I’m a history minded fellow and sometimes I forget that others are not. I tend to study history more than most, but not as much as many others. And there is a sliding scale of interest that ranges across the vast depth of history. Even the most studious have blind spots where our knowledge is weak. Still others have almost no knowledge of a wide swath of our collective history yet are remarkably well informed on a single area that is of interest to them. When I talk about the past and look for lessons to be learned, I am aware that some several or even many are better informed than am I, but still try to write to those who know less.
Today I address authoritarianism. Right now. Right now it is raging around the world. In countries from east to west people are accepting and even warmly embracing authoritarian leaders in ways that trouble those of us who favor democratic rule. I won’t bother to name countries, but strongmen dictators have found themselves in power in countries that had once shunned such concentrated power. And while this isn’t universal, it has grown in the past several years. And even a glance at history through this lens informs us that this recurs in some irregular cycle. I haven’t cracked the books to see just how often this happens, nor to find the papers that explain it in depth, nor do I pretend to know what exactly happens that make a democratic people turn toward dictators. Fear, perhaps, but that is too vague for a real understanding.
But here we are in the most democratic country, the country that invented the modern version of democracy, facing a rabid lust for a dictator by close to half our people. It is frightening. The idea of democracy is to spread power as a check against despotism. Once power concentrates it is damn hard to split it up again.
But we’ve seen this before in America, and perhaps shining a light on this will help those who seek it understand what they are lusting for.
During the 1930s the Great Depression ravaged not only America, but the whole world. People became desperate and often began to doubt the ability of their democratic institutions to address their privations and fears. From country to country they accepted or adopted authoritarian individuals who promised to make things right. There are plenty of history books that will explain each of these cases in depth, and still others to show how doomed the results were in most of those cases. But the string of truth running through all of them was that the individual in question was really seeking power and glory for themselves, as opposed to genuine relief for their constituents. The most famous of these built countries that required war and conquest to survive the changes made. Through the clear glass of history we can see that the people brought death and destruction on themselves in adopting a dictator to lead them.
America was not immune to this. In the thirties it was fascism that we saw grow in Europe. And while it took hold under that name in Spain and Italy, and as National Socialism in Germany, the same fascist desires were growing in Great Britain and the United States as well. There was an organization called the German American Bund. It was a straight up Nazi party in the USA. It boasted 25,000 members and was meant to be sympathetic to the Nazi party in Germany. They even wore similar uniforms and advocated for similar policies.
But this group was limited to German-Americans. But even amongst those who had no ancestry to share with them there was admiration for the dictators of Europe. There were Americans who sympathized with the Nazis before, during, and even after the war. Across the country people of all stripes were turning toward what they perceived as strong, nationalist leaders that made promises of greatness. People were told to blame immigrants and those who looked different. There was always an “other” that was the enemy. Populists gained greater influence. But always it was the power and glory they sought for themselves that drove them. We managed to keep our democratic government structure through all of that, and while people revered President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he resisted the temptation to establish himself as dictator. I say resisted because in the face the crisis at hand, he considered taking powers not afforded by democracy.
But our establishment of democracy in America was a fight against a despot. It was our desire to rule ourselves through collective agreement that prompted us to throw off the yoke of tyranny of a solitary and powerful king. We saw that concentrated power was prone to abuse and corruption. As it was, the people of America, then colonists of Great Britain, had a bad king. But rather than hoping that the next one would be better, or seeking to implant their own, they rebelled and created a country where no one man made the rules.
And we have today organizations lauding those patriots who bore arms and fought to create this nation. We recognize that it wasn’t all of our citizens in agreement to gain independence from the king. No, many of the those in the colonies were loyal subjects of the crown and wished to remain so. We even today have groups that claim (erroneously) that only three-percent of the people fought for the new country. Yet it is true that amongst the population there was a great many who would rather keep the king telling them what to do. Sure, many of these were folks simply preferring the status quo to the struggles of rebellion, but many remained loyal to the crown even after independence was achieved. People went to Canada or back to England.
It is ironic that today many of those who ardently support the authoritarianism that Donald Trump espouses, claim allegiance to the patriotism of the founding armies. They are crying for freedom while supporting the opposite. They are indulging their fantasies of kinship to those who threw off the yoke of regency and tyranny, while proclaiming fidelity to a man trying to subvert the democratic process to retain power. They call on the ghosts of the founding fathers who began a government of the people, while they endorse an authoritarian would-be dictator.
Make no mistake, authoritarianism, by whatever name we call it, has risen its ugly head around the world again. It was the fascists and the nazis then and by other names today, but it seeks to take back what it lost when this country was founded.
The words of President Lincoln ring in my head today. … that government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the earth.