Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton: Trump's attempts to falsify reality follows "pattern of the Nazis"

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

A prominent psychiatrist who spent years studying Nazi Germany called for mental health professionals to speak out ahead of the election about President Trump's attempts to "own reality" by recasting institutions, warning of a pattern that echoes the Nazis.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, distinguished professor emeritus at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a leading psychohistorian who has written extensively about doctors who aided Nazi war crimes, has long called for mental health experts to defy warnings from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and speak out about Trump's mental health. Lifton recently published a book entitled "Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry" and was one of the 27 mental health experts featured in "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," the bestseller edited by Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee in which mental health professionals assessed the president.

https://www.salon.com/2020/09/21/psychiatrist-robert-jay-lifton-trumps-attempts-to-falsify-reality-follows-pattern-of-the-nazis/?fbclid=IwAR13oN7KV-xx_gyVcnDAAeEa5ITDHvp4fKrn98cBv10Ms-FUZ6XOvjHNfIM

Lifton told Salon that the book and a Yale conference on the topic began the movement of "psychologists and psychiatrists speaking out against Trump."

"I spoke about what I called malignant normality that was being imposed on us, and the need to be witnessing professionals who told the truth and oppose the malignant normality," he said in an interview last week.

Lifton said that Trump's supporters and enablers exhibit the same "cult-like behavior" that he has studied, adding that the current administration has "Trumpified" every part of the federal government, in much the same way that the German government was "Nazified" under Adolf Hitler.
Full article at link Salon.

[dhol82]

1. D'uh

No words.

[tanyev]

2. Some excerpts from Norman Ohler's Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

Remind you of anyone?

By now Hitler paid scarcely any attention to affairs of state. He preferred to stay up all night, seldom went to bed before six o’clock, and what he liked best of all was talking to Speer about grandiose architectural projects—although these were now purely illusory. Even his loyal arms minister and favorite architect….had to acknowledge that Hitler “frequently took flight from reality and entered his world of fantasy.”

Hitler couldn’t bear failure or weakness: anyone who looked ill, slack, or even uninspired was quickly out the picture. He had often explained the dismissal of a prominent figure as being on grounds simply of ill health.

The supreme commander of the navy came for the Fuhrer’s fifty-fifth birthday…Grand Admiral Karl Donitz asked his commander in chief to do everything to keep the Baltic ports open in return. Hitler, as mad for boats as a child for toys, blindly promised Donitz that he would.

At the midday briefing, in spite of the looming military disaster, to everyone’s astonishment he revealed a beaming face, and at the lunch that followed he fell into one of his endless, distracted monologues. This time it was about elephants, which were the strongest animals in existence, and which, like him, abhorred meat.

Without intoxication the last briefing sessions in March and April 1945 were so depressing as to be terrible. The generals seemed to be trying to hoodwink him all the time…he constantly thought he was being sabotaged. Hitler started shouting, waving his arms around, raging, raving, his face so distorted that it was barely recognizable. It was only through aggression that he could defend himself against the traitors he sensed everywhere.

[colsohlibgal]

3. Oh Yeah

Make no mistake this may be our last chance to pull us back from the brink. We have to hold nothing back and pull out all stops.

If we ever get control of all three branches we need to try to make things a whole lot more fair. The Electoral College obliterates our supposed one person one vote credo and totally favors the Republicans. Then there is the Senate...States like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, with very low populations get the same two Senators that States like New York and California, with more people than some countries. We continue to be in a fight with one hand tied behind our back.

If/When we get total control it is past time to make Puerto Rico and The District Of Columbia States.