HIDING BEHIND COLLUSION

Trump may have pulled of the biggest propaganda feat since Hitler.  He has turned “no collusion” into evidence of patriotism.

The media reaction to the Mueller report is bizarre.  The charge in the report was to investigate the claim that Russia interfered on behalf of Donald Trump to get him elected.  The quickie summary from AG Barr says the report confirmed this but then .. the report obediently segues into a whattabout .. whattabout collusion?

Collusion was never Mueller’s charge.  His charge did include finding out if there was any American collusion, by Trump or anyone else.  The report showed that Trump had ongoing business dealings during the campaign with the Kremlin, that Trump’s cohorts were involved politically with the Kremlin, but that Trump himself did not play a role in the Kremlin’s attack on the US.  Mueller was also authorized to follow out any leads arising from his investigation of the Russians.  Those leads led to several convictions of Trump’s colleagues and to evidence that Trump obstructed justice in an effort to protect himself and his colleagues.  The latter is an indictable crime but Barr chose not to bring charges presumably either because he doesn’t have enough evidence to convict or because, as he has stated before, Barr considers the Presidency as above the law.

From Hitler’s Men Kampf.  While using the big lie technique, Hitler said it was the Jews who lied: ” it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. ….  All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

This ought not to be good PR for Trump.  Being found innocent of participating in the Russian attack is a good thing, but the rest of the report seems rather damning.  So why is Trump so happy?

The answer comes from German history … Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels, who succeeded Hitler as Chancellor for one day after Der Fuehrer’s suicide, began his career as an aspiring author.  After a  Ph.D from the University of Heidelberg in 1921 Goebbels  joined the Nazi Party in 1924 and created the Propaganda Ministry.  In that role, Goebbels supervised all of German news media, arts, as well as the  new media of radio and film.  The Herr Doktor used his skills in public speaking to promote the Nazi regime.  Herr Goebbels even planted stories in the foreign press, truly inventing fake news.

Goebbels invented many of the tools Trump uses, including the big lie, presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, and the use of loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response.  One such tool is putting words in other’s mouths.  It is very easy to take what someone else has said out of context, turn it into a catch phrase, and then magnify it. 

This is exactly what Trump has done with “collusion.”  Early on, the reality of the Russian campaign became apparent.  Trump immediately began to cast doubt on whether the Russian campaign had even happened while making it clear that he had not been part of the campaign. His Goebbelsesque mantra became “NO COLLUSION.”

As Trump and his state media arm, Fox, repeated this mantra, they managed to make collusion the issue.   Meanwhile the key finding of a Russian intrusion into our election is being ignored, as is Trump’s failure to act on that subversion of our democracy.  And, of course, the other findings of the Mueller report .. election fraud, bank fraud, and likely tax evasion seem unimportant.

GOEBBELS WOULD BE PROUD