Thread by @TrumpFile

Thread: Live tweeting as I listen to the brand new episode of the @GaslitNation podcast, "Electoral Autocracy: The @RuthBenGhiat Interview," with @AndreaChalupa & @SarahKendzior.

"I love when you have a one stop shop for all of your dictatorship needs!"

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Ruth is a professor at New York University and the author of Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, a study of the dictator's playbook--including the propaganda, corruption, and nepotism employed by Donald Trump. Give her a follow! @ruthbenghiat

If you're new here, we do this every Tuesday night! @GaslitNation is a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world. Fun, right?!

"The rules of personality cults... haven't really changed for 100 years. What you needed was mass communications and the beginning of mass surveillance... Mass communications is very, very important because propaganda works on the principles of repetition and saturation." - Ruth

I'm posting the above tweets now & live-tweeting as I listen from here. This episode of Gaslit Nation will be available wherever you get your podcasts soon, or listen early and get bonus episodes on Patreon! patreon.com/gaslit

"In a dictatorship, there's this idea of synchronization, that the same messages are played throughout society in slightly different ways through education, through all the different media." - Ruth

The GOP wants this with Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Parler, the 1776 Commission, etc.

Historically, when massive groups of people feel angry and anxious about changes in society, that's when we dangerous leaders come along "who promise to be saviors of society, who promise to turn the clock back, in a sense, but also shake things up."

Under Trump, we saw the destabilization of society and the rise of mass media propaganda. This is "the textbook rise of dictatorships."

Sarah asks why it was so difficult for Americans to believe that Trump was an aspiring dictator when he fit the bill.

Leaders like Trump "force nations to reckon with their cherished ideas about national identity. One of the myths about America was 'It can't happen here.' That we're the land of freedom... Their frame was, resolutely, that America is a place of democracy." - Ruth

"Our cherished idea is that there's American exceptionalism. Although the true American exceptionalism is our gun policy--500 million guns in private hands and arsenals. That's the true American exceptionalism." - @ruthbenghiat

"Conservative elites will back these extremist figures & bring them into the mainstream thinking they can control them... [They] will let themselves be 'used,' but the joke is that they end up leading those elites, forcing them to even more extreme positions." - @ruthbenghiat

Not only will the extremists end up leading elites to take even more extreme positions, but the elites also "legitimize all the extremism that's already been there. And that's what Trump did."

We see that now with the elite normalization of Lauren Boebert, Greene, etc.

"Donald Trump and Steve Bannon's coup in the making"

This op-ed by @ruthbenghiat was published in February 2017. Yes, 2017. edition.cnn.com/2017/02/01/opi…

"There's no doubt that Trump takes things that were pioneered by fascism... The corruption, the turning public office into private profit. Of course he also channels neo-Nazis, so he's got a lot of things that come from fascism, but his aims are different from fascism." - Ruth

"He wants to... How do you put it Sarah?"

"Strip the country down and sell it for parts?"

"Yeah! And convert everything into a private money making enterprise for him and his cronies."

Trump is a kleptocratic autocrat who uses fascism.

Leaders like Trump have to turn the public against the press, because the press can harm them with information about their crimes.

"He came out and said it, a few years into his presidency, that he wanted to discredit the press so nobody would believe what they said." - Ruth

Besides discrediting the press, men like Trump have to elevate themselves as "the arbiter of reality" within a personality cult.

"There's a whole apparatus of collaboration that goes into this." Example: religious leaders claiming a leader was chosen by God.

Elite groups (like the GOP, the CNP, etc) know the leader is an amoral, transactional individual. They support him because they know that he will do their bidding if they give him credibility, cover up his crimes, etc.

"They underestimate the destructiveness of the personality."

"Politicians have always told lies. They've always had their party lines. There have been moments when party discipline has been imposed. But not like this... At this point, it's a very concerted effort to erode democracy." - @ruthbenghiat

#GOPCorruptionOverCountry

"One party is no longer a democratic party. The GOP has become a far right party. It has more than one foot in the realm of authoritarianism at this point." - @ruthbenghiat

We like to joke about how kooky GOP figures are sometimes, but this should worry everyone.

"I heard this privately from people on the left saying 'Trump should become president and burn it all down.' ...Once you're in that black hole, once you've burned it all down, it's very hard to come back out of that." - @AndreaChalupa

"Trump was trying to sabotage the Biden administration by not taking care of corona, no economic relief, all of this. [When that happens,] democratic governance becomes / looks so unstable... that it increases the appetite of the voters for 'law and order' governance." - Ruth

"It's too easy for us just to laugh at Putin who strips his shirt off, shows his pecs, or Trump with his [hot Trump memes]... We can laugh at it, but it's deadly serious because virility-- it's part of their personality cults, but it's also key to their corruption." - Ruth

"As we've said on this show many times... This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government, and there are people within that system -- like Jeffrey Epstein -- who seem more central to it than our actual elected officials." - @sarahkendzior

"All authoritarians legalize lawlessness. They institutionalize and glorify lawlessness... Trump brought this to new levels, and it makes sense. The people around him have been involved in places [where government officials are predators]." - Ruth

"The formulation of the transnational crime syndicate is so important because it's also hard for many Americans to think of governance in those terms. They might know about mafia methods, but the transnational scope can be difficult to grasp." - @ruthbenghiat

The anti-globalist narrative in the GOP is blatantly hypocritical.

"No one is more of a globalist than Trump. His whole business model was licensing his name and enterprises abroad. Well into the presidency, he and Ivanka were picking up Chinese trademarks." - @ruthbenghiat

Did you know about Ivanka's Chinese voting machine trademarks? trumpfile.org/china-approves…

Trump also attacked Hillary on the campaign trail for financial ties to Saudi Arabia... But the government of Saudi Arabia literally owns the 45th floor of Trump World Tower. trumpfile.org/donald-trump-s…

"We need to do way more to expose this hypocrisy as part of exposing how these transnational crime methods have been able to infiltrate more and more into American governance."

Trump's ties to transnational organized crime date back to 1984 or earlier. trumpfile.org/category/crime/

"Hitler, like Trump, ruled through chaos. And he ruled through essentially paying people off. His top guys in the infrastructure of the Nazi party got to have their own little fiefdoms and enrich themselves and steal from the state and steal from their victims." - @AndreaChalupa

The Nazis bribed Germany with beneficial policies to make voters ignore the crimes & dangers. Similarly, Trump voters touted tax cuts for the rich and less regulations as reasons to support him, even though he went straight to the Muslim ban and separating families at the border.

People like Trump's supporters have a heart. But they are encouraged to be complicit and not worry that others are being persecuted. The leader (Trump) makes it easier by giving them reasons to feel like it's worth it to participate in the corruption and violence.

January 6th: "When Trump had the rally, he wasn't just inciting violence... He told them he loved them. He said 'I love you. You're special. Our journey is beginning.' This [was] elevation of the worst criminal elements in society." - Ruth

"Every single time a GOP official goes on television, they are telling you that the GOP has decided that violence is an acceptable way to solve the problem of staying in power... There's a real emergency in the GOP because they can't, perhaps, win legally." - @ruthbenghiat

January 6th was an unsuccessful insurrection, but it was a successful recruiting tool. They could have gone the direction of disavowing Trump and the coup attempt. They went the other direction because that's how badly they need the personality cult to elect them.

"Elections become just another piece of information that can be denied -- or fabricated through fraud -- and replaced with the 'reality' you need to stay in office... Just a few people made a big difference this time. [The GOP] is learning from this." - Ruth

"In the future, they won't really care if they didn't win the election. They'll try to stay in power anyways. And in that, they will be like 21st century authoritarians in other countries." - @ruthbenghiat

That's all for this week's Gaslit Nation. For the FULL discussion, make sure to listen to the episode. This week's bonus episode is "Madison Cawthorn, the Lincoln Project, & More!" Get that and more on Patreon at the Truth-Teller level or higher.

patreon.com/gaslit

If you're a reader like me, check out Ruth's book 'Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.' Buy it from a local shop if you can do so safely.

Big thanks to @sarahkendzior @AndreaChalupa & @ruthbenghiat. For more Gaslit Nation, here's last week's thread ⬇️

https://twitter.com/TrumpFile/status/1369511391732789248