Working Towards the Autocrat
November 6, 2024 Donald Trump Adolf Hitler Ian Kershaw Power
Actually, Trump won’t have to do a whole lot himself.
View from Hitler’s residence in the alps.
In his eponymous biography of Hitler, British historian Ian Kershaw traces not just how the German dictator came to power—but also how Hitler turned his deeply hateful vision into policy without doing much himself.
Kershaw paints a picture of Hitler as hermit choleric who spends most of his days sleeping in, lecturing his staff, and watching movies at his Berghof residence. How did his regime instigate the Holocaust and conquer half of Europe? The author argues the key to understanding Hitler’s power lies in his subordinates’ eagerness to work towards the Führer, e.g. to enact policies and make rules in the spirit of what Hitler had emphasized in his speeches, pamphlets, and in Mein Kampf.
Crucially, Kershaw never absolves Hitler of responsibility for his regime’s countless crimes. But he stresses that the Nazi leader didn’t have to do much at all—because he had surrounded himself with plenty of people all too willing to act in his interest.
I was thinking about all this in the morning as I woke up to to news that Donald Trump was poised to win the U.S. presidency for a second term. Trump is no Hitler (although his own vice president previously made that comparison)1 but I was struck by the parallel that voters (re)elected him even though he had spelled out, in very clear terms what his platform amounted to: Autocracy, racism, revisionism, and retribution.
Interpreting Trump is possibly the most dangerous
Trump talked about being a dictator “on day one”, stereotyped all immigrants as criminals and rapists, refused to accept his election loss, threatened “a bloodbath”. He promised the largest deportation drive in history, courted dictators, encouraged Russia to “do whatever the hell they want”. Trump is a convicted sexual predator who had joked about groping women, who incited a riot in the U.S. Capitol , who said all sorts of vile, racist stuff that should have made him unelectable. And yet: Voters were either enamored with what he said or willing to overlook it, chalking the rhetoric up to exaggerations and insisting that Trump wouldn’t actually do what he said.
The problem, of course, is that Trump doesn’t need to do anything himself anymore. I think he’s right when he calls his ascent the product of a “a movement like nobody’s ever seen before”. His rise, fall, and comeback are truly unprecedented. And that will motivate people to try and act in his interest (or in his spirit!), possibly for decades to come.
Nobody can run a government entirely by themselves, especially not at 78 years old. What I think we’ll see instead is that people will start working towards him, that his administration and the people in his wider circle will push for laws and regulations they think will befit the often rambling, hateful vitriol we’ve been hearing for the past eight years. And I think any attempts to interpret Trump are possibly even more dangerous than what he’ll do by himself.
Trump has many Hitler-esque attributes, but it would be reductive to consider him only on somebody else’s terms. Trump is his very own beast.↩︎