Never said it was “Nazi-level”. But demagoguery is demagoguery at any level.
The problem with Trump is not appeals to emotion; all politicians do that to a certain extent.
Demagoguery is:
“A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.”
This, he does in spades and in particular he targets specific minorities in the population and incites fear of them. It inflames passions and can incite others to violence and hatred.
A democracy is not measured by how well it corresponds to the wishes of the majority. That can descend into the “tyranny of the majority” and that is what Trump is playing on.
A democracy is properly measured by how the rights of the minorities are protected. Kicking minorities out of the country because of their religion is the very antithesis of what the USA is supposed to stand for. The US is fighting wars in other countries to for those rights, for heaven’s sake!!!
Anger at 911 is fully understandable. Extending that anger to an entire group for the actions of terrorist elements within that group is something else altogether and the decent thing to do is defuse that anger, not play on it. Even GW Bush was careful to admonish Americans to not take it out on Muslims in the country.
Should americans be angry at white males because of Timothy McVey? No they should be angry at Timothy McVey.
They can also be angry at Osama bin Laden, ISIS, and Al Quaeda. They should not be angry at their Muslim neighbours. Donald Trump should know better. Shame on him.
If demagoguery is measured as you say, then Obama is far more a demagogue than is Trump. So, for that matter, is Hillary Clinton, who demagogues even Trump by calling him a demagogue.
Nobody suggested taking anything out on Muslims in this country; not trump or anyone else.
What Trump actually said is that he would want to suspend their immigration until identification and background checking could be improved; something the government is supposed to be doing anyway, but isn’t.
Now, if the studies are correct, about 10% of all Muslims believe in violent jihad. That’s a lot of people. Among the remainder, there is an inherent problem in Islam; one that we had better start recognizing. In those parts of the Koran written during the Medina period, the requirement of armed jihad against infidels is very plain. The more pacific and tolerant parts were written during the Mecca period. So how to reconcile them?
During the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars came up with the “Doctrine of Abrogation”, by which the later parts (Medina) more fully express Allah’s will than the earlier (Mecca) parts. All four major schools of Islam accept that doctrine.
But there is an “out” for Muslims in all of that. Muslims are not required to wage jihad against infidels if the infidels are too strong to overcome. So, interestingly, western power gets them “off the hook”, as it were. They can go about their lives without even thinking about violent jihad. But only so long as the infidels are manifestly too strong.
It is exactly the reason why ISIS beheads people on video. The objective is to demonstrate to other Muslims that the “infidels” are weak; too weak to defend against the most barbarous and provocative acts. It’s almost a “spiritual blackmail”; a way of telling Muslims that they are no longer justified in failing to wage jihad.
Now, I’m sure most Muslims are quite content to be excused from jihad. Our efforts really need to be to give them a basis for resisting the call of the jihadis, and that basis has to be strength. Every time we show weakness, we give strength to the jihadis.
It’s a tension that will, unfortunately, never go away. Islam will always be Islam, and its doctrines will always be what they are. But undoubtedly most Muslims simply want to live in peace and go about their lives. We give them that respite by showing strength. We need to understand that. Islam will never be anything other than Islam. But its people are still people. We need to give them the one reason to live that the jihadis can’t take away from them. As a symbol, Guantanamo is not what incites jihad. It’s the opposite. It’s the symbol that “we can take the fighters and hold them forever halfway across the world, and there’s nothing they can do about it”; a symbol of strength.
If ISIS was smashed, utterly and completely, it would give Muslims respite for decades; Arab Muslims at least.
. I’m really shocked that people are taken in by this guy. Look at the faces of the people at the rally when he says that people used to be taken out on stretchers in the old days. Look at the laughs and smiles. It’s disgusting.
