Trump’s hate-stoking policy guru may be Jewish — but he still bears a scary resemblance to the Nazi Propaganda Minister in both substance and style.
another in my series comparing hitler’s GOONS to TRUMP’S
Many people consider J.D. Vance’s brilliant book Hillbilly Elegy as the quintessential portrayal of the anger in white America which brought Donald Trump a victory in the Electoral College. Without mentioning Trump once by name, Vance captures this festering nativism.While Vance explained the source of the latent anger, there still have to be those who manipulate that hatred in both rhetoric and policy. Enter Stephen Miller, whose (embarrassingly for me) Duke University education seems to be put to use developing both the strategies and messaging of the politics of white resentment that personify Donald Trump.
More forebodingly, Miller is Jewish, and should know the lessons history teaches about nativist politicians turning one group of citizens against another. Instead, he seems to channel the skills of Joesph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.
Miller is a truly chilling figure, He resembles Goebbels physically, as well as in his willingness to provoke the dark side of humanity.
Goebbels of course was the master of simplified hate-mongering, Among his most infamous quotations is this, for which the average Trump voter can certainly relate:
“...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.”Goebbels had no aversion to lying to gain an advantage, as he once said:
“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”For Goebbels the bogeyman was primarily the Jew, at whose feet he helped Hitler lay the blame for the ills of Germany in the years after the “War to end all Wars”.
For Miller, it’s hispanics, blacks and anyone he deems not “100% American”. As the New York Times put it in a recent profile:
“Mr. Miller has rocketed to the upper reaches of White House influence along a distinctly Trumpian arc — powered by a hyper-fluency in the politics of grievance, a gift for nationalist button-pushing . . .”Miller started early with his demonizing of others, once infamously declaring as a 16 year old at Santa Monica High School.
“Am I the only one,” he asked, “who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”John Oliver labeled Stephen Miller “a revolting human.” While it’s easy to accept that characterization, my concern is the Goebbels-like deviousness of the man, combined with a total lack of Jewish values. As a Jew myself, it’s appalling and frightening to see another so-called Member of the Tribe who is so bereft of character that he aligns himself with Trump’s legions of hate.
Note: A point about conservative jews who get exploding heads at any comparisons between trumpism and Nazism:
Jewish conservatives are quick to take offense at any comparison between Hitler/Naziism/Fascism and Trump. I made that analogy before, and was excoriated by something called Jewish Journal for that. In truth, I am immensely proud to have been listed right alongside such luminaries of progressive thought as Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Dana Milbanks and Richard Cohen of The Washington Post, and Charles Blow and Paul Krugman of The New York Times, who have made similar comparisons — and received similar criticism.Maddow: “By studying the first few months of Adolf Hitler’s tenure as German chancellor, beginning in 1934.”
Richard Cohen, Washington Post: Trump “is Hitlerian in his thinking.”
Henry S. Rosen, Daily Kos: “Any student of history can compare current times to the rise of fascism in the 1930s — when an electorate reeling from The Great Depression brought to power Hitler and emboldened Mussolini.”
Neal Gabler, BillMoyers.com: “Like Goebbels before them, conservatives understood that they had to create their own facts, their own truths, their own reality.”
Dana Milbank, Washington Post: “Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody. … When the election returns come in Tuesday night, it will be Nov. 9 in Germany — the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ at the start of the Holocaust when Nazis vandalized synagogues and businesses.”
Charles Blow, New York Times: “[Trump is] the demi-fascist of Fifth Avenue … an arguably fascist and racist demagogue.”
Jewish apologists for Trump would be well advised to study the history of fascism in the 1930’s. Or perhaps they should just take in the movie Ship of Fools, set in the 1930’s, in which:Paul Krugman, New York Times: “It takes willful blindness not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare.”
“ . . . the unflappably amiable Jewish salesman Lowenthal” naively proclaims: "There are a million Jews in Germany! What're they going to do . . .kill us all?"Maybe that will be reminder enough of the danger of ignoring both Jew baiting and demonization of other minorities as well — whether it’s done by an original Nazi propagandist, or a modern day traitorous, Jewish demon.
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