Why Does Trump Get So Much Attention? Totalitarian Techniques | Tim Wu
- 6 years ago
If Donald Trump's political strategies look familiar, says Tim Wu, it's because we've seen them before. Where? In the totalitarian regimes of China, North Korea, and Germany. Wu's latest book is "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads" (https://goo.gl/aGLq9T).
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Transcript - Trump has followed an ignoble history of attracting attention using techniques that other Totalitarian leaders used before him, particularly the Fascists. Now I’m not saying those are the views of Trump but I’m saying he does use the same methods. And one of the keys – this is something that Adolf Hitler in particular understood is that the most compelling way to fire up your audience is to speak to their unconscious fears and hatreds and give voice to them in a way. And that seems so really in terms of intention just grab people in this very intense way. So if you study carefully the rise of the Third Reich it is fascinating how well the speakers of the Third Reich targeted unconscious, unspoken but truly present fears, hatreds, powerful emotions, you know, far beyond the thinking mind. And I think that those techniques whether or not you’re a Nazi or Hitler, whatever you are are effective for anyone who wants to captivate their audience and inspire an angry rally. And so I think there’s some similarities. One of the things I also think is very interesting about the rise, you know, Trump’s success in the, particularly in the primary campaign. He’s obviously a master attention merchant and a master at getting people to just want to see what he does next. And, you know, we have a private media. We don’t have a state media. Nonetheless, there has been for the last year the phenomenon where you turn on the television or you turn on any website and there’s Trump’s face. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/rb3AtG.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/tim-wu-on-donald-trump-and-fascist-propaganda
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
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Transcript - Trump has followed an ignoble history of attracting attention using techniques that other Totalitarian leaders used before him, particularly the Fascists. Now I’m not saying those are the views of Trump but I’m saying he does use the same methods. And one of the keys – this is something that Adolf Hitler in particular understood is that the most compelling way to fire up your audience is to speak to their unconscious fears and hatreds and give voice to them in a way. And that seems so really in terms of intention just grab people in this very intense way. So if you study carefully the rise of the Third Reich it is fascinating how well the speakers of the Third Reich targeted unconscious, unspoken but truly present fears, hatreds, powerful emotions, you know, far beyond the thinking mind. And I think that those techniques whether or not you’re a Nazi or Hitler, whatever you are are effective for anyone who wants to captivate their audience and inspire an angry rally. And so I think there’s some similarities. One of the things I also think is very interesting about the rise, you know, Trump’s success in the, particularly in the primary campaign. He’s obviously a master attention merchant and a master at getting people to just want to see what he does next. And, you know, we have a private media. We don’t have a state media. Nonetheless, there has been for the last year the phenomenon where you turn on the television or you turn on any website and there’s Trump’s face. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/rb3AtG.