Economist on Trump, Chomsky on Trump: Trump as Hitler

Morning meeting with the editor…

Economist Dec 8, 2015

Journalist: Possibly the most commonly asked question these days is why Trump is getting so much support.

Editor: The Economist published a graph correlating his support rising each time he made an outrageous statement. Media theory that sensation outsells good news?

Journalist: If he became president he would be an international embarrassment.

Editor: But more of a worry is the reason why people are getting behind him.

Journalist: People believe he’s rich so he would fix the economy? Ha. He says things that other politicians are too afraid to say in public? Many of the American public secretly believe the outrageous things he says?

Editor: All of the above. Triumph of emotion over reason.

_________

Voice-over

Many meticulous predictions of how a Trump presidency would play out are disturbing. Snippets from Noam Chomsky:

"Trump is appealing primarily to less educated white sectors of the population, lower middle class and working class, people who are angry, frustrated, frightened, bitter that they have been cast by the wayside… Hitler’s hostility drove forward a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason."

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