The Uncanny, Frightening Ways That Trump's America Mirrors Hitler's Germany @alternet:
"Nazi leaders and propagandists of the 1930s used the phrase Lügenpresse (“lying press”) at every opportunity to describe the media of their day; today Trump and his supporters are both undermining our faith in our press, and preparing us for a crackdown on press outlets like this one. And once net neutrality is done away with, they merely have to work with their friends in the multibillion-dollar ISP corporations who, like with the 2006 AT&T scandal and others, are more than happy to help “intelligence” agencies and the administration out. The phrase “Fake news” is simply the Trump version of Lügenpresse, and the goal and trajectory are the same. Even Mike Godwin, the inventor of Godwin’s Law (basically, that “whoever first mentions Hitler automatically loses the argument”), is now writing in the Washington Post that, “If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump.” Fritz Thyssen was a very wealthy and politically active German industrialist in the 1930s—arguably the Murdoch/Koch/Adelson/Mercer/etc. of his day in Germany— helped fund the rise of Hitler because he thought it would be good for his business and that Hitler would cut his taxes. When I read his book I Paid Hitler, part apologia and part rationalization, I couldn’t help but wonder how the heirs of today’s GOP/Trump-financing billionaires will look back on this era. That’s assuming, of course, that any sort of real history of the events of this time survives Trump and Pence’s dual assault on our news organizations and net neutrality. As Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie."
