One after another, former fierce critics from his own party now lining up to sing his praises and repeat the same lies and exaggerations they once condemned. It has a Soviet show trial or Spanish Inquisition aspect to it I can't quite put my finger on. Its a string of testimonies from the condemned at a Nazi kangaroo court, parading up to the witness box to denounce the accused. I kept asking myself, how does he make them do it?

It all reminds me of the final interrogation in 1984. And again, what really terrifies me is not that it can happen, (there is plenty of historical precedent) but that no one in the cult seems to recognize how familiar, how obvious, how formulaic it has all become.

"For I know that the hypnotized never lie"