How do you fight fascist propaganda? Make them look stupid

A historian explains why mockery works better than outrage

Nazi propaganda posters. The imagery played to fears and prejudices already present in German society

For decades, scholars assumed propaganda worked like hypnosis — images burned into brains until victims became completely reprogrammed. But recent research suggests something else is going on.

Propaganda amplifies what people already believe, says Tomas van den Heuvel, a Dutch historian and curator at Design Museum Den Bosch. He curated the exhibition “Design of the Third Reich” and has spent years studying how authoritarian movements manipulate public perception.

The idea that Germans in the 1930s and 40s were “brainwashed” conveniently absolved them of responsibility. Nazi propaganda worked by appealing to the fears and resentments already present in German society.

Van den Heuvel sees similarities between Nazi-era propaganda and today’s authoritarian messaging. “Nazi ideology is a conspiracy theory,” he says. “It’s based on this idea that there is a ‘nefarious race’ controlling everything behind the scenes.” Today’s conspiracy theories usually loop back to antisemitism — what van den Heuvel calls “the original conspiracy theory” — even when it starts somewhere else.

He warns against forcing exact historical comparisons, though. The Nazis emerged from a militarized German society. Today’s movements operate in a commercialized, meme-driven culture and have adapted to fit.

Trump’s former campaign manager called the MAGA hat an “undesign” — deliberately simple and banal. The Nazis obsessively controlled their symbols and passed laws restricting swastika usage on kitschy merchandise. The Trump movement embraces commercial mixing and matching. “Anyone can buy and wear the merch,” van den Heuvel says. It’s a more evolved and effective form of propaganda in today’s world of memes and social media.

Even ICE participates in meme culture now, posting ironic deportation videos and engaging in what van den Heuvel calls “quasi-ironic trolling.” He also notes that ICE agents wear individualized, non-uniform outfits, which creates a specific kind of fear: “Anyone could be an ICE agent. Anyone could pick you off the street.”

Van den Heuvel says the MAGA administration has perfected the “firehose of falsehood” technique developed by Russian propagandists. By constantly saying contradictory things, authorities create “this apathetic sense of, well, everything is true. There’s no real way to tell if something is true or not.” The goal is exhaustion. When Trump said, “Don’t believe what you’re seeing and hearing,” he was setting expectations.

How do you fight back? Van den Heuvel points to John Heartfield, the Weimar-era artist who made anti-Nazi collages. Rather than raising alarms about Nazi danger — which reinforced their image of power — Heartfield made them look ridiculous. He drew Hitler as “a little gnome” watering the tree of militarism.

But timing matters. “It’s very important to counter propaganda,” van den Heuvel says, “but it’s especially important to do that when it’s still possible.” Once authoritarian regimes control media and institutions, resistance becomes harder. In Russia today, opposing the war in Ukraine can bring serious prison time.

“You’re never going to be as strong as you are now,” he says.