Propaganda: Is Trump a Follower of Goebbels?

I have been a political scientist for more than thirty years. And as such I have learned to spot trends and historical patterns. I have also learned that political leaders generally have a political philosophy and that none of them are completely original.

Donald Trump's political philosophy is simple. Some might say simple-minded. But no matter what you call it, its apparently effective. So as a political scientist I ask have we seen Trump's philosophy previously and if so, what if anything does it portend?

President Donald Trump who routinely disparages immigrants and seeks to ban certain immigrants from America is himself the descendant of German (not Swiss) immigrants who came to America from Germany in 1885. So I find both curious and instructive the similarity between President Trump's political philosophy and tactics and those of Joseph Goebbels Hitler's Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945.

Since I believe that my readers will be able to make connections without my commentary I will simply list a number of quotes by Heir Reich Minister Goebbels and ask if you can see any similarity to the philosophy and tactics of President Donald Trump?

Joseph Goebbels Quotes:

"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it."

"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."

"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will."

"Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."

"Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."

"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."

"There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted…. Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

" The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

"If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth."

"If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth."

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself."

"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come."

"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."

"We have made the Reich by propaganda"

"The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times."

"Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"

__________

Scary isn't it? Of course, I do not believe that Donald Trump is another Goebbels or Hitler for that matter. I only seek to show that President Trump is a propagandist in the tradition of Reich Minister Goebbels which might explain why he feels obliged to lie at every turn and continue with his lies even when confronted with the truth. Perhaps more importantly it might explain why he can manage to see good in the Neo Nazis. We shall allow Goebbels the last word.

"There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse

under their own weight, and truth will again triumph."

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Johnnie Cordero holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Doctorate in Jurisprudence. He is the author of Total Black Empowerment: A Guide to Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump. His new book Theodicy and The Power of the African Will is now available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other on line book sellers.