Saturday, November 19, 2016

The Cult of Trump part 8 Godwin's Flaw 2

 Image result for godwin's lawImage result for godwin's law

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This is the direct sequel to the cult of Trump part 7 Godwin's Flaw. That should be read first. Really the entire series Cult of Trump ideally would be read in order.

This will include a few simple parallels to the methods Hitler and the Nazis used compared to the Methods Trump and his surrogates and supporters use.

It's not going to be all inclusive or comprehensive because honestly that could fill an entire large book.

Aside from the specific Hitler quotes I referenced in my last post, Godwin's Flaw, I can note similarities in Trump's actions and Hitler's.

Hitler: Used racism to rise to power
Trump: Used racism to rise to power
Hitler: Proposed mass deportations
Trump: Proposed mass deportations
Hitler: Promised to make Germany great again
Trump: Promised to make America great again
Hitler: Anti-Jew fascist
Trump: Anti-Muslim fascist
Hitler: Blames Jews for Germany's problems
Trump: Blames immigrants for America's problems
Hitler: Thought Jews should wear special IDs
Trump: Thinks Muslims should wear special IDs

Now this can be fleshed out a bit. Hitler blamed Jews for the loss of jobs in Germany and treated Jews as morally inferior. Trump blames immigrants for the loss of jobs of white men and has called Mexicans rapists and criminals and said they are bringing drugs. He's also at rallies stirred fears of refugees in local communities. He has stirred racial prejudices against black Americans by retweeting white supremacist memes and a long history of overt racism and extreme support for white supremacists and tacit approval for them or if pressed hard by the media repeatedly very meak and half hearted disavowals. His racism is extremely similar to Hitler's and he has tweaked his approach so he dare not be overtly antisemitic and has shifted to the far more socially vulnerable groups Muslims and immigrants, specifically Latino immigrants.

Hitler promised deportation that turned into forced labor and extermination. The holocaust is obviously a very important and historic event in genocide history. It stands out in many ways.

Trump like Hitler has announced in his recent 60 Minutes interview that he can round up,  IMPRISON and hold two to three million immigrants he called criminals. But it's a vagueness trick. Criminal can be used to describe ANYONE in the country without legal permission.

Under current law ANYONE can be apprehended, imprisoned and held in indefinite detention forever with no trial, no charges, no record of the arrest, and no access to attorneys or family or anyone else.

If Trump had immigrants, or anyone else, rounded up and forced into involuntary labor it would be slavery and could become permanent. Trump said in his interview that he could imprison the immigrants until we get the border situation straightened out. That means forever.

It's like banning Muslims until we figure out what the hell is going on. That's indefinite.

Hitler claimed to have Jews rounded up for labor camps that in reality were extermination death camps. If Trump would dare go that far I am not absolutely certain. I believe he would dearly want to but might fear discovery with modern technology making hiding death camps too difficult.

But just think about it. First Trump monitors Muslims and rounds up some immigrants. He might even wisely start with a few hundred or thousand actual criminals. He would cherry pick the very worst he could and put vivid and graphic images of them up with a constant narrative of their bloody crimes. Just a half dozen rapists and murderers would do.

He can get a consensus that taking these people off the streets is good. Then take more immigrants, and more then it becomes normal. Just like how Jews in Germany gradually lost jobs and property and rights. Each step was a slightly bigger compromise.

So Trump can take the true criminal immigrants, then more immigrants. Then Muslims that he says either are criminals or terrorists or have terrorist ties or sympathies or radical beliefs or dangerous potential. He probably wouldn't take all these groups outright at once. Take a few, then more, then more, then after a while we stop paying attention.

Eventually ALL Muslims and Mexican immigrants that he chooses get rounded up and put in prison indefinitely, if you listen to Trump's own statements.

The statements and the past actions of Hitler are obviously about as similar as they can be on this point if you take into account that outright antisemitism isn't socially acceptable enough for Trump to have outwardly pursued and advanced in the republican party. Even they would have cast him out, so he went for the socially acceptable targets for scapegoating now in America of Muslims, Mexican immigrants and to a degree black Americans.

He has admitted to being open to making Muslims wear special IDs and monitoring Mosques and banning all Muslims from other countries from entering the US. His supporters recently sited internment camps as legal precedent to support their plans. That's about as obvious as possible without outright saying we are following Hitler's plan and committing genocide as a final solution.

They are really just one step away in their rhetoric, but can act like it's absurd for anyone to compare them to Hitler if it comes up. It's not said in polite company, but a reporter ignoring obvious facts to seem polite is foolish. Most media just won't dare to explore the very relevant similarities.

There are many other similarities. Hitler blamed Jews for the humiliation of losing World War I. He stirred the desire to regain honor by winning. Trump shocked republicans by bringing up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said they were terrible blunders by George W Bush. People thought it was to criticize Jeb Bush and eliminate him from the republican primary race.

It actually wasn't. It was so Trump could say we have been humiliated and can't win anymore. It was so he could use the simple image of World War II and sat we used to always win wars and now we can't win any ever. It was meant to resonate with a nostalgic spirit for the forties and fiftees. To make the America before the sixties seem better.

That's a multi layered approach. It knocked out Jeb Bush, but Trump could have easily crushed him. He was a bully in the debates and effectively destroyed him by talking over him and labeling him as low energy. It stuck and Jeb had no answer simple enough to stick in voter's minds.

Trump picked the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a way to zero in on the fifties and forties as a golden age to return to without having to clearly say it.

If he said it or was pressed by the press and named a year of greatness to return to it would have been something a serious examination of would have forced Trump into a corner.

He would have had to discuss civil rights in depth, gay rights, abortion, and the much, much higher tax rates both corporations and wealthy individuals have had to pay. Several analyses have claimed corporations paid about three times the taxes they pay now in the fifties and wealthy individuals paid at the top tax rate over ninety percent of their income. That's not something Trump could have admitted was great. And he certainly dared not say he would pursue it. Republicans would never accept it. And no corporations or billionaires would tolerate it.

So, like Hitler he used vague claims to stir passionate images of an earlier America that actually never was.

Without saying it Trump stirred visions of a time white male Christians had everything set up for them. Best opportunity for jobs. Best opportunity for religious expression. In any conflicts usually the white male Christians could rely on the law and authorities to support their values.

In the Jim Crow South whites had dominance over everyone else. Women accepted a lower position in class than men and above minorities. Religious minorities were often treated as second or third or fourth class citizens and many would hide being Jewish or atheists as examples to limit discrimination.

The similarities in his propaganda techniques and beliefs to Hitler's are initially striking and upon long examination they are far too similar to be coincidence.

It's just not rational to call two things that are so close unrelated. Trump didn't spontaneously acquire dozens of methods and ideas that are the exact ones Hitler used or slightly tweaked ones by random chance. It's an unsupportable claim.

The big thing is understanding Trump has a vision for the future. This isn't random or a half hearted effort. He wants a pure white America. He wants white male Christians to rule everything and everyone else to be either eliminated or removed or subservient to the ruling straight, white, male Christians.

He has already laid the groundwork with his rhetoric for rounding up Muslims eventually, Latinos immediately, and black Americans with racial profiling, aggressive stop and frisk policing nationwide and packing private prisons to effectively enslave black and Latino Americans. He will pursue long sentences and the decline of rights.

He will pursue opening up libel laws to oppose critics and crack down on activists and journalists.

He will have a hard time with the current internet, but he will certainly try. He has millions of critics online. That's something he may never overcome.

Because once he starts censorship or arrests of protesters and journalists the news will get out and a true resistance will spring up. It's inevitable. With millions of critics and already hundreds of thousands of people have marched in protests. They keep coming out and scheduling more and bigger protests. Different groups are uniting to oppose Trump.

He won't like it and even if we have domestic terrorism that justifies a police state he can't cut off the negative information that millions and millions of people already have regarding him.

It's quite different than Nazi Germany. Even if Trump took over all media on TV, in newspapers and seized the internet somehow people would know it and just the change from a media packed with criticism of every possible view would be an inescapable fact that would prove Trump has established a totalitarian state. The lack of free media would spark open revolt. I am not saying an army would form and fight battles with the US military. That would be suicide. It's more likely weapons would be used in an assassination attempt on Trump and perhaps his inner circle.

It's debatable whether you see killing a US president as acceptable under any circumstances. It's a personal matter. I am merely saying I believe someone would make a serious effort or efforts. If suicide bombers were employed it would make protecting Trump extremely challenging. I don't love the tactic of suicide bombers personally, but understand desperate people may use it.

I think Trump has the very real challenge that he has literally millions of people in the US that ALREADY see him as a fascist and obvious Hitler knockoff. With that population to start with he can't round up half the population and enslave or liquidate them in a speedy manner. He knows that.

He has the problem that video evidence and his own words often show he is lying so getting even half the population to believe he is honest is unlikely. People have simply seen too much already.

Through the eight years under Barack Obama as president his critics were free to criticize him and did so ruthlessly. They had a constant PR campaign against him for eight years on Fox news, right wing radio and innumerable websites and newspapers.

He let them lie, lie, lie and give valid criticism too. So, if one day under the FCC or some other government control ALL criticism of Trump and reporting on his lies and acts was to disappear it would be obvious. If his most famous critics like Lawrence O'Donnell and Stephen Colbert disappeared it would be clear what happened.

I believe Trump will try to con people. He will try to seem cooperative and reasonable enough to get his programs authorized. He will try to get the absolute furthest right candidates in his cabinet and in departments of the US government. He wants people with no conscience regarding white supremacy or extermination of Muslims. No one with any compassion regarding prisoners or casualties.

He has already appointed a veritable who's who of racists and bigots. His enemies will be the internet, the normalcy of free speech, the omnipresent video of events, the awareness of his authoritarian, racist, anti Muslim and whites first policies.

Not everyone will see the clear connection to Hitler and the unity of their visions of racial purity. But millions already see enough that Trump can never reeducate them into believing something else. Not in any efficient and timely manner.

His age at seventy years old and his term of four years or eight if he's reelected also limit his opportunities. Fortunately some people have claimed Trump constantly eats junk food and doesn't exercise. I certainly hope he doesn't live another thirty years ruling America.

I recently read an article in which the author suggested Trump will find a reason to cancel the next election. If that happens the revolution will come in earnest. Taking out the entire military is impossible and a short suicide mission. No one would pursue it. It's far more likely a small direct strike would occur. If Trump cancelled the election he probably would go to a secure military location and hole up.

I don't know if he will cancel elections or stay in power after eight years. A more covert act would be to select a successor with the same Nazi ideology and simply rig the election so republicans stay in power for generations. Though again, it's hard to find Nazis. They don't take ads in the paper saying "secret Nazi seeking government to take over."

If worst comes to worst Trump passing away from natural causes could end his reign and inevitability survivors of his horror would live to tell the tale. Presuming he doesn't destroy us with a nuclear holocaust or climate catastrophe.

It's so bizarre to realize the new reality is living in a fascist state under a totalitarian regime ruled by a white supremacist in the mold of Hitler with in my opinion genocidal aspirations. He has a government filled with people that think he's either good, someone they can work with or an incompetent conman that won't amount to much. Even some opponents like Bernie Sanders in my opinion may know he has Nazi or white supremacist goals but they are severely underestimating his intelligence, skill at propaganda and ruthlessness. It's part of how he became president elect.

I think he's effectively conned virtually everyone in the government. Ironically some other white supremacists in the government have studied Hitler's speeches in detail and the culture and customs of white supremacists and realize Trump IS undoubtedly one of them.

There's a longstanding practice of not publicly admitting things but skirting around them that white supremacists know and follow. It's a way to signal each other but not inform others that one is a white supremacist. It's their own code.

They learn it and it's practiced by KKK members and white supremacists in the Southern US and other places with high white supremacist populations.

A few reporters have noted these subtle signals and been ignored by Trump. That's part of the culture. If someone calls you out and you can ignore them then ignore them so your words can't be used against you. The reporter can't take the long road of teaching white supremacist culture in a short segment or even a whole show. It lacks concision. The quality of being described in a few minutes or seconds.

Hitler relied on the phenomenon of incredulity to hide his true intention.

“If you cannot recognize the signs of Hitlerian Power, if you do not know how to counter their efforts, if you remain confused and uncertain as your opponent makes his moves, step by step with decisiveness and intention, and your inaction allows him to come closer to power, then you have already lost and they have won, for they know the rules of the game and you do not.” 
― Adolf HitlerMein Kampf

Hitler in my opinion relied on reverse projection. In literature on narcissism and sociopaths reverse projection describes the deadly error normal people make of projecting their own qualities onto others that are not normal. Specifically narcissists and sociopaths as examples.

A normal person can think a Hitler or Trump has a conscience, empathy, compassion, humility or basic human decency and with those incorrect assumptions make fundamentally flawed judgments about a Trump or Hitler from there on. Hitler made certain that by the time aspects of his true desires were exposed it was far too late to use reason or government checks and balances to stop him.

Trump knows ALL OF THIS. The reassuring assumption that Trump is stupid because he uses a limited vocabulary in public is unfortunately untrue. It's a calculated tactic to appear stupid to critics and appeal to the masses and the stupidest Americans by speaking to them AT their level of understanding.

His obvious lies he can be caught in are not proof of stupidity either. By working the press and public he has created an us versus them mentality in his followers. They either deny his lies or say you need to look past his words or some other special excuse that sets aside contradictions and negative information about Trump.

That's obviously cult like, but how many hard core cult followers he has is still hard to say. It's a complex issue. He certainly doesn't have even half the country as only about eighteen percent of Americans voted for him and certainly not all of them are in a cultic relationship.

I sincerely hope something prevents Trump and his successors from carrying out his plans. Even if we get lucky and the electoral college members grow backbone and reject Trump as unsuitable and it holds up in court or Trump gets impeached and convicted early into his reign or simply has a heart attack or other natural death in his first few months or even before his inauguration several problems remain. His supporters are going to be a huge source of trouble for generations to come. If Trump carries out his oppressive and fascist policies a segment of the population would treat this as the new normal. It will be difficult to turn back from that. Additionally outside the halls of power his followers have reportedly committed hundreds of hste crimes against Jews,women, black Americans, Muslims, Latinos, gay people, trans people and others since Trump won the election. It's barely been a week.

White supremacists are a terrorist threat to America and likely to be ignored under Trump. An administration after Trump would be criticized if they seriously pursue white supremacists as terrorists or criticized if they don't. It's going to be a tough road for anyone. Obviously I would prefer a very serious and relentless effort to stamp out white supremacists that becomes a routine action.

No matter what happens I feel that people that oppose the totalitarian and oppressive policies Trump seeks to pursue and his vision of a pure white supremacist America have a serious challenge ahead. It's going to be difficult. Difficult to pursue, difficult to stay optimistic and committed. Difficult to achieve. Perhaps many of us won't live to see Trump stopped. But we have to live what life we have left knowing his intentions and knowing our own choices. That's the real challenge. To live with yourself when morally challenged. This challenge is extreme. But we at least have the history of Germany and Hitler to look at. And our own hearts to look into.



The Cult of Trump part 7 Godwin's Flaw


 Image result for godwin's lawImage result for godwin's law

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In any discussion of Trump an inevitable comparison to Hitler comes up. It's an unavoidable idea to carefully weigh and consider. It's NOT a random insult.

Actual critical analysis of a person as an admirer or follower of Hitler or Nazi ideology is entirely appropriate if someone has words and deeds that are evidence that are appropriate for consideration.

The meme Godwin's Law is used as a kind of slogan or thought stopping cliche. It's invoked and ends all examination of evidence. Evidence that almost always shows a comparison to the real Nazis and Hitler was entirely unjustified and a poor choice.

ALMOST always. But, if you have a situation or person that actually warrants examination against Hitler and Nazis then Godwin's Law creates incredulity that ANY comparison could be valid.

The following quotes are from Rationalwiki on Godwin's Law:


Godwin’s Law (also argumentum ad Naziumreductio ad Hitlerum, or a Hitler Card) was formulated by the attorney Mike Godwin (former general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation) in the 1990s and states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Additionally, Godwin made an appearance in Glenn Greenwald's Salon comments section in 2010 to confirm, as Greenwald put it in a column titled The odiousness of the distorted Godwin’s Law:
Godwin himself appears in comments (authenticity confirmed via email) to explain that his “law” sought to discourage frivolous, but not substantive, Nazi analogies and comparisons.
End quote


Trump has done many, many actions and chosen many people that warrants examination in very fine detail to compare with Nazi ideology and Hitler himself. 

The following was published in the Guardian:


An image of Donald Trump with his arm raised in a salute has been included on the cover of a collection of Adolf Hitler’s speeches.
Publisher Ishi Press International has illustrated the back cover of Hitler’s collected speeches My New Order: volume one and the front cover of volume two with photographs of the presidential candidate. It declares in the book’s blurb that: “There are clear similarities between the speeches of Trump and the speeches of Hitler”, citing everything from repetition to name calling and a lack of logical justification for views held.


 

“They never admit they have made a mistake nor do they ever take anything back,” Ishi Press writes on both volumes. “To any criticism, they respond by insults and name calling. They use a low form of language, with simple sentences even a person with the lowest level of education or no education at all can understand.”
The jackets of both volumes read: “My New Order has attracted the attention of the press with the rise of Donald Trump as candidate for president of the United States, because his first wife Ivana Trump revealed that Donald Trump reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.” The publisher is referring to a 1990 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner. Brenner interviewed Trump, who said it was a gift from “my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew” and denied having read the book: “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.’”
Davis later told Brenner: “I did give him a book about Hitler, but it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”
Brenner points out in her Vanity Fair piece that  “Trump is no reader or history buff”, adding that “perhaps his possession of Hitler’s speeches merely indicates an interest in Hitler’s genius at propaganda”.

Sam Sloan, head of Ishi Press International’s US arm, told the Huffington Post that when My New Order was published in 1941, there was “nothing on the back cover … so I decided to use that empty space for an advertisement for the book”. The Huffington Post identifies the photograph used by Ishi as from the 10 December front page of the Philadelphia News, which used the headline “The New Furor” to refer to the presidential candidate’s “latest hair-raising idea … to keep out all Muslims” from the US.

End quote

The claim Trump studied Hitler's speeches from his ex wife Ivana is relevant. 
Trump has a very distinct style of communication. It's amazing in its consistency and it's so unconventional for a presidential candidate that it threw many people off. It threw off the entire republican party during the primaries and the democrats during the election and the press the whole way. 

But is it truly Hitler's or based on Nazism or close to them ? 

To understand Nazism you have to actually LOOK at it, not a caricature or emotional judgment of it. Those are easy to get. Critical analysis takes work and facing the horror of the Nazis including the Holocaust to be sure, but also the minute details of Hitler and his followers and history. 

So let's look.

"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” 
― Adolf Hitler


“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.” 
― Adolf Hitler

Trump has used very, very simple slogans and sayings over and over and over. In an analysis of his lies by a Canadian newspaper four hundred and ninety were found over a short period of time. Almost all were short phrases or sayings. Some were a short sentence or phrase. The Toronto Star published a list of four hundred and ninety four lies from Trump. Many were repeated over and over at different rallies or appearances. 

Most were personal insults. Or distortions about Hillary Clinton or Muslims or a handful of subjects. 

The Toronto Star lists Trump's lies and an interesting pattern emerges. He tells the same lie with a little variation over and over and over. 

Trump uses simple terms that even an illiterate person can understand like crooked Hillary or low energy Jeb or a big beautiful wall. His style has the similarities of extreme repetition, simple and short slogans. Okay, that is one piece of evidence, but a lot of people use repetition and even simple short slogans. 

So, let's look some more.

"I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” 
― Adolf Hitler

Trump uses speeches designed to appeal to and stir emotions. It's his signature move. His surrogates are people that also use this tactic almost exclusively. I have seen them use it in many, many interviews. 

“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” 
― Adolf Hitler

Trump lies almost constantly and tells huge lies over and over shamelessly. He makes it so you either see him as a pathological liar OR get caught up in hoping he can lead or provide something good and you excuse or deny or worse yet believe all his lies. And they are big, big lies. No slight exaggerations. Numerous stories on this have been written. You might be skeptical and think his political or ideological opponents are lying. 

Okay. I saw Trump on numerous occasions, probably over twenty, during the republican presidential primaries state something, then get asked it and flatly DENY saying EXACTLY what he had said just a few days earlier. I saw him confidently act like he never said the things he demonstrably did. And several reporters later presented the video of him saying something then denying exactly that. 

That's troubling enough, but the fact that virtually every Trump surrogate ALSO denies easily proven statements is a propaganda campaign. It's using gaslighting which the media never adequately handled. They should have at the very beginning of Trump using this tactic relentlessly showed excellent investigative journalism and showed the video to discredit Trump. Every news organization should have shown it, the republicans should have said Trump disqualified himself early in the process and cast him out. 

If he had to run as an independent on his own money and with only a tiny bit of media coverage as a fraud and oddity he would have perhaps earned a small cult, but that would have been much better than our current situation. 

So, Trump effectively followed this bit of advice from Hitler. 

He also follows this:

“If you cannot recognize the signs of Hitlerian Power, if you do not know how to counter their efforts, if you remain confused and uncertain as your opponent makes his moves, step by step with decisiveness and intention, and your inaction allows him to come closer to power, then you have already lost and they have won, for they know the rules of the game and you do not.” 
― Adolf HitlerMein Kampf

He often ignores questions like when a reporter asked him how his Muslim registry plan os different from what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany and Trump ignored the question the first three or four times then responded " You tell me"  He put the burden of proof on the reporter. 

He knew the reporter wouldn't dare to say "the difference is you know Jews aren't as vulnerable as they were in Germany and a presidential candidate or even president targeting them would be repudiated or even impeached." The US government would not cooperate, but Muslims are ALREADY demonized and a large percentage of Americans fear or don't trust them. It might be below fifty percent, but it's enough to be supported by republican voters and not strongly enough condemned to be driven out of the political arena automatically. 

See, Trump KNOWS it's obvious he is using tweaked Nazism but in modern America people can't comprehend a Nazi getting through the political process and becoming our president. They dare not face an unpleasant reality. With all their knowledge and experience the media has been conned. The political process has allowed a Nazi to make it all the way through to win the presidency. 

It shows the press can be conned, the American voters can be conned and our democratic process can fail in a profound way. I am not suggesting abandoning democracy. I am saying it can be exploited by a liar and used to gain power. It's not a magic formula that only elects good or at least decent people. 

Trump has put it right out there. I know the KKK has long had a rule. If you can't openly be a racist for your job or social status then you are allowed to lie and even denounce them. They know members can lose jobs or support if their membership is revealed. 

Many do as Trump has done. First, act dumb if the KKK is brought up by outsiders or especially press. Then if pressed give a weak claim of not being a member or sympathetic but be as vague as possible and rapidly change the subject. It's completely routine.

White supremacists know the subtle signs someone is one of them or if someone who dare not say it openly then that someone has their values. Little things like saying or retweeting information from white supremacist groups. Using talking points about black people or crime. Admiring people that supported white supremacy like John Wayne. Enough points of similarity add up to a coded way to tell white supremacists you empathize with them. 

When Trump heard his supporters beat a homeless man and said they are passionate it was a sign for the white supremacists. When he pretended to not know about David Duke and white supremacists it was a sign. When he was asked about his supporters viciously harassing a Jewish reporter with antisemitic slurs and pictures of her in a concentration camp and he said I have nothing to say that was a sign. There have been many, many others. 

To the white supremacists it's loud and clear. He's one of them, but can't openly attack Jewish people and despite a mountain of evidence he is racist towards black folks and Muslims and Mexican immigrants he is acceptable towards republicans. It shows how prejudiced and fascist the republican party already was before Trump ascended into his position within the party. 

There  are other pieces of evidence to support the claims that Trump is an admirer of Hitler with similar methods and goals. Now he obviously hasn't engineered and carried out genocide like Hitler did, YET. 

That's the kicker. People are on one of two sides usually, unless they desire the genocide occur of course. 

People either have a terrible feeling about the Trump Hitler similarities and want him stopped at all costs or entirely disregard any comparison as absurd and unwarranted ad hominem attacks and simply say it's a bad reflection on the claimant. 
But here's the thing - you should NOT need a consensus to know what you know. Or for actual genocide to occur to be aware that is the path you are on. Your own best judgment and carefully weighing the evidence can be enough to justify seeing  person as a threat BEFORE letting them go all the way or most of the way to genocide. 

That's a far more dangerous fallacy than Godwin's Law by far. 


Friday, November 18, 2016

The Cult of Trump part 6 The Con






 

I am going to quote an article from NBC news on a recent development regarding Donald Trump.

Trump Supporter: Internment 'Precedent' for Muslim Registry to 'Protect America'


by 

A former Navy SEAL and supporter of President-elect Donald Trump cited World War II internment camps as a precedent for Trump's proposed Muslim registry during an interview Wednesday night on Fox News.
Speaking to host Megyn Kelly, Carl Higbie, a spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC, argued that a proposed registry would be legal. "I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it will pass. We've done it with Iran back a while ago. We did it during World War II with Japanese. Call it what you will, maybe wrong," Higbie said.
"You're not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope," Kelly responded, adding, "You can't be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the President-elect is going to do."
Higbie pushed back. "Look, the president needs to protect America first and if that means having people that are not protected under our constitution have some sort of registry so we can understand...until we can identify the true threat and where it's coming from, I support it."

The article goes on to say:

The last and most controversial of the 10 WWII internment camps, the Tule Lake Segregation Center, closed 70 years ago. By March 1946, when Tule Lake was shuttered, approximately 120,000 Japanese — more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — had been incarcerated during the six years of the war.
The U.S. formally apologized for Japanese internment in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which granted reparations of $20,000 to each surviving victim of the camps. End quote by 
Trump has called for the imprisonment of immigrants (meaning Latino or Latino looking immigrants or possibly citizens that look Latino, after all with indefinite detention and no right to a trial or legal representation how could a person prove they are American or not a criminal ? They CAN'T).


On his first interview on 60 Minutes since he won the election Trump said the following:

The following script is from “The 45th President,” which aired on Nov. 13, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Rich Bonin and Ruth Streeter, producers.

Lesley Stahl: What about the pledge to deport millions and millions of undocumented immigrants?

Donald Trump:  What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that-- But before we make that determination-- Lesley, it’s very important, we want to secure our border.  End quote

He has opened up the idea of indefinite detention for an UNLIMITED number of people with no rights or recourse. He can detain them until the border is straightened out, which is forever.

The targeted group for this action is immigrants that are or look Latino. American citizens that appear Latino ? They can be rounded up too and under indefinite detention have no rights to hearings or defense or contacting their families. That's how indefinite detention works. If Trump has involuntary labor imposed on the detainees they can comply or be tortured, starved or killed. 

He can effectively enslave ANYONE. He cleverly used the more innocent ideas of building a wall and deportation. Being deported is still a terrible and difficult experience BUT indefinite detention and involuntary labor for being an immigrant or looking like you might be is far, far worse. A deported person can possibly somehow build a life in another country or even legally travel and possibly return to the US in the future. A person rotting in prison or working on a chain gang has far fewer prospects. 

That's one group Trump despises and called rapists, killers and drug dealers. He has no love or compassion for them. None. 

He went on to say the following regarding the Supreme Court and abortion:

Lesley Stahl: One of the things you’re going to obviously get an opportunity to do, is name someone to the Supreme Court. And I assume you’ll do that quickly?
Donald Trump: Yes. Very important.
Lesley Stahl: During the campaign, you said that you would appoint justices who were against abortion rights. Will you appoint-- are you looking to appoint a justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?
Donald Trump: So look, here’s what’s going to happen-- I’m going to-- I’m pro-life. The judges will be pro-life. They’ll be very—
Lesley Stahl: But what about overturning this law--
Donald Trump: Well, there are a couple of things. They’ll be pro-life, they’ll be-- in terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment and everybody’s talking about the Second Amendment and they’re trying to dice it up and change it, they’re going to be very pro-Second Amendment. But having to do with abortion if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states. So it would go back to the states and--
 Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but then some women won’t be able to get an abortion?
 Donald Trump: No, it’ll go back to the states.
Lesley Stahl: By state—no some --
 Donald Trump: Yeah.
 Donald Trump: Yeah, well, they’ll perhaps have to go, they’ll have to go to another state.
 Lesley Stahl: And that’s OK?
Donald Trump: Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go. End quote

He is playing the country. He has selected Mike Pence as his Vice President and will only appoint the most extreme pro life judges possible for the Supreme Court. If any outcome that outlaws abortions for all Americans is possible Trump will require that. No doubt about it. 
Mike Pence has a long, long, long history of opposing women's rights on abortion and many other issues. His history was ignored during the campaign because Trump wanted it that way and manipulated the media with his actions. 

Women will be so worried about their diminishing rights that Trump will hope to divide them off any groups they might otherwise support. They will feel defeated and powerless. 

Trump has spoken in the past on being law and order and supporting stop and frisk racial profiling and racial discrimination in policing. Tough policing. He has retweeted racist false statistics on black crime. He has repeatedly made racist comments on black people and sought their execution in the case of the central park five. 

He plans to pack for profit prisons with black folks. Saying anything else is simply ignorance, false information or wishful thinking aka denial of reality.

He has an overarching value. He wants to diminish or eliminate the power of Muslims, Latinos, Black folks, and control women, additionally he has some of the fiercest opponents of gay rights in his hand picked group of friends and potential judges fir the Supreme Court. He wants to control women in a way that echoes of misogyny in a Christian identity form.

He is simply a white supremacist. He envisions using aspects of a tweaked version of Nazism to make America a white supremacy utopia where whites come first, and everyone else comes last, if they are even allowed or alive.

Now Godwin's Law is a nice meme, but not applicable to someone who goes this far down the path Hitler chose. The parallels are far too many to ignore.

Trump has been called a fool or flip flopper. I believe he has conned everyone. His supporters, his opponents politically, the voters and president Barack Obama.

Everyone underestimated him. Because the reality of a conman that acts foolish to earn support from the masses and to sucker his opponents into a sense of overconfidence is astounding.

I think he has long admired Hitler and realized open antisemitism against Jewish people is still a step too far for even the republican party. He knew he wouldn't gain power as an open antisemite.

He instead picked other vulnerable and unsupported people to scapegoat. Muslims have been demonized by Fox news for decades. Ever since 911 and the more recent terrorist attacks anti Muslim rhetoric and discrimination have risen to extreme levels. And Mexican immigrants are blamed by some people for the diminishing of jobs in certain US states.

So both non white groups are looked down on by white supremacists and used to excuse fear and anxiety by whites. Fear of crime by Mexican immigrants and fear of terrorist attacks by Muslims.

Despite numerous sources reporting that Muslims in the United States commit very, very, very few crimes and very few terrorist attacks. Several hundred sources of death are more likely to take your life than Muslims. It's been reported that more Americans get killed in the United States by sources like bee stings, car accidents, Americans with guns, accidents with furniture and falls in the home than terrorists. In one year more Americans were reportedly shot by TODDLERS than terrorists in the US !

Despite recent reports showing immigrants commit far, far, fewer crimes on average than native born Americans. Immigrants are not looking to get deported and so stay out of trouble to avoid deportation. Despite recent research showing that in recent years more people are actually going from America to Mexico than coming to America.

The facts don't support Trump's claims at all. But he isn't looking for facts. He is looking for an excuse to take something from non whites and to demonize them.

Similarly with black folks and women facts don't support his racist policies but he doesn't care. Trump in my opinion has long held deeply racist and misogynistic values. Numerous incidents like his housing discrimination cases, and racist remarks he admitted then denied regarding "blacks" and his many unsubtle antisemitic and misogynistic remarks over the years long before he ran for president lead me to believe his feelings on many of these issues are genuine. He may use Jewish or black folks and gay people as opportunities present themselves, but lots of people do that too. It's not a proof of a lack of racism. 

Ultimately it's hard for people to understand a man that's always conning everyone. I believe he deep down holds a very narcissistic view of himself and others and that forms much of his identity. 

Here's a quote from Daily Kos:

PBS and The Huffington Post have uncovered video evidence of Donald Trump’s long-held beliefs that he (and people like him) are genetically superior: 
The Frontline documentary “The Choice,” which premiered this week on PBS, reveals that Trump agrees with the dangerous and abusive theory of eugenics.
Trump’s father instilled in him the idea that their family’s success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio.
“The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,” D’Antonio says in the documentary. “They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.” End quote
I watched the video from Frontline and it's obvious Trump believes his genes are superior and give him superior intelligence and many good qualities. He boasts about his German blood and being proud of it as good stuff. 

It's so clear that he has white supremacist values in the tradition of neo Nazis. Now some people act like no one can be compared to Hitler EVER because of Godwin's law. Well the problem with that is some people actually like or deeply admire Hitler and try to emulate him. Those people actually are entirely appropriate to compare to Hitler. 

And there's a lot of evidence that Trump is using tweaked Nazism in many ways. That's the con: be a slightly altered Nazi and Hitler imitation and simply act like being called out is outrageous and preposterous. That's his defense. Many racists dislike any reference to racism as they don't see themselves as wrong and believe being labeled racist is the ultimate unfair criticism. So to see Trump called Hitler just gets him more solidarity with many of his supporters. 

And I will cover more aspects of how Trump has taken pages from Hitler's writing and literally studied them in future blog posts.