Paul Ryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler and Eugenics

Congressman Paul Ryan said: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” 

In a letter to Charles Davenport, a leader of the US eugenics movement and head of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the epicenter of the movement, Theodore Roosevelt said: “I agree with you…that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind…Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen type of the right type, is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

In the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives,” Holmes wrote. “It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices [ i.e., forced sterilization], often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” Referring to Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the case whom the state intended to sterilize, and whose mother and daughter both had been suspected by doctors to be afflicted with “feeblemindedness”, Holmes added: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The Eugenics Movement which developed in the United States in the 19^th Century and continued into the 20^th Century inspired many including Adolph Hitler: “Adolf Hitler himself had followed the eugenics movement in this country for years. In 1916, American attorney, conservationist, and arch-bigot Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, a landmark work of scientific racism that exalted people of Nordic ancestry. Hitler called the book his “Bible,” In fact after World War II the 1927 SCOTUS case was known in NAZI Germany: “Hitler was also aware of the 1927 Supreme Court ruling that gave legal sanction to eugenic sterilizations (a ruling, by the way, that’s never been overturned). Nazi leaders would later cite the Court’s decision in their own defense at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals.”

Charles Darwin’s conceptualization of evolution in his book “The Origin of the Species” sparked a scientific revolution that caused great debates in more than the scientific community. As with many great new insights, the intellectual progression that flowed outward in others thought processes sometime had consequences that were not quite what the author intended. Such was the Eugenics Movement in the United States which is the subject of this piece. Echoes of that discredited movement still exist today as illustrated by the quote above from Congressman Paul Ryan and other “Conservative” politicians and activists. Let’s look at the beginnings of the Eugenics Movement to see how it influences us even today.

“Adolf Hitler read racial hygiene tracts during his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison.[10] He thought that Germany could become strong again only if the state applied the principles of racial hygiene and eugenics to German society.

Hitler believed the nation had become weak, corrupted by the infusion of degenerate elements into its bloodstream.[11] These had to be removed quickly. He also believed that the strong and the racially pure should be encouraged to have more children, and that the weak and the racially impure should be neutralized by one means or another.[citation needed]

The racialism and idea of competition, termed social Darwinism in 1944, were discussed by European scientists and also in the Vienna press during the 1920s. Where Hitler picked up the ideas is uncertain. The theory of evolution had been generally accepted in Germany at the time but this sort of extremism was rare.[12] In 1876, Ernst Haeckel had discussed the selective infanticide policy of the Greek city of ancient Sparta.[13]

In his Second Book, which was unpublished during the Nazi era, Hitler praised Sparta, adding that he considered Sparta to be the first “Völkisch State”. He endorsed what he perceived to be an early eugenics treatment of deformed children:

“Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

We see that Hitler was influenced by a movement that began in our country and in fact influenced some of the most important Americans in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. Much of this movement was thought of as science and its originators were regarded in their time as scientists. Let’s look at how this came about:

Eugenics, as a modern concept, was originally developed by Francis Galton. It has roots in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States in the 1860s-1870s.[5] American William Goodell (lived from 1829 to 1894) advocated castration and spaying of the insane.[6] Mortality rates from “Battey’s operation”, the surgical removal of healthy ovaries, was as high as one in five deaths at the time, but the surgery kept being performed.[7]

Francis Galton had read his half-cousin Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution, which sought to explain the development of plant and animal species, and desired to apply it to humans. Galton believed that desirable traits were hereditary based on biographical studies.[8] In 1883, one year after Darwin’s death, Galton gave his research a name: “eugenics”.[9] Throughout its recent history, eugenics has remained a controversial concept.[10] As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century. At this point in time, eugenics was practiced around the world and was promoted by governments, and influential individuals and institutions. Many countries enacted[11] various eugenics policies and programmes, including: genetic screening, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation (both racial segregation and segregation of the mentally ill from the rest of the population), compulsory sterilization, forced abortions or forced pregnancies, and genocide. Most of these policies were later regarded as coercive or restrictive, and now few jurisdictions implement policies that are explicitly labelled as eugenic or unequivocally eugenic in substance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Though the Eugenics Movement took hold in many countries and infamously Germany, our own country was greatly influenced by the Eugenics Movement. Not coincidentally the movement’s history in the U.S. coincided with the end of slavery and the massive immigration’s needed for America’s industrial revolution.

“Eugenics, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization,[1] based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society,[2] played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States prior to its involvement in World War II.[3]

“Eugenics was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany[4] and U.S. programs provided much of the inspiration for the latter.[5][6][7] Stefan Kühl has documented the consensus between Nazi race policies and those of eugenicists in other countries, including the United States, and points out that eugenicists understood Nazi policies and measures as the realization of their goals and demands.[5]

A hallmark of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century, now generally associated with racist and nativist elements (as the movement was to some extent a reaction to a change in emigration from Europe) rather than scientific genetics, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

After seeing the horrors of World War II, the popularity of the Eugenics movement waned in the U.S.. However, the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, with its offshoots branching into dealing with other oppression of people deemed “different”, aspects of “eugenicist” ideas crept in using coded words like “crime”, “urban” and “inner city”. The election of our first Black President was so traumatic for segments of our population that they have even begun to drop the use of “code” and are openly bemoaning the possibility of the loss of dominance by the “White Race”. Politicians of the “stature” of Paul Ryan and Rand Paul though, with higher political aspirations, still talk in “code” as they appeal to those groups such as the “Tea Party” who are motivated by racial privilege. However, in earlier times in America code was “less coded”.

“The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s. Galton studied the upper classes of Britain, and arrived at the conclusion that their social positions were due to a superior genetic makeup.[8] Early proponents of eugenics believed that, through selective breeding, the human species should direct its own evolution. They tended to believe in the genetic superiority of Nordic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples; supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws; and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and “immoral”.[9]

“The American eugenics movement received extensive funding from various corporate foundations including the Carnegie Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune.[6] In 1906 J.H. Kellogg provided funding to help found the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan.[8] The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded in Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1911 by the renowned biologist Charles B. Davenport, using money from both the Harriman railroad fortune and the Carnegie Institution. As late as the 1920s, the ERO was one of the leading organizations in the American eugenics movement.[8][10] In years to come, the ERO collected a mass of family pedigrees and concluded that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds. Eugenicists such as Davenport, the psychologist Henry H. Goddard, Harry H. Laughlin, and the conservationist Madison Grant (all well respected in their time) began to lobby for various solutions to the problem of the “unfit”. Davenport favored immigration restriction and sterilization as primary methods; Goddard favored segregation in his The Kallikak Family; Grant favored all of the above and more, even entertaining the idea of extermination.[11] The Eugenics Record Office later became the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.”

Some of the wealthiest Americans and their corporations provided the wealth to empower the Eugenics Movement, just as today some of the wealthiest Americans and their corporations funded the movements to neuter Barack Obama and to impose upon the U.S. their views on ensuring that the “mob” doesn’t rule. Then too were those in the early Progressive Movement who also endorsed the Eugenics view:

“Others who supported eugenics included Victoria Woodhull, the suffragist and progressive activist who was the first woman to run for president; the inventor Alexander Graham Bell (who later moved away from the movement); foundations connected with the Carnegies, the Harrimans and the Rockefellers, which donated large sums toward eugenics research; professors at leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Johns Hopkins; and editorialists of the New York Times. Bruinius also fingers Margaret Sanger, the birth control advocate who founded the American Birth Control League, the predecessor to Planned Parenthood, as having sympathy for eugenics; though Sanger did say many suspect things, her closeness to the movement has been questioned and rejected by her supporters. Then there was Theodore Roosevelt, who, in a letter to the eugenicist Charles Davenport in 1913, hoped that “Someday we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” http://www.salon.com/2006/03/04/bruinius/

Theodore Roosevelt had always seemed to me to be a great President. He was the political leader of the Progressive Movement in the U.S. And as the history I learned in school taught me fought against corporate interests. The history I learned in High School though, was hardly the most in depth history available. My disillusion with Teddy Roosevelt became concrete when I read a book by Richard Slotkin called “Gunfighter Nation” in the early 1990’s and have since re-read it three times:

In Gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America (Atheneum, 1992), the concluding volume of his highly acclaimed trilogy, Slotkin draws on a wide range of sources to examine the pervasive influence of Wild West myths on American culture and politics. In the third of a three-volume study in the development of the myth of the frontier in US literary, popular, and political culture from the colonial period to the present, Slotkin covers the expression of the frontier myth in such popular culture phenomena as dime novels, Buffalo Bill‘s Wild West, the formula fiction of 1900-40, and the Hollywood film. Covering historiography, Slotkin also discusses the exploration of the significance of the American frontier experience in Theodore Roosevelt‘s The Winning of the West and Frederick Jackson Turner‘s The Significance of the Frontier in American History. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Slotkin#Gunfighter_Nation

Slotkin in delineating how the “myth of the Cowboy” so influenced our country, writes extensively about TR’s theories influenced by the author Frederick Jackson Turner. Roosevelt believed that the “Anglo-Saxon” race was the most highly developed of all the “races” and that it was their duty to assume “stewardship” over all the more inferior racial types. The links I’ve provided thus far and the links below I think make my case very well and I encourage the reader to follow them because much of the information might be new, as it has been for me.

What is my point though? I believe that “eugenics” was never the result of true scientific inquiry. What it was instead was a means for intelligent people to rationalize their own prejudice and for self interested people to rationalize their own selfishness. America is and has been a country where prejudice against the “other” has played a central role in our political dynamics. I voted for Barack Obama because I felt he represented my personal political interests. As his terms  played out for the most part I’ve been disappointed because in truth he represents he kind of moderate republicanism that I grew up disgusted with in the 50’s and 60’s. When I see the various “conservative” forces criticize him as a “communist”, “fascist”, “commufascist” and dictator” I know that what is really in play is that he is a Black man. In truth he is a moderately conservative, fairly ineffective President of the Bill Clinton stripe who has caved in to most of the principles that got him elected. The hatred of our President is so deep among so many because of the color of his skin, because other than that conservatives should be delighted with him.

Beyond the obvious racism though there is another strain. A strain that runs through the minds of many who are in the elite of this country, just as it was in the minds of those like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, Bell and Roosevelt in the 19^th Century. They saw themselves then and they see themselves now as the “worthy elite” destined by fate, or God, to rule over the “masses”, whose lowlier position is the result of their own innate inferiority. The distinction so ofter raised between “the producers” and “the takers” is an expression of this. When Mitt Romney “privately” said to a group of wealthy donors that 47% percent of the population paid no taxes, with the implication that they were a “burden” on his class, that was an expression of the attitude that gave birth to eugenics. Naturally, neither Paul Ryan, nor Teddy Roosevelt are comparable to the monster Adolf Hitler, but they endorse and endorsed policies that make/made it possible for a person like Hitler to capture the public imagination in times of stress. American eugenic “scientists” worked with the infamous NAZI Dr. Joseph Mengele http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mengele known for his disgusting “scientific” experiment at Auschwitz. As my father used to say: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/23/hitlers_favorite_american_biological_fascism_in_the_shadow_of_new_york_city/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439×2468536

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States

http://www.salon.com/2006/03/04/bruinius/

http://traditionalliberalism.blogspot.com/2011/10/progressive-era-eugenics.html

Paul Ryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler and Eugenics

Congressman Paul Ryan said: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”  In a letter to Charles Davenport, a leader of the US eugenics movement and head of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the epicenter of the movement, Theodore Roosevelt sa: “I agree with you…that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind…Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen type of the right type, is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

In the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives,” Holmes wrote. “It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices [ i.e., forced sterilization], often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” Referring to Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the case whom the state intended to sterilize, and whose mother and daughter both had been suspected by doctors to be afflicted with “feeblemindedness”, Holmes added: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Eugenics Movement which developed in the United States in the 19^th Century and continued into the 20^th Century inspired many including Adolph Hitler: “Adolf Hitler himself had followed the eugenics movement in this country for years. In 1916, American attorney, conservationist, and arch-bigot Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, a landmark work of scientific racism that exalted people of Nordic ancestry. Hitler called the book his “Bible,” In fact after World War II the 1927 SCOTUS case was known in NAZI Germany: “Hitler was also aware of the 1927 Supreme Court ruling that gave legal sanction to eugenic sterilizations (a ruling, by the way, that’s never been overturned). Nazi leaders would later cite the Court’s decision in their own defense at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals.”

Trump/Hitler: The Donald Is A Protege of “Der Fuehrer”: A Needed Reprise

I wrote this last September, during the 2016 campaign which produced a President that has strong support among the most vile racists and bigots and whose Administration seems bent upon turning us towards totalitarianism.  The turmoil in Charlottesvillle, VA. could well be a pre-cursor of worse things to come.  I believe the events of the last few days sadly vindicate the fears I expressed last September, only 11 tumultuous months ago:

In this year’s Presidential race I have had one over-riding fear motivating my preferences and actions. It is that fear that had me working for the Hilary Clinton Campaign on a phone bank for the last few days and it is that fear that will keep me working for her campaign until the election.  That fear of course is that Donald Trump will be elected President, because I strongly believe that Trump is a Hitler in the making.  On March 3rd I wrote Godwin’s Law, Donald Trump, Rising American Fascism and Its’ Eerie Similarity to the NAZI’s.  That remains the most read post that I’ve written in the 14 months since I created ElephantTail.  It was bookended by a host of other posts exploring the same theme which you can reach at this link Trump: Hitler.

In “Godwin’s Law,”  I included excerpts from a 1922 New York Times article titled:  “New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria”.  The article was about Adolph Hitler and his improbable popularity in the German State of Bavaria.  It was an eerie precursor to Hitler’s becoming German Chancellor in 1933 and there were parallels we could draw from relating to Trump’s tactics and rise. In that piece I also went into the background of fascism in America and detailed the ways that a fascist sensibility laid the groundwork for the rise of Trump.  I must admit that even as I write this piece I feel a frisson of fear in the knowledge that if Trump actually becomes President, this piece might serve as a danger to my own and my family’s future.  Call this paranoia, but I call it common sense, based upon the evidence at hand.

Adding to my horror at the rise of Trump, is that as a resident in and around New York City until 2007,  I’ve been aware of Trump far longer than most living elsewhere in the country.  The idea that he might be President never occurred to me, because he was and is such a ridiculous figure.

In the beginning, Trump was merely a boorish real estate millionaire around town known for his “playboy” ways and clownish attempts to seem like he was to the manor born.  Then he married the Czech Socialite and former model Ivana Trump and it was she who crafted the Trump persona and brand as she dubbed him:  “The Donald”.

“Donald and Ivana Trump became leading figures in New York society during the 1980s. They set to work on several massive projects, including the renovation of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and construction of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey and the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.”  

“Ivana took a major role in the Trump Organization. She became the Vice President of Interior Design for the company, spearheading the signature design of Trump Tower. Afterwards, her then-husband appointed her to head up the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino as president. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, with Donald at her side.”^[12]

However,  former models age and to someone of narcissistic bent like Trump, they need to be replaced by younger, more youthful models. Ivana though had set the mold for the future of Donald Trump and her steady hand was replaced by a plethora of disposable advisors and PR people, following Ivana’s basic template. One also can’t discount the work of the high paid legal talent that greased the way for Trump’s clumsy manipulations and frauds. Within the past week there was a New York Times book review by their ace, Pulitzer Prize winning book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani.

Her artful review of a book about Adolph Hitler, in which she lays out Der Feuhrer’s rise in bullet points, which make all too clear the parallels with Donald Trump. I’m going to counterpoint her bullets:

https://www.nytimes.com/svc/oembed/html/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F09%2F28%2Fbooks%2Fhitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html

The review begins:

“How did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a “half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth” — rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?”

By the same token how did Donald Trump, considered a boorish parvenu whose architecture  and design style seemed more in tune with the Palace of Versalles than the modern era; whose antics were deemed a New York City embarrassment; whose use of superlatives in self description was laughable;  who managed to go bankrupt as a casino owner competing with himself; who “authored” a ghost-written autobiography extolling his deal making prowess based upon falsehood;  who anchored a racist movement trying to de-legitimize our first Black President and who began his Presidential campaign implying all Mexican immigrants were rapists and murderers, get the Republican Presidential nominations?  Let’s look at the similarities in Hitler’s rise present in Kakutani’s review of Vlker Ullrich’s book.

• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”

One would have to be intellectually blind not to see the narcissism in Donald Trump. Like Hitler, Trump continually uses superlatives to describe himself and his “achievements,” acting always in an overly dramatic manner. People, even his supporters remark on Trump’s lack of self-control, especially as a risk taker.  To see Trump’s political shrewdness we must remember his Republican Primary debate performances where he skilfully exploited the weaknesses of his opponents, isolating them one by one and bowdlerizing each ones particular foibles. “Little Marco”, “Lyin Ted” and “Low Energy Jeb”.

• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”

The plethora of stories that have come out about Trump’s failing to pay contractors and employees certainly plays up Trump’s own mendacity. He has left investors, many of whom former friends, hanging  by declaring bankruptcy seven times causing them to lose their investments. He has defrauded many with phony projects like Trump University, where he promised the secret of riches to desperate people and provided little, or nothing.in return. Trump, or those who work for him, have shown a knowledge of the latest technology and in fact his aides can’t keep him from Twitter, which seems to involve him late into the night. We have seen copious evidence of Trump as a serial liar, with him denying having said things that have been captured on video, or on tape, such as his 2002 interview approving of the War in Iraq. Donald Trump, even has his own version of “Mein Kampf” know as the “Art of the Deal”.  This book was completely ghost-written in a hagiographic style and its’ ghostwriter now says that it is the “greatest regret of his life that he wrote it”. He says that the picture he painted of Trump was false, but desperately fabricated, since Trump lacked the attention span to give coherent interviews.

• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order.”

Trump is at his best in large rallies where his speeches are steeped in unbridled nationalism,  laced with bigotry against various groups and are aimed at the least informed, White voters, particular males of lower middle class, or lower class backgrounds.  He loves to attack hecklers at his speeches and like Hitler encourages attacks upon these dissidents.  People of color, sometimes even Trump supporters have been refused entry to Trump rallies.  Trump’s whole message is laced with resentment of the powers that be, hatred of foreigners and the meaningless mantra of “making America great again”.

• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”

I don’t really think it is necessary to point out Trump’s similar approach, since if you don’t get it, my words won’t help.  The same is true for the next quote from the times review except to mention that Trump’s father admired Hitler and that Trump reportedly keeps a copy of Hitler’s speeches on his night table:

• Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”

Here is the good news and the bad news from the book review contained in one paragraph:

• Hitler’s rise was not inevitable, in Mr. Ullrich’s opinion. There were numerous points at which his ascent might have been derailed, he contends; even as late as January 1933, “it would have been eminently possible to prevent his nomination as Reich chancellor.” He benefited from a “constellation of crises that he was able to exploit cleverly and unscrupulously” — in addition to economic woes and unemployment, there was an “erosion of the political center” and a growing resentment of the elites. The unwillingness of Germany’s political parties to compromise had contributed to a perception of government dysfunction, Mr. Ullrich suggests, and the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed “a man of iron” who could shake things up. “Why not give the National Socialists a chance?” a prominent banker said of the Nazis. “They seem pretty gutsy to me.”

The Germany that gave rise to Adolph Hitler was in the throes of the Great Depression, with enormous inflation, an out-sized sense of grievance that it had lost the First World War due to the treason of its’ generals and that the Treaty of Versailles was an attempt by the rest of Europe to destroy the German people.  Our America today has little inflation,  is the most powerful nation in history, leads the World economically and in contrast to 1930’s Germany is relatively peaceful and conflict free.  Yet the bad news is, as the response to 9/11showed,  we are one disaster aware from being thrown into a national panic and willing to grasp at straws to quench national anxiety.  Each tragedy that has occurred during this election season seems to be grist for the Trump propaganda mill and has him willing to exploit it for his own ends. We have already seen the same sentiments expressed by many in the Republican establishment, that were expressed in the Ullrich book:

“the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed “a man of iron” who could shake things up. “Why not give the National Socialists a chance?” a prominent banker said of the Nazis. “They seem pretty gutsy to me.”

I wrote in Paul Ryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler and Eugenics  that Adolph Hitler believed in the pseudo-science of eugenics that deemed the Anglo-Saxon (Aryan) “Race” the apotheosis of humanity.  This is an early introduction to Donald Trumps and the “gene” theory.

Here is an analysis of Donald Trump and the “eugenics” idea so popular with Adolph Hitler, in Trump’s own words presented at this link to the Huffpost Article This May Be the Most Terrible Thing Donald Trump Believes.  Watch the minute long video of Trump discussing himself and genetics.  Given Trump’s overwhelming popularity with the Alt-Right Fascist Movement, seeing all the evidence of his similarity to Hitler from above and tell me if I’m wrong in being very afraid and if my working for Hillary Clinton’s election is a fool’s errand.

Well we all know that Hillary lost and whatever you felt about her, how much better off do you think this country would be if she had won and this malignant clown went down to ignominious defeat?

This Link will take you to everything that I have written about the similarity between Trump and Hitler.

Trump=Hitler: If You Couldn’t Conceive It Then, You’d Better Believe It Now!

A fair question to ask about me is “Who the Hell Am I for my views to be trusted by anyone when I state that Donald Trump is a ‘Hitler“ in the making?”  While I could justify myself by presenting my curriculum vitae,  such proffers have little meaning when you consider that George W. Bush was Governor of Texas and had degrees from Harvard and Yale.  The only way for you to even give a little credence to my political judgment, is if you can see some indication that I’ve shown some insight over time.  The following links will give you the many posts I’ve written on the subject of the similarities between Trump and Hitler Here and Also Here.  Many though would dismiss my Trump=Hitler comparisons because of a popular meme that is known as:

“Godwin’s Law”  which is: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches , ​​that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

That spurious “Law” has had such a reach that its’ connotations have kept many a commentator, or pundit from invoking a Trump=Hitler comparison for fear of ridicule. We even have this Huffpost article by a Jason Crotty from February 2016 criticizing anyone who would make the Trump=Hitler comparison: Comparing Trump to Hitler Is Worst Kind of Hate Speech I wonder how proud Mr. Crotty is of his article now? I see this refusal to acknowledge what is actually happening as a problem since every day, to my mind at least, our country is moving towards Fascism and that movement is specifically because we have a Trump Presidency.  More than a year ago,   way before Trump even received the Republican nomination,  I wrote this piece on the speciousness of “Godwin’s Law” and the dangers of Donald Trump. Perhaps it might add to my credibility in tandem with the fact that we have so many more examples of where the Trump Administration is heading.

March 3, 2016

“Godwin’s Law”, Donald Trump, Rising American Fascism and Its Eerie Similarity to the NAZI’s

There is a problem with the oft-quoted “Godwin’s Law”  which is: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches , ​​that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin’s law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric.

In 2012, “Godwin’s law” became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. ”

The problem as I see it is that this meme has become merely another way of terming someone, or something, “politically correct”, thereby untrustworthy, or insincere. You will note that Donald Trump constantly uses the PC formulation as an explanation of his bombast and proudly asserts that he is not “politically correct”. Used in the wrong way the expression PC serves as a cover for all manner of bigotry and racial stereotyping. It serves as a rhetorical “get out of jail free” card for those engaging in bigoted bloviation and in that respect is there a more famous bigoted bloviator at the moment than Donald Trump? Back to Mike Godwin though: “Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin’s law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics. Godwin’s law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. “Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust“, Godwin has written.  In December 2015, Godwin cited several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for their Nazi and Fascist comparisons.”

Notice the last sentence though where Mr. Godwin asserts that comparisons of Trump to NAZI’s, or Fascists are hyperbole. For those who weren’t aware, Godwin is an important cog in the wheel of the “R Street Institute”, which “is an American conservative and libertarian think  tank headquartered Washington, D.C..” Godwin’s Law is but another version of clever usage by Republican/Conservatives of PC, as a way to deflect the fact that since the inception of Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968, the GOP has been the “Grand Old Party of Racism and Bigotry”. Well I am about to cross the line of Mr. Godwin’s phony law and show that Donald Trump is indeed aptly compared to the rise of Nazism in Germany and let me begin with the first New York Times article on that young, rising German politician Adolph Hitler.

If you follow this link you will come upon this article from the NY Times from November 21, 1922 titled: “New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria” subtitled: “Hitler credited with extraordinary powers of swaying crowds to his will”. Since the article is in PDF format I can’t directly copy its words, but I can paraphrase them and you can go to the original to see if my paraphrasing is accurate. The meat of the article comes towards its climax, when while admitting that Hitler’s anti-semitism is virulent and violent, then goes on to say that ” several reliable, informed sources” tell the writer that Hitler’s anti-antisemitism was not as it seemed, but merely was being used as clever “bait” to catch masses of followers with a simplistic message, because the masses are simplistic people. It also quotes a “sophisticated politician” who credits Hitler with “political cleverness for laying emphasis and over emphasis on Anti-Semitism, because you can’t expect the masses to appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you are really leading them”. The upshot is that Hitler was really a German Nationalist who sought to rebuild his country and make sure it regained its rightful place in the world.

Trump made headlines at the beginning of his campaign when he decried Latino immigration to the U.S. and characterized Mexican “illegals” as murderers, thieves and rapists of White woman. Trump then opined that we should not allow anyone of Islamic faith to visit the U.S. and further made the implication that we should look closely at any of our citizens who followed Islam. His rhetoric also was that of an American Nationalist, who was going to make our country great again and yes there were some who opined that Trump was merely using the anti-immigrant rhetoric as a means of rousing the base, when his real message was one of strengthening our country. Though Hitler and Trump came from far different backgrounds, their verbal crudity of speech, their use of stereotyping scapegoats and their messages of jingoistic nationalism seem frighteningly similar. Let’s look at some more examples, but first let’s understand how Trumps’ rise is directly attributable to our Mainstream Media making money on his controversial campaign.

Let’s look at the opinion of Leslie Moonves the Chairman and CEO of the CBS Television Network: “Leslie Moonves can appreciate a Donald Trump candidacy. Not that the CBS executive chairman and CEO might vote for the Republican presidential frontrunner, but he likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.

Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues.

“Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,” he said.

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,” said Moonves. “Donald’s place in this election is a good thing,” he said Monday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco. “There’s a lot of money in the marketplace,” the exec said of political advertising so far this presidential season.”

In the past, when it was a respected news outlet, CBS News was independent of the scrutiny of CBS Entertainment executives. It’s journalistic stars were of the likes of Edward R. Murrow, who had the courage to take on and bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy.  During the Vietnam era, CBS’ Editor in Chief and Nightly News anchor, Walter Cronkite, had the courage to take on the President and present a true picture of the failure that was the Vietnam War. True Journalism no longer exists at the Major TV news sources, who all are making huge profits from the Trump Circus, because of greedy, cynical men like Les Moonves, who are overseeing network news. Moonves could care less about the fate of America, because he and his bosses are quite wealthy and feel they’re above the masses of Americans. In the end he is merely another “hollow man”, willing to make a buck without thought for the consequences of his actions. He and his cohort of top TV network executives, bear direct responsibility for the rise of American Fascist, Donald Trump. Am I violating the benighted Mr. Godwin’s “Law” yet?

At Salon.com chauncey DeVega writes: “Donald Trump is the preferred candidate of white supremacists. Online and in other spaces, they have anointed him their champion in the 2016 presidential race. When asked about this on CNN, Donald Trump deflected, bobbed, weaved and dissembled: “Just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK?” Trump said. Trump was pressed three times on whether he’d distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan — but never mentioned the group in his answers.“I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists,” he said. “So I don’t know. I don’t know — did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists…” Despite what he said Sunday, Trump apparently did know Duke in 2000 — citing him, as well as Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani — in a statement that year explaining why he had decided to end his brief flirtation with a Reform Party presidential campaign. “The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep,” Trump said in a statement reported then by The New York Times. …After his appearance on “State of the Union,” Trump highlighted that Friday comment in a tweet, saying he does disavow Duke.”

DeVega goes on: “The facts are not always kind. In reality, the relationship between the Republican Party and white supremacy–and yes, the Ku Klux Klan–is much deeper and more problematic than the comments by .. other Republicans would suggest.” DeVega goes on to explain his meaning and states: “The post-civil rights era Republican Party is the United States’ largest white identity organization, one in which conservatism and racism are now one and the same thing.”

“In the 2012 election, 89 percent of Republican voters were white. While the Republican Party routinely anoints a professional “best black friend” (Herman Cain in 2012; Ben Carson in 2016; Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele in 2009) who serves in the role as human chaff to deflect charges of racism, non-whites are a minuscule part of the GOP’s electoral coalition and base. This is reflected by how Republican voters are much more likely to be racially resentful toward black Americans and also manifest what is known as “modern” or “symbolic racism.”

Even more troubling, research by Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler demonstrates that “old-fashioned racism” has actually increased among Republican voters since the election of Barack Obama. Once thought to be a relative non-factor in contemporary politics, this, the more primitive and retrograde racism of Jim and Jane Crow America, is now such a potent force that it is directly correlated with party identification: individuals who are “old-fashioned racists” are more likely to support the Republican Party.

Since the end of the African-American civil rights movement, the electoral strategy of the Republican Party has relied on the use of racially coded appeals and “dog whistle” politics to win over white voters. This tactic — what would come to be known as the “Southern Strategy” — was outlined by Lee Atwater, mentor to Karl Rove, as:”

Lee Atwater’s Strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r.”

“Atwater’s approach for mobilizing white American voters has dominated Republican electoral strategy for at least four decades. It was the basis for Ronald Reagan’s “law and order” and black “welfare queen” narratives. George H.W. Bush summoned it with his Willie Horton, “black beast criminal rapist” campaign ad in 1988. The Southern Strategy was desperately deployed against the United States’ first black president, Barack Obama. From “birtherism” to claims that Obama is “traitor” who “hates Americans,” the rampant disrespect and obstructionism that Republicans have shown toward him, as well as the panoply of both overt and subtle racist attacks by conservatives against Obama’s person (and family) are all outgrowths of the Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy, with its mix of coded and overt anti-black and brown racism, is also a script that is closely adhered to by the broader right-wing news entertainment propaganda machine.

The Age of Obama also gave rise to the Tea Party movement. As an extreme wing within an already extremist and revanchist Republican Party, Tea Party members and their sympathizers were/are extremely hostile to Barack Obama and the symbolic power of a black man leading “their” White America. The Tea Party demand that “they want their country back” is both a direct claim of white privilege and constitutes a worldview where whiteness is taken to be synonymous with being a “real American.”

White supremacists quickly identified the Tea Party‘s agenda as congruous with their goals and values. To that end, they attempted to infiltrate and recruit members at Tea Party events.”

Researchers have also found that Tea Party membership and activity was a “racializing” experience for white people, which encouraged them to think in terms of white group interests. In all, the Tea Party and other right-wing organizations are ripe territory for converting white conservatives from being “modern racists” to a more “old-fashioned” type of racism and white supremacy.

Policies and outcomes are also an invaluable barometer for assessing the relationship between the Republican Party, racism and white supremacy. The modern Republican Party has consistently opposed civil rights protections for African-Americans and other people of color. The Republican Party in the Age of Obama has also undermined the won in blood and lives victories of the black freedom struggle and civil rights movement by gutting the Voting Rights Act and allowing states to put in place programs that deter civic participation by African-Americans, young people, the elderly and the poor. Many of the public policy goals advocated for (and advanced) by the contemporary Republican Party are racist and white supremacist both in terms of their disparate impact across the color line, as well as the malicious intent behind them.

One of the most fascinating stories in American political history is how the Republican Party, once the home of the “Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln, was able to “flip” the states of the former slaveholding Confederacy to their side. The Southern Strategy, hostility to African-Americans and the civil rights movement, a sophisticated right-wing media campaign, generational replacement, Christian Evangelicals and their investment in the Jim Crow order, abortion and “values voting” are all part of that story.

While little known, the relationship between the Ku Klux Klan and increasing support among white Southern voters for the Republican Party is also a critically important part of how the Republican Party won over the former Confederacy.”

Given this accurate history of the Republican Party dominating the South and becoming in fact the “White People’s Party”, I look in bemusement at all of the calls to “Stop Trump,” by his, primary opponents and by the Grandees of Republicanism. Why are they so upset with him and why do they view him as a danger, if in fact he is preaching to the same choir of White Christian America that they have preached to for the last forty years?  The answer goes back to the Atwater strategy of subtly using a racist message, while doing it in coded terms, so that there was the patina of deniability of bigotry. At the same time of course, the coded message to the racists of White America came through loud and clear. Now it is also true that since the election of Barack Obama the racism of his opposition has become far more strident and far less subtle. That stridency and lack of subtlety, however, was fended off by charges of political correctness and its corollary Mike Godwin’s Law.

Trump has upset the apple-cart of the subtle racism that has provided the Republican Party with its’ power base  since Richard Nixon’s election. He has in his wake energized the most disreputable elements of American Conservatism such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Supremacist Movement. Trump has brought into the open naked hatred for Muslims,  Latino’s and even now is also looking to demonize all people of color. Jews are even leaking into Donald’s targets and Jews are definitely targets of many Trump supporters. He has become a quintessential Fascist in the making and his technique is directly akin to the same messaging technique that Adolph Hitler used in his rise to power. If you think, as someone like Mike Godwin might think, that I’m being hyperbolic, let’s look at some of the evidence below.

“In Donald Trump’s America it’s fine to use violence to put people in their place”

“Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump often speaks as though he’d gladly punch a journalist if he could get away with it. And hell, maybe he could — in the eyes of his supporters, at least.

On Monday, a Secret Service agent was filmed choke-slamming a photographer at a Trump campaign rally in Radford, Virginia. Online, many were quick to claim that Christopher Morris, a photojournalist for Time magazine, was asking for it.

With much of Trump’s campaign revolving around his near-constant demonization of reporters, restrictions on the media and appeals to callous authoritarianism, perhaps this response shouldn’t be surprising. But it reflects an environment in which people feel comfortable saying it’s OK to use physical violence — and perhaps even violate someone’s rights — to put those who would challenge authority in their place.”

“Meet the White Supremacist Who’s Robocalling Super Tuesday Voters for Donald Trump”

“Last week, voters across Vermont and Minnesota received robocalls from the white nationalist William Johnson, who has founded the American National Super PAC to support Donald Trump. “The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called racist,” Johnson said on the calls. “This is our mindset … It’s OK to give away our country for immigration, but don’t call me a racist. It’s OK that few schools anymore have beautiful white children as a majority, but don’t call me racist.” Others fear the taint of racism, Johnson said, but Trump does not. “Don’t vote for a Cuban, vote for Donald Trump,” his message concluded. He gave a phone number that listeners could call for more information.

Johnson is the chairman of the white supremacist American Freedom Party; according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it was founded by a group of racist California skinheads in 2009. He has called for the deportation of Americans with any “ascertainable trace of Negro blood” or more than one-eighth “Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood.” When he is not working toward creating what he calls “separate white ethno-states,” Johnson farms and practices corporate law in Southern California.”

Black students kicked out of Trump rally at a college they attend, apparently for being black

“Donald Trump’s campaign is denying having told the Secret Service to remove 30 black students from a Monday rally they were attempting to attend quietly and peacefully, but Secret Service agents say they kicked out the students at Trump’s request. Either way, it’s disgusting: The sight of the students, who were visibly upset, being led outside by law enforcement officials created a stir at a university that was a whites-only campus until 1963.“We didn’t plan to do anything,” said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was among the Valdosta State University students who was removed. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.” […] “I don’t understand why they would do something like that,” Davis said. “I have not experienced any racism on this campus until now.”How’s that for a preview of President Trump’s America? He can bring new racism to a place that was whites-only until 1963.”

 Nine Examples of Donald Trump Being Racist

In the interest of brevity I’ll just list the 9 examples, but you can follow the link to see the documentation about each:

1. The Justice Department sued his company — twice — for not renting to black people
2. He refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for him
3. He questions whether President Obama was born in the United States
4. He treats racial groups as monoliths
5. He trashed Native Americans, too
6. He encouraged the mob justice that resulted in the wrongful imprisonment of the Central Park Five
7. He condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester
8. He called supporters who beat up a homeless Latino man “passionate”
9. He stereotyped Jews as good negotiators — and political masterminds

Then there is this sent to me by my friend and long time commenter Anonymously Yours:

“White Supremacists are Broadcasting from Inside Trump Rallies”

“James Edwards, a notorious white supremacist and radio talk show host, is promoting a recent interview with the son of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump that’ll air on Saturday.

Edwards talked to the real estate mogul’s eldest son and campaign surrogate, Donald Trump, Jr., last Saturday for his “pro-white” radio show, “The Political Cesspool.” Previous guests on the show have included Neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and Ku Klux Klan leaders.

Edwards heralded the 20-minute interview in a blog post flagged by Little Green Footballs, that boasted about his access inside a Trump rally in Memphis, Tennessee, last Saturday, where Edwards was broadcasting his show live. He said Trump’s campaign gave Edwards and his co-hosts full press credentials and “VIP” parking near the event. 

“We’re watching history in the making,” Edwards said at the start of his three-hour broadcast from the press area of the Memphis Trump rally.  “Donald Trump will be the first Republican nominee that I have ever voted for.”

Edwards said he and his co-hosts have attended three different Trump rallies in recent months: One in Illinois, one in Arkansas, and the rally in Memphis. With press credentials from Trump, the white supremacists feel “every bit as legit” as members of the traditional media, he added.”

Those who’ve followed my writings know that I’m concerned with what I see as the “Authoritarian Personality” which I first wrote about in

https://miconoclast.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/the-authoritarians-a-book-review-and-a-free-book/

The author Professor Bob Altemeyer has spent his career studying the “Authoritarian Personality” and how this mindset affects the voting patterns in America. The post supplies a link where you can download the Professors detailed book and this is why Bob Altemeyer thinks you should read it:

“But why should you even bother reading this book? I would offer three reasons. First, if you are concerned about what has happened in America since a radical right-wing segment of the population began taking control of the government about a dozen years ago, I think you’ll find a lot in this book that says your fears are well founded. As many have pointed out, the Republic is once again passing through perilous times. The concept of a constitutional democracy has been under attack–and by the American government no less!

The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence.

The last reason why you might be interested in the hereafter is that you might want more than just facts about authoritarians, but understanding and insight into why they act the way they do. Which is often mind-boggling. How can they revere those who gave their lives defending freedom and then support moves to take that freedom away? How can they go on believing things that have been disproved over and over again, and disbelieve things that are well established? How can they think they are the best people in the world, when so much of what they do ought to show them they are not? Why do their leaders so often turn out to be crooks and hypocrites? Why are both the followers and the leaders so aggressive that hostility is practically their trademark?”

The book “The Authoritarians” was written more than 8 years ago and yet it seems even more relevant today as an explanation of why Donald Trump seems poised to become the Republican Presidential Candidate. While the Professor’s book was the first I’d read in terms of the study of the “Authoritarian Personality”, the academic study of authoritarianism has been a fertile field. My last link of the day is from a VOX piece titled: “The Rise of American Authoritarianism”. “the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.

This trend had been accelerated in recent years by demographic and economic changes such as immigration, which “activated” authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strongman leader who would preserve a status quo they feel is under threat and impose order on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.

Trump embodies the classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive

These Americans with authoritarian views, they found, were sorting into the GOP, driving polarization. But they were also creating a divide within the party, at first latent, between traditional Republican voters and this group whose views were simultaneously less orthodox and, often, more extreme.”

An argument can be made that Germany was among the most stable, innovative and well educated Country’s over the 19th and early 20th Century. While it was a homogeneous nation ethnically, it was a cosmopolitan nation as well. The tradition in Germany though was an authoritarian one of follow the leader, who in the 19th and early 20th Centuries was a King called The Kaiser. He with the assistance of a wealthy Military elite, led the country and the good Germans followed these leaders into a disastrous World War I debacle, that left the country struggling. Germany became a country torn by strife between its Left Wing and its Right Wing. As pointed out in that NY Times article from 1922, into that maelstrom of political strife there arose a leader that appealed to the Authoritarian Personality. That leader, Adolph Hitler, used the scapegoating of Jews and Leftists, to arouse the German people, inculcate them with fear and distrust of a minority and eventually become Germany’s Supreme Leader. The authoritarian personalities following him ultimately followed him to their own ruin, but not before they followed him to perpetrate one of the great crimes of recent history.

I’ve provided evidence that Donald Trump is a “Hitlerian” copycat in methodology. He behaves  as a Fascist, is Fascistic in his approach use violence against those he disagrees with and shows a Fascist’s disregard for any laws other than the use of naked aggression.  Although Trump is to the “manor born” he presents a thuggish personality that seems to awe and appeal to those following him. Mr. Godwin can blow smoke out of his rear end as much as he’d like, but in his small way he is complicit in the rise of this NAZI-like figure. This is ironic because Godwin is himself Jewish. Also complicit is the Republican Party Establishment, which has played so long on the edge of racism and misogyny that it has finally teetered into the abyss. God Damn them all for what they have unleashed upon this country.

                                                        Michael Wayne “Mike” Godwin

 

 

Trump and Hitler: Another Example of Fascist Techniques In Action

Using the model of Adolph Hitler and Germany,  Trump and his Republican enablers are working to create an alternate reality. Spouting lies and confabulations into what his ’Goebbels“  Kellyann Conway terms  “Alternate Facts“, Donald Trump is weaving an alternative reality for his mesmerized supporters.  Beyond his slavish authoritarian followers, Trump’s alternative reality has been accepted by his Republican followers in the Congress, who are being herded like dumb animals following a carrot on a stick.  Now somewhat immersed in the alternative reality, we see the corporate, mainstream news media,  responding like lemmings to the musings of our new President.  The press and media are caught between their mostly weak ethical constructs and the fear of reprisal from their corporate bosses, if they are seen as not being respectful enough to Presidential authority.  As for the rest of us, the majority of the American people, our perceptions run the gamut from outrage to fear to stunned disbelief that this is our President.  Yet the Big Lies crafting the Trumpian alternative reality, will ultimately fracture the common sense distrust of many Americans, unless these lies are constantly debunked.  The effectiveness of the Big Lie technique is based upon a constant repetition and a refusal by those lying to ever admit the truth.  Let’s look at the mechanics in NAZI Germany, as compared to the current schemes of Trump and his amoral cohort to achieve the same destructive results.

The Big Lies of Hitler, Goebbels and the Trump Election Team

The lynch-pin technique of Adolph Hitler’s rise to power was the “Big Lie” of which he wrote in Mein Kampf:

“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.” Here.

If you think about it, given this passage, Hitler was some sort of evil propaganda genius when he wrote these words in prison in 1924.  It was Hitler’s luck that he had found an ardent follower in the man who became NAZI Germany’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels,  who kept up a barrage of “Big Lies” throughout the existence of the NAZI regime,  in order to control the German people.

Like Hitler,  Donald Trump has achieved leadership of the United States, even though more than a million more people voted for his opponent.  Hitler’s NAZI Party achieved power by grabbing s only 1/3rd of the seats in Germany’s Parliamentary election and so in a similar manner more Germans were against Hitler than they were for him.  More importantly for  Trump,  he had two Goebbels-like figures to run his unusual campaign,  One is the former and possibly future CEO of Breitbart News. Currently, Breitbart ranks 128 as America’s most viewed website and ranks 680th in the world.  That CEO is the notorious Steve Bannon. Breitbart is an unapologetic ultra Right Wing news site,  that has shown little regard for facts since it first began. This site regularly makes up lies, hatches entrapment scams and edits videotape deceptively, to create false narratives. Bannon,  who describes himself as a “Leninist“, is seeking no less than a revolution to vanquish all Liberal causes and to completely marginalize them. Bannon was the chief strategist and CEO of the Trump campaign and seems certain to be a main White House political advisor.

Bannon’s partner in crime, is the Campaign Manager and chief spokesperson Kellyann Conway.  Conway in my opinion is a brilliant person,  who because she is not moored to any notion of being truthful runs rings against all who interview her.  Conway speaks in a rapid-fire patter that confuses her interviewers with it speed and with its techniques of outright falsehoods and mis-direction and will not hesitate to deny many of Trump’s more outrageous statements even when they have been captured on video.

I wrote about the similarities between Trump and Hitler with respect to “The Big Lie”  here. 

Where Conway and Bannon are actually more effective than the extremely competent Goebbels,  is the fact that our digital age opens up many more avenues for reaching the public and crafting their responses.  In their belief in their causes, Bannon and Conway have made the realistic assessment that with mass media facts and truth no longer apply and winning is everything.  Sadly,  they are probably right.