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keep_left

(3,143 posts)
5. The main problem is that Trump's followers generally don't read...
Tue Aug 26, 2025, 05:09 PM
Aug 2025

...and so they have little understanding of history. If they did, I would recommend several books by Fromm, Hoffer, and Berman.

The most apropos reading list for the MAGA movement would definitely include Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom (1941) and Eric Hoffer's The True Believer (1951). Morris Berman's "America Trilogy" would also make the list, beginning with The Twilight of American Culture (1999).

I might even suggest they watch a couple of classic movies, except that so many Americans seem to take the wrong lessons from them (e.g. Oliver Stone's 1983 rewrite of Scarface). And Trump himself is the personification of the "Rocco" character from Key Largo (1948).

Historian/writer Morris Berman has a lot to say about [the "Rocco wants more" scene] from Key Largo and how it is a subtle but effective critique of the dominant American culture: "more" as an ideology. Oliver Stone made the same point in Scarface, this time in Day-Glo, but a cruel irony occurred when some in the counterculture--the hip-hop culture in particular--began to see the Tony Montana character as a hero worthy of emulation.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219840939#post29

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