Hitler

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke

The need to magnify themselves, to bestir themselves, is characteristic of all illegitimates.

Whether they represent us as clowns or criminals, the main thing is that they mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and again.

Propaganda must above all be popular, he argued; it must not be aimed toward the intelligentsia but “always and exclusively to the masses,” and its level “must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.