From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, page 344
Power propaganda.
Quote:...neither the police nor the courts seriously prosecuted political offenders on the so-call Right. It was valuable as what a Nazi publicist has aptly called "power propaganda": it made clear to the population at large that the power of the Nazis was greater than that of the authorities and that it was safer to be a member of a Nazi paramilitary organization than a loyal Republican. This impression was greatly strengthened by the specific use Nazis made of their political crimes. They always admitted them publicly, never apologized for "excesses of the lower ranks" - such apologies were used only by Nazi sympathizers - and impressed the population as being very different from the "idle talkers" of the other parties.
The similarities between this kind of terror and plain gangsterism are too obvious to be pointed out
I'm posting this not to point specifically to the white supremacist contingent represented by Miller in this administration, or even to the horrid treatment of immigrants at the border though both are obviously relevant (and if things get worse will be profoundly reminiscent of Nazi behavior).
Rather, I'm pointing to how Trump consistently violates norms and laws and then blatantly brags about it.
