The first time I showed clips from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will while teaching about Nazi Germany, I was not expecting to be overwhelmed by grief and anger and revulsion. It wasn’t the iconic shots of athletic feats, tightly regimented youth performances, Hitler’s airplane in flight and his concluding speech that got to me. Instead, as I was fast-forwarding through the long and ponderous film, I landed on Hitler’s triumphant entry into the city of Nuremberg, where he was enthusiastically received by its citizens, and I was not prepared.
This wasn’t my first or last awkward moment in front of a classroom. One of the less-discussed facts about teaching is that you can wander into the middle of an emotional minefield without warning and with no easy way out, even when discussing seemingly harmless topics like education systems and street food.
In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. I have lived near Nuremberg multiple times for over three years in total, and the city has been the site of some important experiences. Dragging a toddler through the train station on the way to an Institute course (taught by a certain Erich Kopischke). Doing dissertation research in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, while I fasted and contemplated whether the dissertation was worth finishing and whether a possible pregnancy-in-development would happen. Six years later when we returned to Germany, Nuremberg was the first place we brought our four children. “Is that a castle?” one of them asked as we arrived in the city, pointing to the city gate.
Just wait, I told him, and you’ll see a castle. Two years later, just a few days before we returned to the U.S., he was baptized in Nuremberg.
So a few years later, when my plan was only to show a few clips from Triumph of the Will, I did not respond with the appropriate analytic distance to the scene of Hitler’s triumphant entry into Nuremberg, as historical evil defiled a place I loved while the parents and grandparents of people I loved cheered him on, setting in motion a tragedy that would tear apart a continent and leave tens of millions of people dead.
* * *
Propaganda does many things. It projects images of strength and unity, offers targets of hate and admiration, and invites viewers to join the winning side. If you’re already on board, propaganda offers you satisfaction for your hopes: Promises made, promises kept. This is what you voted for.
I do not enjoy the propaganda produced by the various elements of the Trump administration. You might say I react viscerally to it. That’s not unusual; that’s just the nature of media produced by people I dislike in favor of policies I oppose. It is also not unprecedented for our government to do some genuinely bad, wicked and illegal things.
But past administrations generally tried to cover up their misdeeds and deceptions. Even evil regimes recognize the difference between the cruelty it wants its citizens to see and fear, and the crimes they want to hide from the eyes of the world.
So what the Trump administration chooses to flaunt is telling. The administration has released both raw footage and slickly produced videos of federal agents conducting warrantless searches and detaining families, humiliating deportees, and murdering alleged drug smugglers (because that is what it’s called when you kill people without legal sanction with whom you are not at war, far from our borders, who have not been arrested or tried, for crimes that do not warrant the death penalty, and when a whole branch of the armed forces exists to interdict smuggling without lethal violence as a first resort). Our government has facilitated the creation of these videos and approved their release because it wants them to be seen, even as it continues to block the release of other footage.
No less than Triumph of the Will, these videos are invitations to be part of the winning side. These contemporary propaganda films also invite supporters to defend the indefensible, to enjoy seeing others’ degradation, and to delight in bloodshed.
* * *
The Book of Mormon offers repeated warnings about this. In early and classic Nephite history in the books of Jacob, Mosiah and Alma, the Lamanites and the armies of wicked King Noah delight in shedding blood. In contrast, the Nephites and their leaders, including King Mosiah and Captain Moroni, “did not delight in the shedding of blood.” It is only during the Nephites’ final decline that they also “delighted in the shedding of blood continually,” despite Mormon’s warning to them to “delight no more in the shedding of blood.” Ultimately, before their final destruction, the Nephites delight in every type of abomination.
* * *
One of the awful new realities of 2025 has been seeing the United States, represented by our government, stop doing much of the good it used to do in the world, including publishing true statistics, promoting democracy and good government, opposing oppression, and protecting some of the world’s poorest from death by disease and starvation. What is harder for people to admit is that the United States, represented by its government, has begun actively perpetrating evil in many ways, including promoting fascist political parties abroad, publishing falsehood, assisting tyrants while abandoning democratic allies, spreading racism, facilitating corruption, dehumanizing immigrants, and, now, committing repeated acts of murder.
This was America’s choice, and the responsibility for it stains us. We have an obligation to put a stop to it. If you consider yourself a Republican or voted for Republicans, you bear particular responsibility to compel the government to change course.
* * *
Because if you accept the Book of Mormon as scripture, you’ve been warned about where this is going. A society that delights in suffering and bloodshed is ripe for destruction. For you as an individual, the temptation is to join the winning side by applauding the cruelty and defending the indefensible. If you persist in justifying murder, a sin second in gravity only to consciously denying the witness of the Holy Ghost, you will face eternal consequences if you do not repent. Maybe you can ignore what the Trump administration is doing to the nation or the world, but you have to be aware of what it is doing to your soul.
Leave a Reply