Comparing today’s authoritarian countries

Social science methodological disputes from 56 years ago sound like about as dry as subject as one could imagine. I suppose it is possible to imagine something drier, though nothing comes immediately to mind.

Still, such discussions are a part of the academic enterprise, even if they induce more than their share of involuntary eyerolling.

I’m bringing this up because I just came across a reference to a political science paper from 1970 by Giovanni Sartori of the University of Florence. It has to do with comparing historical and political phenomena across time and among different countries. (1)

Sartori (1924-2017) was a leading Italian political scientist who was well known for his work in comparative politics. We have been hearing a lot in recent about comparative politics in discussing democratic and authoritarian regimes and how democracies die. The best-known prototype for that process is, of course, how Hitler and the Nazis established their Third Reich by destroying the democratic constitutional order of the Weimar Republic.

But political science and politics are not physics or chemistry, even though “chemistry” plays a big role in politics. Classifications of regime types is a well-known political science practice. But it is not as straightforward as distinguishing between iron and gold, or between protons and neutrons. And, as physical scientists are very aware, even such physical classifications are not as precise as many people might imagine. The famous physics question of whether a proton is a wave or a particle is a reminder.

The V-Dem Institute produces a classification of regime types that is widely used by academics and journalists that rates nations into four categories: liberal democracies, electoral democracies, electoral autocracies, and closed autocracies. In their 2025 report, the USA counts as a liberal democracy, the UK as an electoral democracy, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine as electoral autocracies, China and North Korea as closed autocracies. (2)

During the Cold War, there was a dominant narrative in the US and other Western countries of a division between the Free World and the Communist World. Or at least between the Free World and everybody else. The definition of the Free World was, uh, generous. It included Suharto’s Indonesia, the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), and Pinochet’s Chile, among others for whom that designation was questionable. Certainly not every “Free World” nation would qualify for today’s V-Dem rating of “liberal democracy.”

The Cold War designations were successors of the Second World War classifications in which the alliance of the US, Britain, the USSR, and China was formerly called the United Nations, though it is normally referred to as “the Allies,” as it was also during the war. The other side was called the Axis, or the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, although their formal alliance was called the Tripartite Pact. Soon after the war, the term “totalitarianism” became fashionable in the West as a way to refer to commonalities between fascism and Communism. The term “authoritarianism” was established in political science by the famous postwar Studies in Prejudice project lead by Max Horheimer, previously the director of the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. They used the world “authoritarianism” as basically a synonym for fascism. These days the term is commonly used to refer to countries that V-Dem would presumably call electoral autocracies and closed autocracies.

But the lumping of fascism and Communism together was always problematic at a theoretical and practical level. One could argue that both were dictatorships and therefore essentially the same. We call also argue that all the countries in the world have governments, so they are all also basically the same. Both arguments are about equally meaningful, aka, not much help.

Fascism and Communism in the early half of the 20th century considered each other as diametrical opposites. But they did come out of very different traditions, fascism being a lineal successor to the antidemocracy trends of the 19th century espoused by theorists like Franz von Baader, Juan Donnsos Cortés, Thomas Carlyle, and Friedrich Schelling (in his later work).

Democracy, Fascism, Socialism

Socialism, aka, social democracy grew out of the radical democratic tradition of the French Revolution and utopian projects like those of Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Senri de Saint-Simon. The famous 1848 pamphlet from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, had very limited circulation during the 1848 democratic and national revolutions in Europe. And the broad trend of which Marxism was a part was known aas social democracy and socialism. Politics being what it is, there were numerous variations on what the correct doctrine of that movement should be. But 19th century social democracy was generally focused on creating parliamentary republics. And the leading advocates in Europe for what V-Dem today would classify as liberal democracy were the Social Democratic parties, including the Labour Party in Britain.

The political philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973) wrote a book while living in Austria called The War Against the West which was published first in English in 1938, though he had finished it before 1938 and the annexation of Austria by Germany. The book’s focus was analyzing the political content of Nazi political statements and propaganda positions directly s based on their own speeches and publications. One of the features he elaborates is that the centrality of Nazi hostility to Communism was justified theoretically by describing it as the inevitable product of democracy.

The Communist doctrine promoted by the USSR in those days saw fascism as something distinct from Communism and also from liberal democracy. The Soviet-led Communist International officially defined fascism in 1935 as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital,” based on the Italian and German versions of that time. (The year 1935 was the turning point at which Germany became the senior partner in their cooperation with Fascist Italy.)

Marxist theory generally saw parliamentary democracy as a particular form of rule by the capitalist class, one that did offer genuine freedom and influence to the larger population but still subject to major limitations imposed by the capitalist economic system and class structure. The social-democratic version of this vision assumed that the governmental form of socialism would be a parliamentary democracy.

There have been literally millions of pages written since 1848, including many analyses and polemics about where a full socialist or communist society would have a “state” in the sense of states in capitalist countries at all.

To add an additional wrinkle, Hitler’s Nazi Party was modeled on Mussolini’s Fascist Party. But the shortened of “Nazi” was used for the NSDAP, which stood for National Socialist German Workers Party. Hitler had added the word “Socialist” to the name in the early 1920s because the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Communist Party were the leading parties for urban working-class voters and he hoped sticking “Socialist” in the name would help attract some of them. That wasn’t particularly successful, and German politics up until 1933 was marked by bitter hostility between the Nazis on the one hand and the Socialists and Communists on the other. But this hasn’t stopped today’s Trumpistas in the US from saying, “The Nazis had ‘socialist’ in their name so they were leftwingers like you, libtards, not us rightwingers!” In any contest for the Dumbest Trope In Politics, this has to rank very high on the list.

But to sum up: Nazism and other forms of fascism were and are explicitly anti-democracy. Just as much so as billionaire techlord Peter Thiel, who declared already back in 2009, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” (2) Thiel dated democracy’s fall from capitalist grace, moaning, “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics.” As a good “libertarian,” his mighty mind perceived that the problems were wimmin and welfare loafers: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” Wimmin and minorities just spoil everything, now don’t they?!

There really is, to put it politely, a contradiction between capitalism and democracy. The malign influence of anti-democracy billionaires like Thiel himself is dramatic proof of that. But the notion that freedom is identical with capitalism is dystopian. The classical socialists wanted to democratize the economy via democratic government taking ownership and/or effective control over major industries and financial institutions, aka, the “means of production.”

After the Communists came to power in Russia in 1917 and what had been the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union, the abolished competitive elections with two or more political parties. This pattern was also followed in the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and the People’s Republics in eastern Europe including Yugoslavia. They did not function as liberal democracies, though their ideologies argued they were practicing a higher form of democracy. In other words, they formally claimed to be part of the democratic tradition.

It’s notable in this regard that Mikail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who considered himself a Communist up until his death in 2022, had made a major move to establish contested elections along social-democratic lines in his last years in power.

Comparison of today’s authoritarian systems to earlier ones

Which brings us back to the challenge that Giovanni Sartori was addressing in 1970, comparing types of regimes. In making such comparisons, we have to get along without the mathematical certainties of physical science. As he put it, “My sympathy goes, instead, to the ‘conscious thinker,’ the man who realizes the limitations of not having a thermometer and still manages to say a great deal simply by saying hot and cold, warmer and cooler.” And he notes that “the pre-1950 vocabulary of politics was not devised for worldwide, cross-area travelling.” (His essay also addresses the challenges for political science in trying to be scientifically neutral and value-free, very much a contested concept in the field at the time.)

The point that Sartori was making in at some length in academic language is that it is valuable and necessary to look at meaningful similarities in political processes in various countries over time to come up with meaningful insights about similarities in political processes across different countries. To use the V-Dem terms of today, we can meaningfully compare political concepts, structures, and processes between, say, the United States and Great Britain even though one is a kingdom with a hereditary monarchy as the head of state of a parliamentary democracy and the other is not.

Using computer statistical analysis to process quantitative data was in a comparative stone-age in 1970, when it really did take a whole room, maybe a fairly big room, to get the kind of computing power and speed that we hold in our hands with today with our smart phones. What Sartori was stressing is a problem that persists, which is that to use quantitative data to better understand political phenomena requires having a meaningful conceptual framework in which to understand the results of statistical analysis. It’s an everyday matter in politics to discuss what observed and measured empirical trends mean. For instance, we know that in the 2024 Presidential elections a higher percentage of Latino voters shifted to vote for Trump. And that today the polls and some scattered election results indicate that Latino votes are shifting away from Trump. But, despite the confident interpretations of the data that political consultants are inclined to give to their clients when designing campaign messages and strategies require applying some kind of conceptual framework and classification to the raw empirical data.

Sartori quotes the economist Joseph Spengler: "[T]he introduction of quantitative methods in economics did not result in striking discoveries" To which Sartori expands: “While formal economic theory is by now highly isomorphic with algebra, mathematical economics has added little to the predictive power of the discipline and one often has the impression that we are employing guns to kill mosquitos.”

When it comes to comparing types of political regimes, or comparing past regimes to current ones, there is no quantitative measure that will give us the kind of definitive answer we might expect in a chemical analysis or a medical diagnosis. But when today we see far-right parties take Viktor Orban’s regime as a model for an authoritarian government, that doesn’t mean that they all want to adopt Hungarian as their own national languages. But we can still make meaningful comparisons between, say, Vladimir Putin’s methods of controlling wealthy oligarchs by means of bribery and threat and the occasional accident of unfavored oligarchs falling out of high windows and Orban’s approach which doesn’t so prominently feature oligarchical suicides.

Put another way, two people having an identical height doesn’t tell us whether one is a man and the other is a woman. Just as two people being identical twins doesn’t mean that both are the same height. (I’m fond of that last example because when I met two identical twins for the first time when I was five years old or so, the only way I could tell them apart was that one was slightly taller than the other.)

Sartori makes this comment which is very important in approaching classifications and comparisons of political systems:

While classifying must abide by logical rules, logic has nothing to do with the usefulness of a classificatory system. Botanists, mineralogists and zoologists have not created their taxonomical trees as a matter of mere logical unfolding; that is, they have not imposed their "classes" upon their animals, any more than their animals (flowers or minerals) have imposed themselves upon their classifiers.

Bottom line: Yes, it’s perfectly valid to compare Trump’s Gestapo to its German and Italian models.

Here’s an entirely appropriate case of classification of a particular political phenomena: (4)

Notes:

(1) Sartori, Giovanni (1970): Concept Misinformation in Compartive Politics. American Political Science Science Review 64:4. <https://www.la.utexas.edu/users/chenry/core/Course%20Materials/Sartori/0.pdf>

(2) V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2025, 14. <https://www.v-dem.net/documents/61/v-dem-dr__2025_lowres_v2.pdf>

(3) Thiel, Peter (2009): The Education of a Libertarian. Cato Unbound 04/13/2009. <https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/> (Accessed : 2026-10-02).

(4) The F-Word | Folk Protest Song Against Trump, MAGA, and Fascism. The Resistance YouTube channel 09/20/2025. > (Accessed: 2026-10-02).

On the “How could this happen again?” question

Hans Rauscher in Der Standard (Vienna) just published a grim reminder of the strength of the far right in European politics, including in Austria and Germany:

He cites a new book from German historian Götz Aly:

Aly with icy realism: "An eloquent and shrewd tribune of the people, who uses the fears and frustrated hopes of a majority of the population and promises wonderful future prospects that can be achieved with a little toughness, will also be able to push through his ideas in the future." Incidentally, the rule [of Hitler’s Nazi Party] was largely achieved and secured with "rulers who are still used today and will certainly continue to be used". (1)

Vague references to the possibility of history repeating itself can get stuck at such a high level of generalization can easily get stuck in the stage of a pious reflection if they are not put into a specific context both on the end of the state of affairs to be avoided and of the possible forms and goals of the history-repeats-itself event. Aly has written extensively about the National Socialist Period before. Rauscher describes Aly‘s new book Wie konnte das geschehen? Deutschland 1933 bis 1945 [How Could That Happen? Germany 1933-1945] as a magnum opus on Hitler’s regime of over 800 pages.

In the spirit of the famous comment apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain, “history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme,” we ca recognize that Charlie Kirk’s murder this year was a very different event that the Reichstag Fire in 1933. But at the same time we can see how the Trumpists tried to use his death as a symbolic warning of the dangers of democracy being allowed to continue.

We can also look at parts of American history – colonial war against native peoples, segregation and Jim Crow, racially-discriminatory prison systems – and see elements of fascism like that in Hitler German or Mussolini’s Italy. We can look at how the German Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 were heavily modeled on US segregation laws and racially discriminatory immigration laws. But it’s still important not to assume that similar developments in the US or Europe in the present will somehow directly mimic those developments. (Except, of course, when they do!)

Rauscher continues:

In a year or two, we could be asking ourselves the question: How could this happen again? How could a series of democracies tip back into authoritarian rule?

The tipping point in the West has almost been reached. Donald Trump is dismantling liberal democracy of (and seems to be forcing the Europeans plus Ukraine to make a "deal" with Putin reminiscent of the subjugation of Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938). In the leading European countries of France, Germany and Great Britain, there is a threat of takeover by the right-wing extremists. [my emphasis]

The Munich Analogy is the classic cautionary tale against framing current events as essentially like past ones. The Munich deal was a bad one for a number of reasons. But it’s been reduced in common usage – and all too often in its use by professionals and scholars – to a tale of a testosterone contest between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain.

In this current context, it’s difficult to see how Ukraine accepting defeat for the present would lead to World War Three. But that’s no reason for Ukraine or its European partners to accept a bad deal. In any case, the current 28- point Trump/Witkoff plan is obvious a non-starter.

It’s also important not to conflate the foreign policy aspect of the authoritarian threat to European democracies with the internal ones. It’s standard practice for large powers to try to exploit troubles within adversary countries. But those problems are primarily based in internal political and social issues. A bunch of clever TikTok videos are not going to incite people to revolt against stable democratic governments. Which is not to say that governments should be indifferent to political “information operations” by hostile powers. But it’s also important for European democracies to have a reality-based view of what Russian intentions and capabilities are.

One important factor that pro-democracy parties left, right, and center have to keep in mind and have to stop being so feckless about. That is the fact that xenophobia and cheap nationalism are key elements in the program of the rising far-right parties. The pro-democracy parties have to fight against those positions. Mealy-mouthed “triangulation” by trying to coopt the xenophobic sentiments is a loser strategy.

The Dutch political scientist and expert on rightwing populism Cas Mudde recently wrote about how that approach has repeatedly failed to strengthen the left-center parties:

The 21st century has so far seen two simultaneous electoral developments in western Europe: the decline of social-democratic parties and the rise of far-right parties. This has created the powerful narrative that social democrats are losing votes to the far right, in particular because of their (alleged) “pro-immigration” positions. And although research shows that their voters mainly moved to centre-right and green parties, social-democratic parties have been chasing this mythical “left behind” voter ever since.

Research by social scientists overwhelmingly shows that adopting far-right positions leads neither to electoral success for centrist parties nor to electoral defeat for far-right parties. But this has not stopped centre-left advisers, politicians and strategists. Whenever my colleagues and I refer to this research, someone will point to the alleged success of the “Danish model”. The lure is so great that even as polls were predicting the loss of Copenhagen, Britain’s Labour government ignored internal opposition and introduced a number of policies designed to emulate Denmark’s extremely stringent asylum rules. [my emphasis] (2)

Center-left parties need to stop playing this dumb game and get serious about fighting xenophobia.

Notes:

(1) Rauscher, Hans (2025): Rechtsextreme Machtübernahme: Wie konnte das (wieder) geschehen? Der Standard 22.11.2025. >https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000297306/rechtsextreme-machtuebernahme-wie-konnte-das-wieder-geschehen> (Accessed: 2025-23-11). My translation to English.

(2) Mudde, Cas (2025): The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark. Guardian 11/22/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/22/danish-model-centre-left-parties-labour-doesnt-work> (Accessed: 2025-23-11).

Barack Obama and a former Vice President address the danger of democracies decaying into authoritarianism

Barack Obama discussed the issues of democratic retrogression in a presentation in October. Here are some key points:

“I’ve become increasingly concerned about the rising wave of authoritarianism sweeping the globe,” Obama said in a video introducing the conversation, which took place in London.

The comments were a veiled, if clear, rebuke of not only the current US administration but also some of the leaders Trump has aligned himself with since taking office. …

[T]he former president offered an acknowledgment that sclerotic bureaucracies and unresponsive politicians had, in many ways, ushered in a global populist wave.

“In the United States, for example, there will need to be laws that are changed so that action can be taken more effectively, more quickly to respond to problems in a lawful way,” Obama said during his discussion. “I think what we’ve seen is that when people are frustrated, they’re willing to take any action, even if it’s unlawful, because at least there’s a sense of, something’s happening. That’s something that I think everybody has to internalize at this point.”

He acknowledged that centrist politicians had, in many instances, lost the pulse of voters and allowed some of the populist anger to take hold.

“A big challenge is that the governments themselves, whether center-right or center-left, were losing touch with people and weren’t delivering on some of the basic hopes and dreams of people, so you get frustrated with government, period,” he said. “That obviously then opens the door for right-wing populism, anti-immigrant sentiment, anger, grievances.”

He said wealth gaps and … complex modern economies had left people feeling “as if they don’t have control, and they feel as if their politicians often don’t have control over all the different forces there.” And he said social media was “very good at making people fearful of or angry about those who don’t agree with them.” [my emphasis] (1)

Obama is obviously intelligent and often eloquent. His comments are welcome to defenders of US democracy. And they vaguely hint at perspectives that could be helpful in pushing back against Trumpista authoritarianism.

But what he says in the above quotes also tiptoes around what the political and social pushback against authoritarians needs to be. For instance, why should Obama stick to what the CNN reporter calls “a veiled, if clear, rebuke” to Trump and other authoritarian leaders? Why doesn’t he just be clear about his points without the “veiled” part?

Comments like, “I think what we’ve seen is that when people are frustrated, they’re willing to take any action, even if it’s unlawful, because at least there’s a sense of, something’s happening” would certainly count as vague. But clear? That is something very like what European conservative politicians say when they want to try to position themselves for coalitions with xenophobic, far-right parties. A strategy which has very consistently led to strengthening the far-right parties.

And what sort of criminal actions does he have in mind that people would understandably take when they “are frustrated”? Would Obama defend people staging “bread riots” in the US if people soon start facing serious food deprivation because of Trump’s refusal to continue providing food stamps to qualified recipients in the current moment? A safe guess would be: no!

And why would generically being “frustrated with government” lead specifically to “right-wing populism, anti-immigrant sentiment, anger, grievances”? Do violent goons join ICE to beat, kidnap, and terrorize anyone they think looks Latino because they are frustrated filling out their income tax form? The problem with a completely vague diagnosis like “frustrated with government” doesn’t say anything about what are sensible concerns, as opposed to people being angry because they think there are too many people around who don’t look like Real Amuricans?

And when he says people “frustrated with government” because of “wealth gaps” and “complex modern economies,” what does that tell anyone the political framing or concrete policies that would address such frustration while defanging rightwing demagoguery? Does Obama advocate major redistributive measures to reduce the wealth of billionaires and increase incomes of working-class people? Measures like facilitating the formation of unions or setting national living-wage requirements, neither of which occurred during his Presidency? (The last increase in the federal minimum wage, to $7.25 an hour did take place in 2009 during the first year of Obama’s Presidency but it was mandated by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007.)

Vague platitudes about “frustration or people feeling a loss of control just don’t tell us a whole lot about the politics of authoritarianism.

How could an American politician address such concerns in a more helpful and motivating manner? Well, here’s Al Gore this year: (2)

Gore can "bring it" when he wants to. I’m sure Gore knows he's poking the wannabe-"highbrow" Trumpistas in the eye by explicitly praising the Frankfurt School and Theodore Adorno and Jürgen Habermas specifically.

There's a bizarre rightwing theory pushed by people like Christopher Rufo is that the Frankfurt School spawned "political correctness" and "wokeism" and DEI as part of a decades-long Jewish Commie plan to undermine the White Man. This crackpot narrative even blames the Frankfurt School for creating “postmodernism” philosophy, which is just a bonkers claim.

Various figures associated with the Frankfurt School were Jewish and influenced by Marxist ideas, including Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin. Jürgen Habermas who Gore specifically mentions is currently 96 and is considered one of the leading public intellectuals in the German-speaking world, even the leading one. A student of Adorno’s, he is considered one of the Second Generation of Frankfurt School thinkers. The current Britannica article on him describes him as “the most important German philosopher of the second half of the 20th century.” (3)

It's a demented conspiracy theory. But the St. Charlie Kirk crowd takes that stuff seriously.

Notes:

(1) Liptak, Devin (2025): Obama’s warnings about democracy fading sound increasingly directed toward the US. CNN Politics 10-11-2025. <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/11/politics/obama-democracy-warnings-trump> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).

(2) Gore compares Trump administration's actions to Nazi Germany's attacks on the truth. NBC News YouTube channel 04/22/2025. <https://youtu.be/9uQoXRHsu2U?si=baAPmmQcP6asVayZ> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).

(3) Matusik, Martin Beck et al (2025): Jürgen Habermas. Encyclopedia Britannica 09/20/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas>(Accessed: 2025-07-11).

Republicans' memory laws against "critical race theory" (their current favorite bogeyman concept and conspiracy theory)

I've been saying that the "critical race theory" (CRT) slogan the Republicans are using as their political battle cry right now, and which they are using to try to ban any mention of white racism from school curriculums, is a code phrase for, "Scary Jews! Scary black people!"

Because that's what it is. The thin conspiracy theory narrative on which it is based blames German Jewish Marxists of 90 years ago for making white people in America have to reconsider their racial attitudes in 2021.

Henry Abramson discusses the impact of the anti-CRT laws Republican legislatures are passing in Banning critical race theory will gut the teaching of Jewish history JTA 07/08/2021:

The bans on teaching with a critical race theory framework aren’t really against history per se, which is in the past and therefore stubbornly resists regulation. Rather, these decrees fall more precisely within the category of what are called “memory laws.” Historian Timothy Snyder described these laws as “government actions designed to guide public interpretation of the past… by asserting a mandatory view of historical events, by forbidding the discussion of historical facts or interpretations or by providing vague guidelines that lead to self-censorship.” [my emphasis]

Abramson argues that the anti-CRT laws are similar to laws currently being used to promote jingoistic, ehnonationalist history by rightwing authoritarian governments, including Vladimir Putin's in Russia:

Putin ... pioneered a new approach to memory laws: Rather than protecting the weak, they also can be weaponized to strengthen the powerful. In the context of Russian history, the counterpart to American slavery is the Holodomor, a terrible famine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932-1933. Beginning in 2008, Russia’s Duma assembly passed legislation that forbade the discussion of Russian government policies that contributed to the genocidal nature of the famine, and established entities like the “Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests” (an ideological antecedent to the now-defunct 1776 Commission, then President Trump’s last-minute attempt to promote a “pro-American curriculum”).

This is the intellectual home of the CRT bans. They share educational space with Poland’s ridiculous, offensive and dangerous 2018 law that criminalizes the suggestion that Poland bears any responsibility for the crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. The object of Poland’s memory law is not to prevent the resurgence of extremist antisemitism; it is to prevent Poles from confronting the complex legacy of collaboration with the Nazi occupation. [my emphasis]

I posted about Poland's memory laws in The "historical policy" of the ruling Polish rightwing party PiS 07/31/2020, in which I also note Timothy Snyder's phrase for such narrow nationalist approaches to history, "the 'politics of eternity': a displacement of the real challenges of the actual world with a myth of a sacred past that must be protected."

Abramson explains how the Trumpista approach now becoming embedded in state laws by Republican legislatures would affect teaching about anti-Semitism:

Despite the 1776 Commissions promise to “unite, inspire, and ennoble all Americans,” these laws will chill honest engagement with hard truths, forcing teachers to lie to their students, even if only by omission.

Furthermore, anyone teaching Jewish history will be challenged to find a way to present the legacy of antisemitism without running afoul of these regulations. The historical linkage between Catholic theology and the persecution of Jews, for example, is rife with difficult topics. They range from the medieval charges of host desecration and the horrendous blood libel to the pope’s kidnapping of 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara in 1858 (we could, unfortunately, continue at length). Protestants would also be discomfited by Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish screed, “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543). The list of countries where Jews have lived in their diaspora is pretty much identical to the list of countries that have discriminated against Jews. [my emphasis]

Another JTA article (Eleanor Stern, When Holocaust education meets critical race theory: A partisan history debate unfolds in Louisiana 07/07/2021) describes how rightwing Republicans proposed a law that nominally advocated teaching about the Holocaust in Louisiana schools as a stalking-horse for a rather singular view of history:

The Holocaust education bill seemed potentially uncontroversial when Hodges introduced the measure in April. The original text simply called for “instruction regarding World War II and the Holocaust for middle and high school students and training for teachers relative to such instruction.”

Many Jewish groups have called for exactly that kind of requirement, arguing that education is the key to increasing tolerance and preventing genocides in the future. Currently, 17 states require some form of Holocaust education in schools. Louisiana, which one study pegged as having one of the lowest percentages of Holocaust-aware young people in the U.S., is seen as especially in need of similar mandates. The state also recently became the new home of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, boosting the visibility of Jews in the region.

But as lawmakers held hearings on the bill, it became clear that many of its supporters had a different vision — starting with [Valerie] Hodges, an evangelical ex-missionary and prominent conservative who has served in the Louisiana State Legislature for a decade. Hodges initially accepted, then declined, an interview with JTA.

On her professional Facebook page during the bill’s debate period, Hodges shared an image of Hitler with a caption calling him “everything today’s liberal craves.” Another post compared Nazi Germany to critical race theory and the New York Times’ 1619 Project, writing, “World War II was about RACE, yet liberals objected to it being included in my bill … Hitler had been laying the groundwork for at least 15 years before the Holocaust. It began with the organization of college students who would be the ones to help him implement his reign of horror.”

During hearings, Hodges made her arguments while seated beside David Barton, founder of the Texas-based advocacy group Wallbuilders, which aims to promote the idea that the U.S. is an inherently Christian nation founded on biblical principles. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Barton as an “extremist” who is “a key bridge between the mainstream political right and radical-right religious ideology.” [my emphasis]

If you design things around crackpot notions, it shouldn't surprise anyone that results wind up being cracked pottery.

Orbánism and authoritarianism in Hungary

Shalini Randeria analyzes examples of how rightwing populists can turn a democratic government into an authoritarian one without staging a coup, or a sudden revolution overturning the old governmental system, or blatantly going outside the letter of the law. Her article gives particular attention to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, who she describes as practicing "soft authoritarian rule" via "electoral authoritarianism."

She focuses on the use of ethnonationalist demagoguery and extreme gerrymandering in Hungary.

Randeria writes that one of the characteristics of ethnonationalist´politics to encourage "pro-natalist" policies. This means some form of promoting a higher rate of reproduction by those who are part of the favored type of people, or ethnic group, or Volk. This also tends to enable traditional masculine attitudes, some of them more toxic than others. She cites the new anti-abortion laws in Poland, and Hungary's withdrawal of rights based on non-binary, non-traditional gender identities, as well as the Orbán government' hostility to women's rights in general. "A politics that defines an ethnically, "racially" or religiously homogeneous nation as a political ideal and goal mobilizes against alleged internal enemies, for example, against cosmopolitan elites, minorities or against migrants."

(All the translations from German in this post are mine.)

Even the word "migrants" has an ideoligical twist in its use by European xenophobes. They assume that "refugee" and "immigrant" are more sympathetic and neutral terms. So they prefer to talk about "migration" and "migrants," because that invokes more of an image of people voluntarily wandering from one country to another.

"Pro-natalist" creates there is an implication and sometimes a more explicit demand to promote people from the pure natural ethnic groups to have more children. 

This is a big joke in the real world. Not one of the 27 countries in the European Union has a birth rate as high as the "replacement rate" that would keep the country's population stable over the long term. That rate is generally taken to be 2,1 children per woman. New immigrants, i.e., people who immigrate as adults, tend to have more children. But children of immigrants tend to have birth rates reflecting that of the country in which they grew up.

Which isn't surprising. Because children of immigrants to Hungary or Poland or Austria who grow up in those countries are Hungarians and Poles and Austrians. So that is one of many ways they are like their fellow Hungarians, Poles and Austrians.

Randeria gives a good description of voter suppression measures in Hungary, which she rightly compares to those the Republican Party in America is actively pursuing. She also compares gerrymandering by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez to that of Orbán. I'm not familiar with drawing of electoral districts in Venezuela during his Presidency, and that charge is new to me. I do know about the American Republican Party's redistricting habits. And they are very compatable with Orbánism.

But the political body is deformed not only by population politics, but also by a strategic transformation of the electoral law. The fact that Viktor Orbán, as well as Hugo Chávez, used this tactic shows that such attacks on democracy do not only come from the far right. [Until recently, Fidesz had been a conservative party in the European Christian Democratic tradition.] The American political scientist Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University uses the term "autocratic legalism" to describe how legal and constitutional measures shift the democratic rules of the game toward illiberalism. In this respect, a variety of soft authoritarian tactics and practices can be observed. One measure favored by American Republicans is gerrymandering. The strategic manipulation of constituency boundaries is intended to distort election results in the long term in order to secure a political advantage for one's own party in the long term. [my emphasis]

There can also be other kinds of gerrymandering. In the US, we're all to familiar with racial gerrymandering. But since we're talking about electoral districts, partisan political considerations are always present.

Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary has taken this tactic to the extreme: it first halved the number of constituencies and then completely redefined the boundaries of these constituencies throughout the country. Constituencies that traditionally voted for Orbán's Fidesz party by a majority came out much smaller than those in which opposition parties could count on greater electoral success. [Opposition voting strength was diluted, in other words.] As a result of these demarcations, Orbán's Fidesz party won two-thirds of the seats in parliament in 2014 with only 45 percent of the vote. With this majority in his back, it was easy for Fidesz to make further constitutional changes. As early as 2012, there had been a constitutional amendment under Orbán, in which ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring states and without residency in Hungary were given the right to vote. A full 95 percent of these new voters outside Hungary's borders voted for the Fidesz party in 2014. In doing so, Orbán‘s government has succeeded in changing the electorate to serve its [Fidesz’] own long-term advantage. [my emphasis]

The gerrymandering is indeed extreme. But the addition of ethnic Hungarians living in other countries is also a disturbing piece of enthonationalist chauvinism, connected with resentments over the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Although Orbán isn't about to start a war with any of Hungary's neighbors over it, countries like Romania have reason to be concerned about Orbán's posturing.

Shaun Walker reported last year (Hungary marks treaty centenary as Orbán harnesses 'Trianon trauma' Guardian 06/04/2020):

While never speaking directly about reclaiming lost territory, Orbán’s government has made Hungarian minority populations in neighbouring countries a cornerstone of its foreign policy, pumping money into cultural centres, media outlets, churches and football clubs in the region and handing out Hungarian passports to those who want them. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians have taken up the offer, and the vast majority have cast votes for Orbán’s Fidesz party, cementing its control over Hungarian politics.

Last month, Orbán caused consternation in a number of regional capitals by posting a map of historical Hungary on his Facebook page as part of a post wishing students good luck with their history exams. Slovenia’s president, Borut Pahor, expressed “rejection and concern” over the map. The rights of Hungarian minorities have caused tension in relations with both Romania and Ukraine in recent years. [my emphasis]

Timothy Snyder on the trajectory of Trumpism (1 of 2): "Gamers" and "Breakers"

Confirmed: There is no looming GOP "reckoning" over Trump, and there will never will be, no matter how many times naïve news outlets suggest otherwise.

For five years, the press has gotten this story wrong. Why? Today's Republican Party represents an unwieldy challenge for news outlets. It spent the winter wantonly trying to invalidate election results, while simultaneously endangering the masses during a public healthy crisis by deliberately misinforming Americans about the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also taken no disciplinary action against a new Congresswoman who previously supported the killing of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Yet the press remains committed to portraying the GOP as a mainstream, center-right entity. That's why it keeps botching the "reckoning" story — reporters assume there is a Republican breaking point with Trump and the politics of hate and revenge he represents. But there never is.

- Eric Boehlert, Memo to media: the GOP's Trump "reckoning" is never coming Press Run 01/29/2021

I mentioned recently the Republican ritual of distancing themselves from previous Republican Presidents and failed Republican Presidential candidates.

But that is happening now only to a very limited extent. And it's getting a lot of pushback from the majority Republicans. (Nick Reynolds, Wyoming Capitol crowd cheers on Gaetz, seeks replacement for Cheney Casper Star-Tribune 01/28/2021)

That disavowal ritual has been part of the continuous radicalization of the Republican Party over the last four decades. It's not because the radicalization process has stopped. Nomiki Konst and her two guests in this clip looks at a recent comment by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the topic, AOC: GOP Is Full-On White Supremacist Party 01/29/2021:

Frank Luntz, who now calls himself a former Republican pollster, suggests in this long interview that Trumpism reflects the political radicalization of the Republican base. "These are not your parents' Republicans." (Trump's American Carnage: Frank Luntz (interview) PBS Frontline)

Part of the restraint on criticizing Trump is surely a horse-race one. Trump is still around, he has a fanatical following in the Republican base, and he is still eligible to run for President in 2024.

But Timothy Snyder's essay earlier this month offers a useful way to look at divisions within the Republican Party post-Capitol-riot, The American Abyss New York Times Magazine 01/09/2021. He sees today's Republican Party as an alliance between two political mentalities, which he labels the "gamers" and the "breakers". I might have picked Players and Destroyers, as the labels, but he doesn't.

In his schema, Mitch McConnell is emblematic of the Gamers and Trump of the Breakers. But he does not see this as a difference in basic policies and goal. Or even in their commitment to democracy, at least not in the sense of popular rule. Those he calls the Gamers are "concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters."

In other words, gaming major undemocratic elements of the system like the Electoral College, the structure of the Senate, and Supreme Court elimination of controls on campaign donations and of civil rights legislation to prevent disenfranchisement of voters based on race, to maintain dominant national power even when they cannot win a majority of votes nationally. "They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government." They want to maintain the forms of democracy and Constitutional government, in other words, even while they cheat the democratic system.

Wisconsin is one of the Gamers' success stories. "In 2012, the first election with the new [severely gerrymandered legislative districts] in place, Republicans won less than half the votes, but conquered 60 of the state’s 99 assembly seats. The Republicans grew their majority in 2014 and 2016, despite earning just over 50% of the statewide vote." (Sam Levine, Wisconsin: the state where American democracy went to die The Guardian 04/10/2020; my emphasis).

Snyder writes:

In the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the Tea Party), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans is not made smaller butsimply diverted to serve a handful of interests.

At first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of experience in politics and his open racism made hima very uncomfortable figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief, McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the rich.

Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally. He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a trulybig lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that he might lose something. [my emphasis]

In other words, Snyder is agreeing with those who have been commenting that we got lucky in that Trump was too stupid to actually pull off a coup. And I think this is right, although we are finding out more all the time about how close he actually came, and we will know a lot more eventually.

But Trump didn't just talk and practice "revolutionary" symbolism. He actually wanted to "revolutionize" the system. Or more clearly, to use pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric and posturing to stage an actual authoritarian coup. Here is some of the putschist rhetoric from the Transcript of Trump's January 6 incitement speech (U.S. News/AP; my emphasis in bold), all part of a long speech in which he recounted fabricated tales of voter fraud and repeatedly invoked the names of Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams, both African-American politicians his white supremacist base despite. I'm including a longish selection, to give some context to Snyder's observation that given Trump's message, the storming of the Capitol "did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how could Congress be allowed to move forward?" (my italics)

Trump, January 6:

The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I’m concerned, single biggest problem. The fake news and the Big tech. ...

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. ...

And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. ...

We don’t have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it’s not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country. ...

We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy. ...

For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that’s what they are. There’s so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they’re out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it’s, it’s incredible. ...

Many of the Republicans, I helped them get in, I helped them get elected. I helped Mitch get elected. I helped. I could name 24 of them, let’s say, I won’t bore you with it. And then all of a sudden you have something like this. It’s like, “Oh gee, maybe I’ll talk to the president sometime later.” No, it’s amazing.

They’re weak Republicans, they’re pathetic Republicans and that’s what happens. ...

But we look at the facts and our election was so corrupt that in the history of this country we’ve never seen anything like it. You can go all the way back. ...

Republicans are, Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder. ...

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. ...

The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they’d argue with me. I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight, I’d fight, they’d fight. Pop pop. You’d believe me, you’d believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you’d have an argument.

Now what they do is they go silent. It’s called suppression and that’s what happens in a communist country. That’s what they do, they suppress. You don’t fight with them anymore. Unless it’s a bad story. They have a little bad story about me, they make it 10 times worse and it’s a major headline. ...

Today, for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our Constitution, and for the sake of our children, we lay out the case for the entire world to hear. You want to hear it?

(Audience responds: “Yeah”)

In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats, made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures.

That these changes paved a way for fraud on a scale never seen before. ...

I’ve been telling these Republicans, get rid of Section 230. And for some reason, Mitch and the group, they don’t want to put it in there and they don’t realize that that’s going to be the end of the Republican Party as we know it, but it’s never going to be the end of us. Never. Let them get out. Let, let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength.

They also want to indoctrinate your children in school by teaching them things that aren’t so. They want to indoctrinate your children. It’s all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy, and the American people are finally standing up and saying no. This crowd is, again, a testament to it. ...

The radical left knows ...exactly what they’re doing. They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it. ...

As this enormous crowd shows, we have truth and justice on our side. We have a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts. We love our country. ...

We have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls. Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people. ...

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. ...

Another reminder: the Republican Party is a Trumpist party

Michael Tomasky has written an assessment of the 2020 election results that strike me as unusually pessimistic from him: What Did the Democrats Win? New York Review of Books 11/18/2020 (12/17/2020 issue).

But his assessment of the Trumpification of the Republican Party is realistic:

But even if Trump himself fades, it’s hard to see the changes he has effected being undone. No one else will be quite as brazen as Trump, but he and his 73 million votes have taught the party that created him a great deal. Openly being a white ethnonationalist carries surprisingly little penalty, and in fact brings considerable reward. Ditto flouting constitutional traditions and norms—oh, they will eviscerate you on Morning Joe and the Times editorial page, but Amy Coney Barrett sits on the Supreme Court and Merrick Garland does not. You can lie and lie and lie and invert and pervert the truth endlessly, and half of the media and country will be onto you, but the other half will pick up on your cues and rearrange their understanding of the world to suit yours, and together you will fight the other half to a rough draw, even on a matter as serious as the effective negligent homicide of tens of thousands of Americans, if not more.

The Republican Party will not stop doing, or being, all of the above. Its authoritarian impulses, which predate and have enabled Trump, will continue. There is no one in the party—no one—urging it to pull back from the pursuit of total dominance by means of the courts, racial gerrymandering (which it will continue to control), the rules of the Senate, and the imbalance of the Electoral College. [my emphasis]

I hope Democrats will recognize this. There is no Golden Age of Bipartisan Harmony on the horizon. Much less standing just the other side of Joe Biden's Inauguration.

Krugman on the serious dangers of romantic "bipartisan" illusions and pretensions about today's Republican Party

Paul Krugman was one of the few major columnists who was not only talking sense about the Iraq War in the runup to that disastrous invasion, he was also sounding the alarm from the start of the Obama-Biden Administration on the dangers of a too-timid approach to economic stimulus and the vapidity of the "Very Serious People" (aka, VSPs) advising austerity policies in order to soothe what he called the "confidence fairy" who, similar to Tinker Bell, would wither and die if more attention were not given to balancing budgets and cutting civilian government programs. All this in addition to playing Cassandra during the last euro crisis, giving good advice that the relevant policymakers cheerfully ignored.

Krugman has also been pretty cold-eyed in recognizing the Republican Party's authoritarianism during the Cheney-Bush Administration and ever since.

So his current warning is something everyone in the Biden-Harris Administration should take very seriously (How Will Biden Deal With Republican Sabotage? New York Times 11/30/2020):

When Joe Biden is inaugurated, he will immediately be confronted with an unprecedented challenge — and I don’t mean the pandemic, although Covid-19 will almost surely be killing thousands of Americans every day. I mean, instead, that he’ll be the first modern U.S. president trying to govern in the face of an opposition that refuses to accept his legitimacy. And no, Democrats never said Donald Trump was illegitimate, just that he was incompetent and dangerous.

And he expands the observation with this critical point: "And this won’t simply be because they fear a backlash from the base if they admit that Trump lost fair and square. At a fundamental level — and completely separate from the Trump factor — today’s G.O.P. doesn’t believe that Democrats ever have the right to govern, no matter how many votes they receive." (my emphasis)

Historians still refer to the German Weimar Republic of 1918-1933 as a "Republic without republicans," by which they mean not only the Communists on the left and hardcore rightists who each for different reasons rejected the notion of a liberal democratic republic, but especially conservatives in establishment institutions from the army and government bureaucracies to corporations and universities. Many of the supposed respectable conservatives were especially interested in conserving democratic government. Which led to increasing authoritarianism is the form of a conservative President and conservative Chancellors (prime ministers) like Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, and Kurt von Schleicher, ending with Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Krugman himself during the last euro crisis referred repeatedly to Brüning's brutal austerity program during his 1930-32 Chancellorship as a dire warning that is still relevant.

If Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are successful in obstructing needed economic measures, Krugman urges the Biden-Harris team to do the thing that always seems so difficult for establishment Democrats. That is, to fight for their own side.

First, he needs to start talking about immediate policy actions to help ordinary Americans, if only to make it clear to Georgia voters how much damage will be done if they don’t elect Democrats to those two Senate seats.

If Democrats don’t get those seats, Biden will need to use executive action to accomplish as much as possible despite Republican obstruction — although I worry that the Trump-stacked Supreme Court will try to block him when he does.

Finally, although Biden is still talking in a comforting way about unity and reaching across the aisle, at some point he’ll need to stop reassuring us that he’s nothing like Trump and start making Republicans pay a political price for their attempts to prevent him from governing. ...

[W]hat Biden needs to do is what Harry Truman did in 1948, when he built political support by running against “do-nothing” Republicans. And he’ll have a better case than Truman ever did, because today’s Republicans are infinitely more corrupt and less patriotic than the Republicans Truman faced. [my emphasis]

This is absolutely critical. Today's Republican Party doesn't just pursue bad policies and oppose constructive ones. It wants to do away with the current democratic system of governance.

The new Handmaid Supreme Court Justice and "the autocracy trainee program"

Dahlia Litwick describes how the Republicans' capture of the federal judiciary with highly partisan, rightwing ideological, often techically unqualified judges is a major plank in the Republican Party's oligarchical plan for minority rule (my characterization, not hers): This Is What It Feels Like to Live Under Minority Rule Slate 10/26/2020.

She has a good take on the now-common tactic of judicial nominees to refuse to answer questions about almost anything substantive during confirmation hearings, which The Handmaid Amy Coney Barrett practiced rigidly:

The refusal to answer even the simplest yes/no questions about what black letter law means, and who it binds, has the effect - intentional or not - of unsettling what was once widely accepted and understood. It’s the judicial equivalent of “flooding the zone with shit“ and the result is the same when it’s done in law as it is when it’s done in media - it renders all that was known to be certain as indeterminate and up for grabs. It puts us all at the mercy of powerful deciders and consolidates the power to decide those newly open questions in an authority figure. It recalibrates both truth and power as emanating from someone else. [my emphasis]

Lithwick notes that for all the mealy-mouthed talk about the bogus "originalist" theory, Coney Barrett's position comes down to, "she has taken the position that what judges believe matters more than precedent anyhow."

She places the legal part of this project in the larger political goals of today's Republican Party.

Even though she didn’t answer any of her questions, we know who Barrett is and what she will do on the court. She is exactly who she has always been, who she was seated to become, and if you are worried for your children, for the planet, for the future of anti-racism and LGBTQ rights and voting rights, your worry is not misplaced. Barring court reform, the coming years will be marked by attacks on government agencies, court-endorsed rollbacks of progressive gains, and a steady series of wins for business, oligarchs, and inequality. It will come dressed as neutral “originalism,” but it will be neither neutral nor originalist. And as Adam Serwer brilliantly details, this is not simply a conservative project; it is a project to beat back changing demographics and to suppress the power of the majority. The whatever [attitude] that powerlessness engenders is a feature, not a bug, of the conservative legal movement’s efforts to tell majorities that they are of no moment. [my emphasis]

Here's another of her characterizations of this larger project: "Your very powerlessness is the point. The cruelty is the fringe benefit. ... You’re now in the autocracy trainee program."

Trump and the Christian Right in the home stretch to the 2020 election

Erin Prophet takes a look at some of the nominal justifications for supporting Trump that circulate among Trump's most loyal demographic voting bloc, white fundamentalist Christians. Fulfillment of prophecy? Yes, some evangelicals really do believe Trump is the "chosen one" Salon 10/18/2020.

"Evangelical" in the US is used to refer to conservative Christians who identified with some form of fundamentalism or "born-again" beliefs. In Europe, it's used to refer to Protestants generally.

Christian Right leaders and Republicans closely aligned with them currently cite the perennial "pro-life" (anti-abortion, anti-women's-rights) argument along with Trump's decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. It is somewhat ironic that anti-abortion and support of conservative governments in Israel have become standard Christian Right talking points. Because condemnation of abortion is nowhere mentioned in the Christian Bible. And the "Christian Zionist" view that supports rightwing Israeli governments is based on a very imaginative reading of Christian Scripture, the current form of which dates back to John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), a Irish cleric who founded the Plymouth Brethren sect.

Erin Prophet's article focuses in particular on authoritarian tendencies among Pentecostals, whose religious practice includes "prophecy" and speaking-in-tongues rituals. (The term "charisma" he uses refers to Pentecostalism.) He writes:

The study of charisma, on the contrary, offers insight into his continuing popularity as well as to its potential end. Trump's appeal eventually came into focus for me when I realized that he had fashioned himself as the savior he knew such people were seeking by capitalizing on the charismatic potential of white Christian nationalism, which overlaps with evangelicalism. Although Trump and his inner circle view the prophets with some suspicion, there are clear resonances between the prophets and Trump's public image. His MAGA slogan ("Make America Great Again") echoes [Mark] Taylor's 2011 prediction that God would use Trump "to bring honor, respect, and restoration to America."

Other [charismatic/Pentecostal] prophets predicted that Trump would stand up to banking elites, and in 2015 [reality-show star Kim] Clement declared that the president elected in 2016 would be a "strong figure" who would "clean up the mess" in government. Like a canny charismatic leader, Trump sotto voce embraced the authority of these predictions, for example, by promising to "drain the swamp." The prophets have continued to support Trump through his presidency, even going so far as to predict a second term. They excuse his failings by portraying him as a morally weak and imperfect tool that is yet being used by God.

But charismatic authority is inherently unstable, and unforeseen events may expose a leader's weaknesses. The power of charisma ends when the leader's failures become so apparent that followers have no choice but to withdraw their identification. The events of spring 2020, including the pandemic, natural disasters and economic crisis, have whittled down his support, although the base remains energized. The mysterious "Q" at the heart of QAnon is using elements of the prophecies to shore up the president's charismatic authority. [my emphasis]

Christian Right groups really do stress the need to follow supposedly annoited leaders and actively discourages critical, fact-based thinking and resoning. Rebecca Klein discusses the role of fundamentalist sectarian Christian schools, which the Republican Party actively Voucher Schools Championed By Betsy DeVos Can Teach Whatever They Want. Turns Out They Teach Lies. Huffpost 12/20/2017.

Chrissy Stroop isn't optmistic that appeals from more moderate, non-fundamentalist religious leaders will directly sway the view of the authoritarians ('Respectable' Evangelicals Can't Rein in Evangelical Conspiracy Theorists Religion Dispatches 07/24/2020):

It’s easy enough for these high-profile, “civil” and “respectable” evangelicals to scold their followers for “gullibility” — which, according to [Christianity Today’s Ed] Stetzer is “not a spiritual gift” — or, similarly, to raise concerns about evangelicals’ “witness,” that is, how their reputation in society may bear on their ability to convert others. Not that they will listen — a solid majority of white evangelicals don’t see their support for Donald Trump as harming their witness at all.

It seems to be much more difficult, however, for these men to dig deeper into the theological roots of evangelical authoritarianism and abuse. Doing so would mean they would have to become aware of their own complicity in the very real physical and psychological harm done to those of us “raised up” to “take back this country for Christ” in the thick of the culture wars.

Take [David] French’s reference to schools. Early last year, I sparked a media firestorm by launching the hashtag #ExposeChristianSchools in order to highlight the extent to which evangelical and fundamentalist schools in particular, like the ones I attended as a child, perpetuate abuse, racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ animus as they indoctrinate children in “alternative facts.” [my emphasis]

Stroop stresses the role that promoting irrational fear of specific outgroups of other people is often central to fundamentalist religious teaching and education:

... how can you expect evangelicals to listen to your exhortation to stop believing and spreading conspiracy theories when you [i.e., NeverTrumper evangelicals like David French] simultaneously defend the very institutions that teach evangelical children to be suspicious of any and all experts from outside the evangelical community (at least on matters like evolution, psychology, gender and sexuality, abortion, and climate science), which would, of course, mean the majority of genuine experts in most fields? And yet this is precisely what evangelical schools (which usually brand themselves Christian schools or Christian academies) do, along with promoting a heavy dose of Christian nationalism. [my emphasis]

Stroop has also been profiling the role of the evangelial bloc in the Republican Party in a series of posts in The Conversationalist, including “Jesus is my vaccine”: culture wars, coronavirus, and the 2020 election 04/30/2020:

White evangelicals have consistently been Donald Trump’s most supportive demographic since his 2016 victory. Even as the president’s overall approval numbers decline after the initial “rally ‘round the flag” effect from the COVID-19 pandemic that he is egregiously (and arguably criminally) mishandling, white evangelicals remain steadfastly by his side. The pandemic has itself become a site of the culture wars that the anti-democratic U.S. Christian Right has been waging relentlessly for four decades as it attempts to hold back the progress of civil rights and equality in America. And Trump, who has demonstrated his willingness to pursue their culture wars agenda, can count on unwavering support from white evangelicals in the upcoming presidential election. Our analytical focus should be on why and how authoritarian evangelicals have managed to gain so much power and what can be done to fight back, as opposed to hand wringing over their willingness to partner with an impious strongman. [my emphasis]

Stroop does seem to have a real sense of mission in his criticisms of his former brand of faith. But he also knows his subject:

[Trump's] evangelical base remains unwavering in its support for one simple reason: Trump gives authoritarian Christians practically everything they want. He validates their worst culture warring impulses and pursues the Christian Right’s agenda more comprehensively and vigorously than any previous president, including George W. Bush. Not only has Trump been stacking the federal courts and the federal bureaucracy with young far right ideologues; he also moved the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to play to evangelicals “end times” beliefs. [my emphasis]

Fascism and authoritarianism, then and now

Because Donald Trump is such a clear and present danger to formal democracy and the rule of law, his time in office has produced even more scholarly and journalistic accounts of authoritarianism. Not that the theme was being ignored before that. A new German book on the contemporary far right and its narrative themes is titled Das Faschistische Jahrhundert: Neurechte Diskurse zu Abendland, Identität, Europa und Neoliberalismus (The Fascist Century: New Right Discourses on the West, Identity, Europe and Neoliberalism). The title is a reference to a statement of Mussolini, "We have every reason to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a fascist century." declaring the dawn of a "fascist century". He had founded his Fascist Movement in 1919.

The lead essay in that book is by Roger Griffin, author of A Fascist Century (2008). In that book, he argued that fascism "as a party-political force of any consequence, it effectively died in Hitler’s bunker, unable to operate as a ‘cultic’ or ‘ritual’ form of politics with a charismatic leader." But he also argued even in 2008 that there were discernable continuities between fascist nationalism and some prominent ideas in the European far right:

[There is a] strong element of continuity between interwar and post-war schemes of national regeneration, which sometimes nurtured a pan-European vision of rebirth. It also highlights the way an extreme right-wing form of ‘Europeanisation’ has become far more prominent since 1945 as a response to the Cold War, globalisation, and to the rise of a liberal-capitalist European Union fostering multi-culturalism.

Contemporary Eurofascism offers a motley group of ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, Third Positionists, New Rightists, and white-supremacists a way of dissociating themselves from the narrowly chauvinistic nationalisms of interwar Europe that were largely based on the nation-state – and hence from Nazi crimes against humanity – while smuggling nationalism into their policies in other guises, such as ‘ethno-regionalism’, or the war on ‘Americanisation’. [my emphasis]

As we know, far right politics can evolve fairly quickly. QAnon went within three years or so from being a demented fringe phenomenon on obscure online message boards to now being rapidly accepted by the Republican Party base in the US and even spreading to Europe. Just like the original fascism, even nationalistic ideologies can become an international trend. Yanis Varoufakis talks about the Nationalist International of far-right parties and movements in present-day Europe.

As always, defining fascism is a tricky business. Even people very familiar with the history wind up relying to some degree on a variation of Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: I don't know how to define fascism, but I know it when I see it!

Historically speaking, since Mussolini called his movement and party Fascist, it would be difficult to argue that his politics were anything but fascist. And since Hitler saw himself as following Mussolini's model in his drive to take power in Germany, it's fairly obvious to see German National Socialism as a form of fascism. (Although among academics that has been seriously disputed!) The Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship of 1933-38 in Austria was even more explicitly modeled on Mussolini's regime.

Other far-right regimes of that period like those in Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Rumania, and Croatia were anti-democratic and authoritarian. But the definitional task is complicated by the fact that while explicitly ideological fascist parties may have supported or participated in those governments, the dominant leadership was not quite so explicitly aligned with a fascist ideology as were Mussolini, Hitler, and Dollfuss. Griffin notes that "Mussolini and Hitler recognised an affinity between their movements that they did not see, for example, in Salazar’s Portugal."

That's worth keeping in mind when looking at today's political situation. I'm inclined to an I-know-when-I-see-it approach when looking at Trump, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, or Narendra Modi in India. But as concepts like "red fascism" or "Islamofascism" remind us, a promiscuous use of the term may wind up obscuring more than it clarifies.

I've previously suggested that Hungary is a good example of how Trumpism could develop - with or without the Orange Clown in the White House. (Hungary as a model for American authoritarians 04/11/2020) The main far-right authoritarian party in Hungary had been Jobbik. The current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had been a liberal leader during the post-1989 transition, and his current party is Fidesz, which has been affiliated with the conservative European People's Party, though it is currently suspended (though not expelled). But since Orbán became Prime Minister in 2010, he has pushed Hungary in the direction of authoritarian "illiberal democracy." As Zoltan Simon reports (Orban Says He Seeks to End Liberal Democracy in Hungary Bloomberg 06/28/2014):

“I don’t think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations,” Orban said, according to the video of his speech on the government’s website. He listed Russia, Turkey and China as examples of “successful” nations, “none of which is liberal and some of which aren’t even democracies.”

Orban, who was re-elected in April for a second consecutive four-year term, has clashed with the EU as he amassed more power than any of his predecessors since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, replacing the heads of independent institutions including the courts with allies, tightening control over media and changing election rules to help him retain a constitutional majority in Parliament.

Authoritarianism takes various forms. Despite his affinity for Putin's style of rule in Russia, Orbán is currently maintaining the outward forms of democratic institutions. We can and should expect authoritarian governments to become more so. But Orbán at this point is not arresting journalists or poisoning opposition leaders. He has established broad control over the press through oligarchs allied with him buying up media outlets, without resorting to formal censorship. Politicians and political parties can organize and campaign in regular elections, but through an extreme form of gerrymandering he has made it virtually impossible for opposition parties to gain a majority in Parliament to be able to form a new government.

All this is a way of saying what the famous apocryphal saying attributed to Mark Twain, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And the historical background and contemporary similarities can help us understand the very specific events and developments in the US or any other given country.

Radical Right in Real Time

There is a lot of coverage currently that looks at current developments among radical rights sects and the Republican Party in light of the current danger to democracy.

Dave Neiwert gives a detailed update on the Republican/far-right political narrative about "antifa§ in The right’s eliminationist narrative about antifa was borne of conspiracism and lives in it now Daily Kos 08/03/2020.

Mark Bray discusses the antifa-conspiracy narrative in Antifa: Terrorist Group or Trump Scapegoat? Amanpour and Company 06/04/2020:

Bray also writes about antifa in Antifa isn’t the problem. Trump’s bluster is a distraction from police violence. Washington Post 06/01/2020.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has spent a lot of time this year on YouTube videos discussing her scholarly work and contemporary politics, and also posting political commentary on her Facebook page and at Bill Moyer's website. She has given particular history to American political parties in her professional work, including To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (2014). She takes what I would call a realistic view of US political history that engages directly with how the longterm development and expansion of democracy has simultaneously been intimately connected with inequality and brutality. One of her recent essays is Democracy Under Attack 09/07/2020:

Democracy depends on the rule of law. Today, we learned that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who rose to become a Cabinet official thanks to his prolific fundraising for the Republican Party, apparently managed to raise as much money as he did because he pressured employees at his business, New Breed Logistics, to make campaign contributions that he later reimbursed through bonuses. Such a scheme is illegal. ...

Democracy depends on equality before the law. But Black and brown people seem to receive summary justice at the hands of certain law enforcement officers, rather than being accorded the right to a trial before a jury of their peers. In a democracy, voters elect representatives who make laws that express the will of the community. “Law enforcement officers” stop people who are breaking those laws, and deliver them to our court system, where they can tell their side of the story and either be convicted of breaking the law, or acquitted. When police can kill people without that process, justice becomes arbitrary, depending on who holds power.

Democracy depends on reality-based policy. Increasingly it is clear that the Trump administration is more concerned about creating a narrative to hold power than it is in facts. [my emphasis]

Sarah Churchwell takes a look at the real existing American fascism during the days when Mussolini and Hitler were practicing their versions of it in American Fascism: It Has Happened Here NYB Blog 06/22/2020.

Fundamentalist Christianity and its institutions are still critical links in the US between the Republican Party and the most fanatical far-right attitudes and conspiracy theories. Here are a few recent pieces focusing on that aspect:

• Adam Gabbatt, 'Unparalleled privilege': why white evangelicals see Trump as their savior Guardian 01/11/2020
• Paul Rosenberg, The Power Worshippers: A look inside the American religious right Aljazeera 06/02/2020
• Eric Eykel, Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims 'Jesus Was White' Religion Dispatches 06/29/2020
• Eric Miller, Trump’s Unholy Alliances: An Interview with Sarah Posner Religion and Politics 07/29/2020
• John Stoehr, Sadism Is Still the Point for Most White Evangelicals Religion Dispatches 08/17/2020
• Michael Peppard, Mike Pence’s Idolatrous RNC Speech Commonweal 08/30/2020
• Michael Luo, American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem New Yorker 09/02/2020
• Bob Smietana, Video from priest says Catholics who vote for Democrats will go to hell. One bishop approves this message. Religion News Service 09/06/2020i>

Hungary as a model for American authoritarians

Paul Krugman points to Hungary as a credible model for how the US can become an authoritarian country with democracy effectively suppressed (American Democracy May Be Dying New York Times 04/09/2020):

To see how a modern democracy can die, look at events in Europe, especially Hungary, over the past decade.

What happened in Hungary, beginning in 2011, was that Fidesz, the nation's white nationalist ruling party, took advantage of its position to rig the electoral system, effectively making its rule permanent. Then it further consolidated its control, using political power to reward friendly businesses while punishing critics, and moved to suppress independent news media.

Until recently, it seemed as if Viktor Orban, Hungary's de facto dictator, might stop with soft authoritarianism, presiding over a regime that preserved some of the outward forms of democracy, neutralizing and punishing opposition without actually making criticism illegal. But now his government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to abandon even the pretense of constitutional government, giving Orban the power to rule by decree. [my emphasis]

The Austrian Social Democratic politician Muna Duzdar (the first Muslim to serve as a member of an Austrian national government), posted this criticism of a new anti-LGBTQ position of Hungary's government on Facebook:

My translation from the German]:

This is happening in the middle of our neighboring country, Hungary, an EU Member State. I do not recognize this country. I often wonder how this development into an authoritarian state could be so rapid. Unfortunately, we also see clearly that minorities are the first to be oppressed and stigmatized.

But what I have been observing with incomprehension for years in Austrian politics [is]: before our borders, our neighbor is step-by-step saying goodbye to democracy and the rule of law, but I have never heard a word of criticism, but only appeasement, from the current Chancellor [Sebastian Kurz] and the turquoise ÖVP [Kurz’ Christian Democratic conservative party]. Can you understand why this is so? What does Kurz have in common with Orbán?

The linked article, Ungarn will trans* Personen nicht mehr anerkennen NOIZZ.de 07.04.2020, comments:

Orbán ist seit 2010 Ministerpräsident Ungarns und verfolgt einen politischen Ansatz, mit dem er die Demokratie des Landes nach und nach zerstört. In der vergangenen Woche hat das ungarische Parlament den rechtsnationalen Orbán per Dekret die volle Regierungsgewalt zugesprochen, solange das Coronavirus als Bedrohung für die Nation angesehen wird – und damit die letzten demokratischen Kontrollsysteme des Parlaments ausgehebelt. Denn mit seinen aktuellen umfassenden Sondervollmachten kann Orbán ohne zeitliche Befristung und gegebenenfalls ohne parlamentarische Kontrolle regieren – eine Demokratie ist das nicht mehr.

[Orbán has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010 and has been pursuing a political approach that is gradually destroying the country's democracy. Last week, the Hungarian parliament granted full government power to the right-wing nationalist Orbán to rule by decree, as long as the coronavirus is seen as a threat to the nation – thereby undermining parliament's last democratic control systems. With its current comprehensive special powers, Orbán can govern without a time limit and, if necessary, without parliamentary control – that is no longer a democracy.]

Ghosts of Elections Future-Bloomberg edition

Since hand-wringing and gloom-and-doom seem to be the order of the day for Democratic leaning media commentators, here's a possible scenarios that is a bit more plausible than it was four years ago.

Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg wins enough states to have a small majority in the Electoral College, despite unusually low turnout among African-Americans and union members in key Midwest states. The morning after, President Trump declares the results invalid due to what he describes as several million illegal aliens voting.

The Supreme Court upholds a special request from Attorney General William Barr to dismiss the electors from three states and replace them with independent appointees selected by Barr. The Electoral College officially selects Trump as President for a second term, with all the independent appointees voting for him.

Michael Bloomberg, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and DNC Chair Tom Perez hold a press conference to announce that in the 2022 cycle, the party will provide resources only to candidates that run in Republican primaries. "Participating in Republican primaries is the most practical way to uphold our institutions and reduce the polarization among Americans."

Pelosi declared, "This may be difficult for some in our party to accept. But we can't afford to insist that only we have all the answers. By campaigning as moderates within the Republican Party, we can more effectively reach voters that have previously not trusted us. We should remember that at the time of our party's founding by the great Thomas Jefferson, our party was officially the Democratc-Republican Party. But in fact, for its first few decades, it was normally called the Republican Party."

The press conference came to an abrupt end when ICE and FBI officials acting on behalf of the new Homeland Protection Special Task Foree headed by Rudi Giulani arrested Bloomberg, Pelosi, Schumer, and Perez.

The White House has authorized the press to report that all three will be charged with conspiring with Ukrainians and Latino leaders to tamper with the Presidential election.

President Trump tweeted, "The Democrat TRAITORS have been exposed as the Dirtbags they are. If Bill Barr isn't a Wimp, he will indict all for HI TREASON!!

Asked for comment on the developments, former Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg responded, "We need to strive to maintain hope as we look to imagine a new kind of unity based on innovation and dynamic action."