The opening speech in Florida

I am not going to repeat any of the text of what Trump said in the opening speech of his campaign.  Details of that are already widely available.  But I have a few brief comments. 

I have studied closely the Fascist/Nazi era in prewar Europe so comparisons with that come easily to mind.  And there is no doubt that Trump's speaking style closely resembles that of Mussolini -- the staccato words, the air of indignation, the facial expressions  and the bodily movements.  And both men were preaching a message of insurgent patriotism -- of taking the country back from those who did not have its interests at heart.

But Mussolini was a very successful orator and leader.  So it is no surprise that another successful insurgent patriot would reinvent his approach.

The similarity to Hitler is much less marked.  Unlike Trump, Hitler was very fluent and did not continue on the same constant emotional level that Trump does.  Hitler's speeches were a crescendo, starting out very calmly and gradually building up to a huge pitch of emotionalism and excitement.  The only similarity I can see between Hitler and Trump is that both spoke extempore, without using prompts.   Obama, by contrast read almost every word of his speeches off a teleprompter. His persona as a speaker and leader was a complete fake.  He was basically a dummy.

So any Leftist reading these comments will be disappointed.  They will love the Trump/Mussolini comparison and say that Trump is therefore a Fascist but will hate the Hitler comparison which says that Trump is not at all like Hitler.  But that is the way that the cookie crumbles.  All it shows is that anybody who judges people by their speaking style is a fool.  It's policies that count, not the window dressing. 

And the policies of the two men are about as opposite as you can get. Musso summarized his policies as: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State).  Trump, by contrast, is doing his best to get the government out of people's lives -- JR.


1 comment:

  1. I noticed similarities between the styles of Trump and Mussolini before the 2016 election. Even some of his facial expressions and poses reminded me of Mussolini (though Trump's attempt to get people to take a loyalty oath to him made me think of Hitler's Reichswehreid. I don't know if Mussolini did the same thing.). This, Trump's womanizing, and many unknowns as to his political beliefs made me very hesitant to vote for him, and I almost didn't. But Hillary's constant lies, daily revelations of criminal activity, and leftist policies, convinced me that I could not be a party to her becoming president and I reluctantly voted for Trump.

    Trump still talks like he did before, but thankfully, his actions in office have proven him to be nothing like the fascist dictators. His policies have been good and benefit freedom while protecting the constitution (and we haven't discovered any interns under the desk). He has been successful, despite horrible and constant false allegations by Democrats and the leftist news media. Now that I've two and half years to see how Trump works, I will have no problem voting for him in the next election, even though I still don't care for speaking (or tweeting) style. Any of the 23 idiots running for the Democratic nomination would be a disaster.

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