As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference.There are no similarities at all between the economically fragile fledgling democracies of Europe in the 1920s and the current situation in the wealthiest and strongest country on the planet.
God alone knows what 'troubling differences' this cretin can find between the halcyon days of Hitler and our present misery.
In the 1920s, the US pursued isolationism in foreign policy and rejected participation in international organizations like the League of Nations.Why? Because it wasn't more powerful, economically and militarily, than all the other countries of the world put together. It could, I suppose, have done some 'force projection' but it would have been a great waste of 'blood and treasure'. The plain fact is that America could not occupy Germany, along with its allies. Nor could it bring down the Bolsheviks in Russia. It couldn't even intervene against Turkey despite widespread anger in America about the Armenian genocide.
Why is this cretinous Professor pretending America could have altered the trajectory of the League of Nations? Could it have defended China from Japan? There was widespread, Christian, support for the charming Madam Chiang Kai Shek, but there was very little America could do and when it did that little the result was Pearl Harbor and Hitler's, very stupid, declaration of War against America.
America First was America alone, except for financial agreements like the Dawes and Young Plans aimed at ensuring that our “free-loading” former allies could pay back their war loans.How unreasonable to want loans to be repaid! America should have sent specially trained officials to wipe the bums of those former allies and to tuck them into bed and to sing them nice lullabies. America's failure to do so represents a great historical crime.
At the same time, high tariffs crippled international trade, making the repayment of those loans especially difficult.This is nonsense. Tariffs were the same in 1927 as in 1913. Because cost of transport had fallen, international trade had increased. What caused trade to fall was a liquidity crisis which in turn was rooted on rational expectations. This preceded the Smoot Hawley tariff rise which is why most economists no longer think protectionism had much effect on the Great Depression. The thing was liquidity driven which in turn meant that Expectations had changed. But, as subsequent events showed, it was entirely Rational for Expectations to change. The fact is, the Weimar Republic was just tinsel and cardboard designed to fool the West into financing German rearmament. Once Hindenburg was elected, the future was plain to see. Similarly, it was obvious that Mussolini wouldn't just rattle his saber indefinitely. The time would come when he would draw it in earnest. Europe was headed down the toilet. America, too, could descend into either a 'class war' type stasis or else succumb to an internecine conflict of a type well known to its Historians.
The country witnessed an increase in income disparity and a concentration of wealth at the top, and both Congress and the courts eschewed regulations to protect against the self-inflicted calamities of free enterprise run amok.Nonsense! Hoover spent a lot of time getting industries to avoid 'repugnant' wage competition and 'beggar my neighbor' price competition. Sadly, this increased price and wage stickiness and prolonged the Depression. America was ahead in terms of 'Competition policy', not behind.
The government also adopted a highly restrictionist immigration policy aimed at preserving the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants against an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. (Various measures barring Asian immigration had already been implemented between 1882 and 1917.) These policies left the country unable to respond constructively to either the Great Depression or the rise of fascism, the growing threat to peace, and the refugee crisis of the 1930s.How would lots of immigrants driving down wages and literacy levels have helped America? Granted, letting in Jews would have been a good idea- but not all immigrants are Ashkenazis.
Why is this historian pretending that FDR wasn't elected and that he didn't respond 'constructively' to the Great Depression? What was FDR supposed to do to check Fascism? Invade Germany? Conquer Italy? Even now, Americans can't go to Hungary and topple Orban, or go to China and topple Xi. When they do get rid of a Gaddaffi, they soon realize it was a stupid thing to do.
Today, President Trump seems intent on withdrawing the US from the entire post–World War II structure of interlocking diplomatic, military, and economic agreements and organizations that have preserved peace, stability, and prosperity since 1945.Nonsense! Trump hasn't withdrawn America from anything which wasn't going down the toilet in any case. Perhaps, this historian also thinks that Trump seems intent on raping him. He should certainly report this to the police.
His preference for bilateral relations, conceived as zero-sum rivalries in which he is the dominant player and “wins,” overlaps with the ideological preference of Steve Bannon and the so-called alt-right for the unfettered self-assertion of autonomous, xenophobic nation-states—in short, the pre-1914 international system.This is sheer idiocy. The pre-1914 system featured Monarchies which were closely- too closely- related by marriage. There was no 'unfettered self-assertion'. There was a complicated system of alliances which was supposed to ensure the 'Balance of Power'.
That “international anarchy” produced World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the fascist dictatorships, World War II, and the Holocaust, precisely the sort of disasters that the post–World War II international system has for seven decades remarkably avoided.There was no 'international anarchy'. Serbia, it is true, acted in an unfettered manner. The Tzar should have sympathized with the Hapsburgs and let the Serbians take their punishment. Actually, the best outcome would have been if a Muslim, not an Orthodox Christian, had killed the Archduke. Sadly, the Muslim got cold feet at the last moment. There would have been no European war if Serbia had had 'plausible deniability'. Everybody would have blamed the Turks.
This is not to say there might not have been a European War for some different reason. However, there would have had to be a reason. In those days, Military Alliances couldn't be triggered by a unilateral action. There had to be a plausible 'casus belli'.
In threatening trade wars with allies and adversaries alike, Trump justifies increased tariffs on our allies on the specious pretext that countries like Canada are a threat to our national security.The pretext is indeed specious, but pretty much par for the course when it comes to Trade diplomacy. In any case, Trump didn't say Canada was a threat- he said not being in control of something vital for defense was dangerous. That is a reasonable view. The military needs to plan for 'worst case' scenarios.
He combines his constant disparagement of our democratic allies with open admiration of authoritarians.But, these 'democratic allies' respond in kind. Trump's genius is to have got in his dig at them first. Now they can't break up with America coz Trump will say he already pumped and dumped them.
His naive and narcissistic confidence in his own powers of personal diplomacy and his faith in a handshake with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un recall the hapless Neville Chamberlain (a man in every other regard different from Trump).Rubbish! Chamberlain gave up on Czechoslovakia because the Sudetens had a genuine grievance and, in any case, Poland took a bite out of it. In any case, the real problem- as De Gaulle recognized- was that France had no offensive military doctrine. In 1914, it was relying on the Russian steam-roller. God knows what it was thinking in 1939.
Fortunately the US is so embedded in the international order it created after 1945, and the Republican Party and its business supporters are sufficiently alarmed over the threat to free trade, that Trump has not yet completed his agenda of withdrawal, though he has made astounding progress in a very short time.Trump doesn't 'have an agenda of withdrawal'. His sthick is that he can get Americans a bigger slice of the 'gains from trade' in line with optimal tariff theory. Back in '68, when he was at Wharton, this was the sort of econ that was taught.
A second aspect of the interwar period with all too many similarities to our current situation is the waning of the Weimar Republic. Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril.This is crazy shit. Hindenburg was a senile Junker war horse who was still babbling about his duty to the Kaiser on his deathbed. Who the fuck thought he'd want to 'defend German democracy?' He hated the thing. He blamed the Social Democrats for the so-called 'stab in the back'. The only reason he couldn't bring in his old pal, Ludendorff, as Chancellor was because Ludendorff was batshit crazy. He was railing against the Catholics, in Munich, during the 1923 putsch. He refused to go to jail, which is why Hitler supplanted him.
Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule.Hindenburg concentrated power in his own hands, not the Reichstag, because he was following the General Staff's maximal plan of conquest. What he didn't know was that the 'Austrian Corporal' would command the Army's loyalty while General Schleicher would be brought down by the jealousy of his comrades.
Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyperpolarization of German politics.Hindenburg hated the Social Democrats. So did the Communist leader, Ernst Thalmann who founded the first 'Antifa' which did not target Nazis but went after 'social fascists'- i.e. the Social Democrats. The SDs signed their death warrant by supporting Hindenburg in the 1932 election. It was obvious to everybody that this very very old man hadn't long to live. Thus the SDs were essentially quitting the political realm. They were saying 'The Army knows best'.
Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions.Just a few short paragraphs ago, this cretin told us that the Weimar Republic gave Hindenburg lots of extra powers to 'defend democracy'. Now he tells us that what Hindenburg wanted was rearmament and the suppression of human rights.
The truth is Hitler was brought into politics by the Army which saw Nazi goons as a 'force multiplier'- i.e. a militia which could be turned into soldiers once the need to appear to respect the treaty of Versailles- and thus get foreign loans- ceased to operate.
Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.So, Hitler did what they wanted more speedily and effectively than they could themselves. In the process, they were disintermediated. Blomberg, who got the Army to swear a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler, was sacked ostensibly for marrying an ex-hooker. Others were more unlucky.
If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.No! It is Tammy Wynette! Everybody knows that if she hadn't sung 'Stand by your Man', Hilary would have Bobbitted Bill and gone on to storm the White House in 2000.
He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could.So, the Tea Party had no effect. Bailing out Wall Street while letting Main Street go broke didn't have any repercussions. Some elderly white dude from Kentucky managed to paralyze Obama's administration all by himself. Who knew?
As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more.Weimar didn't have parliamentary gridlock. It had utterly irresponsible cretinism. When the Rhinelanders went on strike against the French, Weimar politicians paid them not to work by printing money. This triggered hyperinflation and the pauperization of the middle class. Weimar's history of weak coalition Governments, whose sole utility was to beg for money from the Allies, demonstrated that Democracy was a cul de sac- a road to nowhere. Perhaps, this had to do with Proportional Representation. By contrast, the US has a strong Executive and a 'first past the post' system. There can be gridlock if the Chief Executive is pusillanimous and sweats the small stuff. With hindsight, no-drama Obama did not deliver what he had promised. The whole point about putting 'a nigger in the White House' was to scare K street straight. Obama should have gone ape-shit every now and then so as to get all them white dudes in business suits to stop fucking over Joe Public so incessantly. Trump, by contrast, is shaking things up. His core constituency is happy with him. Obama certainly had his own loyal support base. But it wasn't happy with the way his Administration performed.
Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.This is silly. It was the Democrats disastrous performance in the 2014 mid-terms, itself a product of the failed roll-out of Obamacare, as well as Obama's refusal to campaign and the Republican party's push to the center, which led to this situation. Polarization is inevitable if the Chief Executive fucks up on bread and butter issues. It may be that Obama could have put a different spin on things by going ape-shit over the Republican shut down of the Federal Govt or by taking a more combative stance shifting blame to the 'fat cats'. I suppose, people admire Obama for taking the high road. But they couldn't endorse his Party's complacency because everybody knew its had its snout deeply buried in K street's trough.
Yup, that's what happens if you have a President who is constantly taking the high road while his Party has its snout deeply buried in the trough of vested interests. However, it is not the case that the Judiciary is 'disrespected'. Kavanaugh wasn't a scandalous choice. What was scandalous was the method used to try to bring him down. It cast the moral legitimacy of the 'Me too' movement into doubt. Now, it is Biden who is being painted as a serial sexual harasser by the Democrats' 'circular firing squad'.
One can predict that henceforth no significant judicial appointments will be made when the presidency and the Senate are not controlled by the same party. McConnell and our dysfunctional and disrespected Congress have now ensured an increasingly dysfunctional and disrespected judiciary, and the constitutional balance of powers among the three branches of government is in peril.
Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.Like Winston Churchill's conservative allies- who rejoiced at the defeat of Hitler and Tojo- the Republicans can be pleased with themselves because Trump has fulfilled some, if not all, his campaign promises.
The combination of Trump’s abasement before Putin in Helsinki,Which did not occur. Why not simply say Putin gave him a golden shower?
the shameful separation of families at the border in complete disregard of US asylum law (to say nothing of basic humanitarian principles and the GOP’s relentless claim to be the defender of “family values”), and most recently Michael Cohen’s implication of Trump in criminal violations of campaign finance laws has not shaken the fealty of the Republican old guard, so there is little indication that even an explosive and incriminating report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller will rupture the alliance.Quite true. But why? It is because the American people don't care about 'basic humanitarian principles'. They just don't want wage competition from immigrants.
Americans don't believe anybody adheres to 'campaign finance laws'- save maybe un-electable crackpots. They have now discovered that the Democrats don't really want to impeach the President. They want to bring down Biden under the pretense of going after Trump. Obama warned them about their 'circular firing squad' but they didn't listen. What they are now doing is tarnishing Obama's legacy by going after his side-kick, Joe Biden. This is like showing Tonto was a member of the KKK or that Robin has child porn on his laptop. The effect is to cast a cloud of suspicion on the Lone Ranger or Batman.
But the potential impact of the Mueller report does suggest yet another eerie similarity to the interwar period—how the toxic divisions in domestic politics led to the complete inversion of previous political orientations.Very true! Under Trump, Communists are joining the Republican Party. Meanwhile, KKK Grand Wizards are standing as Democratic candidates. When will the madness end?
Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power in no small part because the fascist-conservative alliances on the right faced division and disarray on the left.Mussolini and Hitler came to power because their goons were ex-soldiers who could beat the fuck out of the goons of the Left.
The Catholic parties (Popolari in Italy, Zentrum in Germany), liberal moderates, Social Democrats, and Communists did not cooperate effectively in defense of democracy.They didn't want democracy because they could see it was a shit-show. Why is this stupid man claiming that Communists wanted to 'cooperate effectively in defense of democracy'? Is he utterly mad? When Walter Ulbrich got power, did he defend democratic values? Of course he did. The Stasi used to go around kissing and cuddling dissidents and bringing them nice things to eat.
In Germany this reached the absurd extreme of the Communists underestimating the Nazis as a transitory challenge while focusing on the Social Democrats—dubbed “red fascists”—as the true long-term threat to Communist triumph.I think 'red fascist' is a Trotskyite term. I think the Comintern line was against 'social fascists'- i.e. the SD.
By 1936 the democratic forces of France and Spain had learned the painful lesson of not uniting against the fascist threat, and even Stalin reversed his ill-fated policy and instructed the Communists to join democrats in Popular Front electoral alliances.But this strategy failed and so Stalin did a deal with Hitler.
In France the prospect of a Popular Front victory and a new government headed by—horror of horrors—a Socialist and Jew, Léon Blum, led many on the right to proclaim, “Better Hitler than Blum.” Better the victory of Frenchmen emulating the Nazi dictator and traditional national enemy across the Rhine than preserving French democracy at home and French independence abroad under a Jewish Socialist. The victory of the Popular Front in 1936 temporarily saved French democracy but led to the defeat of a demoralized and divided France in 1940,So, it didn't save France at all. It was counter-productive.
followed by the Vichy regime’s collaboration with Nazi Germany while enthusiastically pursuing its own authoritarian counterrevolution.France was occupied by Hitler's Nazis. Does this cretin think Putin will invade the USA? If not, why talk of 'better Putin than Hilary'? Putin has no chance of ruling America. Hitler did have that chance.
Faced with the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the US election and collusion with members of his campaign, Trump and his supporters’ first line of defense has been twofold—there was “no collusion” and the claim of Russian meddling is a “hoax.” The second line of defense is again twofold: “collusion is not a crime” and the now-proven Russian meddling had no effect. I suspect that if the Mueller report finds that the Trump campaign’s “collusion” with Russians does indeed meet the legal definition of “criminal conspiracy” and that the enormous extent of Russian meddling makes the claim that it had no effect totally implausible, many Republicans will retreat, either implicitly or explicitly, to the third line of defense: “Better Putin than Hillary.” There seems to be nothing for which the demonization of Hillary Clinton does not serve as sufficient justification, and the notion that a Trump presidency indebted to Putin is far preferable to the nightmare of a Clinton victory will signal the final Republican reorientation to illiberalism at home and subservience to an authoritarian abroad.
Such similarities, both actual and foreseeable, must not obscure a significant difference between the interwar democratic decline and our current situation. In his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis portrayed a Nazi-style takeover in the US, in which paramilitary forces of the newly elected populist president seize power by arresting many members of Congress and setting up a dictatorship replete with all-powerful local commissars, concentration camps, summary courts, and strict censorship, as well as the incarceration of all political opponents who do not succeed in fleeing over the Canadian border.In his 'War of the Worlds' 1938 radio-broadcast, Orson Welles spoke of a Martian invasion. Some people believed him and panicked. No one believed Sinclair Lewis. FDR could have seen off Huey Long without any difficulty. Indeed, at the time, many people thought it was FDR who posed the greater threat to the constitution.
Invoking the Nazi example was understandable then, and several aspects of democratic decline in the interwar period seem eerily similar to current trends, as I have noted. But the Nazi dictatorship, war, and genocide following the collapse of Weimar democracy are not proving very useful for understanding the direction in which we are moving today. I would argue that current trends reflect a significant divergence from the dictatorships of the 1930s.First you say something idiotic and then you argue against it. Why? How stupid do you think your readers are?
The fascist movements of that time prided themselves on being overtly antidemocratic, and those that came to power in Italy and Germany boasted that their regimes were totalitarian.They also prided themselves on being able to conquer their neighbors. Even Franco used to gas on about he would gobble up Portugal. At the time, people thought the way to get rich was by looting some other country. Now
The most original revelation of the current wave of authoritarians is that the construction of overtly antidemocratic dictatorships aspiring to totalitarianism is unnecessary for holding power.When was this not known? It is obvious that Democracy can be subverted or has already been subverted.
Perhaps the most apt designation of this new authoritarianism is the insidious term “illiberal democracy.”But, a term is all that it is.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary have all discovered that opposition parties can be left in existence and elections can be held in order to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy, while in reality elections pose scant challenge to their power.Putin governs Russia the way it has always been governed- save for spells of anarchy. Erdogan triumphed over the Army and has marginalized it as a political force. But he can lose power the way he gained it. So can Orban. so can Duterte. In any case, they won't live forever.
Truly dangerous opposition leaders are neutralized or eliminated one way or another.Till they stop being opposition leaders and form a Government. But this has always been true.
Total control of the press and other media is likewise unnecessary, since a flood of managed and fake news so pollutes the flow of information that facts and truth become irrelevant as shapers of public opinion.But fake news and propaganda too fail as the Communist regimes of East Europe discovered. Economic conditions, however, do shape public opinion.
Once-independent judiciaries are gradually dismantled through selective purging and the appointment of politically reliable loyalists.Also, Lizard People from Planet X replace all Heads of Government with shape-shifting members of their own species. David Icke has explained all this.
Crony capitalism opens the way to a symbiosis of corruption and self-enrichment between political and business leaders.When has this not been the case?
Xenophobic nationalism (and in many cases explicitly anti-immigrant white nationalism) as well as the prioritization of “law and order” over individual rights are also crucial to these regimes in mobilizing the popular support of their bases and stigmatizing their enemies.But Clinton deported more people than Dubya and Obama is now called the 'deporter in chief' by some Democrats.
Trump has shown unabashed admiration for these authoritarian leaders and great affinity for the major tenets of illiberal democracy.Yes, yes. He begs them to pee on his face. On the other hand, to his credit, he- like most normal people- doesn't think the 'major tenets of illiberal democracy' is areal thing.
But others have paved the way in important respects. Republicans begin with a systemic advantage in electing senators and representatives, because the Democratic Party’s constituency has become heavily concentrated in big states and big cities.Why didn't Obama correct this when he had the chance?
By my calculation every currently serving Democratic senator represents roughly 3.65 million people; every Republican roughly 2.51 million. Put another way, the fifty senators from the twenty-five least populous states—twenty-nine of them Republicans—represent just over 16 percent of the American population, and thirty-four Republican senators—enough to block conviction on impeachment charges—represent states with a total of 21 percent of the American population. With gerrymandering and voter suppression enhancing even more the systemic Republican advantage, it is estimated that the Democrats will have to win by 7 to 11 points (a margin only obtainable in rare “wave” elections) in the 2018 elections to achieve even the narrowest of majorities in the House of Representatives.The problem here is that Democrats gerrymander just as much as Republicans when they have control. No one can say the Weimar Republic had this problem because it had Proportional Representation.
If it is to be feared, why not do something about it? What was Obama doing for 8 long years?
In the five presidential elections of the twenty-first century, Democrats have won the popular vote four times. Two of these four (2000 and 2016) nonetheless produced Republican presidents, since the Electoral College reflects the same weighting toward small, more often Republican states as the Senate. Given the Supreme Court’s undermining of central provisions of the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder), its refusal to take up current flagrant gerrymandering cases (Gill v. Whitford for Wisconsin; Benisek v. Lamone for Maryland), and its recent approval of the Ohio law purging its voting rolls (Husted v. Randolph Institute), it must be feared that the Court will in the future open the floodgates for even more egregious gerrymandering and voter suppression.
The unprecedented flow of dark money into closely contested campaigns has distorted the electoral process even further.Did Hilary get no 'dark money'?
The Supreme Court decision declaring corporations to be people and money to be free speech (Citizens United v. FEC) in particular has greatly enhanced the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to influence American politics.Hilary had plenty of Corporations and wealthy individuals behind her. So would Biden if he gets the ticket.
We are approaching the point when Democrats might still win state elections in the major blue states but become increasingly irrelevant in elections for the presidency and Congress.But, is what they are doing in blue states really so inspiring that red states feel they are losing out? If so, why can't people in red states change their votes?
Trump’s personal flaws and his tactic of appealing to a narrow base while energizing Democrats and alienating independents may lead to precisely that rare wave election needed to provide a congressional check on the administration as well as the capture of enough state governorships and legislatures to begin reversing current trends in gerrymandering and voter suppression.If the Democrats didn't do it when they had the whip hand, why would they do it if they win big now?
The elections of 2018 and 2020 will be vital in testing how far the electoral system has deteriorated.This has happened all over the world. Does this mean Democracy is in danger everywhere?
Another area in which Trump has been the beneficiary of long-term trends predating his presidency is the decline of organized labor.
To consolidate his dictatorship, Hitler had to abolish the independent unions in Germany in a single blow.He had to abolish trade unions so as to fulfill his plans for Germany. A war economy sees the worker as a soldier. It shoots mutineers or deserters. But it does look after their welfare so as to maintain productivity. This element of Hitler's policy was successful. Its legacy continues in the Hartz reforms.
Trump faces no such problem. In the first three postwar decades, workers and management effectively shared the increased wealth produced by the growth in productivity. Since the 1970s that social contract has collapsed, union membership and influence have declined, wage growth has stagnated, and inequality in wealth has grown sharply. Governor Scott Walker’s triumph over public sector unions in Wisconsin and the recent Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory public sector union dues (Janus v. AFSCME) simply accelerate a process long underway. The increasingly uneven playing field caused by the rise in corporate influence and decline in union power, along with the legions of well-funded lobbyists, is another sign of the illiberal trend.This 'illiberal trend' was associated with the revival of classical liberal thought. Indeed, it is dubbed 'neo-liberalism'.
Alongside the erosion of an independent judiciary as a check on executive power, other hallmarks of illiberal democracy are the neutralization of a free press and the steady diminution of basic human rights. On these issues, often described as the guardrails of democracy against authoritarian encroachment, the Trump administration either has won or seems poised to win significant gains for illiberalism. Upon his appointment as chancellor, Hitler immediately created a new Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, who remained one of his closest political advisers.Did Trump do anything similar? No.
In Trump’s presidency, those functions have effectively been privatized in the form of Fox News and Sean Hannity.To privatize something means to shift it from the Public to the Private Sector. Fox News launched in 1996.
Fox faithfully trumpets the “alternative facts” of the Trump version of events, and in turn Trump frequently finds inspiration for his tweets and fantasy-filled statements from his daily monitoring of Fox commentators and his late-night phone calls with Hannity. The result is the creation of a “Trump bubble” for his base to inhabit that is unrecognizable to viewers of PBS, CNN, and MSNBC and readers of The Washington Post and The New York Times. The highly critical free media not only provide no effective check on Trump’s ability to be a serial liar without political penalty; on the contrary, they provide yet another enemy around which to mobilize the grievances and resentments of his base. A free press does not have to be repressed when it can be rendered irrelevant and even exploited for political gain.So, a free press isn't the 'guard rail' of anything. That's the lesson here.
The very first legislation decreed by Hitler under the Enabling Act of 1933 (which suspended the legislative powers of the Reichstag) authorized the government to dismiss civil servants for suspected political unreliability and “non-Aryan” ancestry.One of Woodrow Wilson's first actions was to introduce segregation into the Federal Government. He got rid of many African Americans in Federal Employment.
Inequality before the law and legal discrimination were core features of the Nazi regime from the beginning.They were core features of American democracy from its very beginning. Hitler was imitating America in many respects.
It likewise intruded into people’s private choices about sexuality and reproduction. Persecution of male homosexuality was drastically intensified, resulting in the deaths of some 10,000 gay men and the incarceration and even castration of many thousands more.Britain was far more homophobic than Germany. Turing was chemically castrated in 1954.
Some 300,000–400,000 Germans deemed carriers of hereditary defects were forcibly sterilized; some 150,000 mentally and physically handicapped Germans considered “unworthy of life” were murdered.The US went in for sterilization first. Sweden stuck with the practice into the Nineteen Seventies. The Nazis desisted from killing the handicapped because of a popular revolt. Sadly, it must be said, the killing of Jews was popular in some other countries- with the honorable exception of Bulgaria and, to a lesser extent, Italy. It was, and is, a big part of Hitler's appeal.
Germans capable of bearing racially valued children were denied access to contraception and abortion and rewarded for having large families; pregnant female foreign workers were often forced to have abortions to prevent the birth of undesired children and loss of workdays.Germans capable of killing were denied opportunities to avoid killing by not enlisting in the Army. Trump is forcing women to have 'racially valued children'. He has forcibly conscripted all able bodied Americans into the Army.
Nothing remotely so horrific is on the illiberal agenda, but the curtailment of many rights and protections Americans now enjoy is likely. Presumably marriage equality will survive, given the sea change in American public opinion on that issue. But the right of businesses and individuals to discriminate against gays is likely to be broadly protected as a “sincerely held religious belief.” Chief Justice John Roberts’s favorite target, affirmative action, is likely to disappear under his slogan that to end racial discrimination, one must end all forms of racial discrimination. And a woman’s right to abortion will probably disappear in red states, either through an outright overturning of Roe v. Wade or more likely through narrower rulings that fail to find any “undue burden” in draconian restrictions that in practice make abortion unavailable. And equal protection of voting rights is likely to be eroded in red states through ever more insidiously designed voter suppression laws and gerrymandering once the Supreme Court makes clear that it will not intervene to curb such measures.Why will these things happen? The answer, I am afraid, is that its what people want. They also wanted Hitler and Mussolini till those guys lost wars. Nobody wanted Franco but he died peacefully in his bed.
The domestic agenda of Trump’s illiberal democracy falls considerably short of totalitarian dictatorship as exemplified by Mussolini and Hitler.It also falls short of the Spanish Inquisition. Why does nobody mention the Spanish Inquisition?
But that is small comfort for those who hope and believe that the arc of history inevitably bends toward greater emancipation, equality, and freedom.It bent towards Obama sure enough. But will it bend towards Biden?
Likewise, it is small comfort that in foreign policy Trump does not emulate the Hitlerian goals of wars of conquest and genocide, because the prospects for peace and stability are nevertheless seriously threatened.By what?
Escalating trade wars could easily tip the world economy into decline, and the Trump administration has set thresholds for peaceful settlements with Iran and North Korea that seem well beyond reach.Obama wasted his political capital cosying up to Iran at a time when they were strengthening their grip on Iraq and stretching it out towards Syria and Yemen. The South Koreans are smart enough to deal with the North. They are now fighting the Japs so as to gain sympathy in Beijing.
It is possible that Trump is engaged in excessive rhetorical posturing as a bargaining chip and will retreat to more moderate positions in both cases. But it is also possible that adversarial momentum will build, room for concessions will disappear, and he will plunge the country into serious economic or military conflicts as a captive of his own rhetoric.The whole point about Trump is that he isn't into 'rhetoric'. He is a businessman of a sketchy type.
Historically, such confrontations and escalations have often escaped the control of leaders far more talented than Trump.Only because they think they ought to be bound by their word. Trump has never had that problem as many of his creditors know to their cost.
No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics.What about the specter of the Spanish Inquisition? Why does everybody forget the Spanish Inquisition?
A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.In other words, America will remain America for the foreseeable future. This guy or someone like him can write the same essay four years or ten years from now with only minor alterations.
Finally, within several decades after Trump’s presidency has ended, the looming effects of ecological disaster due to human-caused climate change—which Trump not only denies but is doing so much to accelerate—will be inescapable.But this would still be true even if Trump had never been born.
Desertification of continental interiors, flooding of populous coastal areas, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with concomitant shortages of fresh water and food, will set in motion both population flight and conflicts over scarce resources that dwarf the current fate of Central Africa and Syria. No wall will be high enough to shelter the US from these events.Why not? If this Professor is right, America must start building walls and deporting migrants like crazy because a collapse in the food supply is around the corner. Indeed, our best bet would be to join a militia and start stockpiling canned food and automatic weapons.
Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism, but regardless of how the Trump presidency concludes, this is a story unlikely to have a happy ending.A story told by a gloomy cretin won't have a happy ending. Mental masturbation doesn't work that way. Still if thinking about Nazis gets you hard, you can always finish yourself off after class.
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