Thursday, 18 August 2022
Meet the JournalistsPremiumAucklandWellingtonCanterbury/South Island
CrimePoliticsHealthEducationEnvironment and ClimateNZ Herald FocusData journalismKāhu, Māori ContentPropertyWeather
Small BusinessOpinionPersonal FinanceEconomyBusiness TravelCapital Markets
Politics
Premium SportRugbyCommonwealth GamesCricketRacingNetballBoxingLeagueFootballSuper RugbyAthleticsBasketballMotorsportTennisCyclingGolfAmerican SportsHockeyUFC
NZH Local FocusThe Northern AdvocateThe Northland AgeThe AucklanderWaikato HeraldBay of Plenty TimesHawke's Bay TodayRotorua Daily PostWhanganui ChronicleStratford PressManawatu GuardianKapiti NewsHorowhenua ChronicleTe Awamutu Courier
Covid-19
Te Rito
Te Rito
OneRoof PropertyCommercial Property
Open JusticeVideoPodcastsTechnologyWorldOpinion
SpyTVMoviesBooksMusicCultureSideswipeCompetitions
Fashion & BeautyFood & DrinkRoyalsRelationshipsWellbeingPets & AnimalsVivaCanvasEat WellCompetitionsRestaurants & Menus
New Zealand TravelAustralia TravelInternational Travel
Our Green FutureRuralOneRoof Property
Career AdviceCorporate News
Driven MotoringPhotos
SudokuCodecrackerCrosswordsWordsearchDaily quizzes
Classifieds
KaitaiaWhangareiDargavilleAucklandThamesTaurangaHamiltonWhakataneRotoruaTokoroaTe KuitiTaumarunuiTaupoGisborneNew PlymouthNapierHastingsDannevirkeWhanganuiPalmerston NorthLevinParaparaumuMastertonWellingtonMotuekaNelsonBlenheimWestportReeftonKaikouraGreymouthHokitikaChristchurchAshburtonTimaruWanakaOamaruQueenstownDunedinGoreInvercargill
NZ HeraldThe Northern AdvocateThe Northland AgeThe AucklanderWaikato HeraldBay Of Plenty TimesRotorua Daily PostHawke's Bay TodayWhanganui ChronicleThe Stratford PressManawatu GuardianKapiti NewsHorowhenua ChronicleTe Awamutu CourierVivaEat WellOneRoofDriven MotoringThe CountryPhoto SalesNZ Herald InsightsWatchMeGrabOneiHeart RadioRestaurant Hub

Advertisement

Advertise with NZME.
World

Opinion: Trump contrives his stab-in-the-back myth

24 Nov, 2020 05:30 AM5 minutes to read
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo / Anna Moneymaker, The New York Times

US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo / Anna Moneymaker, The New York Times

New York Times
By Bret Stephens

OPINION:

The word Dolchstosslegende is hard to pronounce but important to understand. It translates as "stab-in-the-back myth" and was a key element in the revival of German militarism in the Weimar years. Even modestly educated Germans know exactly what it denotes and the evil it entails.

Donald Trump and his legal team are now contriving their own Dolchstosslegende.

That's true even as Trump's effort to overturn the results of the election seems to descend from fantasy to farce. The main point of the exercise is no longer (if it ever seriously was) to find a judge, governor or other pliable instrument to deny Joe Biden the presidency. It is to deny the legitimacy of the Biden presidency, of the electoral system that gave him the office and of the federal and judicial systems that turned Trump's legal challenges aside.

The point of the farce is farce. It is to make an obscene joke of the Biden administration and our constitutional system of government.

This was also the point of the Dolchstosslegende, which claimed that the German army, though in retreat in the fall of 1918, could have kept up the fight had it not been betrayed by defeatist and scheming politicians who agreed to an armistice that November.

This was, of course, a self-serving lie: Germany's armies were being routed, its strategic situation was hopeless, its sailors were mutinying, its people were approaching starvation and only the armistice (which the kaiser's generals asked for) spared it from a much more painful defeat.

But the nature of the myth wasn't that it should be believable. It's that it should be believed.

Advertisement

Advertise with NZME.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during a meeting at The Queen theatre in Wilmington. Photo / AP
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during a meeting at The Queen theatre in Wilmington. Photo / AP

There's a difference. The success of the first rests on a plausible interpretation of facts. The success of the second requires a psychologically astute understanding of the people to whom the lie is peddled. The Dolchstosslegende may have been a transparent falsehood, but it had the double advantage of bucking up a humiliated nation's pride and playing to its gut prejudices. Translated into the bigoted vernacular, "defeatist" and "scheming" almost always meant socialists, communists and Jews.

In this sense, it doesn't matter that Rudy Giuliani's legal case is being laughed out of court. What matters is that the district judge who did so is an Obama appointee (despite being a conservative Republican), and therefore can be dismissed as part of the deep-state conspiracy seeking to bring Trump down.

Related articles

Business

Bill Gates, Covid-19 and the quest to vaccinate the world

23 Nov 08:30 PM
World

Analysis: Republicans rewrite an old playbook on disenfranchising black Americans

23 Nov 05:30 AM
World

More Republicans tiptoe toward acknowledging Biden's victory

23 Nov 01:31 AM
World

Trump campaign lawyers step up but are swiftly knocked down

22 Nov 07:09 PM

Nor does it matter that lawyer Sidney Powell painted an anti-Trump conspiracy so vast that it seems to have embarrassed Giuliani and would have made the ghost of Joe McCarthy proud. What matters is that Powell's list of enemies — from the director of the CIA to former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez — hit all the right notes for the president's die-hards.

And there are a lot of them: 52 per cent of Republicans think the president "rightfully won" reelection, at least according to a Reuters Ipsos poll from last week. In other words, a majority of Republicans will believe literally anything Trump says.

Here again the comparison to Germany rings loud. In a famous passage of "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt noted how "Mass Propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow."

A Marine stands outside the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, signifying that President Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. Photo / AP
A Marine stands outside the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, signifying that President Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. Photo / AP

The Dolchstosslegende worked because so many Germans were happy to believe what, at some level, they also knew wasn't true. But it also worked because it had a clear aim that a growing number of Germans shared, which was to overthrow the struggling Weimar Republic by claiming that it was founded on treason. In other words, it wasn't just a conspiracy theory. It was a political weapon with the revolutionary aim of destroying democracy itself.

What Trump and his minions are now attempting is of a piece. It is rich that many of the same people who spent years claiming that Robert Mueller's lawful and constrained investigation was a deep-state coup are now happy to entertain a sitting president's preposterous claims of electoral fraud.

But the aim is clear: to treat the Biden presidency as a product of treachery by a political order that is so comprehensively corrupt that it will require far tougher means than the ones Trump employed to root out.

Advertisement

Advertise with NZME.

In case certain readers think I'm making a comparison between Trump supporters and Nazis, let me emphasise that I am not. What I am saying is that this modern-day Dolchstosslegende, like surf pounding against a bluff, abets future demagogues by eroding public confidence in democratic institutions, until, unprotected, they collapse.

No comparison with the Weimar years is complete without noting that the republic wasn't just done in. It did a lot to do itself in, too, mostly through economic mismanagement. All the more reason to wish the Biden administration well as it navigates crises that now include some of the most disreputable opponents our own republic has ever known.


Written by: Bret Stephens
Photographs by: Anna Moneymaker
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Advertisement

Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

Premium
World

'I'm done with him': Mother disavows son accused of Rushdie stabbing

17 Aug 10:51 PM
Premium
World

The megalodon was bigger, faster and even hungrier than previously imagined

17 Aug 09:05 PM
World

Two tourists wakeboard in the Venice canals

World

Syria denies it 'kidnapped or is holding' American journalist Austin Tice

17 Aug 05:00 PM
World

'How can anyone live that way?': Ukrainians flee grim life under Russian occupation

17 Aug 07:28 AM

Most Popular

Wet, warm and windy: Auckland and Northland battered by heavy rain overnight
New Zealand

Wet, warm and windy: Auckland and Northland battered by heavy rain overnight

17 Aug 09:25 PM
Nelson to New York: TV's David Lomas and an emotional reunion of long-lost father and son
Entertainment

Nelson to New York: TV's David Lomas and an emotional reunion of long-lost father and son

17 Aug 08:59 PM
Live: 'Frightening, out of control' - Nelson residents flee as river bursts; Auckland also in firing line
New Zealand

Live: 'Frightening, out of control' - Nelson residents flee as river bursts; Auckland also in firing line

17 Aug 08:33 PM

Advertisement

Advertise with NZME.
About NZMEHelp & SupportContact UsSubscribe to NZ HeraldHouse Rules
Manage Your Print SubscriptionNZ Herald E-EditionAdvertise with NZMEBook Your AdPrivacy Policy
Terms of UseCompetition Terms & ConditionsSubscriptions Terms & Conditions
© Copyright 2022 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP