The Narcissist’s Playbook: Trump’s Adaptation of Hitler’s Propaganda Techniques

On the road to the post, Is Knowingly Lying for Political Gain Protected Speech? Or a Solution for Bridging our Partisan Divide, way back in the beginning of November, I came across information about Hitler’s propaganda rules and was struck by how accurately they described Trump’s behavior. I know that it has become something of a cliche to say that Trump’s America is like Hitler’s Germany, but it is based on real live hard evidence. The propaganda techniques used by Hitler are part of that and a big part of understanding what Trump did to us and how to recover from it.

Hitler had several “rules” that he seemed to follow. One of them was the Big Lie, which is such a major piece that there is an entire post about it, The Narcissist’s Playbook: Implications for Trump’s Evolution of Hitler’s Big Lie, so head over there to find out more about that one. We’ll look at three of the most applicable rules and how the Ol’ Pussy Grabber adapted them to his purposes.

It is important to realize that other than Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, neither Trump nor anyone else in his administration or campaign studied Hitler, Goebbels, or their propaganda technique. More than likely the reason they are so similar is that both Hitler and Trump are extreme narcissists and just did what they always did and gaslit their respective nations.

It’s another five-star post!

Hitler’s Playbook: The Propaganda Rules

During WWII, the OSS commissioned two American psychoanalysts to study Hitler in order to better understand and predict him kinda like Ye Olde Blogge has been doing with the Ol’ Pussy Grabber. Langer and Murray came up with this list of rules or tendencies:

• never allow the public to cool off;
• never admit a fault or wrong;
• never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
• never leave room for alternatives;
• never accept blame;
• concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong;
• people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and
• if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
• take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.

See what I mean about similarity to the Ol’ Pussy Grabber? That is the narcissist’s playbook for gaslighting anyone and everyone including you and me and all the MAGAs.

Trump’s Adaptation of Hitler’s Other Propaganda Techniques

Never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; Blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong

Trump is a narcissist. The chief rule of being a narcissist is that nothing can sully your delusion of perfection. Being wrong is an indication that you are not perfect. The solution? You’re never wrong; it is always someone else’s fault, and those people need to be punished.

This is not quite the enemy that Hitler had in mind. Hitler really did intend on focusing on just one or two enemies: the Jews and Russia or communists. There were others gypsies, the disabled, France, but they were minor. He focused on the Jews and literally blamed them for everything.

The closest the Ol’ Pussy Grabber has come to a single enemy is the press. They are the enemy of the state. They deserve to be locked up and tried for treason. We’ve all heard his long litany of accusations that he has heaped on the third estate and heard the vicious abuse MAGAs have directed at them during his rallies. We needn’t regurgitate that here.

The Ol’ Pussy Grabber has adapted this rule so that he has something for everyone to hate. You can hate the press, PoC, immigrants, Muslims — funny how we don’t hear much about them any more — Democrats, Clinton, Obama, protesters, antifa, BLM. The list goes on and on, and the emphasis shifts with the news story of the day. They all have a common denominator: all of them have inflicted narcissistic wounds on Trump. This past year, though we’ve been focused on just three enemies: #COVID19, #BidenHarris, and election fraud conspiracies.

During his election fraud rampage, his public list of enemies consists of #BidenHarris, the Democrats, and anyone who has not supported his fraud allegations. These have quite publicly included Gov. Kemp and Sec of State Raffensperger, two prominent Repubes who were big Trump supporters. All of them have to be punished, and he’s gone after each one of them on his Twitter account and other public statements.

He has a private list of enemies, too. That consists of everyone who has contributed to his loss including MAGAs and the Republican Party. This is the chief reason that he is doing so little to address the pandemic. He wants people to suffer and die of it. He wants MAGAs to die of it. It helps him feel powerful and it punishes everyone who didn’t support him sufficiently in the election. In his mind, anyone who gets #COVID19 is a loser and a sucker — in spite of him getting it — and they deserve what ever happens to them.

He will punish the Republican Party, too. It’s already started. He’s attacked party members who have not shown sufficient loyalty. He is not helping elect Purdue and Loeffler in Georgia. Any help they get from his appearance there is secondary to his airing of grievances. Because he will no longer be in office, he doesn’t care about who controls Congress.

This is Trump’s adaptation of Hitler’s rule: You need enough enemies to fill the news cycles 24/7/365. There can never be a moment in which the anger and hatred of MAGAs cannot be focused on someone or something that has inflicted the Ol’ Pussy Grabber with a narcissistic wound. s

Take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind

Trump lives in a chaotic world of grievance. He lacks the executive functioning to do any planning or to execute any plan. He has learned to use chaos to his advantage, though. If everyone is confused and uncertain, then he can do what he wants. The most important thing to him is avenging his grievances.

Trump is a counter-puncher, meaning he reacts to the events around him. Rarely does he actually initiate anything. Initiating government action takes planning and discipline. Neither of which the Ol’ Pussy Grabber has, so he is forced to react to events around him. The biggest thing he initiated was the aide for dirt on Biden scheme he was impeached for. That’s only because it was easy. He only had to make a phone call.

Both Trump and Hitler knew, though, that people who are agitated and angry are easy to manipulate and their anger easy to direct. One of the biggest differences with Hitler is the lack of organized violence being committed by followers. While Trump has hinted that he would like for MAGAs to engage in violence, he has never explicitly directed them to. He’s too much of a coward to do so. Over the summer, they trialed using irregular federal forces to assault citizens. Luckily the push back was such that it discouraged them. Give them another excuse, and they will be less shy about meting out real abuse of citizens. The hoped for violent assault by militias on protesters never materialized, either. Give them another excuse, though, and we could build up to it.

Our deep culture has held. Our deeply ingrained faith in our elections to change the country has held. Our reluctance to use violence for political change has held. It is not part of our political culture. It will take much more leadership — something the Ol’ Pussy Grabber is incapable of — to get us to engage in violence in the name of a political cause. Trump’s narcissism elevated him to his office and has caused his downfall. In spite of his gaslighting of the nation, we have not succumb to his will.

Become an Email Subscriber