Why do Americans believe Trump’s fascist rhetoric?

Here’s a really wild theory, but bear with me for a moment. Could it be that it’s because the nation’s most prominent liberal [sic] media institution pays respectable conservatives ™ to spew lies that give credence to that rhetoric?

Here’s Bret Stephens on the discreet charm of Donald J. Trump:

Arguably the single most important geopolitical fact of the century is the mass migration of people from south to north and east to west, causing tectonic demographic, cultural, economic, and ultimately political shifts. Trump understood this from the start of his presidential candidacy in 2015, the same year Europe was overwhelmed by a largely uncontrolled migration from the Middle East and Africa. As he said the following year, “A nation without borders is not a nation at all. We must have a wall. The rule of law matters!”

Many of Trump’s opponents refuse to see virtually unchecked migration as a problem for the West at all. Some of them see it as an opportunity to demonstrate their humanitarianism. Others look at it as an inexhaustible source of cheap labor. They also have the habit of denouncing those who disagree with them as racists. But enforcing control at the border — whether through a wall, a fence, or some other mechanism — isn’t racism. It’s a basic requirement of statehood and peoplehood, which any nation has an obligation to protect and cherish.

Only now, as the consequences of Biden’s lackadaisical approach to mass migration have become depressingly obvious on the sidewalks and in the shelters and public schools of liberal cities like New York and Chicago, are Trump’s opponents on this issue beginning to see the point. Public services paid by taxes exist for people who live here, not just anyone who makes his way into the country by violating its laws. A job market is structured by rules and regulations, not just an endless supply of desperate laborers prepared to work longer for less. A national culture is sustained by common memories, ideals, laws and a language — which newcomers should honor, adopt and learn as a requirement of entry. It isn’t just a giant arrival gate for anyone and everyone who wants to take advantage of American abundance and generosity.

It said something about the self-deluded state of Western politics when Trump came on the scene that his assertion of the obvious was treated as a moral scandal, at least by the stratum of society that had the least to lose from mass migration. To millions of other Americans, his message, however crudely he may have expressed it, sounded like plain common sense.

Let’s look at a fact or two:

As far as we know, the percentage of the population made up of undocumented migrants is a good deal smaller than it was 20 years ago, and there’s no reason to think that the Biden administration’s immigration policies have altered this situation.

Apprehensions and expulsions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border started increasing in March 2021. Migrant encounters at the border have since reached historic highs.

In other words, Never Trump (yeah sure) conservative Bret Stephens is uttering egregious lies — “virtually unchecked” immigration, meaning severely curtailed immigration; “lackadaisical approach” meaning a punitive interception and detention policy very difficult to distinguish from the Trump administration’s attempts to protect our blood and soil — in the New York Times, to help get Trump re-elected, and his editors (yeah sure) are apparently A-OK with this.

The rest of the column is made up of similarly mendacious garbage, which you can examine at your leisure.

The larger point here is that Stephens’s screed is a classic example how the right wing media complex, which for these purposes the Liberal New York Times is an integral part of, has created the miasma of misinformation that has played such a crucial role in the brilliant ongoing political career of Donald Trump.

Stephens points out that “you can’t defeat an opponent if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable.”

Words of wisdom Bret, words of wisdom.