Donald Trump and the Big Lie Stratagem
Forget the art of the deal, Trump practices the art of propaganda
Today, the New York Times has a terrific editorial, "Mr. Trump's Applause Lies," decrying the shameful and stupid lies being peddled by Republcan presidential frontrunner and billioinaire reality television star Donald Trump. From the editorial:
America has just lived through another presidential campaign week dominated by Donald Trump's racist lies. Here's a partial list of false statements: The United States is about to take in 250,000 Syrian refugees; African-Americans are responsible for most white homicides; and during the 9/11 attacks, "thousands and thousands" of people in an unnamed "Arab" community in New Jersey "were cheering as that building was coming down."
In the Republican field, Mr. Trump has distinguished himself as fastest to dive to the bottom. If it's a lie too vile to utter aloud, count on Mr. Trump to say it, often. It wins him airtime, and retweets through the roof.
So far, so sadly true. Trump is using the "big lie" propaganda technique devised by the Nazis. Adolf Hitler* himself outlined in Mein Kampf how this works …
…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.
Trump is proving himself to be a fabricator of colossal untruths and an expert liar.
Perhaps Trump's most troubling recent political eructation cited by the Times is:
"We're going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago."
The implications to American liberty of this man becoming president are frankly thinkable and frightening.
*Since this is beginning of the debate, this is not a contravention of Godwin's Law.
See Reason TV's excellent and disturbing video, "Dilbert Creator Scott Adams on Donald Trump's 'Linguistic Kill Shots'." Adams argues that Trump's rhetorical genius will take him all the way to the Oval Office.