Trump's Triumphs of the Will

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text: Greg Olear
@gregolear
"What happens when that leader insinuates to us that he and those who follow him can get away with saying and doing offensive things? That is the version of freedom that Trump models and offers: selective lawlessness."

—@jeffblack945 @ PREVAIL

Trump's Triumphs of the Will
Why do Trumpsters love Trump?
gregolear.substack.com

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/trumps-triumphs-of-the-will

Guest post by Rev. Jeff Black

MAYBE, like me, you’ve been pondering the attraction between Trump and Trumpsters. I’ve wondered: What is it about this man that attracts such a fervent response? Why are people so deliriously happy to attend his incoherent rallies? What is it he offers them? Lots of them seem like good, regular people. What don’t I get?

Then I had an insight.

It came to me recently, as I watched coverage of Trump’s rally in Sanford, Florida. They’re enthralled by the apparently unstoppable triumphs of his will.

Let’s explore that a little.

In 1934, Leni Riefenstahl produced her first brilliant propaganda film, a documentary called The Victory of Faith. The faith wasn’t Lutheranism. There was a new faith in town: Hitlerism. Her film chronicled Hitler’s creation in 1925 of the Sturmabteilung, or SA. Hitler, not content with the limits of the SA, then went on to create the Schutzstaffel, or SS.

So in 1935, Riefenstahl produced her second documentary, even greater in its artistry and technique: The Triumph of the Will. It chronicled and glorified Hitler’s greatest early achievement—the rally of 700,000 Germans in Nuremberg to produce, from the ashes of Germany’s democracy, the SS, and with it, the Nazi state.

*snip*