It Can Happen Here

Authoritarianism in America is a real possibility

In his dark com­e­dy, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis describes the rise of a ris­i­ble dem­a­gogue who is elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States and becomes a dictator.

The nov­el was pub­lished in 1935, when Lewis’s wife, jour­nal­ist Dorothy Thompson, was report­ing on the emer­gence of fas­cism in Europe.

The pro­tag­o­nist in the sto­ry is Doremus Jessup, a small-town news­pa­per edi­tor who sees what’s hap­pen­ing and tries to warn his read­ers that their folksy hero is a fraud.

“He was an actor of genius,” Lewis wrote, describ­ing Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip. The politi­cian would cap­ti­vate his audi­ence by glar­ing, shout­ing, coo­ing, and telling them things that “were entire­ly incorrect.”

Among Windrip’s first acts as pres­i­dent were to decrease the influ­ence of Congress, cur­tail the rights of women and minori­ties, and muz­zle the watch­dogs of the free press.

Two years into his reign of error, when his promis­es of pros­per­i­ty have failed to mate­ri­al­ize, and Canada, Mexico and South America have shown no inter­est in becom­ing “part of his inevitable empire,” Windrip’s pow­er wanes. He is oust­ed by his schem­ing for­mer right-hand man, who is over­thrown by a ruth­less general.

Lewis’s nov­el was a warn­ing to a com­pla­cent repub­lic that would soon be enrap­tured by the iso­la­tion­ist America First move­ment led by avi­a­tor Charles Lindbergh and indus­tri­al­ist Henry Ford, men who held anti-Semitic and pro-fas­cist views. 

Had Pearl Harbor not hap­pened when it did, unit­ing the nation in sup­port of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the war effort, the his­to­ry of America in the 1940s and the post-war order might have been quite different. 

But what if Lewis’s night­mare was just pre­ma­ture? Ninety years after his book was pub­lished, his clar­i­on call sounds clear­er and more rel­e­vant than ever.

Is Trump a fascist?

Before Donald J. Trump was elect­ed pres­i­dent for a sec­ond term in 2024, Gen. Mark Milley, chair­man of the joint chiefs of staff under Presidents Trump and Biden, told reporter Bob Woodward: “Now I real­ize he is a total fas­cist. He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this country.”

When he retired in 2023, Milley had said a mil­i­tary offi­cer doesn’t take an oath of loy­al­ty to “a tyrant or a dic­ta­tor” or some­one who wants to be one.

Trump’s chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, echoed Milley’s con­cern on Oct. 22, when he told The New York Times that Trump fits the def­i­n­i­tion of a fascist.

The for­mer pres­i­dent, Kelly said, believed he had the abil­i­ty “to do any­thing he want­ed, any­time he wanted.”

Kelly also con­firmed that Trump was fas­ci­nat­ed with Adolph Hitler and had said the fuehrer “did some good things” for Germany.

Vice President Kamala Harris agreed with Kelly that Trump was a fas­cist and said days before the 2024 elec­tion that this was “a 911 call to the American people.”

It was a call that went unheed­ed by most voters. 

It may have hurt Harris and oth­er Democrats to use the word cre­at­ed for Benito Mussolini’s Italian move­ment that exalt­ed the nation and its gov­ern­ment above indi­vid­ual rights, con­cen­trat­ed author­i­ty in an auto­crat­ic leader, reg­i­ment­ed eco­nom­ics and cul­ture and forcibly sup­pressed all oppo­si­tion. It has since been used to define right­ist regimes in 1930s Spain, a few Latin American coun­tries in the 1970s and 21^st cen­tu­ry Russia.

Are President Trump and his team fas­cists? I think it’s prob­a­bly an exag­ger­a­tion to call them that. However, they rep­re­sent a far-right pop­ulist and nativist move­ment, and Trump’s sec­ond term is a text­book exam­ple of author­i­tar­i­an gov­er­nance — even if it may not yet be so extreme as to war­rant the f‑word.

How democracies die

Harvard pro­fes­sors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of the 2018 best­seller How Democracies Die, have stud­ied the break­down of democ­ra­cies in Europe and Latin America and offered com­par­isons to what they’ve seen occur­ring in this country. 

“Democracies do not die the way they used to die,” which was at the hands of men with guns, Levitsky said in a recent vir­tu­al event. It hap­pens more sub­tly. He sug­gest­ed there are three stages.

“First an ‘an elect­ed auto­crat’ will start ‘cap­tur­ing the ref­er­ees,’ that is, chang­ing per­son­nel in law enforce­ment, courts, intel­li­gence agen­cies, tax agen­cies and more. Then, with loy­al­ists wield­ing gov­ern­ment pow­ers, auto­crats side­line oppo­si­tion fig­ures. Finally, auto­crats ‘change the play­ing field’ of elec­toral pol­i­tics, through new rules about ger­ry­man­der­ing, cam­paign finance, and media access, among oth­er things,” he said.

Two months into his sec­ond term, it’s clear that President Trump has fol­lowed this play­book. He is purg­ing the civ­il ser­vice and replac­ing career pub­lic employ­ees with par­ti­san loy­al­ists; direct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions against his rivals, includ­ing pros­e­cu­tors who tried to hold him account­able; intim­i­dat­ing the media by bar­ring the Associated Press from news con­fer­ences, threat­en­ing to shut down CBS News’s 60 Minutes, and choos­ing his own press pool; and try­ing to wrest con­trol of the purse from Congress by refus­ing to spend mon­ey already allocated.

Unlike past pres­i­dents who used exec­u­tive orders to imple­ment con­gres­sion­al acts or to respond to crises, Trump has gov­erned like a monarch, issu­ing roy­al decrees, includ­ing some that vio­late statu­to­ry and con­sti­tu­tion­al law. 

He has, for exam­ple, tried to end birthright cit­i­zen­ship, which is guar­an­teed by the Constitution; near­ly destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development, which pro­vid­ed most of our over­seas human­i­tar­i­an aid; and fired inspec­tors gen­er­al, the inde­pen­dent watch­dogs over gov­ern­ment, with­out the required con­gres­sion­al notice.

Judges have issued orders halt­ing some of the president’s reck­less actions, and for now, he has said he will com­ply. But he has also threat­ened to “look at” these judges for pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion. And his vice pres­i­dent, J.D. Vance, has said the courts can’t impede the “legit­i­mate” author­i­ty of the president.

Paraphrasing the first mod­ern dic­ta­tor, Napoleon Bonaparte, Trump said on social media: “He who saves his Country does not vio­late the Law.”

Without judi­cial review, estab­lished by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison in 1803, American democ­ra­cy as we have known it for more than 200 years won’t exist.

Federal courts can issue fines and even jail offi­cials (except the pres­i­dent) for con­tempt, but the only way they can enforce their orders is to use U.S. mar­shals, and the pres­i­dent can order the Department of Justice to call them off.

Cabinet of cranks

In an inter­view in the January-February issue of The New Republic, Levitsky said that one thing to watch for in an author­i­tar­i­an leader is his attempt to remove guardrails on his actions by appoint­ing as heads of agen­cies syco­phants who have no “cre­den­tials or inde­pen­dent author­i­ty” and are “gross­ly unfit for their jobs.” That, he said, is “a clear tell that Trump seeks loy­al­ists who will weaponize these agencies.”

We’ve seen it already.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now head of Health and Human Services, is a lawyer with no med­ical back­ground who is best known as a vac­cine skep­tic and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist. Kennedy has said the gov­ern­ment should focus on chron­ic con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty and dia­betes and for­get about pan­demics for a while.

“We’re going to give infec­tious dis­eases a break for about eight years,” he said before being named sec­re­tary of HHS.

He has been strange­ly silent about the bird flu cri­sis and said a big measles out­break that start­ed among unvac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren in Texas was not unusual.

Pete Hegseth, the new sec­re­tary of defense, was a Fox News com­men­ta­tor and a major in the Army National Guard. Prior to Trump’s talks with Russia’s pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin on end­ing the war against Ukraine, Hegseth com­mit­ted what Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R‑Miss., called a “rook­ie mis­take” by telling NATO it was unre­al­is­tic to think Ukraine could return to its 2014 bound­aries before Russia annexed Crimea.

Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelensky, wasn’t includ­ed in the ini­tial talks. 

Last month, the Senate approved as FBI direc­tor Kash Patel, who has said he will fol­low the law, but who also has pub­lished an ene­mies list of for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials and warned that he’s “com­ing after” the media.

Patel has giv­en every indi­ca­tion that he will do what he said in con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings he wouldn’t: weaponize the agency against the president’s enemies.

His deputy direc­tor, Dan Bongino, has called the FBI “irre­deemably cor­rupt” and want­ed to fire FBI agents in the Trump clas­si­fied doc­u­ments case.

Old world order

The new pres­i­dent is sig­nal­ing an end to America’s role as leader of the free world.

For three years, the United States has sup­port­ed Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but now the new admin­is­tra­tion is nego­ti­at­ing with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war on terms favor­able to the U.S. Trump wants half of Ukraine’s rare earth min­er­als as pay­ment for past sup­port, and he may insist that Ukraine give up occu­pied territory.

Last month, Trump called Zelensky a dic­ta­tor and accused Ukraine of start­ing the war. The U.S. even vot­ed with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Russia for its aggres­sion against its neighbor.

Then on Feb. 28, in a tele­vised meet­ing in the Oval Office, Trump delib­er­ate­ly humil­i­at­ed Zelensky and expelled him from the White House because the Ukrainian pres­i­dent pushed back on Trump’s pro­posed cease fire.

Let’s be clear; it is Putin who is a bru­tal dic­ta­tor and Russia’s unpro­voked inva­sion of Ukraine that caused the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

If Ukraine falls, Russia will turn its atten­tion to reclaim­ing oth­er nations that were once part of the for­mer USSR or under its dom­i­na­tion, begin­ning with the Baltic republics that are now part of NATO. But Trump has sig­naled that the U.S. will no longer defend NATO coun­tries if they don’t increase their defense fund­ing, although they have been.

For eighty years, the U.S. has been able to lim­it the pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons by pro­vid­ing Europe pro­tec­tion from Russia with its own nuclear arse­nal. But if NATO can’t count on us, then Poland, Germany and oth­er European nations will have to devel­op their own nukes, mak­ing the world a far more dan­ger­ous place.

It seems Trump no longer con­sid­ers Russia a pari­ah nation. He and key mem­bers of his team also have expressed sup­port for polit­i­cal par­ties in Europe that oth­er Western democ­ra­cies con­sid­er extrem­ist, includ­ing Victor Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and Alice Weidel’s Alternative for Germany, a pro-Putin group that has ties to neo-Nazi activists. Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump’s chief deputy, Elon Musk, voiced sup­port for AfD in Germany’s February elec­tions, but the par­ty came in sec­ond behind the cen­ter-right Christian Democrats, which has refused to include them in a gov­ern­ing coalition.

American carnage

In its effort to remove “waste, fraud and abuse” from fed­er­al spend­ing, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t a real cab­i­net-lev­el depart­ment, has tak­en a wreck­ing ball to the fed­er­al bureaucracy.

They have dec­i­mat­ed USAID, which was about 1 per­cent of the fed­er­al bud­get. They have giv­en no exam­ples of fraud, which is a crime, and most of the instances of waste are State Department pro­grams, not USAID.

Meanwhile, emer­gency food sup­plies aren’t get­ting to starv­ing peo­ple in Sudan, and for­mer President George W. Bush’s AIDS relief pro­gram for Africa, which saved 20 mil­lion lives, is in dan­ger of ending.

Without U.S. for­eign aid, China will be able to expand its influ­ence by pro­vid­ing the poor­est nations with assis­tance, but always at a heavy price.

Trump has said he wants to abol­ish the Department of Education, which pro­vides fund­ing for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, finan­cial assis­tance for low-income col­lege stu­dents and oth­er pro­grams that most­ly help dis­ad­van­taged kids.

The admin­is­tra­tion has indis­crim­i­nate­ly fired tens of thou­sands of fed­er­al work­ers, includ­ing some of the most capa­ble career employ­ees. We can expect our nation­al parks, mail deliv­ery, income tax returns, health and safe­ty pro­tec­tion, pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness, air traf­fic con­trol, and oth­er ser­vices to be less effi­cient as a result.

Trump has made it clear that he wants to purge the civ­il ser­vice of inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­als and replace them with peo­ple who are per­son­al­ly loy­al to him. This would amount to a return to the spoils sys­tem, which the non­par­ti­san mod­ern bureau­cra­cy was meant to reform.

The president’s insis­tence on loy­al­ty even extends to the mil­i­tary. He recent­ly removed the chair­man of the joint chiefs of staff and oth­er top lead­ers. That’s worrisome.

We can’t expect the mil­i­tary to save us. 

A failed coup d’etat

Save us from what?

The unthink­able.

The same day he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, Trump par­doned 1,500 riot­ers who, on Jan. 6, 2021, invad­ed and van­dal­ized the U.S. Capitol, and assault­ed 140 police offi­cers to try to stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Joe Biden’s elec­tion as the 46^th president.

Among those excused for their role in the dead­ly insur­rec­tion were mem­bers of anti-gov­ern­ment para­mil­i­tary gangs that refer to them­selves as “mili­tias.”

Members tes­ti­fied in court and con­gres­sion­al hear­ings that they had come to Washington at the urg­ing of the pres­i­dent, who promised on social media that it would “be wild!”

For months, Trump and his min­ions accused Democrats of elec­tion fraud, although 60 courts, the attor­ney gen­er­al and oth­ers who had inves­ti­gat­ed the claim said there was no evi­dence of it. 

Then, on Jan. 6, Trump ral­lied his sup­port­ers, telling them to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” When he was warned that some in the audi­ence were armed, he said that was all right; they weren’t there to hurt him.

While thugs broke win­dows and cracked skulls, hunt­ed down flee­ing law­mak­ers, erect­ed a gal­lows and chant­ed “Hang Mike Pence” (because the vice pres­i­dent had ful­filled his con­sti­tu­tion­al duty to allow the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) Trump did noth­ing for hours but watch the car­nage on tele­vi­sion. When he final­ly urged the riot­ers to go home, he said he loved them.

During the 2024 cam­paign, Trump called Jan. 6, 2021 a “day of love” and referred to the domes­tic ter­ror­ists as the “J6 Hostages.” 

The president’s actions sug­gest that he will con­done polit­i­cal vio­lence on his behalf and pro­tect the per­pe­tra­tors. In fact, two of the freed para­mil­i­tary lead­ers, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, were embold­ened to make threats against those who had put them in prison.

The admin­is­tra­tion has since asked for the iden­ti­ties of the FBI agents who inves­ti­gat­ed the attack on the Capitol. 

The militia threat

Could these gangs, like the Minute Men in Lewis’s nov­el, com­prise a pri­vate army of Trump sup­port­ers in the event of some future conflict? 

Consider that it has hap­pened before.

In the 2020 pres­i­den­tial debate between Trump and Biden, mod­er­a­tor Chris Wallace of Fox News asked the pres­i­dent if he would tell the Proud Boys to “stand down.”

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said.

And that’s what they did. They wait­ed for the right time and for his orders.

After Biden’s inau­gu­ra­tion on Jan. 20, 2021, the House impeached Trump for his role in the mêlée and for try­ing to steal the elec­tion, but the Republican-led Senate refused to convict.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky exco­ri­at­ed Trump, say­ing every bit of what hap­pened on Jan. 6 was the president’s fault. But, he said, it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to impeach a pres­i­dent after he had left office because the only penal­ty Congress can impose is removal, and the vot­ers had already removed him.

Constitutional schol­ars dis­agreed. And if Trump’s impeach­ment had suc­ceed­ed, it would have made him inel­i­gi­ble to be pres­i­dent again.

McConnell sug­gest­ed the fed­er­al courts were the prop­er place to hold Trump account­able. But the Jan. 6 case and the pur­loined doc­u­ments case were delayed by end­less legal chal­lenges until the 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion, so pros­e­cu­tors had no choice but to drop the charges and resign.

America’s dark age

Now Trump is back. 

This time, he won the elec­tion deci­sive­ly — the first time a Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has done so in 36 years.

I would like to think that most who vot­ed for him last year did so because of frus­tra­tion with post-pan­dem­ic infla­tion, or race-and-gen­der iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics excess­es, or “woke” ideas about defund­ing the police and oth­er exag­ger­a­tions — not because they’re tired of democracy.

Early indi­ca­tions are that his destruc­tive actions, like plun­der­ing pro­grams for the poor; plan­ning to increase the nation­al debt by $4.5 tril­lion to give tax cuts, most­ly to the afflu­ent; aban­don­ing our allies to the pre­da­tions of Russia and China; and bul­ly­ing Canada and Mexico aren’t popular.

It may be that the courts will rein him in, since the Republican Congress has shown no incli­na­tion to do so, and this time there are no Mark Milleys or John Kellys in his cab­i­net or staff to check his worst impulses.

But maybe Trump will suc­ceed in cap­tur­ing the ref­er­ees, sidelin­ing his oppo­nents, ignor­ing the rules, and chang­ing the play­ing field so that American democ­ra­cy will nev­er be the same.

I knew Trump’s sec­ond term would be worse than his first, but I nev­er imag­ined this.

Like Doremus Jessup, who blamed him­self for allow­ing it to hap­pen, I rea­soned that America’s insti­tu­tion­al guardrails would hold and that peo­ple would turn against the dem­a­gogue once they opened their eyes.

“The hys­te­ria can’t last; be patient, and wait and see, he con­ced­ed to his read­ers,” Lewis wrote. “It was not that he was afraid of the author­i­ties. He sim­ply did not believe that this com­ic tyran­ny could endure. It can’t hap­pen here, said Doremus — even now.”

I believe it can hap­pen. But I’m encour­aged by some­thing I read by Maria J. Stephan, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who worked for the U.S. Department of State and NATO and is an expert on author­i­tar­i­an­ism and non­vi­o­lent civ­il resis­tance: “Autocrats are always weak­er than they appear, and we are often stronger than we might think.”

If we are to save our coun­try, we must resist.