Victor Davis Hanson
Leftists now daily claim we are under a Trump “dictatorship” run by “fascists” and “Nazis”—and then when asked to give specific examples of Trump’s “fascism,” they grow mute.
So how do you calibrate the slide from democracy guided by constitutional republican principles into autocracy?
Note first that the first American dictator will likely not be a loud conservative hated by the media and all the institutional powers of the U.S.—including the administrative state, higher education, the corporate boardroom, the media, popular culture and entertainment, and the foundations.
Yes, our first strongman will not club America into “fascism.” Instead, we will go willingly without resistance, like happy Lotus-Eaters.
Mr. Big will not be loud and off-putting; and he will not be despised by the elite. The new suave autocrat will be beloved by Europeans, the Chinese, minorities, the poor, and the billionaire class—but mostly by bicoastal wealthy white elites. He will promise perpetual peace, “equity and diversity and inclusion,” and warn against ‘hate speech” “misinformation” and “disinformation” à la Orwell’s characters.
He will be youngish and suave—Macron or Trudeau style. And the Left shall swoon over his charisma. His clothes will be cool, modestly dressed down, but pricey. He will not look orange with a thinning combover and a loud red tie with a blue suit. He will modulate his chameleon patois to fit the particular audiences he seduces; he most definitely will not speak all the time with a grating Queens accent. He will not say “bigly” or “tremendous.”
In other words, he will romance, win over, or mesmerize the powers that be and regrettably confess that “they” all must take certain steps, regrettably so, to “save democracy” and prevent it from “dying in darkness”—by doing things never seen in the United States before.
You see, he alone needs far more power to stop the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, the transphobes, the nativists, the xenophobes, the clingers, the irredeemables, the deplorables, the chumps, the dregs, and the garbage‚ “to save democracy” from all the clueless yokels who dare to believe that their uninformed, racist, neanderthal, and uncouth voices should be heard.
His FBI director will not look or sound like Kash Patel, the easy target of the sophisticated coastal grandees. No, he will be another philosopher like the smarmy, unctuous, and oleaginous James Comey, who sends neat death threats with seashells on the beach, quotes Kierkegaard, and talks nonstop about “duty,” “honesty,” and “transparency.”
So again, the authoritarian will not mimic the hated Donald Trump. He instead will resemble more a Barack Obama who was beloved even as he bombed Libya for seven months without congressional authorization and left it a wreck, or even as he dispatched 500 Predator drone assassination flights (including targeting U.S. citizens abroad) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and even as he and his associates from the shadows ran the country for four years beneath the waxen Joe Biden veneer.
He will joke about his Predator killings as if they were bad boyfriends coming too close to his teenage daughters (“Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.”).
The new authoritarians will select and deselect presidential candidates without a vote of the people.
January 6 was a boisterous, buffoonish demonstration gone haywire not an “insurrection.”
A real coup? The 2020 orchestrated exit of all the Democrat leftist presidential candidates (who were all doomed to lose)except “good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton” who would serve as the surrogate for a cabal of Obama retreads in the shadows. And when he could no longer perform that role, Biden was 86ed and stripped of his de facto renomination. He was replaced without a vote by Kamala Harris who had never in her life won a single delegate and whose 2020 candidacy was a complete disaster.
Remember, when the Associated Press reporters were told that Obama was spying on them, they felt a bit uneasy, but more or less saluted as if the deity must have had good cause to break the law.
And we shall know the Robespierre dictator by his work. So, what follows are some common milestones on democracy’s path to dictatorship.
Discussion (5)
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Sounds like descriptions of the Anti-Christ, too, doesn't he?
It is precisely the cognitive dissonance that will characterize autocracy. The ‘no kings’ crowd are completely blind to the vax mandate they championed and even harassed their fellow citizens into compliance. Even when the facts emerged about the failed ‘vaccine’’, the continued lies about breakout cases, and the effectiveness of masking, they are immune to any form of repentance.
“And we shall know the Robespierre dictator by his work. So, what follows are some common milestones on democracy’s path to dictatorship.“ Looks like it’s all downhill from here!
Suave, debonair, well-groomed... that cancels out Katie Porter, thank goodness.
Brilliant VDH! I'm a boomer born in 1960. My parents were born in early 1930's Nazi Germany and they shared many stories of what it was like in those days. I'm always amazed how a 40–50-year-old liberal, progressive, leftist knows and compares DJT and his administration to Nazis. It's as if I explained to people what it was like at the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp.