October 10, 2024 J D Vance and Joseph Goebbels
“Every demagogue, right or left, needs a skilled propagandist and a fawning one.”
J D Vance once referred to Trump as “America’s Hitler”. This was understood to be derisive but might it have been, consciously or not, admiring? Trump’s selection of a telegenic, well spoken, devotee, surprised many. Vice Presidents are usually picked to broaden appeal not to preach to the converted. If most of his faithful voted, Trump reasoned, he would win – a most likely outcome at the time he made the choice. He wanted someone who would attack, be indignant never apologetic, exude rage, inflame angst and disrupt the sanguinity of politics for which the “never Trumpers” yearned.
Hitler made a similar calculation in 1927 when he promoted Joseph Goebbels to head the NAZI party in Berlin. He did not want to take the party to moderate and popular ground and knew that Goebbels could amplify anger and fear. When Goebbels’ hate filled speeches provoked violence he was banned from public speaking. He doubled down with a NAZI newspaper for Berlin called Der Angriff (The Attack). Both he and Hitler knew how easy it was to cause bar room brawls and rile young thugs to smash windows. If voting failed, Storm Troopers could win the day. When the NAZIs gained power, Hitler made him Minister of Public Enlightenment.
Every demagogue, right or left, needs a skilled propagandist and a fawning one. Goebbels had a dim view of Hitler in 1924, but by 1926 had become a true believer. Of Hitler he wrote, “Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius." He became the chief creator to the cult of personality that spell bound most Germans and enabled Hitler to become the Fuhrer. “America’s Hitler” witnessed the Vance epiphany, did he see in him his own “Joseph Goebbels”?
They share many attributes. Both came from modest working-class backgrounds. Each was traumatized as a child, Goebbels by polio and Vance by a dysfunctional family. They attended prestigious schools; Vance graduated law at Yale and Goebbels received a PHD from Heidelberg. They worked for a period in finance, and both men wrote of their early struggles. Family men, each of them stressed its importance. Goebbels said, “If the family is the nation’s source of strength, the woman is its core .... The best place for the woman to serve her people is in her marriage, in the family, in motherhood.”
Each was skilled with the communication technology of his time. Goebbels was an effective writer, skilled with film and adept at public speaking. Hitler’s radio voice, when raised in anger, was shrill, Goebbels’ was melodious, a voice made for radio. Each man had disliked the culture of his youth and saw societal forces as having corrupted his people. They became preoccupied with spiritual and philosophical issues. This led Goebbels to the religious fervor of National Socialism and Vance to the frenzied populism of Trump.
Current right-wing populism is like the Volkish movement of pre-war Germany. It sought to make Germany great again by stoking anger and creating the “stab-in-the-back” myth. Germany did not lose WW I; it had been sold out by wealthy Jewish bankers. Trump did not lose the 2020 election; it had been stolen by the deep state. At the same time as this denial of German defeat developed, another myth reached its apex in America. While the “Old South” was recreated through Jim Crow laws and KKK terrorism, it was reinvented and fixed in the American mind as a “genteel” plantation society now Gone With The Wind. Now these durable lost cause mythologies are dangerously entwined in the right-wing mind. Adolph Hitler and Robert E. Lee share a pedestal. Now Donald Trump is up there with them. Three losers who did not lose. The Klan and the Storm Troopers had much in common. How easy it would be to recruit a Deportation Army. Trump would design the uniform and Vance would elegize its service.
Goebbels knew about lies: the most outlandish spreads fastest, “They are eating your pets!” An outlandish claim is made easier to swallow by an even more outrageous one, “They will come into your kitchen and cut your throat.” The oft repeated becomes true, “War in Ukraine would never have happened.” A small truth can cloak a big lie, “Harris is more predictable.” Putin’s Orwellian praise shields the whopper. In his dystopia, truth translates as Pravda. Trump’s Truth Social comes to mind. Effective lies appeal to emotions not the intellect, “That’s fake news.” Arguments must be crude, clear and forceful. The same day Trump re-posted a crude sexual insinuation about his opponent and then posed in Arlington in a manner that deliberately provoked outrage, JD Vance drove home the run in a well rehearsed retort condemning the journalists that they had bated. He then blamed Harris for it all. It was worthy of Goebbels. “… she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?! She can … [Rehearsed pause designed to show it pained him to use such strong language.] go to Hell!”
Kamala Harris was asked about the sexist attacks and racist taunts being hurled. She replied that they were, “From the same tired old playbook.” She probably was referring to the litany of sordid, malicious, racist and sexist things Trump has said and done since Obama was elected.
The playbook Trump and Vance are using is older than that.
Russ McLean
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