A Republican View of Autocracy –– Pt. I

Review by Bill Doughty––

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.

One of the first authors of “old books” Stevens cites is George Orwell, who writes, “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” [Instead of a belief in belief. Or skewed news and propaganda.]

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.”

Regarding dictators and autocratic movements, Arendt (above) says, “Their most conspicuous external characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual member.”

Examples today are obsequious cabinet meetings in the White House and the recent firing of freethinking military officers, including General Todd Donahue, commanding general of United States Army Europe and Africa and commander of Allied Land Command. [Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who calls himself Secretary of War, has removed or pressured removal of more than two dozen senior military leaders, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr.; Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan; Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George; and Army Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff of the Army. A disproportionate number of people removed from power are women, African-Americans, and/or free-thinkers.]

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.

In her book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” Ruth Ben-Ghiat (above) describes this as a tradition of the strongman: “…divide-and-rule and bullying tactics to weed out government officials who won’t conspire in his corruption and subversion of the rule of law.”

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 win a Republican primary election but lose to Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.

In the same chapter, Stevens uses Jane Mayer’s (above) 2016 book “Dark Money” to springboard onto a discussion about the influential Koch brothers.

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.

Stevens writes, “As Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry (above) wrote in their 2022 book, “The Flag and the Cross,” as absurd as it might seem that a three-time divorced failed casino owner who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy could appeal to conservative Christians, Trump fits a narrative of Christian Nationalism:”

“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.”

Trump said. “They will kill your people and that's what they're about. They want to end religion.”

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.

General Hertling’s reminder to read old books for new ideas also applies to “old” ideas: freedom over suppression, ethics over corruption, and democracy over autocracy.

We have Hertling’s book, “If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal” on our summer reading list.

Orwell on ICE III: War, Truth, Iran

Review by Bill Doughty––

Sons from poor families go to war; sons from rich families go to the bank. Some working class kids lie about their age to enlist, while some wealthy kids lie about their health to get out of military service.

Although George Orwell writes passionately about the horrors of war, he does not shrink from its necessity at times, despite society’s inequities, especially in the face of direct threats and tyranny. So, when does an undeclared war need to be declared? What constitutes a direct imminent threat?

In his essay “My Country Right or Left” Orwell shows both clear thinking and true patriotism in confronting reality when war becomes a necessity.

“I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King.’ That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. It is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will finch from revolution when the moment comes.”

He wrote “My Country Right or Left” in the autumn of 1940, near the end of the Battle of Britain, an early victory against Hitler’s Nazis. The Royal Navy fiercely defended the English Channel. While the navy protected coastal shipping the Royal Air Force successfully repelled air attacks against Germany’s failed Operation Sea Lion invasion of the British Isles.

At that time there was a clear imminent need to wage war in order to defend against an attacking force.

Two years later, still in the midst of the Second World War, Orwell wrote a devastating account of war in “Looking Back on the Spanish War.” It begins with this fragment sentence, “First of all the physical memories, the sounds, the smells and the surfaces of things.”

Truth on War

Orwell's memories leave little to the imagination. “One of the essential experiences of war is never to be able to escape from disgusting smells of human origin.”

“The essential horror of army life (whoever has been a soldier will know what I mean by the essential horror of army life) is barely affected by the nature of the war you happen to be fighting in. Discipline, for instance, is ultimately the same in all armies. Orders have to be obeyed and enforced by punishment if necessary, the relationship of officer and man has to be the relationship of superior and inferior. The picture of war set forth in books like All Quiet on the Western Front is substantially true. Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers. It is true that the social background from which an army springs will colour its training, tactics and general efficiency, and also that the consciousness of being in the right can bolster up morale, though this affects the civilian population more than the troops. (People forget that a soldier anywhere near the front line is usually too hungry, or frightened, or cold, or, above all, too tired to bother about the political origins of the war.) But the laws of nature are not suspended for a ‘red' army any more than for a ‘white’ one. A louse is a louse and a bomb is a bomb, even though the cause you are fighting for happens to be just.”

Orwell concludes, “We have become too civilised to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”

“One has to remember this to see the Spanish War in its true perspective. When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war — and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings — there is always the temptation to say: ‘One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral.’ In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins.

Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction. The hatred which the Spanish Republic excited in millionaires, dukes, cardinals, playboys, Blimps and what not would in itself be enough to show one how the land lay. In essence it was a class war. If it had been won, the cause of the common people everywhere would have been strengthened. It was lost, and the dividend-drawers all over the world rubbed their hands. That was the real issue; all else was froth on its surface.”

[“Blimps,” by the way, is a term Orwell employs to describe stereotyped puffed-up, overfed, self-important bureaucrats, and slick-haired military leaders who often profit from war and ignored war crimes.]

An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury, March 1, 2026. (U.S. Navy)

War on Truth

Orwell writes this about atrocities in war when rules of law, international treaties, or the laws of war are ignored:

“I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.”

In war, each side justifies its own miscalculations, civilian deaths, and outright war crimes. 

In Orwell’s “War-time Diary,” written from the end of May through the end of December of 1940, we see clearly the cliché, “the first casualty in war is the truth.” Reports of enemy casualties are inflated while Allies’ setbacks and mistakes are covered over.

On July 3, 1940 Orwell writes: “Everywhere a feeling of something near despair among thinking people because of the failure of the government to act and the continuance of dead minds and pro-Fascists in positions of command.”

Fast forward 86 years…

U.S. Sailors load an F/A-18E Super Hornet with ammunition aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), for Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28. (U.S. Navy)

War on Iran

On Feb. 28, 2026 the United States military, under orders from Commander in Chief Donald Trump, chose to start a war –– together with Netanyahu’s Israel –– against the Islamic Republic of Iran, assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei and other leaders.

People can celebrate the removal of an undemocratic theocracy while simultaneously be alarmed at the potential for escalating into another “forever war.” Americans can be exceptionally proud of the power and tactical skill of its military while also feel concern about a possible ill-conceived strategy of going to war without authorization or justification.

Unfortunately there have already been a number of U.S. service members killed or seriously wounded, and many Americans throughout the world have now become even bigger targets of Iran and its surrogates.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Iranians have been killed or wounded in the first few days of bombings. News outlets report the deaths of more than 150 Iranians, including children, after the destruction of Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school. In response, Iran is firing missiles at gulf states and Israel, hitting a synagogue and bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh, killing nine people.

Was this undeclared war of choice constitutional? Did Iran pose an imminent threat to the United States? Why did we start a war during peace negotiations shepherded by Oman?

According to Trump, he launched Operation Epic Fury to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, destroy its missile arsenal, and neutralize proxy terrorist forces. In a taped message from his resort at Mar-a-Lago, while wearing a white "USA" baseball cap, he also called for regime change.

Trump barely spoke about Iran in his recent State of the Union speech. In other words, prior to launching he war, he did not make his case to the American People, to Congress, or to the United Nations. 

In his State of the Union address filled with heart-wrenching stories of violent crimes and killings, Trump did not mention the violence by Department of Homeland Security agents, including the shooting deaths of Silverio Villegas González in Chicago or Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Nor did he speak of the women who as girls were victims of the nation’s scandal that has become bigger than Watergate: the Epstein pedophile debacle, which is in effect an ongoing war on the truth, transparency, and tragic victims of child-rape.

Most of Jeffrey Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell's victims reportedly came from poor and/or troubled families or from the working class.

Is war with Iran an attempt to distract from news coverage of Epstein/Maxwell or domestic failures and scandals (for both Trump and Netanyahu)? Is Operation Epic Fury a means to foment jingoism and influence mid-term voting in order to support the ruling class?

In 1984, Orwell wrote: “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984 proclaimed “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

As we wage war in Iran, is it being presented as a way toward peace?

Orwell on ICE II: Parasites

Review by Bill Doughty––

In his typically salty way, Orwell describes his beloved England in one of his essays written 85 years ago this month as a nation whose rulers are “parasites.”

Orwell speaks to us from across “the pond” and beyond the grave with observations still timely, relevant, and enlightening in "England Your England."

He has much to say about inequality within society.

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly,” he writes.

Yet, the people of England showed supreme “emotional unity” during the crisis of the Second World War, when authoritarian forces threatened freedom and England’s very existence as a democratic constitutional monarchy.

Orwell calls his country “a family with the wrong members in charge.” Young people must “kowtow” to the rich and powerful and not question the upper classes’ source of wealth.

“It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.”

Orwell recounts the evolution of Britain from an empire with a feudal power system to a modern technological society. The people in country estates and castles became “owners” with no direct contribution to the economy, the so-called “idol rich.” Some are celebrities who get power and wealth by being famous for being famous.

'American Millionaires ... Privileges ... Bribery ... Tear Gas'

Referring to the ultra rich and privileged class: “They were simply parasites,” Orwell writes, “less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.”

“By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this.

By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them— into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.

There is much in England that this explains. It explains the decay of country life, due to the keeping-up of a sham feudalism which drives the more spirited workers off the land. It explains the immobility of the public schools, which have barely altered since the eighties of the last century. It explains the military incompetence which has again and again startled the world. Since the 'fifties every war in which England has engaged has started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been saved by people comparatively low in the social scale. The higher commanders, drawn from the aristocracy, could never prepare for modern war, because in order to do so they would have had to admit to themselves that the world was changing. They have always clung to obsolete methods and weapons, because they inevitably saw each war as a repetition of the last. Before the Boer War they prepared for the Zulu War, before 1914 for the Boer War, and before the present war for 1914. Even at this moment hundreds of thousands of men in England are being trained with the bayonet, a weapon entirely useless except for opening tins. It is worth noticing that the navy and, latterly, the Air Force, have always been more efficient than the regular army. But the navy is only partially, and the Air Force hardly at all, within the ruling-class orbit.”

That wasn’t the first or last time Orwell exempted the Royal Navy or Royal Air Force from the rampant incompetence of a caste system of leadership based on rich versus poor.

At least, he notes, the country’s rulers had not attempted to establish an authoritarian dictatorship or agitated for a civil war –– with a paramilitary force on the streets of London.

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police.”

Orwell saw a direct line to the Gestapo, Nazism, and spread of fascism as an outcome of the Spanish War of 1939 between Nationalists and Republicans. Although he had fought for the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascists he later became disillusioned by the Republicans’ ties to Soviet Russia. His disillusionment would inspire his masterwork “1984” against totalitarianism.

While he lauds the fact that there were no secret police roaming London’s streets, he acknowledges, “Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.”

“Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered,” Orwell writes. “The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root.”

The same thing could be said about nearly all of the first 250 years of the United States’s history.

Fascist Diversity

In his essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War” Orwell says “When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew!”

He mentions a varied array of powerful men including Germany’s Führer/Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Vichy France’s Philippe Pétain, Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelic, American media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, American expatriate and Mussolini supporter Ezra Pound, Palestinian Arab nationalism and Nazi collaborator Mufti of Jerusalem, Canadian-American Christian Supremacist and America First isolationist Father Charles Coughlin, among others.

“They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings,” Orwell writes.

[Interestingly, in another essay he decries his country’s discrimination against hiring immigrants to work in coal mines. Although he acknowledges the “wasteful, dirty and inefficient” nature of coal fires, he celebrates the idea of families of any “class” gathered around a fireplace.]

The ultra wealthy privileged caste, many of whom would be considered part of the “Epstein Class” today, tend to show disdain for immigrants, poor people, and workers. And what do working people ask for?

“All that the workingman demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn't leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against ‘materialism’ would consider life livable without these things. And how easily that minimum could be attained if we chose to set our minds to it for only twenty years! To raise the standard of living of the whole world to that of Britain would not be a greater undertaking than this war we are now fighting … The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police.”

Orwell staunchly believed in the rule of law and protection of voting rights within a culture of income inequality.

Regarding the English electoral system: “In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class” but “not completely corrupt,” Orwell contends. “You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted nor is there any direct bribery.”

But income inequality can lead to corruption, autocracy, voter suppression, and war –– both on foreign and domestic soil.

More about that in our next Navy Reads post.

By the way… 

Today we saw another gift from across the pond from musical artists whose roots are from the "working class" and lower-middle classes:

The islands that gave us The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin just delivered the Irish band U2’s “Days of Ash” EP with the lead song “American Obituary,” recounting ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis with these powerful lyrics: “What you can’t kill can’t die, America will rise against the people of the lie;” “I love you more than hate loves war;” and “the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.” U2’s timely and exceptionally good set of songs complement to America's Bruce Springsteen’s recent tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “The Streets of Minneapolis.”