Continuing analysis of aspects of Donald Trump’s candidacy that have been eclipsed by his boorish attitude and behavior toward women, we note Trump’s use of thinly-veiled anti-Semitic rhetoric intimating that Hillary Clinton is in bed with an international Jewish cabal. ” . . . . The speech was hinged to the original purpose of his campaign: to trade on the resentments of a restive remnant of white America—angry white men and the women who love them—and set the stage for mayhem in the wake of his likely electoral defeat. This was not your standard, off-the-cuff Trump rant. This was a scripted speech, delivered with a teleprompter. It was crafted. It featured the key words of right-wing complaints: “sovereign,” “global bankers” and “slander.” Really, it came right out of a Nazi propaganda playbook. And when one considers the themes common between Nazi propaganda films and the films made by top Trump campaign staffers Stephen K. Bannon and David Bossie (as analyzed by AlterNet), we should hardly be surprised. . . . The agenda of the “media establishment,” Trump said, was to elect “crooked” Hillary Clinton, in the service of “special global interests rigging the system.” There are a lot of ways in the land of Wingnuttia to telegraph that your target is Jews, and these are two of them. Remember them: You’ll be hearing a lot in coming days about the “media establishment,” “global special interests,” oh, and “bankers.” . . . .”
Trump is also rhetorically invoking the prospect of turning to violence to right the wrongs of the “rigged” election he has bruited about. “ . . . . I watched his speech Thursday, and if I closed my eyes, I could smell the campfire smoke at the Malheur refuge and feel the Oregon winter wind on my face. Here were the conspiracies, the references to the shadowy international cabals, the whispers about the illegitimacy of the Department of Justice and the Trilateralist coopting of the FBI. It was like listening to an immodest Ammon Bundy. We have to protect ourselves from not just the government (because it is only a pawn) but from the people who really run it. We should be watchful, resilient, ready—and though he is reluctant, he will sacrifice himself, for he is the only one who can save us from the terror. Donald Trump shouted out every fevered dystopian fantasy I heard on the refuge . . . . I was outraged by Trump before. But now I am worried. . . . Thursday, Donald Trump traveled a step further down the path of militant right-wing revolution. It wasn’t a call to arms, exactly. But it was far past the point of comfort. . . .”
A major point of discussion concerns Trump’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie. Even as Trump accuses Hillary of being a tool of the “elites,” Trump is utilizing Bossie, who is the head of Citizens United. It was a lawsuit by Bossie’s organization that opened the floodgates to virtually unlimited campaign funding by the ultra rich, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United. Bossie and Steven K. Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager, have utilized propaganda techniques pioneered by Hitler, Goebbels and company. ” . . . . The late Andrew Breitbart, founder of the website Bannon went on to lead, called Bannon the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”—a reference to the infamous creator of Nazi propaganda films. While insisting to a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t propaganda, Bannon went on to cite Riefenstahl among his main influences. . . . Ivana Trump, the candidate’s first wife, told Vanity Fair in 1990 that her husband kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s My New Order, a collection of speeches that display the Nazi dictator’s exceptional ability to manipulate reality, in a cabinet near his bed. . . . . The Nazi regime produced a massive amount of propaganda; it had an entire Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels. A central technique of Nazi propagandists, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, was to cast Jews as outsiders and dangerous enemies of the Reich, ‘‘subhuman’ creatures infiltrating Aryan society.’ . . . In her analysis of Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will,’ Price noted that ‘perhaps most critically, Germany’s comeback is portrayed as well underway; the viewer need only jump aboard. What is being said implicitly is that there is no alternative.’ In ‘Battle for America,’ Bannon and Bossie follow the same formula, positing the Tea Party movement as the bandwagon to jump on. But the formula isn’t the only thing about the film that carries echoes of Goebbels: a researcher and counsel for the film was white nationalist Robert Vandervoort. . . .”
Program Highlights Include: The arrest of militia members in Kansas for plotting an attack on Somali refugees, scheduled for the day after Election Day; discussion of UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage’s support for Trump; the support Trump has received from Russian fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky; Zhirinovsky’s funding by German Nazi Gerhard Frey; Frey’s dissemination of the disinformation that Lee Harvey Oswald fired at General Edwin Walker; Frey’s close association with Reinhard Gehlen; Trump’s close relationship with the Steuben Society.
Contextual comparison of the marketing of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political persona to that of Adolf Hitler.
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