Kamala Harris conceded her election but insisted she did not concede her principles. Hillary Clinton conceded her election saying explicitly that we owed the then president-elect “an open mind and a chance to lead.” In what might be one of our nation’s most gracious political moments, and certainly one for which he will always be remembered, John McCain said, the words, “He will be my president too”. As a point of fact, regardless of whom we voted for or how we feel about it, if you remain a citizen of this country, at Monday noon, it will be the simple and undeniable truth, for each and every one of us, that Donald J Trump “will be my president too”.
For some, such an admission might come as a possible opening to healing. For others, darker emotions stir, bitter and angry disappointments linger and flare, and the outlines of troubling decisions can be seen on the horizon. For some there remains a thin line between patriotic reconciliation to our nation’s unity, and acquiecence to something distinctly not of our American heritage. This will take some good faith reconciliation, I believe, for all of us.
Four years ago, I raised in these pages the specter of the USA echoing the fate of the Weimer Republic of the early German thirties. I asked if it were ever valid to make comparisons to the Nazis. I had trepidations about the moral acceptability of making any such suggested comparison. I feared, and stated so, that anything we might learn from such a comparison had to be considered in the light of it being insulting hyperbole to try to evoke any such a reflection.
In this last presidential campaign, however, the comparison to fascism and nazism, whether odious or not, was raised many times, in many venues and by many people. The incoming president-elect was called a fascist, if not a nazi, by those ranging from the former chief of staff to his current political opponent, and so what might be referred to as ‘gracious’ by one could conceivably end up looking collaborationist to history. A good German who had voted for the Social Democrats in 1933 might not appear in such a flattering light to have asserted “he is my chancellor too”.
One hopes that President Trump will not govern as a fascist, and much less a Nazi, and the end of his term in office will offer us nothing but good things to say about him. Perhaps history will demonstrate the comparison to be completely inaccurate and insulting. He has claimed to wish to be a great president for all Americans. We just won’t know, until we know.
We gain little be trying to redebate this last election. Those who voted for Trump did not see such an unflattering parallel, or perhaps discounted as hyperbole any suggestion of fascism. One may be forgiven, however, for being a little confused. After all, Trump rose back into power on a platform in which he explicitly targeted specific groups, and with what appear to be implicitly racial overtones. When he yearned for more immigration of Norwegians, he did not say that it was Norwegian immigrants who were poisoning our blood. While a perception of racial bias may not be completely fair and accurate, it is certainly fair to say that candidate Trump used consistently dehumanizing and demonizing language about specific groups. It is also true that he has shown contempt for the institutions of the law, judges and juries, and the whole department of justice, that he showed contempt for the institutions such as a free press, that he now announces territorial ambitions, and that he has clearly shown admiration for the use of both military and para-military force both on our own citizens and in the world at large. We can argue about whether he commands his own paramilitaries, but he did not discourage his followers from trying to use force to obtain a political end. I hope one can be forgiven for showing concern over seeing at least a trace of national socialist ideology in the man who on Monday next “will be my president too”.
Maybe, and I hope and pray so, such fears are ungrounded, exaggerated and plain wrong. After all, the ‘minority’ which he targeted explicitly are those who have broken our own national immigration laws. He may, it has been argued, have genuinely believed that there had been widespread fraud in the last election and truly believed that it was his presidential duty to see that the laws, including law regarding elections, were faithfully executed. Perhaps Trump is no nazi, no fascist, but a genuine and serious patriot. The people have spoken. Donald Trump will be my President too.
This presents each of us with a clear responsibility and one for which it may be instructive to review history. Instructive, even if that history is felt by many to be applied unfairly and insultingly.
In many instances, including Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Chavez’s and Maduro’s Venezuela, and, yes, even the National Socialist German Workers Party were legitimately elected governments. They were duly charged with running the government for a country that its citizens viewed as threatened and in decline, and those who voted for these governments did so in the belief that this government would make their nation better and stronger.
In each case, it required a specific journey from the day in which a democratically elected leader soon, or ultimately, assumed non-democratic control of the government. It was in some cases a long road, in some much shorter, from that day the new government started until, for example, the suppression of expression, the institution of territorial wars, and, in one case, the building, some seven or eight years later, of a vast and mostly hidden apparatus designed expressly for the elimination of a targeted minority.
So even if it is unfair, insulting, unnecessary, ungracious and harmful to any chance of reconciliation to review the presidential campaign, and to accuse those who won of fascist sympathies, I hope it is not unfair or unreasonable to consider those steps which newly elected and authoritarian leading governments have historically used to guide their once democratic party into something other.
The series of steps by which the NDSAP, the Nazi party, transformed a parliamentary democracy into a lethal dictatorship took but a few short months. These steps were initiated in the immediate wake of a fire which broke out under mysterious circumstances. The fire broke out in the Reichstag, the German version of our Capitol building. The government blamed the communists, but some speculate it was the Nazis themselves. Knowing, and taking advantage of the fact that when a populace is threatened and attacked, they act often in obedience to a central and national authority, the leaders of the Nazi party, then the largest party but not a majority, forced through parliament, not without some coercion, an “Enabling Act”. This law, stated to be temporary, allowed the executive, the Chancellor, to act without legislative authority, with no checks or balances. It is natural and well known that in unusual circumstances, fear and a sense of patriotic fervor can lead to excesses, as we ourselves have seen in various instance. Using the power granted by the Enabling Act, opposition political parties were outlawed and dismantled, an opposing press was regulated and suppressed, labor unions were all stifled. Creating a secret police with no limits on their tactics, dissent was systematically and effectively eliminated with coercion, disappearance, detention, torture and extra-judicial executions.
The next year the offices of Chancellor and President were unified, making Adolf Hitler the unified leader of the government and the nation, calling himself the “driver”, or in German, Der Fuhrer. Dissent within the party itself was eliminated in a 1934 counterrevolution in which thousands of intra-party dissidents, including the head of the storm troopers were executed, and in 1935 laws were passed essentially stripping Jews of citizenship. It was not until 1936, almost 4 years into the total dismantling of the democratic state, that Hitler made his first territorial claims in Europe which were to lead, then in three years to the outbreak of world war two.
God Forbid and God protect us, we do not have the political substrate which did Germany. The German democracy had been a young twenty years old after centuries of effective monarchy, while we have centuries of democracy to rely upon, and with grit and grace we will not go down the same road. Still, if we are to avoid it, we MUST be cognizant, aware and careful.
I would suggest, after reading and listening to many concerned voices including Madeline Albright, Rachel Maddow, Tom Snyder and others, as well as my own perhaps obsessive study of prior instances of fascism, that there are four major pillars which would support the contention that democracy had been supplanted.
- Chaotic events may happen. We may have what history would later characterize as our own version of a Reichstag fire. If the executive branch were to use such events, or even without them to claim rights, privileges, processes which are traditionally performed by the legislative branch or the courts, this would be a troubling development. We have traditionally enjoyed a clear and specific separation of powers. If the executive refused to follow accepted legislative processes, standards, norms and most notably laws, or took actions which the courts forbade, this would be something to cause alarm.
- Suppression or punishment of political opponents would be a major red flag. There has been dialogue about putting various opposition leaders in jail. For what? If Hillary Clinton, or Jack Smith, or Liz Cheney or Jamie Raskin, or any of other dozens of legitimate political leaders were to find themselves facing legal retributive actions, criminal or civil, or to be targeted by, say, the IRS, immigration services, their travel limited, and certainly if, God Forbid, they were arrested, we would be in treacherous territory.
- Suppression of the free press would be a major violation of the convenent between government and citizenry. I don’t mean calling it “fake news”, and “enemy of the people”, those phrases are a bit disgusting and anti-american, but not really what I mean. I am talking about taking stations off the air, refusing to renew broadcasting licenses, or bringing lawsuits (which has already started) or attempting to use the justice department to suppress, imprison, and intimidate reporters and journalists. Such actions would clearly cross a constitutional ‘red line’, and violate our most sacred rights.
- The reliance on military force, and especially extra-judicial force, excessive force, coercive force, force unbounded by legal limits would be the final pillar. We do not, as of yet, have a secret state police and, if detained for an accused crime, we have a broad array of rights which have been in large measure supported and maintained. There are of course well publicized episodes of police brutality and even lethality. Those episodes, however, have been treated as crimes. If we were to witness increasing use of brutal force, extra-judicial force, excessive deadly force, for example, to suppress protest, that could herald a turning point. The creation, facilitation or tolerance of non-state extra-judicial paramilitary actors would herald a potentially fatal blow. Central American countries had their ‘death squads’. No one expects that. Such changes would inevitably be subtle. One doesn’t expect opposition politicians or journalists or protestors to simply disappear into “Nacht und NebeL”, night and fog. But if, for example, “Proud Boys” and the like were found to be roughing up protestors at rallys with impunity, we would be in a completely different territory. If one found there to be enough use of official or paramilitary force to make one feel consistently intimated and afraid to speak up, we would know we were in completely uncharted territory and one which would demand active opposition.
I hope that these are my own dream feverish paranoid fantasies and NONE of it occurs. I hope that Donald Trump, who will be my president too, will want history to remember him, not as the man who destroyed American democracy, but rather as one who led an outstandingly reparative and longingly remembered administration.
But what if that doesn’t happen, and the four pillars of democratic erosion begin consistently to appear. What can we do?
- We must continue to work within the political system when possible. The democratic party is clearly in a state of despair and dissolution, however even from the beginning there are serious discussions about what must be done to regain the trust and affection of a large enough portion of the American people to win elections in the future. It is tempting, I am tempted, to stop sending money to democratic candidates and organizers. Those who want a free two party system to thrive need to evaluate those temptations, and stay involved.
- Support and continue to listen to an independent and free press wherever it can be found. It might be tempting to give up on MSNBC as having been on the side of the “losers”, but now might be the most important time to follow Rachael Maddow. NPR, through whatever your local station is, WNYC in New York needs our ears, and, yes, our dollars, now more than ever.
- There may come a time when initial steps towards authoritarian actions with respect to the above four pillars happens, and we have to increase the level of our protest. This would require courage, perhaps more than many of us think we have. Still there are steps before standing on the front lines. President Biden spoke of an oligarchy. Many in this “oligarchy” benefit directly from our participation. I am not yet ready to place blame, or perhaps to sacrifice my own technology created conveniences, but if steps toward a more totalitarian regime occurred and were countanenced, then perhaps I don’t need Facebook, Amazon or a Tesla.
- There could come a time when we are asked, say, to report suspicious foreign appearing individuals. We may even be branded as responsible if we don’t. That would take enormous courage to refuse, but there is such a possibility. We must try as far as our courage will allow not to cooperate with what are conscious violating dictates. I don’t mean not to obey the laws when we can. But there is a balance between legitimate cooperation, and collaboration.
- I do not look hungrily for mass protests and resistance in the street. I have run from police batons during the Vietnam war, and don’t look for opportunities to do so again. Further it would be particularly challenging in the face of increased miliary and paramilitary use of force. Still, should it come to that, the mass protests of the 1960s did, ultimately, have some effect on the conduct of the war. There could arise a time when we would have a moral calling to place our bodies on a line. I hope that never to happen. I am not sure where my own courage would allow me to stand.
I hope and pray that none of these fearsome possibilities ever come to pass. I hope and pray that we know within some short period that our fears were just fever dreams, and that the country is moving in a stable direction, that those immigrants who are deported are treated within the law, that Democrats in the house and senate continue to pontificate and Republicans continue to shout, and left wing pundits continue to pound the desks, figuratively, in performative outrage, and that my Republican good friends and neighbors and I continue to freely shout at each other over holiday dinners, and that four years from now we go back to free and fair elections and anxiously await the results on election night, knowing either side might win.
But if something darker comes, we must be aware of it, to know what to watch for, and to keep our eyes open. For we are now all, collectively, responsible for it. We do not look back at the concentration camps in Europe and ask who voted for the social democrats and who for the national socialists. We are now all in this together, and we are all responsible for the outcome.
I like to be optimistic about the promise of America. I believe that the vision and values and the sanctity of our process and principles will hold, that, as in President Biden’s farewell address, the Statue of Liberty will sway but not crack.
And I know that the principles which have kept us moving shakily forward for 250 years will survive. I hope they survive embodied in this great nation. I have to hope so, because, like everyone else in our country, if this experiment fails and history records that we could not protect this dream, the responsibility will be on me, and everyone else like me.
Because for every citizen among us, on Monday at noon, Donald J Trump will be my president too.