Any examination of history shows that people can be brought to believe almost anything.
So, Germans voted away the right to vote and put all power in the hands of a scruffy, diminutive, dark-haired, brown-eyed Austrian, who proclaimed the era of the neat, tall, blond, blue-eyed Aryan superman.
Fifty million people died in the aftermath of this group delusion.
There is no safety in numbers when it comes to belief, and joining the crowd often leads to catastrophe.
This post is an excerpt from Jon’s new book, Opening Minds – A Primer on Undue Influence, scheduled for release in the fall of 2019
” joining the crowd often leads to catastrophe” My ex-husband chose that rather than standing up for/with me –
More dangerous than authoritarian groups is an authoritarian president working at undermining the underpinnings of the democracy of America – using the same playbook as Hitler – demonizing groups, usually black, brown or Muslim – using bigotry and zenophobia to energize his base. Operating almost unilaterally like a monarch, calling the press the enemy, owning the Attorney General and attempting to own the Justice Department, committing crimes outlined in the Mueller report yet not prosecutable because he’s a sitting president. Echoing Hitler, he has already separated hundreds of children from their families, and they are literally occupying an old Japanese internment camps, for one. And suffering in cages, basically, from deplorable conditions you wouldnt visit on a dog. This policy came from the fetid recesses of white nationalist nezi Steve Miller, Trump’s Goering. This is the most dangerous authoritarian today, and his movement with their “Lock her up!” Chants are very much cult-like. Trump has got the camps, the Nazi mentality, is a sociopath IC narcissist like Hitler. It wouldn’t take much to do a Third Reich do-over by declaring martial law and turning those camps into death camps.