I have a friend who wears a pin with the Union Jack design and the caption "Make America Great Britain Again." Donald Trump would be OK with that if he could emulate King John, who is universally considered the worst English king ever.
Of course it's not the United States of America he wants to reign over. It's his branded autocratic state, Trumptopia, a cloud cuckoo land where being great again means being white and dumb.
In his appearance at CPAC February 28 Trump rehashed his Big Lie with embellishments, and lashed out fiercely against the Biden administration. In full tyrant mode he predictably blamed the Democrats for all the misdeeds he perpetrated while in office and took credit for their achievements.
The whining was whinier, the self aggrandizement bigger, the boasts more boastful, the threats against democracy more vile--a clear sign of his desperate need for attention. Only Fox News televised the event, unfiltered and with no fact checking.
Brainwashing is Trump's primary weapon. He wields it like a sledgehammer, but he understands the basic theory, which is really pretty simple.
First you identify the core subjects. Not hard. Trump aimed directly at lower-class, lower-income white Americans who are inherently bigoted through generations of racism. He played on their fear of losing jobs to foreigners, on their anger at the rise of minorities, and on their perception that everybody is against them. And he commiserated with their indignation at having to accept a Black president.
He rolled out the most absurd conspiracy theories, but because it was he, an important white man in the news and on social media, they listened and believed. They were hooked.
Reeling them in:
You start with the Big Lie, bringing it out early and repeating it as often as possible. Tell your followers the same thing continually and with conviction, and they will come to believe it and repeat it.
You tell it even when it makes no sense to tell it. Why talk about mail-in voting months before the election? To get it into your subjects' heads. You say forcefully that the upcoming election will be corrupt. How do you know this? Are you a prophet? Doesn't matter. Get it into their heads. You start talking about how there's rampant corruption in the electoral process, especially in areas with high Latino and Black populations. Get it into their heads.
You use negatively reinforcing language: The corruption is terrible, the situation is disgusting, the voting fraud is massive, the opposition's policies are crazy, insane, and the media and anyone else who disagrees is fake--always, always fake.
You plant seeds of insecurity: "Everybody knows this, everybody agrees I'm right." If they don't know what the subject is, they'll scramble to learn. You ask open-ended and leading questions: "What's that all about?" Having opened the door, you tell them what it's all about. Finally you throw a crumb to their knowledge: "You know what went on there, don't you?" Well, yes, they do know, because they've been told by the Leader.
That takes care of the plebes. But you also have to have support from higher-ups, so you go to work on Republican politicians.
Trump is a master at exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He went straight to every politician's greatest fear: losing elections. With lost elections come reductions in power, visibility, access, influence, respect, and self confidence.
Trump promised Republican politicians freedom from those fears if only they would fall into line behind him. And he was careful to point out how many conservative Americans he could control.
He played the upper crust just as he had the commoners, but additionally, by lesson and by example, taught them Doublethink: the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in one's mind simultaneously.¹ Thus they could echo the Leader's practice of saying one thing while meaning the direct opposite--and over time they would come to believe what he and they said.
Having constructed his cult, Donald Trump, the Great Pretender and Liar-in-Chief, launched his campaign to become an autocrat.
To be continued.
--- Diogenes, 3/4/2021
¹ See my January 13, 2021, post: "2020(21) = 1984"
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