Trump
and Hitler: and Pelosi
In the recent government shutdown
Donald Trump revealed himself to be a right-wing populist. Populists believe
there’s a “people” out there that they alone cater to. And once in political
power they try to govern as if only those they cater to matter. They are
willing to side-step or usurp normal governmental practices, laws and the
constitution itself to give those “people” what they want. In his lovely little
book On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder cautions us to “be calm when the unthinkable
arrives.” He talks about how the fire at the German Parliament in 1933 became
the cause for Hitler to declare a state of emergency that would last through
World War Two, until 1945.
What Snyder means by being calm is
to calmly and soberly assess the danger and to stand up and push back
immediately and forcefully. In the parliamentary elections that where held less
than a week after the fire the Nazis won a majority. Less than a year after
those events Germany was effectively, a one-party state. Who set fire to the
parliament was never determined. But Hitler declared that it was Germany’s
internal enemies. Germany lacked the kind of robust but deliberate civil society
in which people might openly say “well let’s investigate who set the fire,” or
we don’t really know who set it. So let’s go to the street to oppose martial
law.” Instead the German people, reeling from post-World War One malaise, the
Great Depression and more than a decade of unstable governments rolled over
before “Der Fuhrer.”
Populism is troubling for the
political establishment. But populism on the right trends toward fascism. Fascist populist not only purport
to despise big government and big capital. They also fear and scapegoat ”foreign”
elements in the population: Jews and Gypsies in 1930s Germany; and people of
color in contemporary America. They thus, also become white nationalists. Fascist in power are much more troubling than
garden variety populists.
Donald Trump is a populist, a fascist
and a white nationalist. The people he seeks to scapegoat are people of color;
and especially immigrants. Snyder says be calm when the unthinkable occurs. He then
describes the creation of a climate of crisis, which induces hysteria in the
citizenry, and justifies a state of emergency. This is what Trump has done over
the issue of the border wall. Those living along the border, including most Republican
congress members would not describe the border situation as a crisis. Fewer
undocumented people are coming across now than before 9-11. Many of those
arriving at the border today are seeking asylum. They aren’t trying to enter
illegally. And, many of those in the country illegally, are people who came
legally and overstayed their visas. Incidentally, many of those people, if not
most are white people from places like Canada and Ireland. So there is no
crisis, except that manufactured in Trump’s head and sold to his base.
The real difference between Germany
in the 1930s the United States today is the durability of our political
institutions, specifically, our system of checks and balances. Heralded as some
of the strongest institutions in the world, they are under supreme challenge
from Trumpism and the long-frustrated white Americans who see the country they’ve
known historically slipping away. Trump has been continually frustrated by the media,
the courts, blue state attorney generals and local officials who won’t do his
bidding. And then the American people sent a thunderous rebuke to his manner of
governance in the 2018 federal elections. The government shutdown over a border
wall that he couldn’t get when Republicans completely controlled Congress was
Trump’s latest desperate attempt to side-step the normal processes of
government and get his way in the name of his “American people.” The steadfast leadership
of Nancy Pelosi and the decline of Trump’s strategy in the polls is the calm in
the face of the unthinkable that Snyder talks about, and the determination to use
our institutions to push back hard that I’m calling for here.
Round One goes to Pelosi and the
Democrats in the House. But Trump may not be finished. He may declare a state
of emergency if this three weeks of negotiations fail. He probably won’t shut
down the government again, but if he does, average citizens must be prepared to
take direct action in myriad ways to send him and his feckless Republican
minions in Congress the message that we’re not going down without a fight. In
fact, we have no intention of going down period!
