Excerpt from Quora thread: "Why is Melania Trump still sticking with Donald Trump" by Manuela Leal
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Melania-Trump-still-sticking-with-Donald-Trump/answer/Manuela-Leal
note:There is more plus many links to citations in the original thread
Appendix A: Learning from Goebbels
Goebbels’ famous words- “A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”. are key here. Trump’s closest advisor is a quote-unquote white supremacist - I am not *saying this* - I read this in the “liberal media” #lockherup, which as you all know, is “full of lies” #buildthewall - y’all know they dig Hitler and shit.
Goebbels was a great guy, an excellent German. He was organized in everything, keeping immaculate records and writing coherent and persuasive sentences while killing millions of people including his own six children:
“On the evening of 1 May 1945, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths.
According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide.”
He and his wife then killed themselves shortly thereafter.
This is the guy the president’s closest advisors have obviously read, extensively. And so have I.
And this is the guy we have to read up on, if we want to avoid the same fate happening to us, if not us, then our friends or co-workers. Reading Goebbels is key to understanding the skeletons of this dystopian present we are experiencing. He was the architect of hate speech in the Hitlerian regime and he spoke of it very clearly.
Understanding the mechanics and goals of hate speech help dispell it. Goebbels’ only gift to us, was his ability to distill his method clearly.
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” [see #lockherup #buildthewall - the use of catchy visual memes ]
“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”
“If you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better.” [ ok guys seriously: bullying people into believing that Ms. Trump is a genius is crossing the line. It’s straight SNL material right there. Even Goebbels would have been like “smh amateurs!”.]
“There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals…Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.”
For an extended treatise on this subject, I recommend reading chapter 6 of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” where he goes on and on about War Propaganda.
On this chapter, Hitler describes propaganda’s spread of skillful lies and appeal to the “emotions”:
“The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function…consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.”
On the need for propaganda to be adjusted for the “limited intelligence” of its audience:
“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.”
There is no need to fear, reading it does not make you a Nazi. But in order to understand this behavior clearly it’s best to get to the source and study it as if you were a detached scientist observing the behavior of bacteria.
Not all people who post troll comments are self-conscious hate-mongers. But I would argue that Nazi speech IS the source of our contemporary trolling speech patterns, consciously or not. Therefore the “antidote” for hate speech must come from an in-depth understanding of the ideas, methods and speech patterns found at the source.
The strange and gripping paradox in the success of hate speech, is that throughout history, the so-called leaders have openly despised their followers. Hitler and Goebbels have WRITTEN it themselves, calling them dumb and primitive and yet, the spell of hatred as the end-all-be-all solution, remains unabated.
The simple genius of fascism goes undetected by the educated “elites” because it is purposely designed to evade the intellect. It functions by activating a magical-hate-meme that in the blink of an eye, will make all your problems disappear.
I am old enough to remember He-Man (a cartoon superhero with a Tyler Swift haircut). Skeletor is the BAD GUY. I mean He-Man’s and She-Ra’s life would be AMAZING if Skeletor were not around. Skeletor wants to destroy the world!!! HE-MAN!!! GET SKELETOR NOW!!!! Whose side are you on? Are you gonna side with Skeletor? WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU??!!! JESUS CHRIST YOU ARE INSANE CAN’T YOU SEE THAT SKELETOR WANTS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY HUMANITY? ARE YOU BLIND!!! SKELETOR IS GONNA GET SHE-RA ANY MINUTE NOW!!!
It’s pretty simple. #1 define evil #2 go get it!!!! How? Root for HE MAN!!!!! HE MAN is the only one who can fight evil and win in the end!!! HE MAN HAS A MAGIC SWORD!!!
The follower’s fantasy, what he truly lives for, is for the eradication of the “evil” as presented by the Leader. The removal of the external-evil-target. THAT is exactly what the Leader presents. The removal of the pain point. THAT is why he is so powerful. So the memes presented by the leader are always related to the fulfillment of this eradication fantasy. Build The Wall, Hillary The Crook In Jail. The Liberal Media Lying about Lies. The Elites. Obama The Foreigner. The New York Times. If you only DARE get between the Leader and the meme YOU ARE JUST AS BAD AS SKELETOR HIMSELF!!! It really does not matter if the Leader is a member of the ACTUAL “Elite”. Because reason, logic, or basic math are not at play here. It’s all about having the *magical ability* to point to external- evil-targets that are “scary” and memes that are all-powerful and insta-pain-removers. How is anyone expected to believe you if you don’t have a magic sword??? GTFO!!!! Bad skin? Didn’t get a raise this year? Got ghosted on Tinder? Ran out of toilet paper? BUILD-A-WALL!!!!!
IT ONLY COSTS 10 BILLION TO BUILD A WALL BEFORE STAFFING COSTS, MAINTENANCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE AND WE’RE A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT THAT IS GONNA “CUT COSTS”. WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
GHOST BUSTERS!!!
The genius of this approach is making a tenuous connection appear solid, tangible and real. I am not disputing the problems that are real in peoples lives, such as the real opportunity gap, the lack of benefits and jobs that pay a lot lower than they once did. What I am saying is, the exploitation and “emotional connection” with the population happens outside of the problem-solution realm. It is achieved by exploiting magical thinking and presenting cartoon-like insta-solutions to the evil which is always entirely visible and right there in front of your face. How convenient! All you have to do it point to it.
(I had never written about this subject before and it all came out completely unexpectedly. Probably because I *do* speak 6 languages and have an analytical understanding of how sentences and meaning are constructed, I noticed the comments and their similarities as they popped up on here in response to the Melania marriage comment. I had never had much contact with hate speech or trolling so this was interesting to watch. Initially I would respond and get annoyed until I understood their patterns and structure, and connected it to what I understood from the Nazi regime. I am going to write a mini-guide in the next few days about how to identify and dismantle hate speech patterns, its causes and motivations).
Appendix B: What we can do:
Create memes that de-sensitize hate speech. Such as: repeating the most hateful hashtag terms in a different context, such as to cause the “primitive” mind, as Goebbels put it, to become confounded. (I will come back to this later with more examples).
“Primitives” -as Goebbels put it - act on instinct. As such they use derogatory terms in ways that are calculated to provoke fear and discomfort. It is not a coincidence. There is no coincidence.
We are educated to have empathy and as such we are the “intellectuals” that can’t be converted. However, when dealing with “Primitives”, we must get at the point that hurts them. Which is the fact that they are being used to achieve propaganda’s goals. Propaganda, according to Goebbels, is a means to an end. It is always calculated for effect.
Appendix C: Faith
Everyone has a God they call their own, or something larger than themselves to keep them going. Faith tests us in every corner. Others live by logic and that’s ok too of course, people should follow whatever path suits them.
I was not around in the days of Martin Luther King. But when I am having a hard day I think of all the people that had nothing, nothing but faith, who were slaves their parents had been slaves, and their churches were so simple they did not have instruments they had their voices and their hands and their feet and even when their churches were burned they kept going. And I think of how lucky I am that with all my mistakes and regrets I still get to walk down the street and sit at a coffee shop when so many people were denied that basic right for so long. That basic right came about when some people stood up for what they believed in. What does that even mean today? I am just a random person moving fingers aka TYPING on the internet. Big effin’ deal. All I can say is, you don’t get to write your mispelled BS hate speech on my answer and get away with it.
I know that Martin Luther King has not died in vain, and I know, the little that I know, that his dream is my dream too. And that faith casts out fear and that every religion has spoken of unity and light because that is the only way forward. Truth be told I was scared after the election. But thanks to trolls I felt compelled to respond and I was reminded of a few things and now I feel renewed and ready and full of energy.
read more (including Appendix D: Telegram from parents in the concentration camp) :
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Melania-Trump-still-sticking-with-Donald-Trump/answer/Manuela-Leal