In this thoughtful piece for The New York Times, Blow makes clear that he does NOT think our current occupant of the Oval Office is comparable to the noxious Nazi, except in what appears to be a deliberate use of untruths to manipulate the public. Trump is clearly not (yet?) on a path to exterminate millions (although I would note that some of his fellow travellers that he has refused to reject would be if they could). But Blow argues it is legitimate to see how others, including Trump, seem willing to use the kind of rhetorical strategies that Hitler used in their own attempts to achieve power. As he writes
… very reasonable and sage comparisons can be drawn between Hitler’s strategies and those of others.
One of those lessons is about how purposeful lying can be effectively used as propaganda. The forthcoming comparison isn’t to Hitler the murderer, but to Hitler the liar.
Here I am going to jump ahead and remind people, as does Blow in this very good column, that Ivana Trump told us that Trump used to keep a collection of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. Keep that in mind.
Blow offers selections from Hitler’s Mein Kampf (which means My Struggle) in the translation by James Murphy. I will not quote those words, but you should read them.
Blow then writes these words:
This demonstrates a precise understanding of human psychology, but also the dangerously manipulative nature that operates in the mind of a demon.
And yet, as many have noted, no person of sound reason or even cursory political awareness can read this and not be immediately struck by how similar this strategy of lying is to Donald Trump’s seeming strategy of lying: Tell a lie bigger than people think a lie can be, thereby forcing their brains to seek truth in it, or vest some faith in it, even after no proof can be found.
Trump is no Hitler, but the way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies, stacked one on top of the other, has an eerie historical resonance. Demagogy has a fixed design.
Let’s stop for a moment. It is bad enough that the American people in general get mental overload by some of the outrageous untruths. The problem was that the American media gave widespread attention to Trump without challenging those untruths, without the confrontation that should have been part of exposing him to the populace. Yes, some of his more outrageous statements such as his attacks on Judge Curiel and the Access Hollywood tape were widely publicized, but in a way that gave Trump air time to bloviate, to blow up the political system. Too many in the media werewilling, in apparent pursuit of larger ratings, to abandon long-standing standards of political coverage to give Trump free access to their viewers and readers. It was not just the cable networks, all of them, giving free coverage to Trump’s rallies which served as a free gift of billions in publicity. It was also Morning Joe allowing him to call in to the show on a regular basis (something not at all balanced out by the after the fact strong opposition to Trump as the nominee and then especially as the President). We have to live with the results of this enabling.
Returning to the column in question, Blow also provides an analysis of how Trump does this, which begin with these words:
Trump has found a way to couch the lies so that people believe they don’t emanate from him but pass through him. He is not a producer but a projector.
One way he does this is by using caveats — “I was told,” “Lots of people are saying” — as shields.
Blow is not here necessarily doing his own original analysis, but does us a service by pulling together the analyses done by several others over a period of more than a year.
It is in the latter part of the piece that Blow forcefully expresses what he thinks this means.
I cannot quote all of the powerful statements in that part, but let me offer a few snippets.
About the overall thrust of what Trump is doing, Blow writes:
This is not a simple fear of the truth; it is a weaponizing of untruth. It is the use of the lie to assault and subdue.
About why he does not think what we know as Godwin’s Law is appicable or should be a deterrent to bold statements:
Ignoring what one of history’s greatest examples of lying has to teach us about current examples of lying, particularly lying by the “president” of the most powerful country in the world, seems to me an act of timidity in a time of terror. It is an intentional self-blinding to avoid offending frail sensibilities.
After telling us that rather than tiptoeing around the issue, he prefers to be blunt, and reminding us the corrosive effect this is having on our country and our culture, Blow concludes with two paragraphs that I will quote, as my final offering, because I find them an effective summary of what we confront, and as a challenge to what we should be doing:
That is the very real threat we are facing. Trump isn’t necessarily a direct threat to your life — unless of course you are being kept alive by health care that he keeps threatening, or if you’re in Puerto Rico reeling in the wake of two hurricanes — but he is very much a threat to your quality of life.
The only question is: Are enough Americans sufficiently discerning to understand that this time they are the ones being manipulated?