- Address your base. Make it so opposition would be very uncomfortable.
- Hold rallies after you are elected, simply to rile up your supporters.
- Publish hotshot pictures, and today videos, of yourself physically beating up someone to show how tough you are and to lower the threshold of physical violence in your supporters.
- Find a common enemy, a scapegoat that can’t defend itself. Muslims in general are a good example. “The Media” portrayed as evil and dishonest is another example.
- Define opposition to your views as fake news.
- Define the attempt of discovering the truth of what happened as unpatriotic, or dishonest, or even criminal.
- Start attacking the Constitution and position it as opposed to the good of the people.
- Position yourself as the “only one who can solve these problems.”
- Equating your ambitions and goals with the “objectives of the people.”
- Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat……
Trump has been using all those techniques to rile up his base.
Hitler did the same thing in 1932 and 1933, and successfully took power of an entire country with a minority of supporters, because those supporters quickly resorted to physical violence, silencing of the media by threat of physical violence, and quickly and unconstitutionally usurping police power in all areas of law enforcement. Once law enforcement was taken over, there was no turning back. The country was a thug, and it beat up its people. Then it beat up other people. It took 12 years, and 60 million deaths, to stop that thug. Then it took another half decade of misery before that country started its recovery.
Trump is working the Hitler playbook like a master. 2017 is 1933. Everything is on track.
This time it’s called: Make America Great Again.
Know fear — as Andrew Sullivan used to say on his Daily Dish blog.