February 26, 2021

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

Just a few days ago, Donald Trump made his first media appearance since becoming a former president. It was a call in to Fox, ostensibly to eulogize the passing of the incendiary racist and white grievance arsonist Rush Limbaugh. However, Trump barely paid homage to the insidious bigot, just enough to segue into his big lie claim that the election was stolen from him..

Trump, in deep umbrage, stated that Limbaugh thought "we won and so do I. By the way, I think we won by a substantially... I don't think that could have happened to a Democrat. You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat.”

Trump told Newsmax, "we did win the election, as far as I’m concerned. It was disgraceful what happened, totally disgraceful."

It was once again a reminder that the big lie was going to long outlast Joe Biden’s inauguration, continuing to stoke Trump’s cult followers. It was once again a reminder that the coup attempt is not over in Trump’s mind. In Thursday Congressional hearings on security, the acting Capitol Chief of Police warned that there was intelligence information that rabid Trump followers planned to blow up the Capitol when Biden gives his State of the Union address (which is not yet scheduled). There is also law enforcement chatter that there might be Trump paramilitary troop activity on March 4, which was the date of the inauguration until FDR was sworn in in 1933. Qanon followers think that this could lead to Trump assuming his “rightful” presidency then.

News networks are continuing to help amplify the big lie by booking election deniers to goose viewership. Indeed, MSNBC’s Brian Williams scathingly criticized the lame Chuck Todd for booking Ron “Smirk and Jive” Jonhson (D-WI) on Sunday’s Meet the Press and allowing him to spread Trump big lie conspiracy theories.

And Republicans aspiring to fill up their campaign and PAC coffers are raising scads of money off of the big lie that Trump won the election by a landslide, the champion being Trump who has raised millions.

In a February 22 BuzzFlash Editor’s Commentary entitled, “Progressives Must Stop Getting Queasy Over Comparing Trumpism to Nazism,” I detailed how Trump, while obviously not being an exact replica of Hitler, is utilizing many of his propaganda techniques (including those created by Goebbels) to still try and achieve dictatorial power.

A key strategy of Hitler’s was to normalize the transformation of German society into a nation weaponized, with scapegoating as the justification, over a period of many years, until the horrifying became acceptable “patriotism.” What is happening in the post-inauguration stage of Trump’s American version of “Mein Kampf” (as dramatized, metaphorically, in Philip Roth’s “Plot Against America” on HBO Max) is a continuing normalization of sedition, insurrection, violence and hate galvanized by a continued big lie that “enemies of the people” stole the election from Trump. Indeed, the Insurrection is being sanitized by Congressional Republicans so as not to “taint” the big lie with the truth.

According to a February 21 Suffolk University/USA TODAY Poll: “Three of four, 73%, [of Republicans] say Biden wasn't legitimately elected. Most don't want their representatives to cooperate with him, even if that means gridlock in Washington.”

Even out of office, Trump continues the normalization of a seditionist authoritarian government, built upon a foundation of lies, even as most advocates of democracy believe the peril to the Union is past. It’s not.

Trump will be ramping up the big lie, test marketing how far he can push, as his worshiping cult and elected GOP acolytes promote the idea that the White House is temporarily occupied by a usurper.

As a February 15 article in the London Review of Books clarifies how dependent this process is on Trump as a quasi-religious figure who has taken upon himself the victimhoods of a populist, white grievance-driven mob who are in a dependency relationship with him:

The demagogue, Freud argues, turning to the second component of our template, does not command loyalty on the basis of shared ideals or values. Rather, the demagogue is like a hypnotist who says to his followers: pay attention only to me; nothing else matters; concentrate entirely on me. This accomplishes three things. First, it shunts the ego aside; it replaces reason with loyalty. Second, it resolves conflicts arising from frustrated and unfulfilled narcissism, by fostering identification with a leader who has demonstrated his mastery by a willingness to deploy sadism by bullying and humiliating others. In this regard, Freud points out, the successful demagogue need possess only the typical qualities of his followers, but in a ‘clearly marked and pure form’ that gives the impression ‘of greater force and of more freedom of libido’. Third, because Trump established the same identification with every one of his millions of followers, he fostered an experience of shared equality among them. In Freud’s words, ‘the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he must be of a masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic, self-confident and independent.’

As a result, about 40% of Americans angrily believe that Democrats, Blacks, Browns, LGBTQ and Indigenous Americans and the media are betraying the Constitution.

Read this CNN account of one protester closely, and notice how Trump has made a huge swath of Americans believe that only loyalty to him and the big lie supports the Constitution.

In a February 21 CNN article entitled, “Oath Keeper claims she was VIP security at Trump rally before riot and says she met with Secret Service agents,” the lawyer for Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins made an extraordinary claim that reveals the toxic contortions of the big lie:

Watkins' defense attorney, Michelle Peterson, wrote on Saturday that her client and other supporters of Trump had believed the then-President would invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military to overturn what he falsely said was the fraudulent election of Joe Biden. And Watkins and others believed "they would have a role if this were to happen," the filing said.

"However misguided, her intentions were not in any way related to an intention to overthrow the government, but to support what she believed to be the lawful government. She took an oath to support the Constitution and had no intention of violating that oath or of committing any violent acts."

This insurrectionist believed that the only way to save the Constitution was by backing Trump’s big lie because he had told his followers he was the lawfully-elected president. To Watkins, Congressional Senators and Representatives who would vote to uphold Biden’s 7-million-vote election victory were betraying the Constitution because Trump was the real victor, and everything he said was to be believed because of a psychotic symbiosis. This is about a smoldering cauldron of vengeful id. Many Democrats believe that Trumpism can be defeated by reason. This is a big mistake.

The big lie can be radioactive in its power, according to the London Review of Books:

This brings us to the big lie, our fifth component. A big lie is not a claim subject to contradiction, or a statement of fact that can be disputed. The concept was first put forth in Mein Kampf, where Hitler defined it as an untruth so colossal that people ‘would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously’. Trump’s claim that he had won the election ‘in a landslide’ and victory was stolen from him by a corrupt establishment is a lie of this sort.

It is the psychological work that the big lie performs that makes it so important. Its essence is that something terrible has been done to an innocent individual or group.

Trump has assiduously cultivated Red State GOP parties to be loyal to him alone, to the point that the 2020 GOP Convention had no platform other than whatever Trump wanted it to be. He has also cultivated Red State legislatures, and we are seeing the payoff now in the countless voter suppression laws being passed and censures issued. Trump has indicated that he will only support Republicans in 2022 who voted against Biden’s decisive win at the ballot box on January 6.

According to Jedd Legum’s blog entry, entitled “A Festival of Lies,” about the CPAC conference now underway that Trump will speak at this weekend :

There are seven panels devoted to perpetuating lies about election fraud, including:

Other Culprits: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence

The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It

Failed States (PA, GA, NV, oh my!)

The "Other Culprits" panel features Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL), who appeared at the January 6 rally that occurred just before the riot. Brooks told the crowd that it was time to start "taking down names and kicking ass." He refused to apologize. 

Trump will undoubtably include his false claims of election fraud in his keynote address on Sunday. In a statement this week, Trump claimed that "experts" believed he "won" the election and bemoaned the "election crimes that were committed against me." 

Donald Trump, like Hitler, Peron and Mussolini, will never yield the power over his cult voluntarily. As for the Republicans in Congress, please stop thinking most of them detest Trump. He stands for a Republican authoritarian rule that would create a one-party government that would rule for years. This is a goal shared by far too many of them. To those Senators and Representatives, democracy is an inconvenience and usurpation of white power, and Trump is still normalizing that malignant possibility that inclusive democracy will be jettisoned into the dust bin of history.

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