Resisting Autocracy

"All propaganda should be popular and should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address... all effective propaganda must be confined to very few points which must be brought out in the form of slogans," wrote Adolf Hitler In Mein Kampf.

Reciting a list of facts is not the same as telling the truth, and lying repeatedly is not the same as propaganda. You might be able to speak back to lies with facts, but facts alone are insufficient to speak back to propaganda. You need to tell the truth, repeatedly and consistently, in order to do that.

In addition to the explicitly propagandistic slogans of the Trump campaign of 2016 - "Lock her up," "Build that wall," and "Drain the swamp" - there was a much more insidious idea that far too many Americans fell for, that Trump was running to become an elected president in a liberal democracy. He was not. He was running then, as now, to become an autocrat. In 2016, he won.

This political reality, in which the American public is able to see a president where in fact there is an autocrat, was not manufactured overnight, but constructed over decades of slow but consistent efforts by people (mostly white men) disdainful of a version of reality based on empirical observation and consideration of multiple perspectives.

As Masha Gessen put it, "...if we use the wrong language, we cannot describe what we are seeing. If we use the language developed for describing fish, we cannot very well describe an elephant: words like 'gills,' 'scales,' and 'fins' will not get us very far."

Political commentators, apparently unaware of the dangerous shifts in our country away from democratic culture, continue to use language developed for describing a president when they're actually describing an autocrat. Attempting to make sense of Trump's recent rallies, including the one last night in Michigan, some commentators continue, at our peril, to explain Trump's behavior as if his primary goal is to win an election, noting how some of his language or behavior may be geared toward picking up independent voters. In doing so, they continue to miss the real ways Trump is seeking to stay in power, through the rhetoric of division and incitement to violence.

In April, Trump encouraged armed militias who showed up in state capitals (many employing openly white supremacist rhetoric) to protest government restrictions implemented to slow the spread of coronavirus. He referred to them as good people who state governments should meet with and make a deal. In doing so, Trump supported the idea that threats of paramilitary violence are legitimate means political discourse.

In July, Trump referred to American protestors as anarchists "who hate our country." In doing so, Trump continued to perpetuate the hauntingly dangerous rhetoric of nationalism, proposing that anyone who protests is not one of us, and does not belong in "our" country.

In August, before his first speech of the RNC, Trump told members of his audience, "If you really want to drive them crazy, you say 12 more years." Media outlets that refer to this behavior as joking or provocation are still living in an illusion grounded in American exceptionalism. This is no mere joke or provocation. Michael Cohen tells us that Trump does not joke, that he has no sense of humor. Masha Gessen encourages us to, "Believe the autocrat. He means what he says."

If the news feels confusing and disorienting, it's because we're trying to make sense of it with the wrong frame. Many of us have been trained to engage in political discourse with the idea that its purpose is to honestly attempt make sense of reality and, ultimately, ought to drive reasonable policy. If you come to today's news with that idea, it's going to knock you out cold.

The Trump administration does not come to politics with that idea. Rather, it approaches political language as a tool for mounting a full frontal assault on our consciousness, with the aim of fundamentally altering the way we think of ourselves and our world. It approaches events that happen in the real world as props to be used in a fictional political theater devoted entirely to breeding consent through hacking our loyalties and emotions.

As Jason Stanley teaches us in his book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, "The goal of fascist propaganda is not merely to mock and sneer at robust and complex public debate about policy; it is to eliminate its possibility."

It is, as Victor Klemperer put it, "to strip everyone of their individuality, to paralyze them as personalities, to make them into unthinking and docile cattle in a herd driven and hounded in a particular direction, to turn them into atoms in a huge rolling block of stone." It is "the language of mass fanaticism."

Language is not the only tool of propaganda. Trump's refusal to wear a mask during a global pandemic or speak of the devastating fires on the West Coast amount to power lies. It is a way of lying about reality not by offering fake evidence to the contrary, but by asserting his will to power, and in doing so, he conditioning us to accept our place in the hierarchy he's trying to create, slowly and dangerously leading us down into a chasm of unreality.

If we are going to find our bearings and resist a dictatorship, we had better begin learning from history and ditch the notion of American exceptionalism that has us continuing to analyze an autocrat as if he were interested in being a president. Doing so only serves to further his propaganda efforts.

Ditching American exceptionalism will serve us well in at least one other way. The trend in the US to move away from democracy and in the direction of autocracy is a global phenomenon. When we look, we will find strikingly similar trends in India, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, and other countries. It is past time for those of us who believe in a viable future for real democracy to wake up, reach out, and learn from one another.