by Lee Smith, Real Clear Wire:
The propaganda campaign labeling Donald Trump as an aspiring dictator determined to use the military and national security apparatus against his political opponents is designed not to affect the upcoming election but rather to shape the post-election environment. It is the central piece of a narrative that, by characterizing Trump as a tyrant (indeed likening him to Hitler), establishes the conditions for violence — not just another attempt on Trump’s life, but political violence on a massive scale intended to destabilize the country.
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As I write in my forthcoming book Disappearing the President, Democratic Party research and media reports show that many senior party officials and operatives are preparing for the possibility of a Trump victory. Accordingly, planning is focused on undermining the incoming president with enough violence to rock his administration. Prominent post-election scenarios forecast such widespread rioting that the newly elected president would be compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act. With some senior military officials refusing to follow Trump’s orders, according to the scenarios, the U.S. Armed Forces would split, leaving America on the edge of the abyss.
By vilifying Trump as a despotic madman who must be stopped before he can commence his reign of terror, the regime’s propaganda apparatus not only slanders Trump but also pre-emptively threatens the reputation, as well as the livelihood and perhaps the liberty, of current military personnel. The point is to push the military against Trump: When the time comes to act, will you stand for democracy or side with a tyrant who sees the military only as an instrument to advance his personal interests?
For instance, last week the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, quoted former Trump administration officials claiming that the Republican candidate is contemptuous of America’s armed forces and, according to Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, wishes he could command the same respect that Hitler commanded from his general officers.
This is not the first time that Trump has been compared to Hitler or that Kelly, a retired Marine general, turned on his former commander-in-chief. Kelly was the key source for a story published before the 2020 election, also in the Atlantic and also by Jeffrey Goldberg, that alleged Trump had called American WWII soldiers buried in French cemeteries “suckers and losers.”
The veracity of Kelly’s latest revelation that Trump admires Hitler must of course be judged against the fact that he waited five years to disclose it, even if it is unlikely to have much effect on the current election cycle. The military, and veterans of the Global War on Terror in particular, overwhelmingly support the candidate opposed to waging endless and strategically pointless foreign wars. Moreover, Trump has weathered far more damaging fabrications — like the false allegations that he had been compromised by Russian intelligence — that only galvanized support for him.
The purpose of the Hitler narrative is not to alter the electoral preferences of left-wing media audiences already solidly in the anti-Trump column, but rather to justify taking extreme measures against the Republican candidate and the America First movement and ensure that the bulk of the military sides with the anti-Trump plot. Thus, it is best understood in the context of recent accounts promising, or urging, violence after the November vote.
For example, last week the New York Times published a long interview with a scholar of fascism who declared that Trump is a fascist. The paper of record followed up with another long article by two Harvard professors calling for mass mobilization in the event of a Trump victory. The proposal suggests that private industry join civil society organizations to ostracize Trump and his supporters and engage in large public protests to provoke a crisis. Kamala Harris herself, commenting on Kelly’s allegations in the Atlantic story, claimed that her opponent “is a fascist” during a CNN town hall.
