playbook strategy
420 mostly FF corps follow tobacco, but other variants
fascist
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NO LNX
Thom Hartmann
October 06, 2025
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson
People are baffled. Why are Trump and his Republican lickspittles so intent on gutting our government, destroying our alliances and reputation around the world, and screwing working class people while transferring over $50 trillion to the morbidly rich?
Historian Kevin M. Kruse captured the zeitgeist brilliantly, reflecting widespread public bewilderment when he posted over on BlueSky:
“We’ve had ----ups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a ---up. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn’t be doing anything different.”
So, let’s engage in a simple thought experiment. If you or I were hired by Vladimir Putin, an angry group of billionaires who want to end democracy, or a wealthy serial killer, and our orders were to tear our country apart and make us vulnerable to foreign takeover, what would we do? What steps would we take?
As I mentioned a few days ago, if we follow the Dictator’s Playbook there actually is a simple, 12-step formula to make that happen.
The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income, and whether we live in cities or rural areas.
In Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), he described the first three strategies that “despotic moralists” use to rip apart the fabric of a society. They were Fac et excusa (“Act now, and make excuses later”), Si fecisti, nega (“If you commit a crime, deny it”), and Divide et impera (“Divide and conquer”). Jefferson perhaps inspired Kant when, in 1787, he wrote, “Divide et impera [is] the reprobated axiom of tyranny…”
When Hitler claimed that Jews, Gypsies, and queer people weren’t “real Germans,” he was invoking that principle. Joe McCarthy tried to divide us by political ideology. David Duke said we should be separated by skin color.
Its most recent invocation was just this week when Trump and Pete Hegseth told our nation’s generals that most Black, Hispanic, and female officers were only in their positions because of their gender or skin color. “Whiskey Pete” was blunt, claiming that Ronald Reagan’s invocation of America’s traditional belief that “our diversity is our strength” was an “insane fallacy.”
Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’d been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream.
That strategy would include several steps:
Destroy unions that bind workers together with their employers and raise standards of living.
Gut programs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, including high-quality universal public education, low-cost college, and inexpensive access to healthcare.}:
Ship manufacturing overseas to low-wage nations while using incoherent, ever-changing whim-based tariffs to batter the domestic economy.}:
Build media operations that demonize “the other,” telling them Blacks, Hispanics, queer people and women are the cause of their troubles.}:
Ban books that embrace diversity and teachers who use them.}:
Spread hate and conspiracy theories via powerful social media and search engine algorithms that make them seem normal, coarsening the entire culture.}:
Throw people off programs offering healthcare, student debt repayment, and housing subsidies.}:
Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news. Loudly proclaim that it all has a “leftwing bias” and can’t be trusted, that reporters are elite “enemies of the people,” and attack the media relentlessly.
Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories. Convince citizens to stop taking commonsense steps to protect themselves and their children including vaccinations, precautions against airborne diseases, or measures to slow climate change. Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.
Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.
Sixth, fracture citizens’ faith in their elected officials and the government itself. Legalize the practice of morbidly rich people and giant corporations buying legislation and the loyalty of politicians with cash by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” “dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”
Seventh, turn the military and police forces of the nation against its own people, making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men in the streets, kicking in their doors at midnight. Start with vilified minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.
Eighth, demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villainizing its leadership.
Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.
Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions — corporations, universities, law firms — into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.
Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws like the Hatch Act that forbids the use of any government agency or property for political or commercial purposes.
Force agencies to make illegal, partisan statements denigrating the opposition party and defy anybody who calls out that naked criminality. Sneer and laugh at those who demand that people committing crimes in office should be held accountable.
Twelfth, turn the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under the rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.
All of these 12 simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğan, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi.
Whether Trump has put America on this road at the insistence (or by the payment from) Putin, rightwing American billionaires, or just his own authoritarian impulses and with strategies he’s learned from Orbán and Putin, it doesn’t have to end with America resembling today’s Russia or Hungary.
The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies.
They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.
History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question — the only question that matters now — is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along, like the citizens of those countries listed above have done in the recent past.
If they can do it, so can we.
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no lnx
Dictators have a playbook — but the media seems oblivious to it
Thom Hartmann
October 03, 2025
Most jobs have a “playbook,” a sort of instruction manual or checklist for how to do the job right, whether it’s running an assembly line, piloting an aircraft, or redoing a house’s plumbing.
Although our media seems oblivious to it, dictators have a playbook, too.
It’s one that’s been carefully followed in recent times by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, and numerous initially-elected leaders of other smaller nations. In previous generations the Dictator’s Playbook was followed, step-by-step, by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Ferdinand Marcos, Agustin Pinochet, Josef Stalin, and Hideki Tojo (among others).
And now it’s being followed by Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are a bit more than halfway through the list. Trump’s speech on Tuesday before our assembled generals and admirals — telling them they should use our American cities as “training grounds” for the military whose job is to “kill people and break things” — is getting us closer to the final steps.
“We are under invasion from within,” Trump said, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. … We’re under invasion from within.”}:
And who is this enemy that’s so bad, so evil, that Trump just declared war against? He was explicit that the “enemies” are his political opponents and average people who live in our big cities:
“The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats ... what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one. This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”}:
What’s most astonishing about the reporting on this meeting is that none of the media I follow have even once mentioned that militarizing the nation’s cities is one of the most significant steps in the Dictator’s Playbook.
Combine that with the demand for absolute loyalty to the Dear Leader — Trump told the generals “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room” THEN ThREateded their careers? — and he’s declared himself the absolute ruler of America wielding the most lethal military in the history of the world against our nation’s own citizens.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow recently laid out five moves that dictators reliably make.
First, they identify an internal enemy to blame for social ills; Trump has spent years turning immigrants, big cities, and universities into scapegoats. Now, like every dictator listed above has done, he’s claiming that the opposition political party, the Democrats, are an “enemy within.”
Second, they turn security forces inward, exactly what Trump’s new call for turning our military against our cities represents. The moment a dictator turns military forces built to destroy foreign adversaries against his own people, the rest of the transformation becomes easier.}:
Third, they criminalize dissent and protest, insisting that when people show up in the streets it is not constitutionally protected free speech and the right “peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances” but a security “threat” to be crushed rather than heard and responded to.}:
Fourth, they intimidate or capture the press and punish truth-telling, as we’re seeing now with rightwing billionaires capturing virtually every major traditional and social media source in America.
Fifth, they seize control of independent institutions like universities, law firms, or the civil service to eliminate any professional standards that interfere with Dear Leader’s will.}:
Overlay that list with the work of historians and political scientists like Timothy Snyder, Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jason Stanley, and M. Gessen. Their research on how democracies die all point to the same ingredients:
Deny or rewrite election results to delegitimize democracy itself.}:
Declare political opponents enemies of the state.}:
Turn independent institutions like the Department of Justice, the civil service, and the military into personal tools.}:
Flood the public square with lies so thoroughly (Steve Bannon proudly called it “flooding the zone with ----") that reality itself becomes negotiable.}:
Tolerate or celebrate political violence on behalf of the dictator, and demonize violence against his followers and mouthpieces as sedition and treason.
Demand personal loyalty instead of constitutional duty.}:
Invoke a mythic past and promise national rebirth if only the strongman is given total sovereignty.:
Use his office to rapidly enrich himself and his family while creating a patronage network of loyalists who owe their fortunes to him.}:
There is also the money. Autocrats rarely forget to convert state power into private wealth. Trump’s hotels, golf courses, and commercial properties brought in millions from foreign governments during his first time in office, as documented by House Oversight Committee findings.
His son-in-law Jared Kushner secured a two-billion-dollar investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund almost immediately after leaving the White House. Ivanka Trump picked up fast-tracked Chinese trademarks while advising her father in government.
Kleptocracy is not a side effect of authoritarianism or fascism: it’s essential, particularly when some of that fortune is shared with those willing to break the law to support Dear Leader. So far, according to reporting, Trump and his family have made at least $5 billion from his 9-month-long presidency. It’s a core feature of the Dictator’s Playbook.
And when people protest the theft of the nation’s resources and the personal enrichment based on handing out favors, dictators go after them in the most brutal ways imaginable. It begins with investigations, but never ends there. Just look at what he’s doing to James Comey and Miles Taylor.
And now Trump has issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum that essentially says Democrats, atheists, Muslims, Jews, socialists, and queer people are terrorists. Not because of anything they’ve done, but because of who they are or what they believe.
It directs the FBI, DOJ, and over 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces coordinated with police forces across the country to investigate anybody who meet it’s “indica” (indicators) of potential terrorism. They include, as Ken Klippenstein reported:
“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”
Do any of those sound like you? If Trump and Republicans continue down this road, get ready to have your life turned upside down as they tear apart your social media profiles, search your email and postal mail, surveil you, and one day bang on your door in the middle of the night.
And you don’t have to have actually done a thing. Trump’s order explicitly calls on the FBI and local police coordinating with them to “intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
To go after you before you do anything, based entirely on who you are, who you love, what you believe, and what you say.
That is not the America our Founders, or the men and women who’ve fought and died to keep us free for 249 years, envisioned. And, again, the mainstream media almost entirely missed it while rightwing media ignored it altogether. Even though one day it may be directed against them if they say or do anything to offend Trump or his henchmen.
When Trump told the generals he would remove anyone who does not “agree with everything I say,” he also embraced the logic of tyrants who treat disagreement as insubordination.
Democracies rely on officers sworn to the Constitution, not to one man. Trump is trying to undo that distinction. He’s demanding personal loyalty backed by the threat of firing, demotion, or public shaming. Civilian control of the military that George Washington and James Madison insisted on becomes a hollow phrase when the civilian in charge demands the military serve his whims.
What once sounded like fringe rhetoric is now proclaimed loudly to the uniformed leadership of the United States. The generals who heard him are not hypothetical. They command forces, oversee operations, and embody the principle that the military does not exist to occupy American streets.
The notion that they should roll tanks into urban neighborhoods to harden troops for foreign war is not law enforcement: it’s preparation for ruling America by force, a force that may well be preparing for the November 2026 elections.
This is the kind of moment historians point back to later with disbelief. The warnings have been clear for years, but now the mask is off.
Even though our media insists on ignoring it, the Dictator’s Playbook has always included using a nation’s biggest cities as the stage for demonstrating power. It’s always required replacing officers and officials who follow the laws and traditions of a nation with loyalists who obey without question. It’s always depended on turning people against one another so Dear Leader and his lickspittles can step in as the only source of safety or authority.
Nobody can say this is a surprise: Trump pretty much campaigned on exactly what he’s doing now, and people from former intelligence, military, and FBI leaders to scholars of fascism warned us this was coming if Republicans suppressed enough votes for him to win. (Without the GOP having prevented 4.2 million registered citizen voters from voting or having their votes counted, Kamala Harris would have won and the House and Senate would today be under Democratic control).
The question now is whether Americans will accept a president who treats their hometowns as battle simulations and sees disagreement by generals and agency leaders as an offense punishable by firing, imprisonment, or exile.
As I point out in my new book The Last American President, it’ll depend on whether we’ll stand up and speak out. Or whether, like our media and so many universities, law firms, media outlets, and giant corporations, we’ll cower in fear and submit to Trump’s demands.
That is not law and order, and it’s not democracy in a free republic. It’s the language of autocracy that yesterday was spoken out loud in front of the armed forces of the United States and is echoed every time Trump attacks a reporter, media outlet, or one of his many “enemies.”
Will American democracy survive this onslaught, straight out of the Dictator’s Playbook? To a large extent, that will depend on you, me, and our elected officials summoning the courage to resist and protest loudly. And our media to call it out for what it is.
The clock is ticking, and these guys are racing for the finish line.
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brulle 2021 obstructing:
...Our analysis also supports the finding that funding strategies differ between progressive and
conservative philanthropists.We find a striking stability in funding over the 16-year time
period. The funding strategy of the conservative movement was laid out in the so-called Fat
Memo(Miller 2005), which informed the giving practices of theOlin Foundation, the first
major conservative philanthropy, and subsequent conservative donors. These funding efforts
focus on the development and promulgation of a clear conservative viewpoint. To realize that
effort, conservative philanthropies have funded a range of organizations that act to realize that
goal on a long-term basis. This strategy focused on the creation and maintenance of conservative
think tanks, development of public intellectuals (“thought leaders”), and promulgation
of a consistent ideological message. Additionally, conservative foundations focus on building
institutional capacity in organizations with strong communications capabilities (Covington
1997; Barley 2010).
This consistent and long-term funding strategy has enabled the development of a cohesive
institutional network of conservative organizations that work collectively to promulgate a
consistent message. This strategy stands in marked contrast to the funding strategy of
progressive foundations, which focus on individual research projects and short-term efforts.
Consequently, the progressive activist organizations and think tanks form a very loose and
disconnected network(Barley 2010, p. 792). This differs significantly from the very tight
network of organizations and think tanks that comprise the conservative movement. The
analysis confirms the long-term stable funding that maintains the CCCM.
This analysis still leaves Senator Whitehouse’s question unanswered. The source of over
three-quarters of the funding of the CCCM cannot be identified.While some of this funding
could come from small donations, the existing IRS disclosure rules do not enable any further
investigation in this area. Further research is needed to develop new means to extend our
understanding of the unidentified funders that created and maintain the CCCM.[refs]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula
The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.
The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.[1][2]
The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the National Association of Manufacturers Labor Relations Bulletin, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.[3][non-primary ^source needed] Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used. At least one source names the strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.[4] Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the Remington Rand strike.
Noam Chomsky has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on propaganda. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their patriotism.[5][6]
Elements of the formula
The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:
- When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".
- Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.
- Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.
- Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.
- Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.
- When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.
- Stage the "opening" theatricallyby throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.
- Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force.If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.
- Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.[2]
A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in The Nation in 1937.[1]
See also
Notes
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_ref-nation_1-1) Stolberg, Benjamin (Aug 1937). "Vigilantism, 1937". The Nation. 145 (7): 166–168. Archived from the original on 2009-07-20.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_ref-IAMAW_2-1) Rodden, Robert G. (1984). *The Fighting Machinists: A Century of Struggle*. Retrieved 2009-07-10.
- ^ "National Association of Manufacturers. Pamphlets, 1908-1969". Retrieved 2009-07-10.
- ^ From Aristotelian to Reaganomics: A Dictionary of Eponyms With Biographies ... by R. C. S. Trahair, page 54
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (Nov 2002). *Chomsky on Democracy & Education (Social Theory, Education, and Cultural Change)*. RoutledgeFalmer. ISBN 978-0-415-92632-4. Retrieved 2009-07-10.
- ^ Barsamian, David; Chomsky, Noam (May 2001). *Propaganda and the Public Mind*. South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-634-0.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tactics-from-the-right-wing-playbook-on-covid-19/
pfaw peter montgomery
During this extremely challenging time, when the spread of the coronavirus threatens people’s lives and the nation’s well-being, Americans should be able to count on their leaders for honest and accurate information. But Americans who trust right-wing media, political, and religious leaders have too often gotten the opposite.
President Donald Trump himself has been a steady source of dishonesty, disinformation, and wildly mixed signals about the coronavirus outbreak. And his supporters in right-wing media, the religious-right political movement, and Republican Party leadership have employed a range of messaging strategies and tactics designed to mask administration failures, smear its critics, and promote narratives that serve to distract and misinform Americans about the crisis and the public health measures being taken to address it.
Here, briefly, are some of the ways Americans are being ill-served by conservative leaders, activists, and media.
Dismissing and Downplaying the Threat
In the early days of the spread of the virus, Trump and members of his administration downplayed the seriousness of the threat the virus posed to Americans. Trump’s allies and right-wing media have decried what they described as a hoax, hype, and fearmongering designed to harm Trump’s reelection prospects. Even now, as new cases and deaths continue to spike, Trump and his supporters send mixed messages about the threat and the importance of social distancing.
Distracting Americans with Conspiracy Theories and Finger-Pointing
A wide range of conspiracy theories about the virus and its spread have been promoted not only by fringe activists in online spaces but also by members of Congress and religious leaders with large audiences. Many of the conspiracy theories are meant to deflect accountability from U.S. officials’ decision-making by diverting attention and blame elsewhere. COVID-19 has been portrayed as a weapon of war launched by the Chinese or North Korean governments and as a plot by Satan, the Democratic Party, globalists, big pharma, and other habitual enemies of the right-wing imagination.Others who promote theQAnon conspiracy theory popular in some corners of Trump’s base say the virus and social distancing measures are cover for Trump to make mass arrestsof a deep-state pedophile ring. A new wave of hoax conspiracy-mongering is spreading on social media using hashtags like #coronavirustruth and #FilmYourHospital.
Pushing the Team Trump Line, Whatever It Is
The extent to which right-wing activists, leaders, and media have become public relations vehicles of the White House is evident in the ways that they have followed the Trump administration’s own dramatic shifts from dismissing fears of the virus as hype generated by the media to belatedly recognizing the seriousness of the situation and the need for strong public health measures. Trump’s supporters have learned from him not to bother acknowledging or explaining their abrupt shifts in position. One religious-right activist even defended Trump’s misinformation as a strategy for sowing confusion in the “enemy camp.”
Making the Most of It / Shameless Opportunism
Some right-wing leaders are taking advantage of the crisis to push preexisting agendas. Among them: promoting hostility to immigrants and immigration; shutting down accessto abortion; promoting school vouchers; underminingenvironmentalprotections; fomenting nationalism and disparaging international institutions;disparaging federal aid to struggling individuals and promoting libertarian social darwinism; and weakening the separation of church and state. Others have used it to enrich themselves by selling bogus “cures.”
Playing God and Portraying Trump’s Actions as Part of a Divine Plan
Conservative evangelicals are Trump’s most loyal supporters. Many have followed his shifts, urging their followers to adopt the administration’s social distancing guidelines. But some haveresisted restrictions on large gatherings, portraying them as attacks on religious liberty and telling supporters that believers have divine protection. Some have portrayed attending church as a test of their faith in God’s power to heal. Some have called the virus a sign of God’s punishment for abortion or homosexuality, and others have said it’s God’s way to focus attention on the church.
Some “prophetic” leadershave declared that God will bring swift and miraculous resolution to the crisis: one asserted that the tide was turning in mid-February; others decreed that the virus would leave Earth on March 23; and others have predicted divine intervention around Passover or Easter, when Trump himself has said he would like to see churches full. Some are depicting current events as evidence that we are living in the End Times and that believers should therefore expect “pestilence” and other events prophesied for the last days.
This post has been updated.
Tags: conspiracy theories Coronavirus disinformation Trump Administration
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