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‘Fake news’ has led to widespread brainwashing, aka ‘hogwashing’

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Donald Trump’s behaviors, aspirations, activities, and utterances too often evoke comparisons to Hitler. And, in the day, a la present-day Fox News and other right-wing media, certain publishers fawned and fussed over Hitler.

A sizeable portion of the American population continues to support Trump. As Hitler sought to and succeeded in brainwashing many Germans and others with his brand of fake news, so has Trump.

The most perplexing part of all this is why so many Americans continue to allow themselves to be brainwashed by Trump’s brand of fake news—including seemingly blind acceptance of whatever Fox News, et al have to say.

Of course, by the end of WWII, the impact of that brainwashing had been hugely catastrophic and resulted in the deaths of many millions of people. If Trumpers and their ilk continue to successfully peddle their brand of brainwashing (aka “hogwashing”), we’re very likely headed toward oligarchy or autocracy, massive violence, and possibly even a full-fledged Civil War.

Continuation of the democratic republic is becoming increasingly unlikely. And the threat to it has been spawned largely by those who demand personal freedoms until the freedom protects someone or something with whom they disagree. I recently heard that the right to bear arms is in the Constitution but the right to abortion isn’t. I gotta believe that the framers would have recoiled if they knew that “the right to bear arms” included high-capacity, high-velocity military-style weapons designed to kill many innocent people.

So far, my efforts to explain how the efforts of Trumpers—through creation of an autocracy or oligarchy—will ultimately erode our freedoms are falling on deaf ears. Putin’s Russia, anyone? When was the last time than an autocratic group or oligarch advocated enlightened government at the risk of losing their power or money? They’re avaricious and increasingly influential in this great democratic experiment of ours—the United States of America.

Washington Post articles detail the Hitler comparisons all too clearly.

First, there are (and were) the rallies. Notes the Post, “The night thousands of Nazis packed Madison Square Garden for a rally…‘Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans,’ the banners cried out…On Feb. 20, 1939, 22,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, took over the venue…it was a full house for Bund leader Fritz Kuhn…a household name as the ‘American Hitler.’”

Another Post article addresses the pro-Hitler publisher malaise: “Kathryn S. Olmsted levels a damning indictment against six of the most powerful English-language publishers of the World War II era…they used their influence to downplay, condone and sometimes even promote Adolf Hitler’s rise…The worst offender was Lord Harold Rothermere, publisher of London’s Daily Mail, a right-wing tabloid that sold more than 1 million copies a day. …Rothermere gushed in print about how Hitler had ‘saved his country’ from ineffectual leaders and had brought ‘immense benefits’ to Germany…”

A recent article identifies how Trump has made comparisons to Hitler himself. The author writes, “…one entire major political party was still unsure whether a man who compared himself to Hitler, but in a wistful, ‘if-only’ sort of way, ought to be its standard-bearer. The alternative being considered was literally anyone else. Yet others said that maybe the problem was people who were being divisive by comparing their party’s chosen standard-bearer to Hitler, even if, technically, he was one of those people doing the comparing and what he had said suggested that he viewed Hitler’s example as aspirational. Still others said that maybe when he wanted to be like Hitler, he just meant an inspiring leader, despite all the other more ominous racist, exclusionary, autocratophilic parallels he had already laid out in speeches.”

When will the hogwashing cease to be effective? The future of our democratic republic and freedom of its citizens lie in the balance.

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