My parents are, unfortunately, very easily manipulated by sensational rhetoric and unsupported claims to God's will acting in the world. For example, their newest argument for Trump is that "God, who had more use for Samson than David, has a plan for him. He is repentant and God intends to use him for something big. The recent reveal of his locker room talk is Satan attempting to keep him from office." Aside from what should be obviously wrong with this argument, I should point out that no evidence is given as to why this is so clearly Satan revealing things. (I'm actually agnostic, but for the sake of debating with them, I try to argue from a religious perspective.) I should also mention that they don't even attempt to defend him any more. It's purely apologetic. How can one even argue that?
I was just wondering if there were prominent texts expressing a similar popular argument for past demagogues and personality cults. Just to try and show them that religion can be abused to convince people of things.
Thanks in advance for the help!
I suggest having a look at the German Christian movement or Positive Christianity. It was a Lutheran attempt to tie God to German volkisch thought. German Christians essentially denied the Jewishness of Christ, associated German blood with the morality of God (thereby casting Jewish and other bad blood as the cause of immorality), and saw Hitler as a messiah. The alliance didn't work out for the German Christians as, when they failed to get the rest of the church (they were roughly 10%) to go along with them, Hitler cast them aside. Their failure to be useful to Hitler led to their loss of power and influence.
I don't have documents in English right now as the last time I looked at it, I used interlibrary loan.