Lesson from history about the peddlers of populism

A SET of quotes to consider:

:: “The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force”;

:: “Strength lies not in defence but in attack”;

:: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one”; :: “The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention”;

:: “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think”;

:: “Great liars are also great magicians”;

:: “Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction”;

:: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”;

:: “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach”;

:: “Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.”

You might wonder who said these things. Could it be a living politician? But no, it is a dead one: the man who became chancellor of Germany in 1933 when his party was voted into power by 17.34 million people (43.9pc).

Hitler’s poisonous book was written in 1924 while in prison for attempting a coup in Bavaria. His book was originally titled ‘Fourand-a half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice’.

This is a man who made populism an art form. Take note. Alison Hackett Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin