"People who believe in Trump will never consider a substitute

[MGKrebs]

no matter how similar in policy positions, rhetoric, or business experience, because support for their champion has nothing to do with policy positions, rhetoric, or business success. It is, at its core, personal and emotional — like the backing for other authoritarian poseurs who have at times managed to convince multitudes that they and they alone possessed the supernatural abilities to achieve or restore national greatness. "

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432646/donald-trump-cult-personality

I've been searching for writing on how to defeat a cult of personality. I'm not finding much. But defining the problem is at least a step.

[BigmanPigman]

1. You probably would have to look at similar figures throughout history

and go from there. Some are not stopped unless they are killed and/or destroyed by war or other means (literally like drinking the tainted Kool-aid).

[struggle4progress]

2. Trump Supporters Spread the Majority of Phony News

DENISE CLIFTON
FEB. 6, 2018 1:00 AM

Trump supporters are among the most prolific social media users spreading fake news and conspiracy content, according to new research from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project, which has been studying disinformation campaigns globally since 2014.

The group’s new findings are based on study of more than 13,000 Twitter accounts representing politically diverse viewpoints, including just under 2,000 pro-Trump accounts—which were identified by terms like #MAGA included on their Twitter profiles and explicitly pro-Trump content they have shared. The Oxford researchers found that those pro-Trump accounts, though comprising less than a sixth of the total accounts, were responsible for 55 percent of the “junk news” tweeted out from all 13,000 accounts, studied during the period of October 20, 2017 to January 18, 2018. The researchers also studied content from more than 47,000 public Facebook pages during the same 90-day period; they determined that about 60 percent of the total “junk news” links were posted by users that appeared to be aligned with the political far right ...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/02/trump-supporters-spread-the-majority-of-phony-news-on-social-media/

[Cha]

3. Yeah, just ain't no fuckin' substitute

for a Russian mole and his doormats inside the white house.

[RandomAccess]

4. Well, AFAIC, they're all at heart fascists, and follow that pattern -

Trump’s not Hitler, he’s Mussolini: How GOP anti-intellectualism created a modern fascist movement in America
In an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert Paxton warns against describing Donald Trump as fascist because “it’s almost the most powerful epithet you can use.” But in this case, the shoe fits. And here is why.

Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies (Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse (the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own personality (“I will be great for” fill in the blank).

To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal "The Anatomy of Fascism": “Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program.” This explains why Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism and yet promises to crack down on free trade. In the words of the Italian writer Umberto Eco, fascism was “a beehive of contradictions.” It bears noting that Mussolini was a socialist unionizer before becoming a fascist union buster, a journalist before cracking down on free press, a republican before becoming a monarchist.

Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions. He selfishly guards his image of a self-made outsider who will “dismantle the establishment” in the words of one of his supporters. That this includes cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (“illegals”), stripping away citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of the “illegals”), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation (killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature among his supporters. The discrepancy between their love of America and these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota. To borrow from Paxton again: “Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain.” For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against “political correctness” in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the Constitution.

To be fair, there are many differences between Italian Fascism of interwar Europe and Trumpism of (soon to be) post-Obama America. For one, Mussolini was better read and more articulate than Trump. Starting out as a schoolteacher, the Italian Fascist read voraciously and was heavily influenced by the German and French philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Marie Guyau, respectively. I doubt Trump would know who either of these two people were. According to the Boston Globe, Trump speaks at the level of a fourth grader.....MORE AT LINK

https://www.salon.com/2016/03/11/trumps_not_hitler_hes_mussolini_how_gop_anti_intellectualism_created_a_modern_fascist_movement_in_america/