Finally Major Media Outlet Says It - WAPO: "Trump deploys the fascist playbook for the midterms"

[kpete]

Last edited Fri Nov 2, 2018, 02:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Trump deploys the fascist playbook for the midterms
By Ishaan Tharoor
November 2 at 12:59 AM
President Trump’s message is as clear as it is ugly: Fearmongering about illegal immigration will deliver his party the votes it needs to retain control of Congress. And so, in the final stretch before next week’s midterm election, the president and his allies have launched a blitzkrieg of misinformation.



Trump’s pitch is aimed precisely at voters who believe the “traditional order” is being subverted, those who yearn for the restoration of a mythical American grandeur. His critics have argued that he panders to such divisive, ultranationalist sentiment because his party is fighting a losing battle on key issues such as health care and taxes. A fascist culture war presents their greatest hope.

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“Trump and some of his supporters mount a strategy of deterrence by narcissism: if you note our debts to fascism, we will up the pitch of the whining,” wrote historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on the atrocities carried out both by the Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

“Thus,” he continued, “Trump can base his rhetoric on the fascist idea of us and them, lead fascist chants at rallies, encourage his supporters to use violence, praise a politician who attacked a journalist, muse that Hillary Clinton should be assassinated, denigrate the intelligence of African Americans, associate migrants with criminality, run an antisemitic advertisement, spread the Nazi trope of Jews as ‘globalists,’ and endorse the antisemitic idea that the Jewish financier George Soros is responsible for political opposition — but he and his followers will puff chests and swell sinuses if anyone points this out.”

Trump’s attacks on journalism he doesn’t like as “fake news” follow the Nazi tactic of berating the Lügenpresse, or “lying press,” a phrase that has returned to the political conversation in countries such as Germany and Austria with the resurgence of the populist far right.

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MORE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/11/02/trump-deploys-fascist-playbook-midterms/?utm_term=.ebf8704369c1

Link to tweet

[Fuzzpope]

1. "His struggle"

Not so subtle reference to Mein Kampf in the article's header image, wow.

[GoneOffShore]

2. Thank you. Retweeted and shared on FB