Anti-democratic rulers always try to prevent a free press from reporting what they are doing. So do Donald Trump and his allies, with disastrous long-term effects for American democracy.

In Russia, during period from 1921 to 1928, Bolsheviks limited freedom to publish to sympathetic non-Communists. After Stalin took power, every word published in the Soviet Union had to conform to strict government guidelines.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were 4,700 newspapers in Germany, but the Nazis outlawed leftist parties and seized their newspapers seized. By the end of the Nazi regime, there were only about 1,000 newspapers, and those owned by the Nazi Party outsold independent organs 5 to 1.

Control of journalism by authoritarian government is demonstrated today in Turkey where Erdogan has cracked down widely. Turkey has jailed more journalists in the past two years than any other country.

Trump’s war against the free press is often compared to Hitler and other dictators. These comparisons are misleading. The Republican Party in no way resembles the monolithic parties which violently suppressed opponents. Trump does not have broad powers to deploy force against the press. Closing newspapers or arresting journalists would cause a constitutional crisis in the U.S.

Instead Trump has spread distrust of the mainstream media, so that their reporting about his words and actions is not believed by his supporters. He goads those who attend his rallies to shout “CNN sucks,” calls journalists “horrendous people,” and lately uses the phrase “enemy of the people” to describe the mainstream media in general. Attacks on the major national news outlets are part of nearly every speech he gives.

Trump did not initiate conservative attacks on mainstream news reporting. Sarah Palin’s primary political target was objective reporting in the 2008 campaign and afterwards. 1995, FAIR reported on a “right-wing media machine” based on personal attacks, fabricated stories, and thinly disguised white supremacy. But Trump gives respectability to what used to be a lunatic media fringe. Before Trump began his campaign, Pew surveys showed that “consistent conservatives” distrusted the major national newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today, and the national TV news organizations, except FOX.

Trump also supports irresponsible reporting of pretend journalists. Alex Jones disseminates made-up conspiracies on his website Infowars, designed to create distrust of our government: that the mass murders at Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon, and Oklahoma City were government hoaxes. Trump appeared on his program as a presidential candidate, praised him as “amazing,” and repeated many of his wild and untrue ideas. The White House granted Infowars official press credentials in 2017.

Trump’s promotion of Steve Bannon, the director of Breitbart News, to be his campaign director and then special advisor in the White House, put the leading voice of alt-right disinformation at the center of his administration.

Recent polling shows that more than two-thirds of Republicans think traditional major news sources make “fake, false, or purposely misleading” reports “a lot.” That is true for only 42 percent of independents and 22 percent of Democrats. Most Republicans think the New York Times (74 percent) and the Washington Post (65 percent) are biased, but only 19 percent distrust Breitbart.

Trump’s model is designed to subvert democracy from within without violence. Responsible news sources will continue to report Trump’s constant lying and his political failures, while Trump will continue to call these reports “fake news.” Unless FOX decides to start reporting in a “fair and balanced” manner, conservative voters will continue to prefer the fantasyland of right-wing media to the real world of factual journalism.

If you don’t know whom to trust, watch the news over time. Even on Fox, news is forced to report facts. Where would the immigrant children be today without the free reporting of the press?

NANCY GERTH

Sagle

STEVE HOCHSTADT

Springbrook, Wis.