UNE’s David Livingstone Smith discusses Trump’s political rhetoric on ‘KPFK’ radio
On March 12, David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, was interviewed for the program “The Scholar’s Circle” on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles. Smith was featured on a segment on the show dedicated to the issues of race, propaganda and ideology.
In the interview, Smith argued that President Donald Trump’s rhetorical style is very similar to the style employed by the Nazis and analyzed in “The Psychology of Propaganda,” a 1941 paper by R. Money-Kyrle.
Smith said of Trump, “His rhetorical style, the approach that he used in his speeches, not just the first one but almost all the ones after it, really conformed to the analysis of Nazi rhetoric that is presented in that paper to an extraordinary degree.”
Smith went on to describe how speeches by both Hitler and Trump seek to first evoke depression in the audience, then transition into a paranoid frenzy of blaming others and end with a manic solution. “It’s a very, very powerful way of ensuring political persuasion,” said Smith.
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