It’s wild to see his ex-wife’s claim, but I just don’t believe Trump was smart enough to study a book by Hitler and understand it. Hitler, as cruel and insane as he was, had a brain.
You're thinking of Trump now, as a deranged old man. It's entirely possible he studied it back before he was a rambling incoherent loon. A lifetime of hamburders, drugs and privilege must really fuck a brain up.
The list regurgitates the same points over and over.
Old, deranged trump is a complete lunatic. Young, narcissistic trump was dumb as a rock, but he cared a lot, a whole lot about his image. He was popular and he's always been the useful idiot actual powerful and smart people like to hide behind.
To his credit, it would be way too wild of a coincidence for him to play the fascist playbook so accurately. He's probably been coached, the new order book annotated by someone who actually read it. I don't think he studied any of this seriously though. There is no foreshadowing of future event. He just gets stuck and incredibly mad at something blocking his path, and he probably goes "Hmm, what would Hitler have done", and he gets to use whatever brainpower he has to follow a few simple guidelines and rhetoric.
That's the thing with the fascist playbook, it's incredibly dumb. You just ignore everything and get people riled up about the next thing in order. It's immigrants, the medias, scientifics, every other politicians, elections, the justice system, democracy itself. He'll be jailed and do the next thing Hitler did, like have a smarter someone publish a "solution" to their "struggle" and it will be spread like gospel. Given the chance he'd then starts a war with a neighboring country. Just follow the steps one by one, even a buffoon like him can get coached on it. Suddenly you'll hear Canada has to be liberated and it is all you'll hear about. That's what his second term and planned for-life presidency would look like.
Trump and other Republicans have recently not-so-secretly been plotting to invade Mexico in a war on drug cartels. It's not Canada, but it's right in line with the fascist playbook.
Really. Those 20 points do absolutely nothing to indicate he "studied Hitler's speeches". It's basically just saying "Trump was awful. You know who else was awful? Adolf Hitler!".
Sometimes it's better to just let evil speak for itself. What a load of crap.
It seems he actually had a copy of My New Order though. But I doubt Trump ever had the discipline to study it much. Bannon yes.
The thing is, it just doesn't make sense. I think it's uncontroversial to say Hitler's skills in oration were a factor in the rise to power of that regime. But Trump? Trump is a horrible orator.
I don't see similarities at all in terms of oration. Trump meanders through a speech, often switching subjects abruptly, leaving thoughts incomplete, or otherwise being entirely nonsensical.
That in itself is a strategy -- I think people lacking formal education especially are susceptible to it and see it as sounding intelligent ("he's so smart, the thoughts just keep flowing!"), but it is extremely un-Hitlerlike in terms of oration style.
Is it an actual strategy of Trump or does he just naturally meander like that? I kind of lead towards the latter, which means he's probably gotten lucky by surrounding himself with stupid people for a very long time.
It's a completely flawed comparison. Hitler was capable of making coherent sentences, and he was doing it rather well. He wasn't just identifying a few catch phrases (build a wall! Lock her up!) and repeating them ad infinitum to make the crowds go wild.
Fascism doesn't need to look like a bunch of drooling idiots in adult diapers. That's just the specific branch of it that ended up successful in contemporary America, for whatever reason.