This Is How You Turn 'Nice Folks' into Nazis.

[applegrove]

By docsiege at the Daily Kos

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/27/1684420/-This-is-How-You-Turn-Nice-Folks-into-Nazis

"SNIP...........


At his campaign rally in Youngstown on July 25th, 2017, President Trump said a lot of scary things as he attempted to pump up his base. I’d like to focus on a very small portion of his speech, but one that I believe is incredibly important. Here’s the transcript. He is talking about immigrants:

The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people. These beautiful, beautiful innocent young people. Will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15. And others. And they slice ‘em and dice ‘em with a knife. Because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.

This is my response, initially presented in a series of tweets here, but cleaned up and revised for Daily Kos for my very first diary. Please let me know if I need to make any adjustments.

Seriously losing my mind here. People love to ask "Why didn't the good Germans do anything to stop the rise of Hitler?" I'm wondering the same thing myself. Why is this such a hard conversation? The man is obviously a bad fucked up man who should not be in charge of the remote, let alone the country.



............SNIP"

[Bettie]

1. Unfortunately, for a lot of Trump supporters

this was already what they believed. They may wear pleasant smiles and say "hi" to you in passing, but that pleasant face disappears when they are faced with someone they don't see as one of their people.

They have a lot of hate behind the pleasant, friendly mask.

The Trump true believers are the eager followers. The ones who want to see all of this come to pass, hoping that even if it harms them, it hurts those they hate more.

I truly hope that for the vast majority of the population of our country his rhetoric and his open disdain for those who aren't white, male, and rich is disgusting and horrifying.

[broadcaster90210]

2. Indeed.

All they have is their hate. The only queation is, can we survive it?

[dalton99a]

3. +1

[BannonsLiver]

5. Agreed.

It's innate in many of them.

[Caliman73]

16. It isn't "innate". Hate is learned.

Fear and discrimination may have more "innate" tendencies, but hate is strictly a learned behavior.

Studies on babies presented one "innate fear" which is the fear of falling. The subjects were exposed to stimuli that evokes a fear response in adults and adolescents (I.E. Snakes, dogs, etc..) and the subjects approached those objects to explore them. The only thing that researchers were not able to do is get the babies to cross over a transparent bridge that was put over a 10 or so foot drop (even with their mothers calling to them). if you look at it, it was probably an ethically questionable study for exposing babies to stress, but before the days of ethical review boards.

Anyway. Fear and anxiety is something that has an evolutionary value. We learned to fear things that were dangerous to us, like darkness, large animals, other humans that were not familiar to us. That kept us alive as a species, but it also paved the way for animosity based on differences, which could be stoked by people seeking power. These people are not born hating, it is taught in many obvious, but some more subtle ways throughout their lives.

[BannonsLiver]

17. Thanks but didn't mean literally

[VOX]

7. True. For many of them, it's "suspicions confirmed."

As deluded as that is in genuine, measurable reality.

[byronius]

10. There's also a massive disconnect at work.

Trump supporters (mostly) rarely have contact with the Boogeymen they fear so much. All of their rationalizations and calculations are based on subconscious images drawn from programming that goes back thirty thousand years or more.

But when they make contact with the actual people behind the stereotypes, especially when they live near them on a day to day business, they exempt those people from the stereotypes, probably just those people alone. Remember the recent deportee restaurant owner whose arrest brought out Trump supporters, who declared him one of the 'good ones'.

It's half-grown, damaged people, can't think critically enough to escape. Bad parenting, bad environments, autocracy by mysticism. The Russians have shown us so clearly now what the true weight of all these people are on a nation. The percentage of Really Angry Stupid People in any culture is probably as good a marker for population survival as the CO2 PPM is for global warming.

[apkhgp]

4. Nazis, we have to stop them

First, when people look at 45 they see a businessman that runs a lot of companies. They think "Great, he can fix this country up". They do not stop to look at what he is going to do. During the campaign 45 never talked about how he was going to provide Healthcare to every American citizen. It was a big secret. He never released his taxes. People said all of that is alright. Sixty-two million alright.

He promised the LGBTQ community that he would support them. Yesterday he stabs them in the back. Meanwhile, he stops off at appearances around the country and people see him as the guy that is running the country, without going past that and seeing what he is actually doing.

You want to know how Nazis are made. That is a little bit of an explanation.

[VOX]

6. Snuff-porn for the simple-minded.

And the vulnerable, uninformed, unenlightened, frightened mob sucks it up with relish.

[Amaryllis]

8. Nazi propaganda was remarkably like Faux news.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Those rallies aren't full of "nice folks" to begin with.

[BigmanPigman]

11. So ya thought ya might like to go to the show.....

That is what it's all about...A SHOW. He's a snake oil salesman and TV celebrity rolled into one big fattie.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. he's nearly a laugh

but he's really a cry.

[RandomAccess]

12. For anyone who ever wondered about how "Good Germans" could have

let Hitler do what he did, there's a magnificent excerpt from a book by Milton Mayer -- "They Thought They Were Free"

I urge every American to read it. Bookmark it and have it handy.

I used to be intrigued by that question myself, all my life. Now I see the answer happening around me. I am hoping and praying and doing what I can myself to ensure that our democratic institutions are strong enough to prevail.

[Raastan]

14. Thanks for the link

I have not seen this before, and am glad to have read it now.

I hope to share with others, too.

[RandomAccess]

18. Great

You're welcome - and thanks for sharing it. I think it's important, especially in today's world.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

15. They're animals, not human.

They're coming for our women! He's making great use of Nazi propaganda techniques.

[Nevernose]

19. Coincidentally, it's how the South got IRS 2nd wave of volunteers

Or, given the ideologies, not so coincidental.

The first wave of Confederate volunteers were largely scions of wealthy families, and therefore had a direct economic interest in maintaining slavery. So how to get millions more to join a cause for which they should have no logical support?

First, the appeal to patriotism. Just on a smaller scale than the US as a whole. It's the same thing as rival small town football, just on different levels of tribal organization.

More importantly, Southern newspapers (mostly owned by wealthy scions, no coincidence) began running crazy-ass fear-based propaganda. "Freed slaves terrorize white women! Yankee troops throw babies from incubators!" Actually, that last was told about Iraqis during the first gulf war. Anyway, people signed up. Rich people managed to rile them up and scare the shit out of them.

The third wave of Confederate troops were actually all draftees, because everyone stupid enough to join had already joined. The (American) draft was an invention of the Confederacy.

So, yeah. Gin up fear, make someone else's group monsters, lots of propaganda. Fascism 101 (with a concurrent war is Fascism 601, a graduate course).