Trump's Cult, Like Hitler Fanatics, Feels "Stabbed in the Back" by Inclusive Democracy
Trump has been following Hitler’s playbook of vilifying scapegoats for “stabbing the US in the back” (A. Davey)
Before getting to the primary subject of this column, let me comment on the term that I use in its title for one of what must now be regarded as the two (or more) increasingly separated and distinct parts of the Republican Party. There is what can be called, as I do above, the Trump Cult, an unfortunately large group of Republican voters that vote Republican because of Trump, and not the other way round. Then there are the other parts, characterized by McConnell, Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney.
In terms of policy, they are Republicans through and through. None of them are heroes. A couple of days after Cheney voted in the House in favor of impeaching Trump she introduced legislation to protect private drilling for oil and gas on public lands against any Biden prohibition of same. Kinzinger has consistently been for repealing the Affordable Care Act and against freedom-of-choice in the outcome of pregnancy. McConnell desperately wants to keep the filibuster in place so that he can do you-know-what with it. They just don’t like the flavor that Trump gives to the Republican Party, thinking (correctly in my view) that in the long term the Trumpublicans© will lose votes for the generic Republican Party.
But in meantime, Trump and the Trumpites are doing everything they can to keep the myth of the “Stolen Election” going; e.g., in his “tribute” to Rush Limbaugh on the day of his death (Feb. 17, 2021 --- thanks goodness it didn’t coincide with either the real Lincoln’s (Feb. 12) or Washington’s birthday (Feb. 22), each of which when I was a child were celebrated as separate holidays) --- Trump swiftly moved on from Limbaugh to his favorite subject. Among other things, Trump said: “I always seem to like people who like me. It's much easier. Call that a weakness. . . . Rush thought we won, and so do I . . . I think we won substantially. . . You don't know how angry this country is. We should have had it."
Indeed, the “Stab in the Back” metaphor is being used ever-more widely amongst Trumpublicans©. As Newsmax anchor Chis Salcedo said, in talking about the Impeachment Trial: “Let’s watch the dagger plunge even further into the backs of we the people and this country.”
The Historical Origin of the “Stab in the Back” Myth, and its Nazi Utility
In the Spring of 1918, the Prussian Army launched what proved to be its last major offensive on the Western Front in Europe. It happened that since the occurrence of the Russian Revolution on October 25, 1917 [November 7, new calendar] and the subsequent departure of Russia from The Great War, Germany faced only one front. But even that eventuality proved to be too much for an exhausted, way underfed army. A major British naval blockade had been proving to be increasingly effective in depriving Germany of both military and civilian goods, as well as food. At times that summer the Prussian Army had to stop fighting to forage for its own food. The offensive eventually failed. And so, the Prussian government, with the major participation of the Social Democratic Party (the SPD, which had in 1914 voted “war credits” so that Kaiser could undertake his war in alliance with his brother monarch, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor) began surrender negotiations with the Western Powers. They eventually led to the Armistice of November 11, 1918, and then after that to the Versailles Treaty, which proved to be so disastrous for the whole of Europe, in the long run. In the process in Prussia that led to that agreement, the SPD issued a set of demands to the Prussian government, which included the abdication of the Kaiser.
The two leading commanders of the Prussian Army, Generals Paul von Hindenburg (later the Weimar Republic President who appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933) and Erich Ludendorff (who was a Hitler supporter from the mid-1920s), did not like the movement to end the war. They thought that somehow Germany could fight on and did not do so only because the civilian government was weak-kneed and had thus decided to implement the policy to bring the War to an end. As noted above, that the civilian government, especially the Social Democratic Party that was part of it, undertook this policy, after the war, and especially after the imposition the economically onerous Versailles Treaty, that surrender policy came to called, by the German Right, the "Stab in the Back." It was used, over-and-over again, to justify the development of various right-wing parties in Weimar Germany, most especially the Nazi Party. Hitler and Goebbels were still using the phrase in speeches in the 1930s.
The US Presidential Election
As everybody in the United States and indeed around the world who has any interest in the U.S. Presidential elections knows, Donald Trump, at the end of the last Presidential debate, on October 22, 2020, said that he would not necessarily accept the result of the vote on November 3. If he thought that "something was going on" (a phrase that he uses constantly to describe supposed conspiracies of all sorts, of course without defining them, much less proving their existence), he would not do so. Since the election he and his surrogates have been evermore fiercely claiming that the election was somehow "rigged," by the media, by the courts, by voting machine manufacturers, by various vote counters, etc. to create non-existent massive voter fraud, by the millions. This fraud, of course, occurred only in "certain neighborhoods," which means that voting while Black was not a “legal” vote. This white supremacist perspective has its origins in the Confederacy and the Jim Crow era.
As I said above, I believe that Trump will continue to use the false charge of a "rigged election," along with the "media/Hillary conspiracy to savage him," as his "Stab in the Back." I think that the on again, off again involvement of Breitbart's Steve Bannon is part of the development of this strategy. In Trump's view (whether he truly believes that he was stabbed in the back or not, and given how he seems to think, he may very well truly believe it) he is the one who can save the United States from all of its enemies, at home and abroad.
Once having let himself loose of the Republican Party, he will be able to openly align with the far right, including its openly racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic elements. (Trump's Jews may eventually have a problem with that one, but in the Nazis' early days, there were actually “Jews for Hitler,” in an organization called the Association of German National Jews.) In the beginning, the new party will likely be more like Sir Oswald Mosely's pre-World War II British Union of Fascists. But it could develop into a national political party ready to contest elections. And in three-way races, it could conceivably win in certain areas. On the other hand, a Trump third-party would split the Republican voters, thus possibly assisting in the election of Democratic candidates in three way general election races.
Trump has historically been viewed favorably in polls by less than 40% of the vote. But it is useful to recall that Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (clever name, eh wot?) never got more than 37% of the vote in a free election. Also, there will eventually be an armed uniformed militia in those states where the gun laws are so loose that they can be established. Can you say "Sturmabteilung," or "Brown Shirts?" After all, in certain "open carry" states armed Trump supporters were already showing up at his
This is truly scary stuff folks, but in my view, it is all part of his long-range plan, of which the "rigged election," the U.S. "Stab in the Back" for the 21st century, is a central piece.
Whether Trump can maintain cult control over around 40% of US voters will be tested as he attempts to control the current Republican Party without his highly effective Twitter account. If not, he may proceed to forming a Trump third party.
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Postscript: Considering the last section of this column, above, doesn't this all sound familiar, sort of a general description of part of what is going on with Trump and the Trumpites now? Well it should. Because it is. But what is particularly interesting about the particular piece of text just above is that almost all of it is drawn from a column that I originally published on The Greanville Post on October 24, 2016 (changing just a few details so as not to give the game away). Am I posting it now to show how foresightful I was?
No. I am posting it now to show how Trump just doesn't change. He and his team thought that he was going to lose in 2016 (and if it hadn't had been for Jim Comey, he most likely would have) and he was preparing, guess what? A campaign to contest the election based on "they cheated" (the charge of course based-in-the-doctrine-of-white-supremacy), by “their artificially pouring all those black votes that had to be illegitimate" into the electoral counts.) Just as in 2020, when of course he really did lose. You can see my original "Rigged Election" 2016 column here.
On February 1, 2021 The New York Times published an extensive and very important revelation of just how much planning went on in the Trump camp a) in support of the "stolen election" fiction this time around, and b) in support of what eventually became the January 6, 2021 Insurrection.. Yes indeed, Trump doesn't change. Even though in the end he didn't have to raise “the stolen election Big Lie” it in 2016, just as in golf, once a cheater, always a cheater.