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(image: Hitler speaking at a rally, from National Archives and Records Administration) Last year, I submitted a grant application seeking support for the book I’m writing about Hitler’s rhetoric. The grant was rejected (it was a competitive Federal grant, so I wasn’t too surprised). This morning, I received comments on my proposal from three anonymousContinue reading “Hitler Fatigue (Apr. 14, 2022)”

On Jan. 10, Politico reporter Nicholas Wu broke the news that Trump supporters in Michigan and Arizona filed forged election documents that incorrectly certified the Trump-Pence ticket as the winner of those states….While this unfolding forgery scandal is shocking, it’s not a new phenomenon. Read the rest at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/18/history-tells-us-gops-forged-2020-election-documents-should-sound-alarm-bells/

In his newly-released book about the 2020 election, Wall Street Journal White House reporter Michael C. Bender reveals that former President Trump allegedly praised Adolf Hitler’s role in Germany’s economic recovery in the 1930s as evidence that the Führer “did a lot of good things.” Read the rest at: https://www.salon.com/2021/08/07/trump-praised-hitlers-economic-miracle–and-thats-even-worse-than-it-sounds/ Republished at RawStory, 7 Aug. 2021. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-hitler-economic-record/

In 1937, Irmgard Keun published a short novel, After Midnight, which tells the story of two young women in 1930s Frankfurt who find themselves caught up in a parade and rally starring Adolf Hitler. The rally touches off a series of events in which the characters struggle to make sense of their lives, beliefs, andContinue reading “History of Yesterday: A Sweaty Hitler Is a Sincere Hitler, and Sincerity Is Profoundly Persuasive (Aug. 6, 2021)”

In 1958, Dr. Franz Jetzinger published Hitler’s Youth, a scathing repudiation of the Führer’s adulatory backstory as advanced in Mein Kampf and August Kubizek’s The Young Hitler I Knew. Jetzinger had been a bitter opponent of the Nazis since before Hitler became Chancellor and annexed Austria. During Hitler’s reign, Jetzinger lost multiple jobs because ofContinue reading “Are You Really Going to Make Me Defend Hitler? Style, Grammar, and Usage Edition”

“The lesson is not that contemporary politicians are modern-day Hitlers, but rather that Hitler’s example shows how easily ‘the strong will overcome the weak’ can metamorphose into ‘the strong must allow the weak to perish’ or even ‘the strong must eradicate the weak.’” Read the rest at: https://www.newsweek.com/only-strong-will-survive-american-echoes-dark-past-opinion-1576321

“Re-committing to America’s founding ideals, then, is a necessary step forward. This means committing to civic action, to civic education, and to holding ourselves to our own ideals in support of all the people around us, not just the ones we agree with.” Read the rest at: https://medium.com/politically-speaking/the-maga-mutiny-shows-that-america-isnt-a-fascist-country-yet-8d037b79fc5e

“We have trained ourselves to think of justice as equivalent to authority, power, and obedience. It’s no surprise, then, that people who appear obedient are treated differently than their ‘disobedient’ counterparts. It’s a rhetorical problem that produces a violent reaction.” Read the rest at: https://theglobepost.com/2021/03/03/capitol-coup-rhetoric/

“I have spent more than five years studying fascist rhetoric and demagoguery and in particular the relationship between truth and facts in fascist regimes. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, one of the main lessons I’ve learned is that facts and truth have a very uneasy relationship in fascism – but I have also learned that fascist rhetoric reliesContinue reading “Public Seminar: Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out: What 20th-Century Fascists Can Teach Us about the Need for Truth in the 21st-Century (Dec. 10, 2020)”

“People can understand what’s going on if they know to look. If you think of memes as sophisticated methods of communication, with different messages communicated in different contexts, you probably won’t uncover a Russian plot. But you’ll be more aware of what people are trying to persuade you to believe — what appetites they’re creatingContinue reading “Arc Digital: “Shitposting for Fun and Profit: Memes, Rhetoric, and Russian Trolls” (Oct. 7, 2020)”