Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commanding general of U.S. forces in Europe, reminds us of this old saying: “If you want a new idea, read an old book.”
A book that is not too old –– and seemingly written yesterday –– shows how the United States is embracing autocracy. Longtime Republican campaign strategist Stuart Stevens captures the country’s current radical slide with the clarity of hindsight in “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Democracy Away” (Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2023).
For a new idea, read an good book!
Stevens quotes key authors of other “old books” to investigate the seeds and roots of an anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian movement growing in the government –– including the justice department, legislature and military –– and branching into society. Five building blocks of autocracy include propagandist media, MAGA followers, oligarchic financiers, corrupt legal theories, and shock troops such as J6ers and right-wing militia all supporting the totalitarian movement.
In 1984, Orwell warns about Big Brother and in effect Big Lies despite objective facts. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It means loyalty to the leader, not the Constitution or even to concrete reality.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” writes, “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.”
Attacks on education and science are a hallmark of authoritarians, as Stevens points out through the perspective of philosopher Umberto Eco, who writes, “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity” to the fascist, and “thinking is a form of emasculation … Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”
As fascist-friendly forces attempt suppression of free speech, media and voting rights, authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in “How Democracies Die,” “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy –– gradually, subtly, and even legally –– to kill it.”
Anne Applebaum writes in “Twilight of Democracy” that this “soft dictatorship … relies upon a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies.”
Legislative and judicial enablers, administration sycophants, propagandist media, and oligarchs –– “elites” –– either endorse or allow the authoritarian to gain power and restrict liberty.
It happened in 1930s Germany.
Another seminal author quoted by Stevens is William Shirer, who penned “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” Shirer writes about Franz von Papen, an aristocratic conservative politician who served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932. Papen made a deal with Adolf Hitler, thinking he and his fellow conservatives could control him and the Nazis.
Shirer writes, “By means of a shabby political deal with the old-school reactionary he privately detected, the former tramp from Vienna, the derelict of the First World War, the violent revolutionary, became chancellor of the great nation.” Hitler then removed, often violently, anyone not completely loyal to him.
Their efforts are often funded by misguided oligarchs.
Ghiat writes,
“Once the ruler is in power, elites strike an ‘authoritarian bargain’ that promises them power and security in return for loyalty to the ruler and toleration of his suspension of rights. Some are true believers, and others fear the consequences of subtracting their support, but those who sign on tend to stick with the leader through gross mismanagement, impeachment, or international humiliation.”
In a chapter titled “The Financiers,” Stevens examines the role of Peter Thiel through Max Chaikin’s book “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.” Thiel wrote in an essay for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel is a big funder of his proteges J.D. Vance, who would become vice president, and Blake Masters, who would lose to Arizona Senator Mark Kelly
The Kochs inherited a fortune from their father who helped both Stalin and Hitler develop oil industries that were indispensable in their respective war efforts. As libertarians, the Kochs were ironically opposed to centralized power and autocracy. They championed and funded Mike Pence, Trump’s first vice president. Pence served Trump faithfully until January 6, 2021 when he resisted an effort to subvert the election in the face of an angry populist mob demanding he be hanged at the Capitol.
A highlight in Stevens’s “The Conspiracy to End America” is a timeline in a chapter titled “The Legal Strategies.” After the formation of the Federalist Society in 1982 and appointments of Federalist judges to the Supreme Court –– Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett –– there is an exponential growth of the influence of money in politics, inequality in society, control by Christian Supremacists, and corruption within the executive branch, including lying to the public.
Moisés Naim cites “3 Ps” of the autocrat in “The Revenge of Power”: Populism, Polarization, and Post-Truth. The 3 Ps are often seen as nationalism, division and outright lying, where the truth no longer seems to matter to those in power.
A “Big Lie” like election denial is an example of the 3 Ps and the root cause of the J6 insurrection coup attempt. Russians and the Soviets before them sowed discord in U.S. elections. Stevens writes, “There is no more fundamental assault on democracy and the rule of law than overturning the results of a free and fair election.”
When Trump announced his last election campaign in Waco, Texas, it was a form of endorsement of White Christian Nationalism. According to Stevens, it was a link to Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh, Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge, and Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing that targeted the federal government.
In Kathleen Belew’s masterful “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary in America,” the author writes, “Nowhere was the horror of Ruby Ridge more acutely registered than in the white power movement.”
Trump’s Waco speech starkly presented his election as a “final battle” of good versus evil and of a “final battle,” linked to biblical end times.
“The first thing to note is that Trump's MAGA narrative can be understood as a semi-secularized version of white Christian nationalism's deep story. Trump's narrative is shorn of the sorts of biblical references and allusions that peppered earlier presidents' speeches.
But the MAGA narrative still has many parallels with the deep story. The most obvious one is between the apocalyptic strand of white Christian nationalism and the catastrophizing aspect of MAGA. Premillennialists believe that there will be a final battle between good and evil, a life-and-death struggle between natural and supernatural forces that is visible to them, but invisible to unbelievers. Trump's worldview is similar. ‘Disaster’ is one of his favorite words. He sees life as an endless battle between us and them. He sees hidden conspiracies everywhere he looks. We should not be surprised that Trump's rhetoric resonated so strongly with many white devotees of Christian nationalism. Their deep stories are quite similar.”
At today’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference President Trump lied to evangelical supporters that recently elected democratic socialists were “hardcore godless communists” who “will close your churches in this country.”
The opposite of “diversity, equity and inclusion” can be considered as religious-based “racism, inequality, and exclusion.” It’s “Us vs. Them” instead of “E Pluribus Unum.”
By using the words of other authors to make his point, Stevens achieves a brilliant strategy of illustrating the five “building blocks” of autocracy: propagandists, support of a major party, finances, legal theories to legitimate actions, and shock troops.
We have Hertling’s book, “If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal” on our summer reading list.
