A Case Study of Trump Propaganda
Warning: I am about to show you a piece of political propaganda. However, unlike when you are usually shown political propaganda, I am making you fully aware that you are about to watch a piece of propaganda.
I am about to show you perhaps Donald Trump’s most famous speech, made at a campaign rally in Florida in the lead up to the 2016 election, and probably the main reason why Trump somehow found a way to win that election.
Why am I showing you this, aside from the fact it feels safe to do so now that the Orange Man is seemingly contentedly out of the picture playing daily rounds of surprisingly high standard golf in Florida?
I used to listen to Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, in raptures (before I broke away from the gaslighting). He said things that just felt right, in a way that just sounded right. And with swag. His finest moment, and the moment that still sticks out for me, was when he broke into an impromptu rendition of Amazing Grace at the funeral of a black pastor killed in the Charleston church shooting.
Look I’m not gonna lie about this: I don’t think Obama is a particularly good dude. But he still did good things, and brought about good things. This is still a powerful moment, and it is still real in the emotions it brings to the surface, which I can say even knowing now what I know about the person delivering it (side note: if we are unable to separate the art from the artist, then we may soon be saying good-bye to many of our favourite artefacts of popular culture).
Trump could never pull off such a moment. As an immaculate, measured and convincing public speaker, Trump is not Obama: far from it. Trump is more an improviser and a rambler: going off on entertaining and politically incorrect tangents that clearly aren’t part of the auto cue script — a script hastily paused and started again time over, presumably by some diligent and attentive aide in the green room who has been tasked with keeping the scrolling words aligned with Trump’s train of thought.
I’ve watched a few of his speeches in full, and they are as unique and enthralling as Obama’s were, in their own way (you get used to the boasting and self-aggrandisement after a while, and his audience clearly love it). There is an edge and realness in how close he cuts to what is acceptable public speech that is extremely rare. It is only once you watch him speak without selected editing and partisan commentary — the only way you will see his words presented in the mainstream news — that you will understand the power of the movement that Trump has catalysed.
This speech was perhaps the true start of this movement. Yes, it is very ‘Murican, but you don’t have to be American to appreciate the sentiments. After blaming the demise of the United States on its self-serving and bipartisan political elite, it then ties this elite to a broader globalist power structure, who exerts control via its media mouthpieces. Plus: that burn on the Clintons…
The speech is, of course, largely about himself. It poses one of the most fundamental questions of his Presidency: why would Trump have given up his life of luxury to take on a role that would lead him to be hated by approximately half of the world? It is this question that has lead people to see beyond his personal flaws and past misdeeds to elevate him into an otherwise inexplicable figure of adoration (not that these flaws and misdeeds don’t make him even more relatable to everyday folk who believe in the redeeming power of the Hero’s Journey). It is all in that line, whether you choose to believe its sincerity or not: “Nevertheless, I take all these slings and arrows gladly for you”.
But it isn’t just about the Don. His message has always been about the returning of power from a corrupt establishment to We The People. In this sense, whether Trump gets back into the highest office again is largely beside the point (unless you had money riding on it, of course). Because the main outcome of those 4 years was, as we can see here, to expose the corruption that existed at the top of the world — making it clear to the people that the only way forward was through the people reclaiming power themselves (something that a handful of his most zealous supporters took literally on January 6th).
I won’t force you to sit through the full 45ish minutes, because no-one has time for that. But I will show this montage video that has received almost 5 million views. It is selectively edited and manipulated, cut with video footage, and put to a rousing soundtrack so as to evoke the greatest possible feelings of emotion. It is then, in every sense, propaganda.
It highlights, above everything else, the power of propaganda. Knowing this power — understanding that propaganda is all around us, and used by both sides equally in the informational war we are all caught up in — the trick is to work out who is using it for good, and who it using it otherwise.