After watching Trump at the RNC, I was prompted to read a bit about Hitler's principles of propaganda, how to bend crowds to ones will.

A few key principles:

quote:

1. Keep the dogma simple. Make only 1 or 2 points.

2. Be forthright and powerfully direct. Speak only in the telling or ordering mode.

Hitler3. As much as possible, reduce concepts down into stereotypes which are black and white.

4. Speak to people’s emotions and stir them constantly.

5. Use lots of repetition; repeat your points over and over again.

6. Forget literary beauty, scientific reasoning, balance, or novelty.

7. Focus solely on convincing people and creating zealots.

8. Find slogans which can be used to drive the movement forward.

Not that it was all unique to him, but Trump sure follows the playbook.

Wondering what Hitler might have done with Twitter!

(And FTR, I noticed Trump's speech followed a very specific "melody" - about 20-25 beats in all, consisting of up ~ eight notes, slightly down then up another ~six notes and down five [repeat last five beats/words as a kind of chorus]. Wish I could write music.

Hypnotic, as it was definitely the same over and over.

"Psychology of Coercion"

Trump also makes hay with The Big Lie. No matter how ridiculous it is on its face, repeat it frequently and vigorously enough and people will believe it.

The Big Lie works especially well with racist tropes.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
Trump also makes hay with The Big Lie. No matter how ridiculous it is on its face, repeat it frequently and vigorously enough and people will believe it.

The Big Lie works especially well with racist tropes.

Trump is definitely a classic BIG LIE expert.
Thing is, he changes his lies more often than his ties. As much as I recall 1984, Big Brother changed lies a lot too. It must makes his propagandists/PR people's heads spin trying to keep up.

Both are gaslighting the whole population.