THE ROAD TO TYRANNY: THE MARGINALIZATION OF THE PRESS AND THE RULE OF LAW

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.

Robert Dallek

Much of the fear generated in our body politic, exacerbated by the vituperative and vindictive emanations from President Trump and his acolyte apologists, attacking the free press read directly from the totalitarian playbook.  Anyone who has studied European history understands the origins of German totalitarianism flowed from the democratic election of Adolf Hitler in 1933. 

Abrogation of liberty occurred incrementally, and generally, with the population at large ignoring each erosive stage since Germans thought it would not affect them individually, a beach washed away by waves.  In Weimar Germany, Hitler’s consolidation of power, a step-by-step process, took years, in which his original supporters and putative enemies were first marginalized, arrested, imprisoned and then murdered.   New illicit laws supported Hitler's perfidious allegations that the press were foreign subversive agents of the Bolsheviks and the Jews, enemies of the state.  Then journalists were arrested, followed by the Nuremberg laws proscribing racial guidelines and Aryanism to the first degree, the second degree and so on down the totem pole.  Jews were at the bottom, on their way to be classified as subhuman, eligible for deportation, arrest and extermination.  Neighbors denounced neighbors.  All of this unchecked by institutions gradually dissolved and laws perverted by a master of manipulation of baser instincts of the human psyche--fear.  Sound familiar?

Hitler announced his intentions in Mein Kampf, but took time to effectuate his plan for Europe and the rest of the world.  He believed America set an example of what he should do in Eastern Europe by its treatment of the Native American, Mexicans, and the "lesser races" by its racially inspired concept of Manifest destiny in which the white government expropriated the land of Native Americans and had enslaved African Americans.  Andrew Jackson, a Trump hero, was a proponent of this policy of racial exclusion.  Hitler's plan of lebensraum was a copycat version related to the "lesser" races of Eastern Europe, the Slavs, the gypsies, the Jews, the Russians, the Poles.  He was weak at first, people dismissing him as a crank and a madman.  Even Jewish newspapers editorialized that once he assumed office he would moderate his position.   He would act more like a statesman. 

In Germany, the Fuhrer embarked in a plan of dominance based upon the nationalistic instincts of Germans, his propaganda ministry churning out lies and misinformation to explain and scapegoat the problems of the Reich, by blaming minorities, communists, Jews and political opposition, jailing journalists, clergy and promulgating a world view of racial and nationalistic animus codifying it all into perversions of law facilitated by courts of Nazi martinet judicial imposters.

History instructs us about past events roughly analogous to what is happening today.   American institutions and the rule of law are under threat from a President the likes of whom we have never seen before, who cannot distinguish between lies and truth, is ignorant of policy and has no understanding of the world order.  His own worldview preys upon the baser instincts of fearful people, who believed our former President was a Muslim not born in the United States and who would "institute Sharia law in the United States of America." Trump played this fear like he played his stiffed workers. This alone should have been disqualifying for a presidential candidate.  But his followers do not care.  They actually believed the con.  Whatever else Trump is not, he is a master showman, a PT Barnum, relying on the gullibility of the ignorant, the uneducated, the true believer.  His latest trip is an attempt to manipulate the Justice Department.

In 1945, the United Nations, formed as a methodology of dispute settlement among nations rather than war, has essentially kept the peace for 70 years.  Disagreements between nations, including trade were to be arbitrated and the results binding.  The world did not want to relive the horror of a war that killed 50 million people.  Now Trump, an anathema to this principle wishes to return to the 1930s--every nation for itself.  A return to the 20th century, the most devastating in human history.    He visits Saudi Arabia and praises a nation that disregards human rights and then castigates our democratic allies.   He criticizes South Korea on the eve of an election between a friendly to America candidate and an antipathetic one when he knows the South Koreans are our most important ally in efforts to curb the madman in the north.  The antipathetic candidate wins the election.   Denzel Washington on his best day could not stop this runaway train.

Worst of all is his attack on our free press, reminiscent of states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Hungary, and Putin's Russia, who everyone now knows meddled in our election and is attempting to destabilize NATO and democracy in America.  His admiration of dictators and authoritarians is no less secret than Madonna's bra.  He orates on the banks of the Ohio river talking about the renaissance of coal and the promise of new jobs that will not come back, nakedly averting attention from the potentially explosive investigation, showcasing his tainted character and degradation of his Presidency to the peril of all Americans.

Our institutions need more vigilance from below than ever before.  The roots in the tree of Liberty are fragile.