Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who incited a violent insurrection in January 2021 after losing the 2020 election and illegally attempted to remain in office, has made it clear what kind of president he intends to be if he returns to the White House in January 2025.
Trump has declared that he will be a dictator from day one of his inauguration in December 2023. In an April interview with Time magazine, he suggested deploying the National Guard or the military as a deportation force. Combined with his recent comments at the National Rifle Association convention that the president may need a third term, and a new video on his Truth social account in which he repeatedly references “creating a united empire” (the Nazi government was called the Third Reich), a Trump victory would likely herald the dawn of a new era of dictatorship for America.
This unrealistic situation reflects both a lack of information and an excess of misinformation.
Yet many in the US seem to be treating this election as politics as usual: Primaries, caucuses and other events are proceeding despite Republican candidates refusing to commit to accepting the legitimate election results if they were not the winner, and most Republicans still accept the false reality that Trump also won the 2020 election.
This surreal situation reflects both a lack of information and an excess of misinformation. A March poll of voters in battleground states found that a majority of respondents were unaware of Trump’s criminal indictments, dictator threats, use of fascist language (such as calling people “vermin”), and pledge of pardons for the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol on January 6. More worryingly, the poll excluded voters who believed Biden stole the 2020 election. Those surveyed were not lost in a Trump alternate world, but they lacked the information to take the threat to our democracy seriously.
And many well-informed Americans don't take Trump's words or actions seriously either, instead accusing those who raise the alarm about his heavy-handed behavior and rhetoric of exaggeration and hysteria.
Certainly, Americans tend to think, “This kind of thing doesn't happen here.” Because our country has lived up to its reputation as a bastion of freedom and democracy, and because we've never had a national dictatorship in the country (though we did have local authoritarianism in the Jim Crow South), many don't notice the gradual creep of dictatorship. But as Robert Kagan writes in a moving essay in the Washington Post, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We need to stop pretending.”
But too many are still pretending. President Joe Biden's age has gotten far more press than President Trump's declaration that if he returns to the White House he will detain and deport millions of people and allow Vladimir Putin's Russia to “do what he wants.” Biden has such an affinity for Russian authoritarianism that he would allow Moscow to attack NATO members if they stood in the way of Putin's imperialist ambitions, a situation that could trigger World War III.
For millions of people who have taken freedom for granted, continued denial is the default mode.
These dire consequences may seem surreal, so far removed from our everyday lives of school drop-off and pick-up, doctor's appointments, work, and sports games. Denial is the default mode for millions of people who take their freedoms for granted and don't want to consider how the rise of tyranny in America might change their lives.
Americans are not the first to live in a state of collective denial. Authoritarians have often told their people what they were going to do, but the people rarely believed it, or felt that they would not be affected because they did not fit the profile of the people the dictator was targeting. Later, when it was their turn to be harassed or persecuted, it was too late to do anything about it.
Recommendation
When Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini declared dictatorship in 1925, most active anti-Fascists tried to flee Italy or went into hiding to avoid imprisonment. But Ignazio Silone, an Italian Communist who took refuge in a safe house in Milan, heard comrades tell him that even as Fascist security forces filled the streets, people lined up outside La Scala, waiting to watch the latest spectacle, seemingly unconcerned about Mussolini's seizure of power.
In Germany, the Jewish linguist Viktor Klemperer, who kept a diary about his life under Hitler's regime, did not deny the reality, but was forced to remain in Nazi Germany because he could not find a position at a university abroad. “Don't think about such things, live your life, indulge in your most private affairs!” he wrote on September 20, 1938, hoping that each time persecution was repeated, it would be the last.
Even though a coup can upset democracy and repression can be severe and immediate, some people underestimate its impact and consider the situation to be only temporary. After Chile's bloody 1973 coup, former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva, a conservative Christian Democrat, was confident that the new military dictatorship would restore order and “return power to democracy.” However, as dictator Augusto Pinochet consolidated his power, Frei realized he had made a grave mistake and began to criticize the regime. He died less than a decade later, and his family claims that Frei was poisoned on Pinochet's orders.
Tyranny “moves not with the force of the executioner’s blade, but with the speed of the tightening screw,” Italian anti-fascist exile GA Borgese wrote in 1937. We can learn from this sad history and treat Mr. Trump’s actions and words with the gravity they deserve.
