…A quick look at Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in July shows that his dependence on superlatives has overtaken all his other oratorical habits. He used them to describe almost everything he discussed. The criminalization of political disagreement is “at a level that nobody has ever seen before.” The “inflation crisis” is “crushing our people like never before. They’ve never seen anything like it.” As for the “illegal immigration crisis,” well, “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it” either…

…This type of rhetoric is not new. Vesna Mikolič, a Slovenian scholar of linguistics, analyzed the speeches of four of the original Italian fascists of the 1920s. She found that an increased intensity of their language, including hyperbole and superlatives, correlated with their detachment from reality, as well as with incitements to violence, and with actual violence. Mikolič calls this kind of oratory — as when Trump promises to “lead America to new heights of greatness like the world has never seen before” — the “fascist imaginary.”

…Once a leader commits to hyperbole, he stays committed. As Richard Evans reminds us in his book “Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich,” Adolf Hitler claimed that his invasion of France was the most “glorious victory of all time” and that he was the greatest military leader ever — greater than Napoleon or Caesar.

Federico Finchelstein, an Argentinian fascism expert, says such leaders “fantasize about creating new realities and ultimately transform reality to fit their fantasies.” For example, Hitler claimed that Jews were disease-ridden subhumans and then created the conditions that made him prophetic. The fascist’s aim, says Finchelstein, is “the destruction of any trace of demonstrable truth.” And the philosopher Hannah Arendt says “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is … people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Source: Opinion: Why does Trump seem to talk like no one ever before? – Los Angeles Times