The Cult of Trump

I am working my way through the Third Reich Trilogy by Richard J. Evans, and I'm on the second volume, The Third Reich in Power. I was reading this bit about this middle-class family, and the way that their correspondence showed how many in the middle-class became masters of self-deception and delusion under the propaganda assault of the Reich. Within a matter of weeks the tone of the letters changed from feeling sorry for the victims of the violence of the Nazis, particularly the Jews, to fully accepting the actions of the regime as necessary. Now, they believed, Jews were a negative influence on the nation, and they praised Hitler's swift actions to put an end to their corrupting influence. Particularly revolting acts of violence committed by Hitler's stormtroopers were waved away as the acts of provocateurs who had infiltrated the brownshirts with the intention of committing such acts so as to make them look bad. News of civil rights abuses on a mass scale were accepted as baseless rumors being spread by Marxists to discredit the regime. These were the lies they were told; they happily accepted them as fact, and repeated them as such.

I couldn't help while reading this bit to think of the Cult of Trump, and the way that his most ardent supporters are willing to believe anything he says no matter how ridiculous, and to completely disregard all evidence to the contrary.

He says he saw news footage of thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11? Then it happened, and the fact that no one else saw this footage, no news service has acknowledged that they aired such footage, and despite the fact that in the months since he initially made the statement no one has been able to find the footage, they accept it as truth. Why would the Great Man have said it if it weren't true?

He says that the Obama administration is lying about the unemployment rate, and that the real rate is 40%? It doesn't trouble their intellect  that this dubious figure is 15 points higher than the deepest part of the Great Depression, or that we have had over 70 consecutive months of private-sector job growth. The unemployment rate is 40%. Because the Great Man said so. Says he read it on the Internet.

Where this unthinking, sheep-like obedience and willful bypassing of the intellect is most glaring are in the instances (and there are many) where Trump changes his position from one moment to the next. Trump says he will order soldiers to kill the families of terrorists, and his supporters defend it. Then he says that he never said he would order soldiers to kill the families of terrorists, and the same supporters who a matter of days ago were defending the statement now claim that he never made any such statement, and that it's just more lies for the "liberal media". He says that a judge of Mexican heritage is inherently biased against him due to his ancestry, and his supporters defend him vehemently. It's obvious, they say, that the judge is loyal to "the Mexicans" and can't possibly give Trump a fair trial. Then Trump says that that's not what he meant, and that the "liberal media" took what he said out of context. Despite the fact that he repeated this point very clearly, and that there is video and audio footage of it, and despite the fact that they themselves were agreeing with the point and defending it a day ago, suddenly his supporters deny that he ever said it. Just more lies from the media, who took what he said out of context.

In order to reinforce the bubble of willful ignorance in which it is necessary for one to live in in order to support Trump in spite of the lies, flip-flops, and exaggerations that escape his mouth on a regular basis, Trump, like all the best demagogues and cult leaders before him, has set himself up as the only source of truth.

The media? They're liars!

The leaders of his own party? They're liars, too!

If a Trump supporter wants to know the truth, they must go to only one source. Trump, and Trump alone, is the source of all knowledge. News from any other source is inherently untrustworthy, no matter how well-sourced. Only he has the power to decide what is true, and if what he judges to be true today is different from what he judged to be true yesterday, so be it.

We have always been at war with Eastasia, have we not?