As I was reading Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant Caste (see my review, here), I was struck by two passages, more than a hundred pages apart.
They both could have been written in the last five years, about now-President Donald Trump.
Please Note: The first passage is about Nazi Germany, particularly Hitler. I am not saying in any way that Trump = Hitler.
Hitler was evil and had a plan.
Trump is an incompetent carnival barker, who relies on instinct of the moment to drive his policies.
That said, the way Trump wormed his way into leadership is a bit like Hitler: Republican leaders didn’t take him seriously, he was good for TV ratings, and they woefully misread how he could galvanize his base.
Hitler had made it to the chancellery in a brokered deal the conservative elites agreed to only because they were convinced they could hold him in check and make use of him for their own political aims. They underestimated his cunning and overestimated his base of support.
[…]
The old guard did not foresee, or chose not to see, that his actual mission was “to exploit the methods of democracy to destroy democracy.”
By the time they recognized their fatal miscalculation, it was too late. Hitler had risen as an outside agitators, a cult figure enamored of the pageantry and rallies with parades of people carrying tourches that an observer said looked like “rivers of fire.” Hitler saw himself as the voice of the Volk, of grievances and fears especially those in the rural districts, as a god-chosen savior running on instinct. He had never held a political office before
The second passage is from a chapter titled “The Insecure Alpha and the Purpose of an Underdog.”
The basic premise of the chapter is that, if you are not truly an Alpha (dictator wanna-be), you have to convince people you are one. And one of the simplest way to do that is find an underdog and turn your abuse on them. Find someone who, for whatever reason, can’t fight back. Faux Alpha.
In India, the Untouchables.
In Nazi Germany, the Jews.
In America, blacks.
You know that you are not seeing a true alpha or, put another way, you have encountered an insecure alpha, if he or she must yell, scream, bully, or attack those beneath them into submission. That individual does not have a loyalty and trust of the pack and endangers the entire group through his or her insecurities, through his or her show of fear and lack of courage.
I really don’t have anything to add to this.