Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook: A Guide to the Orange Caricature’s Administration

The news, and more importantly my social media feed, is filled with headlines and snarky hot takes, respectively, about the continuing resolution to keep the government open and functioning for the next few months, which is all we can seem to do nowadays, and by nowadays I mean for the past two years. Much is being made of the Orange Caricature being for Mike “Monitor My Porn Usage” Johnson’s bipartisan funding measure before he was against it — something that didn’t happen until Musk was rage xitting about how funding for children’s cancer research, natural disaster relief, and repairing the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore was all wasteful spending.

There are MAGA-types both inside and outside of government, arguing that we really don’t need a functioning government until Trump is sworn in. It’s only thirty some odd days until then and a few weeks longer before a funding bill can be passed, what’s the harm? I dunno, but Trump’s record-breaking 35-day government shutdown cost us five billion dollars. But for Musk that is chump change.

Understanding Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook

As someone on Bluesky lamented, how can Republicans be okay with living like this? If you’re wondering, I have the answer: it’s all part and parcel of Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook. We’ll lay out the rules by number for easier reference, then interpret some of the recent news items.

Origins of Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook

Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook isn’t an actual book but rather two sets of rules that resulted from studies commissioned by the OSS on the German leader’s rise to power. One set was derived by Harvard psychoanalyst, Walter Langer, and the other by Harvard personality psychologist, Henry Murray. Unsurprisingly, these sets of rules are very similar. You can find the original posts from December 2020 about the techniques here and the implications here.

Updating the Playbook for the Fascinating Modern Times We Live In

Here they are combined and using more modern language:

1. Cultivate chaos, conflict, and confusion: Keep everyone arguing and fighting over meaningless divisive culture wars and ridiculous policy goals.
2. Own Nothing: Never admit to a mistake or accept blame. Deflect! Deflect! Deflect!
3. Demonize your Opponents: Find a single easily defined and recognized group to scapegoat for all problems.
4. I Alone Can Fix It: Present your view as the only valid choice—no alternatives allowed. Dissenters are enemies of the people.
5. Lie and Lie Big: People are more likely to believe a massive lie than a small one, so go big or go home.
6. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: If you say something enough times, it becomes truth in the public’s mind.
7. Exploit Opportunities: Seize every chance to stir up controversy or create a political maelstrom.

Don’t these simple rules sound a lot like gaslighting? The narcissist gaslights on an individual level, the fascist, a societal level. Add to this the Explosive Diarrhea of Falsehood technique — Trump’s caricature of Putin’s Firehose of Falsehood — and we are drowning in confusion, division, and stress.

Stress is one of the goals because a sufficiently stressed society will succumb to mass psychosis. To deepen the mass psychosis to menticide, keep the lies, chaos, stress, and fighting coming in waves of terror.

How does this explain the mishegas that we’ve seen since the election and how does it suggest we should proceed into the future?

Trump’s Implementation of the Playbook

Cultivating Chaos: Appointments Meant to Distract

All of the Orange Caricature’s outrageous cabinet and political appointments are explained by rule number one: Cultivate chaos, confusion, and conflict. We’re STILL arguing over Peter Hegseth while issues like lifting the accident reporting requirements for self-driving cars receive scant attention.

For all the consternation over Ambassador to the Bahamas, Herschel Walker, and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, most Americans seem to approve of the job His Orangeness has been doing with the transition. Our memeing and snarky, sarcasticky social mediaing haven’t cut through the noise and disinformation amplified by the mainstream media.

Exploiting Opportunities: Hurricane Helene, FEMA, and Lives Sacrificed for the Election

While the use of these propaganda techniques is effective, they also harm real live suffering Americans. Perhaps this is no where as clear as it is over to North Carolina and Tennessee where Hurricane Helene wrecked so much havoc — $200 billion in damage and 230 lives lost. The good people of North Carolina are not applying for FEMA relief funds in the numbers you’d think they would.

Apparently, the misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies repeated by Trump, MAGA, and other useful idiots about FEMA have created such doubt and mistrust among the populace that few are applying for the money they’re entitled to help them rebuild. This is a prime example of several propaganda techniques:

• Exploit Opportunities: Even a natural disaster that has destroyed lives is a useful opportunity to create political chaos by spreading conspiracy theories and lies.
• Lie and Lie Big: People are more inclined to believe a big lie than a small one—who would tell such a bald-faced whopper if it were easily disproved? Like FEMA has used all of its money to help undocumented immigrants.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat: By repeating disinformation about FEMA’s intents, people have come to believe that applying for federal relief will cost them their property. How is that helping anyone? It doesn’t, but it helped Trump eke out a win there, which was all that was important.

Taken together, they explain why people in North Carolina continue struggling to recover from the storm damage three months after the fact. Five of Tennessee’s nine Congressional delegates voted AGAINST the continuing resolution with disaster relief funding! How are the residents of the Great Smoky Mountains supposed to recover without federal disaster relief funds. These propaganda techniques are key to getting these swindlers, chiselers, and cheats re-elected.

Demonize Your Opponents: Blaming Democrats for Republican Funding Failures

The government funding mishegas is another great case in point. It only took a Republican controlled House THREE tries to pass a bill that Republicans wrote. You’d think they’d be able to talk to each other and actually write a bill that they’d all vote for. Instead they have to rely on Democratic votes to get it passed.

The bill that did pass included disaster relief and a one-year farm bill, but not the removal of the debt ceiling that the Orange Caricature wanted. Still, thirty-four Republicans voted against it, and ALL Democrats for it.

The fact that we’ve relied on continuing resolutions to fund the government since the Republicans took over the House two years ago emphasizes the effectiveness of the propaganda rules being used.

• Cultivate Chaos, Confusion, and Conflict: The budget process is complicated, making it easy to demagogue over. Republicans have created waves of terror by threatening government shutdowns and to default on our debt every few months.
• Own Nothing: Whenever the Freedumb Caucasians scuttle a budget-related bill, Republicans blame Democrats for their failure to negotiate in good faith with themselves!
• Demonize Your Opponents: The first bill was negotiated with Democrats but was unacceptable because it included priorities like children’s cancer research and repairing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Somehow, the Democrats hoodwinked all the Republican negotiators, I guess? With the last bill, His Orange Hueness was overheard saying passing the continuing resolution was Biden’s problem, as if he hadn’t played a major role in scuttling the first bill and couldn’t bully his caucus into passing the second.
• Exploit Opportunities: Playing brinkmanship with funding, the debt ceiling, and budgets creates frequent opportunities for chaos, confusion, and conflict. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The election has really turned us all on our heads and our lives inside out. Understanding the propaganda techniques that Trump and his MAGA Republicans are using will help us make sense of why people voted the way they did and why the Orange Caricature won a second time. Being able to separate the misinformation chaff from the corruption at the core of his oligarchic operation will help us make the best use of our resources as we fight off the fascists and defend our democracy. We must know which fights are worth engaging in and which ones are merely designed to keep us stirred up, agitated, and distracted.

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