Beware of Falling into the CCP’s Military Parade Propaganda Trap

The September 3rd military parade has not yet arrived, but Beijing has already implemented strict lockdown measures—guards stationed every three steps, sentries every five steps, with the entire city shrouded in an atmosphere of panic and tension. (Video screenshot)

【People News】Michael Pezzullo, former Australian Minister for Home Affairs, recently said in a media interview that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping bears “chilling similarities” to Nazi Germany’s rise in the 1930s. He specifically pointed out that the CCP’s September 3rd military parade is not a commemoration of history, but a blatant display of power. Such scenes are strikingly similar to those of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg rallies.

Pezzullo’s observation is not groundless. Fascist aesthetics are the core link of this similarity.

The Characteristics of Fascist Aesthetics

So-called fascist aesthetics are not simply an artistic genre but an aesthetic model with strong political intent. Through the extreme mobilization of visual and auditory senses, it creates an atmosphere of “collective worship” and “leader centrality.”

This aesthetic can be traced back to Mussolini’s famous saying: “What is called fascism is, above all, an aesthetic.” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also once said: “Politics is the highest and most comprehensive form of art in existence.” Within this framework of thought, politics is no longer merely governance, but rather a manipulation of the masses’ senses and emotions in an artistic manner.

The typical features of fascist aesthetics include:

Grand narrative: Magnificent scenes and scale that make viewers’ blood boil.

Dissolution of the individual: Uniformed formations and identical clothing reduce people to “objects.”

Deification of the leader: All spectacles revolve around the supreme leader, creating a cult of personality.

Beautification of obedience and violence: Goose-stepping, weapon formations, military uniforms, and medals package violence and death as beauty.

Susan Sontag, in Fascinating Fascism, pointed out incisively: The charm of fascist aesthetics lies in its simultaneous glorification of “megalomania and submission.” It conceals rationality with scenes of collective frenzy, causing individuals to unconsciously dedicate themselves to power.

The Nazi Template and CCP’s Imitation

In 1934, German director Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will was hailed as “the pinnacle of documentary film.” Through masterful cinematic language, the film transformed the originally long and tedious Nazi Party Congress speeches into breathtaking collective spectacles: workers waving shovels, farmers holding harvest fruits, youth shouting slogans, the Stormtroopers and SS lined up neatly, and Hitler, as the Führer, appearing at the center, elevated as the nation’s savior.

Today, the message conveyed by the CCP’s military parade is identical: a vast square, synchronized steps, identical clothing, dense weapon formations, and the leader inspecting from on high all proclaim, “We are rising—do not obstruct us.” Pezzullo pointed out that the CCP’s propaganda footage is almost a mirror image of Nazi propaganda films, even goose-stepping can be traced back to Germany ninety years ago.

Beware of Falling into the CCP’s Parade Trap

French sociologist Gustave Le Bon warned in The Crowd: once individuals merge into a group, they lose independent rationality and are driven instead by emotion, agitation, and fanaticism. Fascist aesthetics is the ultimate exploiter of this psychological mechanism. Its seductive and deceptive power lies in its ability to package politics as “art,” disguise power as “beauty,” and make people willingly belittle themselves before “magnificent” collective spectacles, actively abandon thought, and exchange it for a false sense of belonging and security—unconsciously submitting amidst passion and tears.

The recently concluded CCP military parade is by no means a simple military display but rather a replica of Nazi-style fascist aesthetics. The group aesthetics it presents are precisely the continuation of the model pioneered by the Nazis. Therefore, to avoid falling into this carefully constructed aesthetic trap, when facing the synchronized formations and grandiose scenes of a parade, people must be highly alert to the deceitfulness of this “spectacle,” reminding themselves: Is this “spectacle” dissolving the value of the individual? Is it manufacturing another kind of Nazi-style fanaticism? △