“Portrait of a bush-league Führer… a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for, and finds, is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon, he calls it ‘faith, strength, truth’.”
This quote isn’t from this century. It was spoken by Rod Serling as the opening dialogue for the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “He’s Alive” in which the protagonist Fuhrer could be a Trumpian forerunner. Trump longs for adoration His executive cabinet meetings have turned into public glaze festivals, where secretaries, directors, and administrators of the most important federal agencies spend hours exuding praise upon “Dear Leader.” When global leaders refuse to “salute” him, they are deemed “losers,” and their countries are “weak.” He’ll spew out falsehoods like a broken sewer pipe, claiming gas prices are at an all-time low, jobs are at an all-time high, and criminal immigrants from insane asylums are running free in the streets. Yet, when the media report on his shortcomings, his poor poll numbers, his health, or the EPSTEIN FILES, he’ll call them “fake news,” and “the enemy of the American people.”
The plot of the Twilight Zone’s “He’s Alive” revolves around Peter Vollmer (Dennis Hopper), who is a wannabe fascist leader. He’s visited by a shadowy figure who coaches Vollmer on how to grow his Neo-Nazi group. “How do you excite a crowd,” he asks. “How do you make them feel as one with you?” I wonder who coached Trump? Trump’s first campaign was unprecedented in how a person with no prior political experience was able to bring together a cult-like following of individuals who pledged allegiance to not only a movement, but to the individual himself. For the first time in American politics, the candidate became a God, and he had millions in his flock.
This hadn’t happened in a vacuum, though. The man in the Twilight shadows instructed Vollmer on how to increase his followers. “When you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a member of the mob. Speak to them in their language, on their level. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of poverty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears. And if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, Mr. Vollmer, is that you make this mob an extension of yourself. Say to them things like: They call us hatemongers, they say we’re prejudiced. They call us hatemongers. They say we’re biased. They say we hate minorities…minorities. Understand the term, neighbours: Minorities. Should I tell you who are the minorities? We are the minorities!”
Though these are words from a script in 1963, they mirror the words spoken by Trump at his rallies during all three of his presidential campaigns in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Mob mentality, or herd mentality, is a phenomenon seen in the field of psychology and social science. In essence, it means that an individual will deviate from their belief system when in a group setting. Individuals will adopt emotions, behaviours, and beliefs, conforming to the larger crowd. One of the reasons for this is disenfranchisement from society. This parallels the driving reasons behind individuals who join cults. The Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has all the ear markings of a cult.
Trump’s rhetoric, just like the shadowy figure who coached ‘Vollmer’, gave a voice to the disenfranchised. His words gave a pulpit for hate. We became a nation divided in those four years of Trump’s first term. After the chaos we endured, including the Covid pandemic, we pushed back against hate. Likewise, the people revolted against Peter Vollmer in the Twilight Zone. Vollmer was brought down after murdering his Jewish neighbour. His so-called followers realized that he was simply a small man with out-of-date ideas about hate. At best they learned that hate is never the answer. At worst they crawled back into the shadows to emerge another day. Serling ends the episode with these words: “Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare… Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Florida, Vincennes, Indiana, Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He’s alive, because through these things, we keep him alive.”
Trump lost the 2020 election. Joe Biden was our 46th President. However, our respite was short lived. Trump’s followers of hate rose again, and he was re-elected in 2024. Trump’s second coming was more vicious than his first term. He was out for revenge against a nation who threw him out of office, who tried to charge him with insurrection, and who impeached him, not once, but twice.
We’re now over a year into Trump’s second term. We’ve seen non-criminal migrants terrorized and deported into foreign gulags. Americans have been shot and killed for exercising their constitutional right to protest. There has been unilateral killing of 157 individuals in boats in international waters. Regime change through force and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro. Private billionaire Elon Musk was “hired” to disassemble federal agencies which service, or are associated with LGBTQI, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and most social welfare programs. The Department of Education is being run by the former executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, with the Department of Health being run by an anti-vaccine proponent, who freely admits to snorting cocaine off a toilet seat. Countries around the world were forced into a tariff war, which has disrupted the flow of goods to consumers. Media organizations were subjected to multiple billion-dollar lawsuits for reporting on stories unflattering to Trump and his departments. Organizations quickly capitulated, under threat of broadcast license revocation. Career journalists were fired or forced into resignation by networks. Traditional centralist, or more liberal, are now right leaning, or shy away from any negative coverage of the President. Journalists covering the Pentagon are required to sign a loyalty oath to keep their spot in the pool. Right wing bloggers are now considered legitimate journalists and added to the White House Press Corp. Trump now controls the narrative. Trump is getting richer, Americans are getting poorer, and the world order has been shaken to its core. Not to mention the wars he claims to have stopped, whilst committing an illegal attack in the Middle East.
It’s hard to watch Trump without seeing shades of Hitler or Mussolini. This is reflected in another Twilight Zone episode, “Obsolete Man,” which aired in 1962. “You walk into this room at your own risk because it leads to the future, not a future that will be, but one that might be. This is not a new world. It is simply an extension of what began in the old one.
It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace.”
There are many episodes of The Twilight Zone that show a frightening vision of a dystopian future, a future we are now living through. Perhaps, that’s why, sixty-seven years after the series debuted, it still has relevance. Rod Serling was a visionary. He had seen the horrors of war while serving in the Philippines during World War II. He had experienced antisemitism, not only during his school days in Binghamton, New York, but also from his father-in-law. His early work was subjected to extreme censorship, which ultimately led to his creation of this legendary science fiction series. He knew what another Nazi-like state would lead to, and he called it out on nationwide television. Yet today, networks cower before Trump, afraid to do the same. One wonders what Serling would say about Donald Trump. The Trump Regime – full of lies, backroom deals, war, and hate. Hate. A sickness. Best to end with Serling’s words:
“A sickness known as hate. Not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ—but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don’t look for it in the Twilight Zone—look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.” – Rod Serling (1964).
.
Kathryn S. Kraus
Kathryn S. Kraus, an independent filmmaker, holds an M.A. from the University of Hertfordshire in Film and Television Studies, with a concentration in The Twilight Zone.
Kraus’ video essay, “How The Twilight Zone Exposed the American Dream as a False World War II Utopia,” can be viewed on YouTube.
.