Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
By openly defying judicial orders, President Trump has now taken us to the brink of dictatorship. In polite circles and on NPR, this will be referred to as a “constitutional crisis,” but make no mistake: The lack of all restraint on executive power, should the judiciary be unable to prevail in the matter of law or to force compliance—and how can it?—is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
Congress, too, appears to have neither the power nor the votes to challenge Trump. The majority is his very own Nazi party; the minority is an ineffective pseudo-opposition. There remains the tantalizing question of whether the majority-Trump Supreme Court will resist Trump’s most blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions, but there again, how will they compel him to obey their rulings should they displease him?
It may be depressingly instructive to compare Trump’s actions to the rise and consolidation of Hitler’s power. While there are differences, of course, the overall trajectory has many parallels. Trump has not yet—at least to our knowledge or directly—been responsible for murders akin to the Night of the Long Knives (and not counting bombing other countries), but then again, Hitler used the SS to stamp out perceived threats to his political power. This country does not display any political threat to Trump, it would seem.
Would the U.S. military stand up to Trump? Unlikely, unless they were drawn into one bloody war too many, and even then, it’s difficult to imagine them turning on him.
A brief and incomplete inventory of the authoritarian steps Trump has taken would include:
+ Ruling by decree. Trump has done it by executive order. The Nazis did it by passing the “Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People,” which removed any guardrails from Hitler ruling by fiat.
+ Hollowing out the federal government. Trump, along with his accomplice Musk—very much Trump’s Bormann—has removed thousands of civil servants and other federal employees from their jobs. Hitler insisted on installing Aryans and loyalists; Trump is hardly different in going after anyone but white men and installing loyalists.
+ Trump’s Gleichschaltung. Civil servants are just one aspect of the Trump-ification of the country. In a move eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels, Trump has grabbed control of the Kennedy Center (our national theater), curtailed press freedoms and access, except for his sycophants, and openly threatened to illegalize any media coverage and outlets that are not favorable to him.
+ The Supreme Court is another aspect of Trump’s Gleichschaltung (literally “bringing into line,” i.e., Nazification), in his pre-existing control of the highest court. Again, any resistance coming from SCOTUS (and there has been some) would be a supreme irony.
+ Removal of free speech, jailing and disappearance of “enemies of the state,” etc. This process has already begun, in the cases of Mahmoud Khalil and others, aided and abetted, it must be said, by certain Vichy universities and unidentified government hooligans aka Brown Shirts. “Non-Americans,” by Trump’s Nazi racist definition, starting with immigrants, have been indiscriminately imprisoned and deported without any due process of law. The administration’s belated use of the Alien Enemies Act flagrantly and illegally to attempt to make himself unanswerable to the law is even more blatantly authoritarian, like the aforementioned Nazi “emergency decree.”
+ Attacks on political opponents. No matter how compliant or sycophantic Trump’s enemies get, he continues to threaten them with prosecution, or persecution, going so far as to declare the clemency given by Biden to January 6 prosecutors, Anthony Fauci, and others null and void—another display of absolute rule. Hitler did the same, of course, by jailing his opponents, killing them, or sending them off to concentration camps.
+ Disregard for international law and agreements. We all know where Hitler took that. To be fair, that’s an area where the Democrats have been no better. But by bombing Yemen and now openly threatening Iran, Trump could be on the verge of taking things to a whole new level.
I write this just a week after a family member sent me a right-wing screed questioning why we would dare compare Trump to Hitler. This isn’t even a full list by any stretch. QED.
The only real question is, “What comes next?”
*Disclaimer: I am no expert on Nazi Germany. For reference, I have gratefully used this source on the rise of Nazi power.
