Commentary:
Trump takes tactics from Hitler’s playbook
Bill McCann, contributing columnist
Austin American Statesman
Excerpt…
From the moment Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 he has raised fears and sought scapegoats to get supporters to find someone else to blame for their problems. He characterized immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers and rapists” and promised to ban Muslims from entering the country. He has engaged in race baiting and sided with white supremacists. Hitler was a white supremacist whose scapegoats included Jews.
Trump has cozied up to authoritarian leaders in Brazil, North Korea, Poland, Turkey and Russia. Like Hitler, Trump has attacked the legitimate news media as the “enemy of the people.” Accurate reporting that puts Trump in a bad light is always “fake” news.
Anyone who has studied Hitler will recall he loved big crowds and revved them up with rants packed with propaganda and lies. He thought if you told a big lie often enough, people would believe it. Trump loves rallies too. Plus, he has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims as president, telling some of the same big lies again and again, according to Washington Post fact checkers.
Hitler attacked and undermined the courts and the electoral process. So has Trump. Even before the outcome of the 2016 presidential election Trump warned it was rigged. He is doing the same thing ahead of the November 2020 election.
In a desperate effort to rekindle his faltering reelection campaign, Trump has ratcheted up his fear-mongering rhetoric in recent months amid the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread public protests in cities following killings of unarmed Black people by police. His Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was a Hitlerian attempt to fire up white Americans against anti-racism protesters in cities around the country. He inaccurately called protesters “far-left fascists.” Fascists are, in fact, far-right authoritarians like Hitler.
In July, Trump ordered anonymous federal forces to Portland, Ore., and threatened to send them to other Democrat-run cities. The heavily-armed forces arrived under the guise of protecting federal buildings from protesters, but the forces really were window dressing for Trump’s “law and order” reelection campaign pitch and to get campaign ad videos. The federal agents mistreated peaceful protesters and did everything but goosestep through city streets. They mostly inflamed the protests.
Continues…
https://www.statesman.com/story/special/2020/08/13/commentary-trump-takes-tactics-from-hitlerrsquos-playbook/113764796/
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