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Why Trump Keeps Winning [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-27
I know Trump’s winning is a nightmare. I know his poll numbers are falling. I do think he is a malignant narcissist with a kind of psychopathic amorality. But he surprised me when he beat Hillary, and he surprised me when he beat Kamala. He surprised me when he easily fileted the republican field when he has faced them, all with more experience than he has. With all of his failures and his nonsense, why was he seen as more credible than experts reviewing his economic and other plans? Has anyone tried to talk to a family member or a friend who is a proud owner of a red maga hat, and bumped into an impenetrable wall of lies? Despite all his bungling I still fear this unreasonable power he has over the electorate, and has taken from congress and the DOJ.
I started searching around youtube for videos that might help me on how to fight trumpism. One I found that caught my eye was this one, a TED talk by Peter Pomerantsev.:
He explains three rules that were used by the British to fight the propaganda of the Nazis.
1. “Break the monopoly authoritarians have on strong emotions. That is the root of their power”
He details that it was important to use vivid imagery. I’m struck by the emotions that Trump uses to make his case and the anemic imagery that we often respond with.
When Trump rolls out his plan to send americans to a concentration camp, he uses vivid imagery.
here is his quote:
“We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump declared.
If we let him have all the emotional images and framing around losing our rights as americans it makes it easier for him to do so.
When the democrats decide to fight him, they have to realize that safe, emotionless things like raising a little black sign that says lies during a speech is not only ineffectual, and passionless but it raises the concern that no one is fighting and there is no other image to fight his framing. Sometimes I chuckle thinking of waving my own “lies “ sign at my TV sharing in the complete lack of efficacy.
The next two rules the Pomerantsev found the British used to Fight propaganda were the following:
2. “Deliver facts that improve people’s lives and inspire agency”
3. “Foster alternative communities”
His book about his findings is here:
https://a.co/d/5irzULJ
I kept looking for more theory that could explain Trump’s successes. I saw an interesting author, David Hassan go into a lot of detail about the parallels between the MAGA movement and the cults he had studied. He had personally become a member of a cult, was deprogrammed and now works to deprogram people from cults, has written several books about cults and has a online course for clinicians about deprogramming people.
I read through his book, “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control”
https://a.co/d/41wQB35
He mentions that emotional images become a touchstone that is returned to over and over. They block thought and rational discourse, and he finds them an important part of efforts to exert undue influence on followers. It seemed to dovetail Pomerantsev’s findings pretty well. Hassan goes into several ways that a cult leader or an autocrat using the malign skills of a cult leader can exert control over people. Another of his ideas is to deprogram someone, it’s important to goto neutral areas, like talking about the chinese communist party’s mind control techniques to ease people into the idea they may have been lied to. His book is a little encyclopedic and there is a lot to it. There are way more ideas than I could hope to summarize here. I hope some people find these angles on the information war interesting enough to look into both their works in more detail. They’re both on youtube and you can listen to them going about your day or check out the books I have linked above.
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