Ultimately, authoritarianism is about ruling in the absence of accountability. Now imagine what the likes of Stephen Miller or Tom Homan would do if they knew there would be no consequences for their actions. It’s a scary thought!
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In the first part of this series, we looked at different types of MAGA supporters, compared them to equivalent groups and individuals in the Third Reich, and concluded that they would have made excellent Nazis.
That does not mean that they are actual Nazis, just that they are the kind of people who would enthusiastically support a regime that does really bad things.
How bad?
In the case of the Nazis, they were not merely bad things but unfathomable atrocities, arguably the worst crimes against humanity ever committed.
In the US, the jury is still out. It all depends on how effectively the Trump administration can consolidate power… and how evil are the people in charge of its most cruel parts.
But we’ll get to Stephen Miller in a moment.
First, let’s look at how we got here, and how Germany fell from a parliamentary democracy to a totalitarian dictatorship in 1933.
The roads to authoritarianism are often quite similar, which is why there are so many parallels between the Third Reich and the present-day United States.
To go from a democracy to fascism, you need a disenchanted populace, perceived economic hardship, effective propaganda, weakened institutions, a charismatic leader who promises to restore the country’s greatness, and a minority to blame.
Nazi Germany was an extreme version of this. In the early 1930s, the country was still feeling the sting of defeat from World War I; it was especially hard hit by the Great Depression and hyperinflation; its democracy was just over a decade old, and many people still pined for the strong hand of a charismatic leader — someone who (with the aid of skilled propagandists) not only promised to restore Germany to its greatness but also told Germans that they were superior people. And, to grease the passage to dictatorship, there was an age-old scapegoat to blame everything on.
The current situation in the US is a “lite” version of this. By most benchmarks, the country is doing pretty well economically and would be doing even better if regular Americans ever figured out that their problems stem from unrestrained capitalism more than anything else. In addition, the United States boasts a democracy that has withstood the test of time and institutions that are much stronger than those of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and ’30s.
However, the societal and demographic changes that culminated in the election of a Black president in 2008 have given the white majority (which is projected to remain a true majority for only another two decades or so) the impression that they are no longer firmly in charge of the country.
Therefore, a demagogue promising a return to greatness, i.e., a time when all those “others” still knew their place, is very appealing to tens of millions of people, especially if that leader can rely on a propaganda machine that presents a fact-challenged version of reality that just seems right to those Americans.
Finally, just as antisemitism was a fixture in Europe for centuries before Adolf Hitler took power, Donald Trump can rely on a long history of racism and xenophobia in the United States. It was easy for both of them to identify groups of people to blame everything on.
And here we are.
The similarities don’t end with Trump winning a second presidency and his party in control of both houses of Congress. In fact, that’s when the journey toward authoritarianism really begins.
In Hitler’s case, the last step to dictatorship was quite short. He granted himself emergency powers and, within 18 months, proclaimed himself Führer. Once the Nazis had full control, they began their reign of terror. Using intimidation and violence, they quickly moved to eliminate any political opposition, i.e., communists and socialists (which should tell you all you need to know about where the Nazis were on the political spectrum).
However, most Germans also enthusiastically supported Hitler as a result of early successes. The economy improved, he bullied other European nations by openly defying the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany regained its international stature by hosting the 1936 Olympic Games and putting on quite a show (filmed in mesmerizing black-and-white by a talented documentarian, Leni Riefenstahl). Hitler also rebuilt the military and regained territory lost after the Great War.
In other words, Germans felt that he was making their country great again.
Of course, the Nazis did so at the expense of “subhumans,” i.e., “non-Aryans,” and the worst of Hitler’s henchmen, partially out in the open and partially behind the scenes, pursued an entirely different agenda.
And that, in a roundabout yet important way, brings us to the subject of today’s editorial: the masterminds behind Donald Trump.
Authoritarianism can take many forms — some comparatively benign.
Hungary, for example, operates in a system referred to as “competitive authoritarianism,” which means that elections are held and opposition parties exist, but the ruling government is massively putting its thumb on the scales by taking control of the judiciary system, the media, universities, cultural institutions, etc.
If you have been paying attention, this will sound eerily familiar since all these things are happening in the US right now. At this point, the country is moving rapidly toward becoming such a “competitive authoritarian” state.
In Hungary, there is no doubt that Victor Orbán is an authoritarian leader, but he is largely motivated not by sociopathic cruelty, but by staying in power, running a right-wing government, and funneling money into the pockets of supporters.
In fact, he is so “benignly” authoritarian that Hungary is allowed to remain in the European Union (which is probably a mistake). In addition, his country is small and fairly insignificant, so even if he had ambitions for grander mischief, he does not have the means to carry it out.
The ambition of the Nazis, however, was to take over the world and eradicate and enslave those they considered to be subhumans — and they had the means of going for both.
In other words, there is a wide range of authoritarian regimes, and present-day Hungary and the Third Reich are at opposite ends of that spectrum.
And that brings us to the central question of world politics in the next few years: Where will the US end up on that continuum?
In terms of the sheer ability to commit atrocities, the prospect of an authoritarian United States is terrifying. It will supplant the Soviet Union of the Cold War era and present-day China as the most powerful authoritarian states in human history.
The only thing working in favor of pro-democratic (with a small “D”) forces in the US would be that the country’s embattled institutions are fairly solidly entrenched, and that the administration may not be able to act quickly enough before the midterm elections, when the political landscape in the US could undergo a major shift.
But what about in terms of motivation and malice?
That depends on who makes the decisions.
Ultimately, authoritarianism is about an absence of accountability, which is exactly what people like Donald Trump or Elon Musk seek. They don’t want anybody to tell them what to do.
While the leaders of functioning democracies answer to voters and co-equal branches of government, authoritarians, depending on where they are on our scale, are either less constrained by popular opinion and the rule of law or not at all.
To someone like Orbán, those things (and the official approval of the European Union) still matter, which means he can’t be caught doing anything too bad.
Hitler and the Nazis had no such concerns.
They knew that, within Germany’s borders, institutions had lost all meaningful power to stop them, and all they had to do to maintain their complete power was to prevent a revolution (and, as it turned out, not pick a fight with the entire world).
All of this begs the question: What would US leaders from Trump on down do if they knew that no one is looking and that they face no consequences for their actions?
The answer shows that the president isn’t really the problem here (and we will get to him in the third installment of this series). Trump would just enrich himself, which, on the scale we’re talking about, is fairly benign.
If you go down the long list of Nazi crimes, the ones most appealing to Trump would probably be the looting of the properties of rich people he deports, and taking the golden teeth from murdered non-Aryans.
As for Musk, he would probably be most interested in eugenics experiments and other measures to maintain the purity of the white race and increase the birth rate among those he considers worthy.
Elon Musk really doesn’t like that women have access to birth control and abortions. pic.twitter.com/T4NnYs1VYS
— Paris Marx (@parismarx) April 19, 2023
But consider Stephen Miller or Tom Homan. What would those guys do if they knew they could get away with anything?
Something really bad, that’s what.
Listening to them talk about immigrants is like listening to Nazis talk about Jews. We have no doubt that, to them, people of color coming to the United States from the rest of the world to improve their circumstances are “subhumans.”
We are convinced that, if you were to put Miller or Homan in an SS uniform or on a planning committee for extermination camps and the “Final Solution,” they would fit right in.
Both of them seem almost deranged when they talk about how they want to punish immigrants for having had the audacity to seek a better life in the US.
Even within the confines of the current system, that means instructing masked thugs to abduct them in broad daylight, denying them due process, imprisoning them in remote and sometimes undisclosed locations, deporting the mothers of US-born children suffering from cancer, defying court orders, and sending documented residents of the US to foreign concentration camps for the “crimes” of expressing opinions that Miller and Homan object to.
Now imagine what the likes of Miller and Homan would do if there were no rules, as in Nazi Germany after Hitler consolidated power.
It’s a scary thought.
Most Americans believe that the atrocities committed in the Third Reich could never happen in their country. We believe that they very well could… if people like Miller and Homan have their way.
