Former president Donald Trump and German Führer Adolf Hitler share many qualities: A far right ideology, a mythos centered around a Big Lie, a predilection for theatrics. Until July 13, 2024, however, only Hitler had nourished his cult of personality around assassination attempts.
From a drunken brawl in 1921 (back when Hitler was just a Nazi Party speaker and long before he rose to national power) and an ordinary citizen's pistol in 1939 to multiple official bombing conspiracies, Hitler survived so many attempts on his life that his followers claimed he was protected by a higher power. Certainly, Hitler had luck on his side; one attempted bombing only failed because of a defective fuse, while three others failed (two in 1943 and one in 1944) because Hitler randomly happened to leave the locations he was expected to be when the bombs went off. Regardless of whether it was dumb luck or a malevolent god, though, Hitler's repeated brushes with death were a figurative godsend for the Nazis: They helped spread the impression that their victory was inevitable and that Hitler was worthy of admiration.
Perhaps most significantly, each assassination reinforced the Nazi narrative that criticizing them was not just wrong, but inherently evil. This happened even when the would-be assassins were fellow Nazis and not the Nazis' opponents — much as the cursory evidence on Trump's attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, reveals far more evidence of Republicanism (his party registration, his fixation with firearms, the Trump campaign being aware of Crooks' father as a strong Republican and his family reportedly having MAGA signs on their lawn) than being a Democrat (a single $15 contribution to a Democratic political group prior to registering as a Republican). As historians and writers like John Grehan and Don Allen Gregory point out, the attempts on Hitler's life often were used to justify waves of repression against Jews, political dissidents and anyone else who the Nazis traditionally vilified. Republicans are already showing signs of doing exactly this, with Trump's future vice presidential running mate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio leading a chorus of conservatives blaming Democrats and liberals for the shooting.
This is not because the Nazis innovated the art of propagandizing. It's because they were using the same techniques practiced by successful cults — whether political, religious or otherwise — throughout human history.
"The goal is chaos uncertainty — fourth generation psychological warfare, which I wrote about in the cult of Trump, which attacks experts and science and democratic institutions," said Dr. Steven Hassan, one of the world's foremost experts on mind control and cults, a former senior member of the Unification Church, founder/director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc. and author of the bestselling books "Freedom of Mind," "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump." "And the goal with this type of warfare is to create so much uncertainty and stress that people will respond to a very simplistic authoritarian message, which is incorrectly being cast as populism, which it is not."
Dr. Nathan P. Kalmoe, the executive administrative director of the University of Wisconsin — Madison's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, explained to Salon that groups which are told they are under attack — much as Trump told his audience that the person who tried to shoot him was really attacking all of them — are more likely to commit violence.
"Violence by political or social opponents doubles support for political violence among the group that feels attacked, which creates a major danger of violent retaliation," Kalmoe said. "My research with Lilliana Mason shows the same. Violence by extremists within a broad political coalition (e.g. a far-right attack on right-wing politicians) can lead to reevaluation of those coalitions and potential alliances with moderates and the left to neutralize the threat." While an attack not motivated by politics is less likely to spur political violence — this includes the assassination attempts against former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, against President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and against Arizona Rep. Gabbie Giffords in 2011 — "it can and often has motivated policy changes meant to reduce the general threat to political leaders."
Sometimes assassinations can galvanize positive change.
"Lyndon Johnson framed the 1964 Civil Rights Act partly as a response to Kennedy's assassination, for example, and abolitionist newspaper Elijah Lovejoy's 1837 murder in Illinois helped galvanize white Northerners in the movement against Black enslavement," Kalmoe said. "On the other hand, the assassination of neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell in 1967 motivated a new generation of bigots, including David Duke."
Kalmoe observed that the current trend in the aftermath of the attempt on Trump's life is to ask Democrats to "tone down" their criticisms of the former president, which he argues would set an ominous precedent.
"Regardless of the motive, we also need to guard against the self-serving reaction among Republicans and the self-reflective reaction among Democrats that Democrats need to tone down their criticism of Republicans, which is largely based in fact about real existential threats to American democracy," Kalmoe said. "Airing those warnings is fundamentally pro-democracy. Democrats can supplement those statements with an explicit rejection of violence, which they have been doing consistently already. That's the ideal combination of rhetoric that's good for democracy."
If Trump's critics fail to rise to the needs of this historic moment, their future may resemble that of Nazi Germany after it fabricated a martyr for lack of having a real one. In their case they chose Horst Wessel, a German law school dropout who joined the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization, known as the SA or "brownshirts," and after leading multiple violent clashes in Berlin was eventually murdered after a dispute with his Communist landlady (most likely over unpaid rent) by getting shot by two other Communists. After the Nazis seized power, Wessel was turned into a folk hero, with a song he wrote for the SA becoming the unofficial anthem of the Third Reich. The Nazis passed a law in 1934 requiring every German citizen to give a "Hitler greeting" upon hearing Wessel's song — and, of course, pointing out that Wessel had led a violent life and almost certainly was responsible for his own death was strictly forbidden.
Just like criticizing the Nazi regime, sanctified by Wessel's blood, was strictly forbidden.
"The biggest effect so far in this case seems to be a shift in news and political discourse to call for 'taking down the temperature,' with even Democrats implicitly criticizing their own arguments about how Republicans pose a threat to democracy and the well-being of all Americans," Kalmoe said. "That's wild because Republicans have been and still are the party of incitement and insurrection."
