Part 1: Think Indoctrination Can’t Happen to You? Think Again.

I am sickened by what has happened in the first 2 weeks of the Trump administration, but I am not overwhelmed. There were no real surprises – he is following his own playbook. Our resistance can be more impactful if we examine and understand what he is doing, where the strategy comes from, how he is trying to implement it and what we can do to resist the creation of the society he’s attempting to put into place.

How far is the Trump administration willing to go? We can get clues for what he has in store for Black, brown, queer people and women here not just from direct attacks on DEI and education, but on how he speaks about other marginalized communities. 

Bigotry 101 says that if you plan to treat a group of people as subhuman, you should first talk about them using subhuman terms. 

While you may see trans service members as dedicated military personnel, just like their other colleagues, Trump’s administration claims including transgender soldiers in the military “…conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle…” and “… is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”  If this administration calls your existence proof that you are without honor, without discipline, a completely selfish liar, what do you think is in store for you?

You may see death and destruction on the Gaza strip, but Trump saw the bodies and debris as an opportunity, “I looked at a picture of Gaza –it’s got to be rebuilt in a different way... You know Gaza is interesting, it's a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather…I mean, you’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”

Why “clean out” the Palestinians? We now know: the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip and forcibly relocate roughly two million Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries so the Gaza strip can become the "Riviera of the Middle East." Stolen “waterfront properties” for American elites. In Trump’s America, transgender people are dishonorable, simply by existing, Palestinian people are simply obstacles to casinos that need to be built. These are the kinds of values and beliefs being unleashed on us – we have known it is coming, so let’s take a breath, clearly identify the plan they are using, where it came from, and how it is vulnerable. Let’s lay it out so we can all be better prepared to resist what is coming.

THE NATURE OF THE PLAN 

Goering takes the stand at this trial in 1946.

It’s Thursday April 18, 1946 – the eve of a court recess in the Nuremberg trials in observation of Good Friday and Easter Sunday – and Nazi party leader Hermann Goering is talking to someone named Gustav Gilbert, a German-speaking U.S. intelligence officer and respected psychologist. Goering is explaining to Gilbert how to manipulate people to go to war.

At the time, the Allies gave Gilbert access to the prisoners in the Nuremberg jail, and he kept a journal to record his conversations with prisoners and his thoughts about the actual proceedings. He wrote two books - “Nuremberg Diary” and “The Psychology of Dictatorship Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany”. In “Nuremberg Diary”, Gilbert shared a discussion with Goering about whether people could be manipulated into a war. 

Goering had this to say, “But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

Gilbert responded, "But there is one difference - in a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Goering was unimpressed, "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Who is attacking us? According to the Trump Administration it is diversity, equity, and inclusion and its practitioners, trans people, student protestors, and immigrants (including documented ones and refugees) who he loosely defines as mentally ill and criminals. And if anyone disagrees? They lack “common sense”, courage, and most importantly patriotism. But why are so many Americans, without evidence, so willing to agree?

The answer: Indoctrination.

What is indoctrination?

The process of repeating an idea or belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question.

Teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. 

Forcing someone to accept a particular belief or set of beliefs and not allow them to consider any others.

A textbook in circulation in the 1970’s teaches that enslaved people were “treated with kindness”.

In the United States, the idea that Black, brown, queer people, and women are less qualified than white men is a deep-rooted one. It was reinforced for centuries through plantation-style paternalism and supported by eugenic “scientists” for decades in the 1900s. Today, MAGA leaders are repeating the word “competent” to refer to white, cis, straight male leadership and implying no other category of people could possibly match up. These statements rely on previous indoctrination to appeal to latent prejudices the American people have had subtly reinforced throughout their lives. While it is not true that DEI hires caused the D.C. plane crash that killed 67 people, to people who have been repeatedly told that they have lost out on jobs due to unfair DEI practices, it feels true. That’s the power of indoctrination.

This has been done before – perhaps most notoriously in Germany through the creation of the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth was established to create support for the Nazi agenda. Between January and December of 1933, membership in the Hitler Youth went from about 100,000 members to more than two million. By 1937 it was 5.4 million. Indoctrination can work.

For the better part of a decade, starting in 2015, Trump and his faction have worked hard to characterize Black and brown immigrants as the ones attacking us. The attacks have been constant and unrelenting: 

About Mexicans, Trump said in 2015, “They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

During the presidential debates in September 2024, he said, “They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats - They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."

Immediately after being sworn in, President Trump took executive action to “stop the invasion at the southern border” with an executive order that strips churches and schools of their immigration raid protections. Raids have already taken place in cities across the United States, targeting vulnerable people he’s labeled criminals to justify ordering sweeps.

The drumbeat has been sustained and incessant– repeating the false narrative time and time again and rewarding those who accept it is a tried and true method, as long as there is a successful effort to suppress the truth so that people are not allowed to consider it.

We know that convincing people of an enemy ready and waiting to attack us is a necessary part of the plan, indoctrination about who the enemy is and why the enemy must be feared. Exposing the playbook from which the plan is drawn, and the need to suppress the truth in order for the false narrative to survive is the first step. 

Why? Control.

Trump’s recent Executive Orders require the elimination of DEI positions in government, forbid the teaching of “critical race theory” and threaten the loss of funding to institutions who do not comply.

Call it DEI or CRT or the “woke mind virus”, we are talking about orders that will put severe limits on what can be taught, discussed, and acted on regarding the U.S. history of racism and other kinds of bigotry that had and still have a major impact on American society. 

Trump’s narrative that says we should return to a colorblind, merit-based society requires the elimination of facts that demonstrate that the U.S. society has never been either one. Orwell said you control the past to control the future so, erase all things DEI; call true history CRT, then erase, marginalize and minimize it; you now have a future path unrestrained by facts that contradict your positions. 

There is pushback – Costco, JPMorgan Chase, Apple, Pinterest, Microsoft, and Cisco are examples of companies who see the value in DEI and have not stopped their commitment to the process of equitable hiring and employment practices. 

And lawsuits are coming – one filed by a group including The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, and the city of Baltimore said this,

“In the United States, there is no king. The President can exercise only those powers the Constitution grants to the executive, and only in ways that do not violate the rights the Constitution grants to the American people. In his crusade to erase diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility from our country, President Trump cannot usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, nor can he silence those who disagree with him by threatening them with the loss of federal funds and other enforcement actions.” 

In 2022 a Boston College Law school student, Rayne Mahfood, wrote this in her final paper for a class I taught:

“Without truth and knowledge, what would be the purpose of education? The first answer that comes to mind is control. Education lacking truth, and therefore concealing knowledge, is used to control those being educated by promoting specific narratives.” 

This is a four part series.

Read part two here: What Do They Want You To Believe? Black People Are Stupid & Other Lies.

Read part three here: Competent White Men Need You…To Inform on Your Colleagues.

Read part four here: If They’re Not Human, We Don’t Need to Treat Them As Human.