Over the past couple of weeks I've been reviewing the speeches of Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. I was surprised to find many of the same prevailing themes. By far the most common theme was patriotism. A large part of the speeches are devoted to this subject. What is especially interesting is that they all praised qualities that they were destroying such as freedom and democracy. A conspiracy nut would probably think that all these fanatics were using the same playbook. It's hard to blame them by looking at there similarities. Anyway, here are the major themes.
Patriotism
Freedom
Democracy (Hitler is mixed)
We are a peace loving country (unlike the enemy, they are barbarians intent on destroying everything sacred)
There is good and evil. We are the good
The government works for the sole benefit of the people
The leader loves and serves his people; tries to make their lives better
There is always an enemy about to attack and they must stop them before it's too late
Great praise for the military and police (they carry out the government's dirty work)
Hatred of the media (they never get the story right)
Constant praise of the preferred economic system
All other economic systems inherently evil
Name calling of opponents
Our country is making great progress
All acts of the government are benign and for the best
History
- Country better off than the past
- People will see things our way in the future
Hatred of anyone opposing their ideas (they are anti-X)
Certain groups of people (usually minorities) are destroying the country from within
The far left and far right are evil
Right wing governments use God as a reason for their actions
Here is a list of links to the different speeches I looked at.
Mao
Stalin
Mussolini
My next project is going to look at the internal discussions of these people. As far as I can tell, none of them saw anything wrong with what they were doing. In fact, so far I've seen the opposite. It seems like they all thought that what they were doing was somehow beneficial and righteous. More on this later!
