Goebbels' Ghost
The broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily. ~ Joseph Goebbels
The Nazi propaganda chief's quote is often paraphrased as: "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."
The Nazis were evil geniuses in their use of The Big Lie to manipulate a gullible citizenry. In Mein Kampf, Hitler elaborated on this: "The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies."
And --
"The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another... All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed." (Italics added.)
Amid the ocean of bullshit the Third Reich spewed with its nonsensical ideology, its leaders nailed it with their highly effective use of lies in their propaganda. And the bigger the lies, the more people tended to believe them: Jews were in a conspiracy to take over the world. "Aryans" were the master race. Germany owed its defeat in the First World War to a "stab in the back" by domestic enemies.
I am well aware, dear readers, that here I succumb to Godwin's Law: "If an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism."
But the parallels between Goebbels and Donald Trump in their use of propaganda to sway the minds of gullible masses is uncanny. Behold the following Big Lies repeatedly trotted out by Trump (all have been deemed outright falsehoods by PolitiFact and/or FactCheck):
"It’s possible that non-citizen voters were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina."
"Of course, there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. The following information comes straight from Pew Research, quote, ‘Approximately 24 million people — one out of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or significantly inaccurate.’ One in eight more than 1.8 million deceased individuals, right now, are listed as voters."
"More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote."
"Because non-citizens tend to favor Democrats, — to put it mildly — Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 sample."
When Hillary Clinton "ran the State Department, $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion? You ran the State Department, $6 billion was either stolen — they don't know."
Hillary Clinton is "proposing to print instant work permits for millions of illegal immigrants to come in and take everybody's jobs, including low-income African-Americans."
Barack Obama "founded ISIS. I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton."
"I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed."
And the lies go on and on. The fact checkers, in fact, have a hard time keeping up. I would say the key difference between Joseph Goebbels and Donald Trump is that Goebbels was much smarter and more clever than Trump, not to mention more disciplined. But both men are effective in manipulating the elastic minds of the willingly gullible utilizing The Big Lie. And as Goebbels' boss so astutely pointed out, all propaganda "must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed," i.e., primarily the undereducated.
Which brings America to a potentially dangerous historical crossroads. The torrent of lies continues unabated, but Herr Trump isn't going anywhere. It is clear, by asserting our voting process is "rigged," he is setting himself up to lead the willingly ingenuous, all wallowing in Trump's Big Lies, having drunk the Kool-Aid of imagined enemies and the need to wall them out.
What form will Trump's governance take? An American fascism? A first world failed state a la Venezuela?
The ghost of Joseph Goebbels is laughing his ass off.
See also --
Voting With Your Middle Finger
The Dumbass Vote: A Modest Proposal to Repeal Universal Suffrage
This Isn't My Father's Republican Party: Waiting for 9 Thermidor