make America great again.
(Labor Day Address, Liberty State Park, 1 September 1980)

Bill Clinton (1946) [3 October 1991]:
I believe that, together, we can make America great again.
(New World Order, The Nineties, Episode 4, 2017)

Traudl Junge (1920 – 2002):
Then Hitler came, and offered that he would make Germany as a great nation again.
(The Death of Hitler, BBC Witness History, 4 February 2019)

Berlin, 15 September 1930:
The Nazi's [have] gained 107 seats [in the Reichstag] to become the second largest party after the Socialists.
The world economic crisis has meant soaring unemployment and widespread hardship, and the powerful Communist Party has instigated violent street demonstrations in the hope of starting revolution.
In the election campaign, Hitler made furious speeches denouncing Jews and Bolsheviks as the cause of the nation's problems and promising to make Germany great again.
(Chronicle of the World, 1991, p 1097)






(Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 11/9, 2018)



The Enemy of the People




(Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 11/9, 2018)

Trump Supporter [Conservative Political Action Conference, February 2017]:
There's no confusion and chaos [in the Trump administration] except as felt by the 5 enemies: …
  • ABC,
  • NBC,
  • CBS,
  • Washington Post,
  • New York Times.
(Liz Garbus, The First 100 Days, The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 1, 2018)

Otto Dietrich (1897 – 1952) [Press Chief, 6th NSDAP Party Congress]:
Truth is the basis on which the power of the press stands and falls.
Our only demand of the foreign press, and our own press, is that they report the truth about Germany.
(Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, 1935)

George Orwell (1903 – 50):
The Hate had started.
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen.
There were hisses here and there among the audience.
The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. …
[Goldstein] was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. …

Before the Hate had proceeded for 30 seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. …
[Goldstein] was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. …

[As] the Hate rose to a frenzy [people] were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices …
[In Winston's mind] Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein … seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization. …
[Then,] drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother … full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen.

Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying.
It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. …
The little sandyhaired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her.
With a tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms towards the screen.
(Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)

Donald Trump (1946)


[The fake news] are the enemy of the people. …
[They] have no sources, they just make ’em up …

They’re very dishonest people.
[The] dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. …
They dropped off the word "fake."
And all of a sudden the story became: "the media is the enemy." …

… I’m not against the press.
I don’t mind bad stories if I deserve them. …
I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources.
They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.
Let there be no more sources. …

[Let’s] not even mention names, right?
Shall we? …
Well, you have a lot of them.
Look, the Clinton News Network is one. …
Take a look at polls over the last two years: …
  • maybe they are just bad at polling?
  • maybe they’re not legit?
but [it has to be] one or the other …
  • look at CBS,
  • look at ABC, …
  • look at NBC,
They’re so bad, so inaccurate [that] it creates a false narrative. …
[Throughout] the entire campaign, and even now, the fake news doesn’t tell the truth. …

[The] best thing we can do [about Obamacare] is nothing.
Let it implode completely …
[Then, in two years, the] Democrats will come to us and beg for help …

(Conservative Political Action Conference, 24 February 2017)


The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news. …
These are sick people. …
You would think they would want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don't.
If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media.

(Trump Rally, Phoenix, Arizona, 22 August 2017)



American Fascism

We must secure
  • the existence of our people, and
  • a future for white children.
 — David Lane (1938 – 2007)

(Adam Thompson, Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, PBS Frontline & Pro Publica, 2018)

(Julian Jones, The Rise of the Nazis, BBC, 2019)

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)



(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)

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)


Jeffrey and Me

(The Game Is Rigged, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 1, Season 2, Vice, 2021)


Harvey and Friends




(Daniel DiMauro & Morgan Pehme, Slumlord Millionaire, Dirty Money, Episode 3, Season 2, 2020)


MbS and Friend




(The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2019)




(Escape from Saudi Arabia, ABC Four Corners, 2019)


Would you like to know more?






(ABC Planet America, 24 July 2020)

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