William Shirer, many years before he published The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published Berlin Diary, an account of his time as a correspondent in Berlin during the ascendancy of Hitler. When the war started, he of course had to leave. In Berlin Diary he wrote:
"We are strong, and we will get stronger," Hitler shouted at them through the microphone, his words echoing across the hushed field through loudspeakers. And there in the floodlit night, massed together like sardines in one mass formation, the little men of Germany who have made Naziism possible achieved the highest state of being the Germanic man knows: the shedding of the individual souls and minds -- with the personal responsibilities and doubts and problems -- until under the mystic lights at the sound of the magic words of the Austrian they were merged completely in the Germanic herd.
I find Shirer's use of the phrase "little men" particularly telling. Hitler was of course far more intelligent than Trump, and despite his lack of formal education much better read. He actually wrote a book, as opposed to putting his name on books written by others, and developed a coherent ideology. But they both exploited the same psychological vulnerability, of people who have little self worth or meaningful personal aspirations and rewards, to fuse their own feeble identities with an entity they perceive as great and powerful, elevating their self-perception in the process. In both cases a major component of this mystical process was racism, and also creation of an alternative factual reality.
We have so far been spared the worst by Trump's intellectual and psychological incompetence. That he has gotten as far as he has despite his crippling narcissism and cognitive limitations is actually quite disturbing and scary. If it was that easy, what if the next guy is just a little bit smarter and a little more secure?
1 comment:
Chilling reporting and insights, and well-founded fears.
I enjoyed watching Dave Chapelle's SNL monologue. I'd heard it was "anti-semitic" (a term that I, like you, don't like because of its inaccuracy and label).
He did a terrific job of exposing and talking about truths that need to be discussed. One unfortunate side effect of the Nazis' and present-day Republicans' sound machines is that they drown out truth. But truth is more powerful, infinitely so, and it needs to be spoken more and more to preempt the next Shitler.
Just as success in life means getting up as many times as you've fallen down, so teaching truth is the way to prevent the march to death and ignorance necessary for a Hitler and a Shitler. We need to stop transcribing and responding, as the NY Times does (I've cancelled my subscription), and instead state truths and promote education and reform with people's needs at the center, like Daily Kos.
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