Donald Trump credit: Google images
Trump's Big Lie
By Dr. Gregory Stanton
September 24, 2024
Genocide Watch was founded in 1999 to predict and prevent genocide. We use a model of how genocide develops to warn about processes that make genocide possible. The Ten Stages of Genocide include:
• Classification: "us" versus "them," exclusion from citizenship
• Symbolization: IDs, names, color, language, dress, yellow stars
• Discrimination: exclusion from voting, jobs, housing, transport, parks, civil rights
• Dehumanization: calling people criminals, terrorists, vermin, cockroaches
• Organization: hate groups, armed militias, mobs
• Polarization: hate radio and TV, social media hate campaigns
• Preparation: planning, violent attacks, coups d'état
• Persecution: ghettos, starvation, untreated epidemics, trial massacres, mass deportations
• Extermination: concentration camps, mass killing, genocide
• Denial: Big Lies denying or justifying crimes
The processes are not linear. They often occur simultaneously. Together they lead to genocide.
The Nazis claimed that Jews "stabbed Germany in the back" and made Germany lose World War I. Victory for Germany was "stolen." The Nazis used this Big Lie to rise to power.
Nazis failed to win an outright majority in the elections of 1932, but as leader of the largest party, Hitler became Chancellor.On February 27, 1933, Nazis burned the Reichstag (German parliament.) Hitler dissolved parliament and declared emergency powers. Parliament never met again.
The Ten Stages of the Nazi Holocaust
• Classification: The Nazis re-classified Jews, stripping them of German citizenship.
• Symbolization: Jews had to carry IDs marked "Jude" and wear symbolic yellow stars.
• Discrimination: Jews were excluded from government and academic jobs. Jewish businesses were boycotted, destroyed, and confiscated. Jewish homes, art, and possessions were stolen by the Nazis.
• Dehumanization: Jews were dehumanized as "vermin," and as vampires who drank the blood of Christian children. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion portrayed Jews as monsters bent on controlling the world.
• Organization: The Nazi Party seized power, and the SS was organized to kill Jews.
• Polarization: Nazi media spewed hate propaganda. Opponents were the "lying press."
• Preparation: On Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) November 9-10, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers and mobs burned 1000 synagogues, looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, and sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. Nazi prisoners built the death camps.
Nazi leaders planned "The Final Solution" and tested methods of extermination.
• Persecution: Jews were deported into ghettos where they starved and perished.
• Extermination: Nazi troops invaded Eastern Europe, where Einsatzgruppen and Police Units murdered 1.3 million Jews. During the Holocaust, the Nazis transported and murdered over six million Jews, Roma, LGBTQ, and disabled people, and other minorities.
• Denial: The Nazis denied their crimes from start to finish. Holocaust deniers still deny the Nazi crimes. Holocaust denial is still dominant among neo-Nazis in Europe and America, in Iran, and in much of the Middle East.
Trump promotes all these processes, but another American genocide has not begun. The American Constitution enforced by courageous officials has checked the process at Polarization, Preparation, and Persecution. So far.
But Trump has not stopped. Now he is promising “the biggest deportations in history.”
The parallels of Donald Trump’s ideology and proposals with Hitler’s Nazism are ominous.
The Ten Stages of Genocide in Trump’s America
· Classification: Under Trump’s racist policies, ICE held asylum seekers in detention camps and separated children from their parents. Ten million immigrants in the US are still denied citizenship.
· Symbolization: Without documents, these ten million long-term residents cannot register to vote.
· Discrimination: One in six Black American men cannot vote. Native Americans are on reservations. Visitors from Muslim countries were barred from the US, a policy Trump says he will reimpose. Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants is based on racist xenophobia that appeals to white supremacist fears that whites are being “replaced.”
· Dehumanization: Trump calls immigrants at the southern border “invaders”, "murderers", “criminals”, "rapists", “fentanyl smugglers”, “gang members”, “mentally ill”, "Illegal aliens", ”vermin” who pollute American “blood”. Trump insists without any evidence that black Haitians eat pets.
· Organization: The Proud Boys and other white supremacists parade openly, brandishing automatic weapons. Trump says racists carrying swastikas are “good people.” He incited the mob that invaded the Capitol.
· Polarization: FOX news, right-wing radio, and over 130 members of Congress and the Senate amplify Trump's Big Lie that he won the election and that his followers should "Stop the Steal." He denounces reports of his election defeat as "Fake News." Over half of Republican voters believe Trump’s Big Lie.
· Preparation: White supremacists post hate speech on Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Signal, and Telegram. They planned the takeover of the US Capitol. They are planning more violence if Harris is inaugurated.
· Persecution: Black and Native Americans died from Covid-19 at a mortality rate per capita over twice as high as for whites. White police still shoot Black people with impunity. Trump promises his enemies will be imprisoned.
· Extermination: The mob that took over the Capitol was led by terrorists, intent on murdering the Speaker of the House and the Vice President. They tried to enable a coup d'état to keep Trump in power.
· Denial: Trump's Big Lie is that he won the 2020 election "by a landslide," and it was a "Stolen Election." His followers believe "the steal" justified the invasion of the Capitol to prevent certification of the election.
Some rioters who seized the Capitol on January 6 wore 6MNE T-shirts ("Six Million is Not Enough"). Others wore Auschwitz sweatshirts. Many believed the QAnon neo-Nazi cult’s conspiracy theory that Jewish, Democrat, and Hollywood pedophiles kidnap children to drink their blood. QAnon revived the Nazi Blood Libel that Jews kidnap and murder Christian children, then mix their blood in matzos at Passover. There are now even QAnon cultists in Congress.
The parallels of Trump’s ideology to Nazism should make your blood run cold. He is supported by neo-Nazis and Congressmen and Senators too cowardly to oppose him.
It isn’t the first time that supporters of Nazism in Congress have tried to take over America. Rachel Maddow’s Prequel shows how Nazi Congressmen and Senators paid by Hitler’s Germany tried to keep America out of World War II.
Trump himself suffers from the same Narcissistic Personality Disorder that deranged Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and other tyrants. He is most at home with murderous dictators like Kim Jong-un, Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdoğan, and Mohammed bin Salman.
Like all narcissists, Trump can never admit he is wrong or that he has lost. Trump's worst fear is that he will be branded a "Loser." That is why Trump's Big Lie that he did not lose the 2020 election is vital to his narcissistic self-image. He is trying to inflict that Big Lie on America.
Make no mistake about it. The January 6th invasion of the Capitol was a Trump attempted coup d'état. By a 232 to197 vote to impeach supported by only ten Republican Congresspersons, Trump was stopped. For now.
It can happen here. If Trump wins again, it will happen here.
Dr. Gregory Stanton is the Founding President of Genocide Watch. He was Research Professor in
Genocide Studies at George Mason University, and the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at the
University of Mary Washington. He was President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Copyright 2024 Gregory H Stanton. This article is published under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license.
It may be freely republished in full with attribution to the author, Gregory H Stanton.