This is fascinating.

I'm kind of wondering if Amanda Marcotte has ever actually watched more than a brief clip of Triumph of the Will, though?

I feel like this article could have been stronger acknowledging additional layers of comparison. Because TotW is draped in insidious "wholesome" imagery too. No open antisemitism, even. Good local boys and family people all excited to stand tall for their Führer.

I've said this before, but watching uncensored Third Reich propaganda films with critical awareness is extremely instructive.

Fifteen years ago, around the same time I watched a bunch of Riefenstahl, I went to Germany, and went to the museum in the old half-finished Nazi stadium in Nuremberg. The museum uses its space hauntingly well, built on glass walkways through this cavernous monument to hubris. The paths take you through a chronicle of the rise and fall, including newsreels of Hitler - shaking hands and kissing babies like the doofy-looking, roguish politician he relied on everyone seeing him as.

In America, I observed, they only ever show you the same ten seconds of Hitler yelling, because they want you to think you can identify a monster when you see one.

They don't show you that most of the footage is not like that at all. That fascism in progress mostly isn't militaristic shouting, it's an endearingly slovenly reality TV star taking office and holding "grassroots" rallies to stir up something that thinks it's civic pride. They definitely don't want you to recognize that a monster can look like the kind of regular dude that conservatives want to go drinking with.

I worried about it fifteen years ago and I wish I hadn't been right.