America's First Anti-Democratic Leader

On the march.

Much of the world is still reeling from the brutal and violently riotous assault on the Washington Capitol on January 6th. Trump’s Save America rally immediately before the event, specifically called for the attack, singled out Pence, urged the potential rioters to be strong and set them off on their murderous way. Rudy Giuliani threw a little fuel on to the fire, calling, in his Trump warm-up act for

trial by combat. I have just watched [Jan 10th] a 35 minute video, filmed by someone within the crowd [who had no time to do anything other than film] as the building was attacked, entered forcefully and desecrated. The noise, violence, the chanting We want Trump/ Stop the Steal/; the sheer animal force and brutality of a mob totally out of control, drunk on unrestricted power and convinced of the rightness of The Cause. It is terrifying to behold.

The fifty Capitol policemen had no chance against the thousands, many half-crazed with the dizzy excitement of being where they were, with the power to do exactly as they pleased. Despite denials, it is apparent that White House staff and close allies of Trump including former Trump campaign staff and family, worked with organisers such as Women For America First and Stop the Steal, to plan and promote Wednesday’s events. The permit for the march, obtained on Jan 4 by Kylie Jane Kremer, daughter of Tea Party activist, Amy Kremer, was operative between 9.00 a.m. and 5.00 pm and covered 30,000 marchers. The chatter about the planned insurrection was amplified on Twitter and Facebook with supporters openly discussing their plans online. On more extremist media sites like 8kun [linked to QAnon] there was talk “for weeks” about the planned siege of the Capitol. So the remarks of the Washington Police Chief, Robert Contee, at a news conference that there was no intelligence to suggest there would be a breach of the Capitol, seems at least, disingenuous. 8kun put out a message on Jan 5th: As many Patriots as can be. We will storm Government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents and demand a recount. [8kun]

Plato

Aristotle

I learned today [Jan 11th] that Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace and that Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded, in the end, by yes-men and enablers. Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale, in a wonderfully illuminating essay in the New York Times of January 9^th, mused on the similarities between Trump’s methods and those of the Nazis: in 1930s Germany, they used the new-fangled radio to replace the pluralism of journalism; Trump communicated via the unrestrained bullhorn of Twitter. Like the Nazis, Trump declared journalists to be enemies, constantly referring to “fake news”, akin to the Nazi, “Lugenpresse”, lying Press.

Timothy Snyder

Josh Hawley in unhelpful pose.

Snyder also unpicks the strands of the Republican Party to explain the continuing support there, even post-chaos on Wednesday, for the Trump viewed by the world, including a majority of Americans, as terrifyingly disgraced. He identifies the ‘breakers’ and the ‘gamers’. The latter want to game the system to maintain power. They are happy to use constitutional obscurities, dark money and gerrymandering to win elections with a minority of voters. He identifies Mitch McConnell as a leader who consistently indulged Trump allowing his electoral fiction to flourish, without commenting on the consequences. The breakers do not care if they break the system; the aim is to gain or keep power even without democracy. He cites Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz who challenged States’ electoral votes to cause delays and impress Trump followers knowing they could not effect the outcome. They were joined by 8 senators and over 100 representatives who voted for the lie that had caused them to flee their chambers.

Snyder suggests that, at the core of Trump’s fantasy of electoral fraud, there lies the belief that
it was a crime committed by blacks against whites. The persistent, traditional racism which continues to blight American life and politics, remains to underpin all.