As there are a number of new subscribers to this blog, I would—shamelessly—like to call attention to my book Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm, a guide to how to confront a second Trump administration and the rise of right wing authoritarianism in the United States, published by OR Books here in New York last July (four months before the election, I hasten to add).
The intent of that book, drawing on my experience as a military intelligence officer, was to look “over the horizon” as they say at the Pentagon, and contemplate the worst case scenario so that we could be prepared should it befall us. I was hoping the book would prove unnecessary and wind up on a high shelf, to be retrieved only in some far off, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency dystopian future.
Sadly, to paraphrase the late George Allen, that future is now.
While the book contemplated the full range of outcomes following the 2024 election and offered contingencies across that whole spectrum, its most pertinent parts have proven to be its assessment of the autocratic threat and prescriptions for how to combat it in its most pernicious form. What follows are two key excerpts from the book. If you find the material of value, I encourage you to buy a copy: either directly from the publisher (here, or at the link above, or order from your local bookstore, or wherever you get your books. And please tell your friends. Thanks.
LISTENING TO YOU, I GET OPINION
The contemporary Republican Party is at once the logical result of its downward trajectory over the past 57 years, and yet unrecognizable from the GOP of only a few decades ago. Both Nixon and Reagan would be ostracized from the Republican Party of today. On taxes, on the environment, on foreign policy, on nuclear arms control, on wage and price controls—across a range of issues, they championed ideas that would cause the contemporary GOP to scream liberalism, or even socialism. More likely, if I may speculate, those men, operating in today’s climate, would have quickly changed their tune, as so many other contemporary Republican politicians have done, keenly aware of the melody that the right-wing piper is calling.
All political parties look for wedge issues to peel voters away from their opponents, but the GOP has made an art form of it. In his 2012 book The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, Mike Lofgren, a longtime GOP congressional staffer, pulled back the curtain on this kayfabe, declaring in an interview with Truthout that same year: “The primary purpose of the GOP these days is to provide tax breaks and other financial advantages—such as not regulating pollution and other socially costly externalities—to their wealthy donor base. All the rest of their platform, all the culture wars stuff, is simply rube bait.”
That “rube bait” includes guns, abortion, homosexuality, trans rights, immigration, and a whole slate of other social issues that the plutocratic wing of the party did not really care about. Trump himself—who had been a registered Democrat for almost a decade before running against Hillary Clinton—was very much on record as being pro-choice, moved comfortably in circles with gay people, and was generally live-and-let-live….appropriate for someone who was himself so libertine. But he was also happy to reverse course like a stunt car driver doing a screeching, rubber-burning one-eighty when it served his ends. Prior to that, Trump’s low-information liberalism was largely a function of the well-to-do Manhattan milieu in which he moved—not a world where Confederate flag decals and gun racks were often seen on Lincoln Town Cars. But as a natural-born shitbag with a long history of ignorant, incendiary, unsolicited commentary (see: the Central Park jogger case), Trump had no problem whatsoever feeding the most disgusting instincts of the GOP’s aptly named base. But like all demagogues, he also took his cues from his audience, and tailored his act to suit it. In that regard, he was simultaneously leading the mob and following it.
For example, the Republican Party of the twentieth century had always had a nativist bent, but the euphemistic “family separation policy”—better described as a deliberate and openly sadistic campaign of kidnapping small children and caging them in inhuman conditions—represented a new low of almost incomprehensible depths. As Caitlin Dickerson concluded in her Pulitzer Prize-winning reportage for The Atlantic, “family separation” wasn’t an unfortunate by-product of Trump’s border policy: it was the goal, aimed purely at punishing migrants and thrilling the base. Or Adam Serwer wrote, in what might be the single most memorable comment ever made about the Trump administration, “The cruelty is the point.”
This willingness of both casual conservatives and diehard denizens of MAGA Nation to get onboard with Trump’s worst atrocities was a worrying sign—a chilling homegrown demonstration of Arendt’s banality of evil, and the crucial complicity of the great swath of nonchalant citizenry in abetting the monstrous actions of authoritarian regimes. And it would only accelerate throughout his time in office.
This hold Trump had on his followers—and still has, for many of them—has led many observers to refer to Trumpism as a “cult-like” phenomenon. But other experts argue that the modifier is unnecessary.
In a 2018 piece for Truthdig called “The Cult of Trump,” the journalist and author Chris Hedges outlines the ways in which Trump’s followers meet the dictionary definition of a cult, and not just metaphorically, noting that the “more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity.” Hedges goes on at length: about the use of the language of hate and violence; of fearmongering and divisiveness; of the denial of objective reality and the malleability of facts and truth, even when it comes to the leader’s own past statements; of the leader’s bombast and grandiosity, emotional abusiveness, and insecurity; and of the fawning obedience they demand, and the psychology of their followers’ willingness to submit.
Sound familiar?
Of course, not all Republicans can be said to be in the grip of the Trumpist cult of personality the way that its most Kool-Aid-drunk adherents are. In some ways, however, the Republicans who are not Trump cultists but merely making a cynical, utilitarian calculation are worse, in that they cannot be excused by reason of mental incapacitation. They are quislings and collaborators who will one day face history’s harshest verdict.
As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait writes: “Would-be dictators gain crucial support from allies in the political system who may not be committed authoritarians themselves but side with a factional leader who will advance their policy goals at the expense of democracy,” a segment the Spanish political scientist Juan Linz calls “semi-loyal actors.” In The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (1978), Linz, who was born in Germany on the eve of the Nazi era, writes that in order to stop a political party that is showing autocratic tendencies, reasonable political parties that are otherwise in opposition to each other must join together—in other words, put country before party. It happened in Belgium and Finland in the early 1930s, successfully stopping the rise of homegrown authoritarian parties even as kindred spirits rose to power elsewhere in Europe. As recently as 2016 it happened in Austria, despite that nation’s chilling history of susceptibility to fascism. In the United States, it would have meant key leaders of the Republican Party breaking ranks to join with Democrats in opposing Trump, publicly announcing the threat he posed to the nation, and perhaps even declaring their support for Hillary Clinton. Precious few did, and those were all excommunicated, or left the GOP willingly before that sentence was pronounced upon them.
The question of whether or not Trumpism is a literal cult, then, is ultimately moot. Even absent Trump himself, right-wing fanaticism in the United States remains extraordinarily dangerous, such that—as Hedges points out—the mere demise of the man and the breaking of the fever of his followers will not solve our long-term problem. We must lime the soil from which it sprung.
THE DEATH OF NORMALCY
The enduring notion that Trump was an aberration in US politics, or that the GOP would return to some sort of “normalcy” if and when he is ejected from a position of power, flies in the face of history.
Trump represents the logical end state of the process that had begun with the Southern Strategy. The GOP’s alliance with segregationist dead-enders, and then with Christian fundamentalists, and finally with outright white nationalist semi-fascists comprising both of those strains, was a deal with the devil that had finally come due. The plutocrats had imagined that they could use these allies as shock troops, and for a time they did. But now the center of gravity in the party has shifted to its openly seditionist, neo-Confederate faction. We should therefore postpone any mourning parties for the “Rockefeller wing” of the GOP, which after all, brought this fate on itself, and continues to be a willing—now junior—partner in this antidemocratic axis. The irony of its sorcerer’s apprentice-like plight in no way mitigates the danger to the entire nation, and world, that it unleashed.
It’s true that the tension between MAGA Nation and those Republicans who merely grit their teeth as they bend the knee to Trump may help keep the party paralyzed, a case of malevolence tempered by squabbling. But as the anti-Trump conservative Jennifer Rubin notes in The Washington Post, the media rarely holds the GOP “moderates” to account and does “a disservice to the voters by characterizing them as somehow more sensible than the Freedom Caucus crazies.” Team Normal, as it likes to style itself, has thus far not shown enough courage to power a nightlight, belying its own self-flattering moniker.
The fact is, there is little evidence that the policies that the moderates wish to pursue are much different from that of the party’s far-right wing. As Rubin writes, “it would take only a few of them to defeat radical measures. Yet time and again, they cave”—because the ends they seek are largely the same even if their methods are less aggressive. Caving, then, is almost too generous. The pattern of centrist submission suggests either cowardice or dishonesty, with these alleged moderates using the seditionists as cover to advance far-right policies with which they privately agree.
Rubin’s fellow anti-Trump conservative Robert Kagan goes further, arguing that these ostensibly anti-Trump Republicans, consciously or not, are actually aiding the Trumpist cause by insisting on business as usual “even though they know that Trump’s lieutenants in their party are working to subvert the next presidential election.”
Revolutionary movements usually operate outside a society’s power structures. But the Trump movement also enjoys unprecedented influence within those structures. It dominates the coverage on several cable news networks, numerous conservative magazines, hundreds of talk radio stations and all kinds of online platforms. It has access to financing from rich individuals and the Republican National Committee’s donor pool. And, not least, it controls one of the country’s two national parties. All that is reason enough to expect another challenge, for what movement would fail to take advantage of such favorable circumstances to make a play for power?
Personally, I am astonished that any American gives the Republican Party even passing consideration as a viable political organization, or that any candidate can run under its banner without crippling shame. But apparently you can kidnap and cage children as a matter of deliberate policy, preside over the deaths of half a million Americans through sheer malevolence, and try to overthrow the government on your way out, and still demand to be treated like legitimate public servants.
Why do people continue to support this openly neofascist, would-be theocratic party that is openly rife with corruption, brazenly antagonistic to the basic ideals of this nation, eager to suppress your vote, and dedicated to a long-discredited brand of reverse Robin Hood economics that hurts the very people it claims to champion? I know that just asking the question invites withering criticism for being a snotty and condescending “coastal elite.” But the Republican Party did so much damage to this country in so many different ways during the Trump years (we can go back further if need be, but that period will suffice) that no sentient American ought to give it the time of day unless and until it undergoes a radical reformation of a kind it seems unlikely to undertake.
(Update: The actions of the second Trump administration thus far over less than a hundred days bear that sentiment out. By contrast Trump 1.0 was a garden party.)
In a 2022 interview with Al-Jazeera, Noam Chomsky noted that, in the past, he had typically described the Republican and Democratic Parties as merely two wings of the same “Business Party.” But that characterization no longer obtained. The GOP, he argued, had ceased to be “a political party in the traditional sense,” but was now “a radical insurgency that has abandoned any interest in participation in parliamentary politics.” The Party itself gleefully announces it.
So let’s be clear. The Grand Old Party has no business presenting itself as any kind of reliable steward of the public trust, and its efforts to do so ought to be dismissed out of hand. I am not astounded that Republicans are brazen enough to say and do the things they are currently saying and doing: their shamelessness is well-established. But I am astounded that we are letting them get away with it.
DEMOCRACY FOR BEGINNERS
Autocracy in America is not new, and we can learn how to confront it from those who came before us, and who even now continue that struggle. Effective communication and control of the information space are paramount. In that effort, we must commune with our fellow Americans in the smallest possible groups, and work locally to improve life at the most direct level. Finally, we cannot lose faith by fixating on seemingly overwhelming long-term goals.
“Don’t focus on the outcome,” the esteemed historian, novelist, and longtime activist James Carroll told me. “Because if you start by doing that, you’ll be too discouraged to keep going. Focus on the importance of standing for the principle, and the truth, that’s at stake in the present moment.”
Ultimately, the final defense against autocracy is to destroy its appeal. A just and equitable society, where the rule of law is evenly applied irrespective of wealth, social status, race, ethnicity, place of origin, religious faith or lack thereof, sex, sexual orientation, political belief, or any other metric, will be infertile ground for autocracy and demagoguery to flourish. A society in which people feel they have agency, and a proper voice in their own governance, and a chance to make better lives for themselves and their children, is one in which con artist politicians will have only a paltry audience, and where alienation, anger, and divisiveness find no purchase.
But even in such ideal conditions, there will always be outliers, people who admire authoritarianism—so long as it benefits them—and are perfectly happy to oppress their fellow citizens, people who crave submission to a cretinous “strongman” and are ready to exchange freedom for security, or what they imagine security to be. We will never totally eradicate that mentality or its adherents, nor should we imagine that we can. What we should do instead is work to keep that cohort as small and powerless as possible.
I hesitate to suggest that the rise of Trump will lead to anything beneficial, even accidentally. Only a Pollyanna would cheerfully look for the proverbial silver lining here; it’s probably mercury. But the wounds of Trump’s reign have undeniably exposed sobering realities about who we are as a people, about the strengths and weaknesses of our institutions, and about our character as a nation. Those realities have not always been flattering. But they are invaluable.
Unless we act, the problems exposed by Trump’s rise will still be with us decades from now. It is within our power to determine whether he goes down as the anomaly many of us would like to believe he is, or as the harbinger of a dark future for this country.
In the fall of 2023, the aforementioned Robert Kagan sparked something akin to mass hysteria in progressive and centrist circles with a piece in The Washington Post that called a Trump dictatorship a near-inevitability, including a grim, point-by-point litany of how efforts to stop it were likely to fail. Kagan’s goal almost certainly was to sound a wake-up call. But the ensuing depression among liberals risked becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, to the point where numerous other pundits felt compelled to publish responses cautioning against defeatism—including Kagan himself.
The right wing would like us to believe that their eventual triumph is a fait accompli, and that there is no point in resisting. But nothing could be further from the truth. “Authoritarians create a climate where they seem unstoppable,” Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat of NYU told The Washington Post. “Creating an aura of destiny around the leader galvanizes his supporters by making his movement seem much stronger than it actually is. The manipulation of perception is everything.”
The fundamental paradox of America remains the same as it was when Tocqueville visited these shores in the nineteenth century. The first nation on Earth to attempt to form a true representative democracy was also founded on twin crimes: the genocide of its original inhabitants and the abduction and servitude of enslaved people brought here by force to build that new nation. Can a country with that history shed the damage of its past and remake itself to be true to the values on which it was founded and continues to espouse? Can we make a second American Revolution, a slow and nonviolent one that acknowledges and repudiates that blood-soaked past and lives up to the lofty ambitions and ideals of our founders, flawed though they were? Are we going to face at last the sins of our past and the bitter paradox at the very core of our country’s origin, and strive for the ideals we claim to revere, rather than ignore the ways we have fallen short, or flatter ourselves that we did not fall short at all? Are we going to care for the hungry, the poor, the ragged and the hopeless, the motherless children, the broken, the suffering and oppressed yearning to breathe free, the ones filled with righteous anger, the dreamers who came here seeking a new life in a place dedicated to freedom and democracy, or will we turn our backs and prove ourselves hypocrites? Are we going to be true to the notion of a nation founded on the equality of all people, or is the contradiction that those words were written by a slaveholder, however brilliant, too damning?
The fight against autocracy is a long one—eternal, in fact. For a majority of Americans, it has never been a threat great enough to occupy much of our bandwidth. For less fortunate others it is a familiar struggle, generations long. Shamefully belated though it is, it’s time for those of us in the former category to recognize our common dilemma and band together. We must keep up our morale, and never let our determination flicker out, even if it occasionally flags. As the Rev. Dr. Norvel Goff, deacon of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, SC, told me, “Without hope we are just lost. We’ve got to make sure that there’s a brighter light. You can’t curse the darkness—light a candle, and let your light shine, and before you know it, there will be other candles, and when all those lights come together, we’ll bring about a brighter day.”
He smiled at his own eloquence. “You know what? I might use that in a sermon.”
Ultimately, we are not just trying to stave off an autocracy, or resist it should it arise. We are trying to build a true democracy in a form that our country has never fully been able to mount, despite the best intentions of some, the opposition of others, and our collective delusion about how well we live up to the lofty principles which we claim to hold dear. It is impossible to achieve that goal if we are not clear-eyed about the past or the current state of play. The right-wing autocracy that now threatens the republic is gasping for air, recognizing that time and demographics are against it, and is making a final, panicked, ferocious attempt to hang on to power. If we can defeat it and fulfill the promise of the much-vaunted American experiment, we will earn the flattery we regularly dole out to ourselves, and all that poetry that makes our hearts swell. Naively or otherwise, I believe all that is within our capability as a people, even a people who so recently saw fit to elect as our leader Donald Trump.
It’s in our hands.
***********
Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm is available for order directly from OR Books, or online from the usual retailers, or from your local bookstore.
Photo: Comedian Judy Gold and me recording an episode of her podcast “It’s Judy’s Show with Judy Gold” at East End Books in Provincetown, MA, July 2024.
thekingsnecktie.com 