L’État, C’est Moi.
"Authoritarian governance means only one person matters, and the rest of the government is just decoration."
When Rachel Maddow and Ruth Ben-Ghiat talk about authoritarianism and fascism in the United States, we need to listen.
The first season of Maddow’s Ultra podcast focused on an important slice of American history that had been quickly erased from the country’s collective memory. In the early 1940s, in the lead-up to World War II, a Nazi agent infiltrated Congress and colluded with more than 20 sitting members in a plot, financed by Hitler, to overthrow the U.S. government. She expanded on that trial in her most recent book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. In the second season of Ultra, “a bunch of totally crazy shit happens”, Maddow says. The story centers on “an American fascist who ends up becoming a mole inside the war-crimes trials, working for the Nazis” and “becoming essentially the godfather of American Holocaust denial”.
Two nights ago, Maddow explained Trump’s latest actions with respect to his cabinet announcements.
Maddow (bold emphasis mine):
Along with that absurd bluster from Trump [about approving judges], where he is trying to pretend he is already in power, telling Democrats to behave as if Trump is already president and Republicans already control the Senate, which they don’t; aside from that (which is pushing it, big guy), Trump also said one other thing about confirming people for positions in the government. He said he wants the new Senate, once they’re sworn in January, to go into recess. He wants them to recess, to leave town, so that there is no Senate in session to confirm his nominees for the new administration. Now on the surface level, you might think this makes no sense. Republicans are going to control the Senate when they’re back in January. It’s not like Trump-era Republicans are known for their independence and their willingness to buck Trump’s wishes. Whoever Trump wants to appoint to his government, no matter how crazy, the Republicans in the Senate are going to approve everyone he asks for. What do you think, they’re going to be offended? Somebody like Tom Homan, oh, he’s been spending time with the Jews-did-9/11 guy. You think the Republicans in the Senate are going to have a problem with that? Really?
He is going have a Republican-controlled Senate. They will confirm his appointees no matter who they are. So why is Trump now telling the Senate to go into recess, to shut themselves down, so they can’t vote to confirm his appointees? Why is he doing that? He’s doing that so the Senate won’t have to vote to confirm his appointees. If the Senate is in recess, he can make recess appointments. He can just install people in their positions without the Senate ever voting for them — even though the Senate would definitely vote for them if they took a vote. He is telling the United States Senate to shut itself down so he can operate independently, and on his own, even though they don’t have any intention of stopping him. He doesn’t even want to give them a say.
I draw your attention to this because in all the discussion we have had as a country about Trump’s dictator-on-day-one promises, his authoritarian values and promises and threats, one of the things that hasn’t been talked about very much is that we have a three-part system of government. Co-equal branches of government. The judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. We have a three-part system of government. But what’s the first rule of authoritarianism? It’s that there is one guy in charge. It’s that there can be no other source of authority in the government other than the Dear Leader. So if there has to be a Congress, well, it certainly shouldn’t be a Congress with any power. It shouldn’t be a Congress that has any role in governing. And frankly, same thing for the courts, right?
This is something that I’ve been trying to raise flags about in advance. You know, sometimes you can just feel something is getting traction or not getting traction. I can tell this is not getting traction, but I’m just going to keep saying it, because this is what’s coming. We’re already seeing it. Watch for moves early on to consolidate power for him, not just within the executive branch, which they’re obviously doing — this whole thing about firing all the civil servants, firing all the career government employees. What’s that about doing? It’s about consolidating the executive branch so there is no source of authority and no directive force in the executive branch at all other than the president himself. That is about consolidating the power of the executive branch. But also look to him to disempower, to hollow out, to neuter, to sideline, the other two branches of government. The legislature, meaning the Congress and the judiciary. Trump does not fear being constrained by this iteration of Congress, especially if the Republicans take the House as well. Trump doesn’t fear being all that constrained by courts, not with John Roberts as Chief Justice on this Supreme Court. He does not fear being constrained by those parts of our government in anything he wants to do. He’s got them both on choke chains, frankly. But it is important to any would-be authoritarian to not just have the obedience of other portions of the government. He needs to have their subservience, too. It must be that other portions of the government cannot matter. Only he can matter. There can’t be three co-equal branches of government. There can be one man who is the government and everything else is subservient to him.
And on this point, amid everything else we are learning about this transition . . . stick a flag in the fact that he is demanding the U.S. Senate shut itself down for him, even though it’s going to be controlled by Republicans. There is no rational reason why he should not want the United States Senate to confirm his appointees unless he doesn’t want the Senate to have that kind of job. He doesn’t want the Senate or the Congress to have any job, frankly. L’État, c’est moi. The state, that’s me. Authoritarian governance means only one person matters, and the rest of the government is just decoration. We are watching for that from him about the courts. We are already seeing it from him about what he is demanding from the Congress.
Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She writes about fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. She is the author of Strongman: Mussolini to the Present and a frequent guest on cable news. Strongman “examines how illiberal leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century”. She also writes the Lucid substack and was quoted in Tim Dickinson’s “You Can’t Despair. Because That’s What They Want” (Rolling Stone, November 8, 2024):
Experts in authoritarianism insist that Trump’s dictatorial threats need to be taken with gravity because he’s already done “things that autocrats do,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who is an expert in Italian fascism . . .
“He has been able to domesticate a very old, storied party, and truly make it his personal tool,” she tells Rolling Stone. “He instigated a violent coup attempt,” and — instead of “having to go into exile or going to prison, like in Peru” — he “managed to paint it as a positive thing” or to make “a lot of Americans shrug their shoulders at it.” These are “preconditions for autocracy,” she insists.
Trump may have a “highly problematic, decompensating personality,” Ben-Ghiat adds, “but the guy is a master propagandist,” who has used those skills in a campaign against the American system of checks and balances. “He’s taken people step by step . . . for almost a decade now to view democracy as an inferior system — a system of crime and anarchy, weak government . . . and to see versions of authoritarian rule, with him at the head, as preferable.”
Ben-Ghiat warns that Project 2025, the conservative policy and personnel program, is the road map “to finish the job” Trump started in his first term. The intent is to “destroy the governing structures and norms of liberal democracy through mass purges of civil servants who are not loyalists — and create something else. And that something else is autocracy.” . . .
[Jason] Stanley [a Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works] and Ben-Ghiat expect Trump will seek to stay in office for as long as he lives, despite the constitutional prohibition against him serving a third term. “He’ll stay in office till he dies,” Stanley predicts, “whether that’s two years, four years, eight years, 12 years, like any other autocrat.”