Fascists want people to disconnect from reality and live in their magical fantasy where anything is plausible because there is no objective truth, criminality is rationalized, and any feat is possible because of their Leader’s greatness. Fascists hate the small truths of daily existence because they clash with the fantasies they have created for their supporters. They filter our complex world into binary, black or white viewpoints, which destroys nuanced thought and swallows people into extremes. For Fascists, every issue is all-or-nothing and framed with apocalyptic terms. Life is either a triumph or a disaster, and there is no middle ground or room for compromise. Hitler once said, “Never acknowledge any good in your enemies.”
They have their supporters substitute critical thinking for water-downed, angry slogans and insults. For example, Donald Trump’s “Lock Her Up” chant is not original and is actually a play on the Nazi slogan of “Lock Them Up”, which supporters would feverishly repeat in reference to Jews until they went into hysteria at Hitler’s rallies. The point of the slogan is to delegitimize the political opposition and create an image in the voters’ minds that the opponent is a criminal and not to be trusted. Donald Trump applied this concept when he smeared Hilary Clinton for alleged criminality and then reinforced that lie in his supporters’ heads by having them repeat the chant over and over. The Nazis had their supporters chant this slogan over and over again until it was engrained in their conscious and they no longer rationally thought about the opposing politician’s actual record. Goebbels once said, “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” In reality, the Nazis were the criminals.
Fascists rely on creative myths and conspiracy theories to distort people’s interpretation of reality and their own history. Fascists preferred myths and conspiracy theories because they were told orally, had no factual backing, were vague and hard to disprove, and they spread like wildfire once in the public conscious. Once reality and shared history is distorted, people question their understanding of themselves and the world they live in. Fascists often rewrite history to amplify their own greatness, exaggerate or create myths of their enemies’ ills, and destroy the common mooring to fact and objective reality that society shares so they can introduce their alternative reality instead. Once people start to become open to the possibility of shared truths being lies and their history being false, Fascists bombard them with their propaganda and people easily succumb to their lies and myths.
Hitler had a keen sense that people are very forgetful of current events and events in the past, so he worked to create many historical myths that distorted Germans’ sense of shared history, scapegoated Jews and his political enemies for all of the country’s problems, and spawned an origin myth of his own struggles and his personal brilliance that allowed him to overcome them. Once German history was distorted, Germans had nothing to look back at and reference in order to analyze current events that were happening before them. Germans believed Hitler’s mistruths about the world, were seduced into believing in the Fuhrer myth of his brilliance and ended up living in his magical fantasy until the walls came crumbling down around them.
Fascists use the technique of the Big Lie, which Hitler details in Mein Kampf: “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.” Hitler knew that people are used to telling white lies in their everyday life but would be ashamed to tell a massive lie and be called a liar. The same people would think that no normal person — especially the government — would be audacious enough to tell a massive lie, and when presented with evidence of deceit, they try to find another explanation. The Big Lie is the foundation for how a Fascist creates a magical fantasy.