Media and Religion: Tools of Political Manipulation

If you read historical accounts of Hitler’s rise as dictator of Germany, you notice numerous uncanny similarities in tactics used between #45 and “the Fuhrer.” Adolph Hitler’s hyperbole and use of symbols to galvanize nationalism as a rallying point are echoed by today’s populous sloganeering and constant stream of Twittered declarations. Efforts to vilify all dissenters and certain ethnic groups stoke racial and ethnic division. In Germany it was alienation of Jews. In the US it was the barring of immigrants and Muslims and derision of Mexicans described as “some are rapists and criminals.”

Hitler duped the German Lutheran and Catholic churches into believing that he was working in favor of their Christian doctrines and principles and in the interests of renewing Germany’s greatness after its humiliating defeat in World War I. Trump ran his campaign under the slogan “Make America Great Again,” inferring that the nation had been failed by its previous leaders, the most recent a non-white African American Barack Obama.

Despite inheriting an economy in full-throttle national GDP upward trending growth, rising rates of employment, and Affordable Health Care for citizens intact, along with a national security plan to combat pandemics, Trump remained committed to a “do-over“ of what he exclaimed inferior domestic programs and services, as well as international treaties and policies, implemented by his predecessor. Trump found zealous allies in his base of white Evangelical Christians anxious to restore America’s greatness and cultural hegemony as a “white Christian nation.” There seems to have been codified a quid pro quo between this unlikely “holy liaison.”

Trump promised to deliver on the Evangelicals’ conservative agenda, judicial preferences, and domestic policy priorities as atonement for his refusal to accept in practice Christianity’s own avowed principles of forgiveness, humility, regular worship, and church covenants expected among the faithful. Just as German Christians’ fealty to Hitler’s rhetoric supported his actions, so Trump understands that organized Evangelicals provide a firewall of political and financial support for his agenda of retaining power. Trump’s mission is to cultivate Evangelical backing by appealing to “pro-life” proponents to support his anti-immigration policies, limited government, expansion of charter schools, and eradication of affordable health care in lieu of privatization. These conservative policy priorities are trades- offs Evangelicals are willing to concede to Trump in their steadfast loyalty.

Hitler was able to tap into Germany’s desire for sovereignty by convincing them of their destined greatness as a united Christian German Aryan republic. He eventually was able to sublimate them under his sovereign rule and forbid their explicit freedom of political dissent that is at the heart of much of the Gospel’s teaching about uplifting humanity and showing justice and mercy to the neediest of all. Thus, fearful of retribution, the German Christian church was weakened and rendered incapable of overtly interceding on behalf of the Jews.

By nationalizing the German press and all media, Hitler and his henchman, Joseph Goebbels, controlled Nazi propaganda and all information made accessible to the German people. A unifying narrative of Aryan supremacy and denigrating of Jews, immigrants, gypsies, and the “others” as inferior gained political currency and acceptance as newly emergent national norms. After such wide-spread success in consolidating military power and rule under his role as Fuhrer, Hitler’s power was unchallenged until the final days of his death as Germany’s “dictator for life.” D.Day 6.2.20