How Authoritarians Took Over the GOP

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, he immediately started throwing gasoline on the populist fires lit by Gingrich and Luntz. The chaos, divisiveness, and anti-democratic activity of his presidency was too much even for the media and general public to accept as normal. Either reluctantly or disbelievingly, the country slowly awakened to the authoritarian threat of Trump’s White House. Yet, it failed – and often still fails – to see that such a threat had been brewing in the Republican Party for some time.

It didn’t take long for some political observers to comment on the fascism that Trump brought to the White House. Just ten days after he was inaugurated, Martin Longman in the Washington Monthly referenced the 14 signs of fascism listed on a poster at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. (He said it was hanging at the museum, but according to Snopes it was only sold in the museum gift shop.) Longman noted that the new president checked off 12 of the 14 boxes. For each item, he provided a link to an article explaining how Trump satisfied that particular fascist criterion.

Longman pointed out that regarding one of the criteria, the entwining of religion and politics, Republicans had exhibited fascist tendencies well before Trump arrived on the scene. Somehow, though, Longman missed making that same connection for several other items on the list:

• Powerful and continuing nationalism. Antipathy toward the United Nations , claiming patriotism as an exclusive Republican characteristic, and promoting aggressive immigration policies and legislation to end birthright citizenship were all precursors to Trump’s America First rhetoric.
• Identifying enemies as a unifying cause. Vilifying Democrats as a domestic enemy was central to the GOP’s strategy to unite Republicans behind the need for electoral victories.
• Controlled mass media. Gingrich and Luntz demonstrated an early mastery of mass media manipulation and showed their colleagues in the GOP how to attract attention and break through the noise with the party’s talking points. They didn’t need to financially own the media. Having Fox News, a growing number of local news programs, and conservative talk radio as willing allies gave Republicans the echo chamber they needed.
• Corporate power protected. That objective – protecting corporate interests – is where the revolution started. Powell’s memo outlined the strategy for defending against a perceived attack on corporate enterprise. Calls for deregulation morphed over time into demands to dismantle the administrative state.
• Labor power suppressed. Ronald Reagan is credited with breaking union power when he refused to negotiate with 13,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Republicans are generally opposed to increasing the minimum wage; holding down the cost of labor may be one of the most controllable means of maintaining high profitability.
• Disdain for intellectuals and the arts. With their refusal to act on the scientific consensus around climate change, with their emphasis on bias rather than debate, and with their disparagement of “coastal elites”, the GOP has long demonstrated its disdain for intellectuals.
• Fraudulent elections. This is not one that Longman checked for Trump in 2017, but as we now know, Trump’s presidency culminated in fraudulent claims of a stolen election. Republicans, on the other hand, has repeatedly used the little lie of election fraud to promote legislation that made it more restrictive for less privileged segments of the population to vote. And a voter purge by the Republican government in Florida prior to the 2000 election suppressed the votes of thousands of eligible voters; the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, won that election because Florida was decided in his favor by 537 votes.

One item left off the list at the Holocaust Museum – control of the courts – is also part of the fascist playbook. Even before Trump, the Federalist Society and Mitch McConnell made sure that open seats in the judiciary went to some of the most partisan judges available. For his part, Trump lived up to his promise to have the Federalist Society pick his judicial nominees. His nominees to the federal bench not only delivered the abortion decision Republicans had long sought, they have so far helped delay and potentially eliminate the possibility that Trump will be tried and held accountable if convicted for any of the crimes for which he has been indicted.

Feature Image: Photo of Donald Trump by Michael Vadon, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license