From NY Times contributor Jochen Bittner:
One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth….
[Trump's present-day] campaign should be seen as what it is: an attempt to elevate "They stole it" to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen….
The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country….
It took another war and decades of reappraisal for the Dolchstosslegende to be exposed as a disastrous, fatal fallacy. If it has any worth today, it is in the lessons it can teach other nations. First among them: Beware the beginnings.
And with, as Bittner notes, "a staggering 88 percent of Trump voters believ[ing] that the election result is illegitimate," sometimes it seems that this is indeed the beginning — of the end — especially with Trump gearing up for 2024 and possibly violent rabble-rousing until then. And should he be in a New York state prison by the next cycle, the GOP will have ideological wingnuts such as Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to rely on.