Trump, Totalitarianism and "the banality of evil"
The first course I ever taught, as a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University in 1973, was on “Totalitarian Political Systems.” I was asked to teach this course after my mentor and advisor, Vaclav Benes, who was to teach the course, had suddenly died. (I was, in fact, with him, when he collapsed of a heart attack).
Benes was the nephew of Eduard Benes, the President of Czechoslovakia, who was deposed by the communists in 1948. In that course, which Benes had designed, I used Hannah Arendt’s book “On the Origins of Totalitarianism” where she used the term “the banality of evil” and discussed how Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin had used “the big lie,” ethnic nationalism, and bombastic masculinity to win popular support. (Mussolini, in fact, called on the U.S. to “make American great.”)
At the time, I thought this mostly a lesson in history. But it is increasingly clear to me that Trump mimics the tactics, style and objectives of both Mussolini and Hitler, and poses the same threats to the United States that those two had on their countries.
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