We are witnessing the death of American democracy

Telegraph

19-06-2025

Contrary to general belief, Weimar democracy did not die when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
It died the year before under Franz von Papen, a national conservative with social-Darwinist views and a visceral hatred of liberal modernist 'filth' in all its forms.
One of his first actions was to end execution by the guillotine – deemed too Jacobin – and return to the ancient Prussian practice of death by the axe.
Von Papen exploited a street clash between Communist Red Front dockers and Nazi Brownshirts on Prussian territory to carry out a constitutional coup against the elected Social Democrat government of Prussia, by far the biggest and most important of Germany's self-governing states. He seized control of policing and state security on the pretext that the Social Democrats were failing to uphold law and order.
Historian Sir Richard Evans says this Preußenschlag (Prussian coup) of July 1932 was the critical moment in inter-war Germany, opening the door for much that followed.
What Donald Trump has done by activating the California National Guard against the protest of the governor, and then bringing in US Marines – both of which his critics argue are unconstitutional – is a very light version of Preußenschlag, but in some ways it is worse. The street protests in Los Angeles were the result of his own theatrical stunt. You could be forgiven for thinking he deliberately provoked the alleged 'rebellion' in order to set this precedent.
One can see now why Trump moved so fast to purge the top echelons of the US defence department, including the three judge advocates general. These officials rule on whether military orders are legal, and when they should be disobeyed. They are legally independent by Congressional statute.
Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, told us why they had been sacked: it was to stop them posing any 'roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief'.
Did Trump mean it when he told his generals to 'just shoot' American protesters during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020? We may find out.
He also fired the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and others deemed symbols of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion', although one might suspect another motive.
An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify the Putsch of Jan 6 2021, and therefore stopped it stone dead. 'We don't take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution,' he said.
Trump is attacking California on several fronts at once, shrewdly judging that Governor Gavin Newsom is the perfect foil. He is stripping the state of its powers under the Clean Power Act to impose tougher pollution rules than federal levels. He has signed an order blocking California's plan to phase out petrol cars by 2035, and another stopping it capping nitrogen oxide emissions. He now is threatening to withhold federal disaster aid for wildfires.
Trump called him 'Governor Newscum' and added in his inimitable style: 'You know, hatred is never a good thing in politics. When you don't like somebody, you don't respect somebody, it's harder for that person to get money if you're on top.'
Forgive me for sounding jaundiced, but decades ago I covered the Republican crusade under Speaker Newt Gingrich to restore states rights and check the usurpations of federal power. Gingrich and his party are now egging on the federal military occupation of states that stand in Trump's way.
James Carville, veteran Democratic strategist and Clinton-fixer, says the Democrats should bide their time and 'play possum', betting that Trump will self-destruct under the contradictions of his own policies. The bond markets will do the job for them. Congress will drop back into Democrat hands like a ripe fruit in the 2026 mid-terms.
I never expected to find myself impugning the ruthless Mr Carville for credulous naivety. Declaration of interest: he once carried out a black ops campaign against me personally from an office in the White House, which I no doubt deserved, all is forgiven anyway.
Playing possum is what the German Social Democrats did in the early 1930s. Reading the first two volumes of Sir Richard Evans's magisterial trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power, I am struck again and again by the refusal of the moderate middle to face up to what was happening. They had a touching faith that the courts would save them.
But the judges were ideologically captured, or frightened, or did what most human beings do in turbulent times: they pre-emptively adapted to keep their families out of trouble.
The Social Democrats made another fatal error. They assumed that Hitler's eccentric mish-mash of economic policies would lead quickly to a crisis, greatly underestimating the lift from neo-Keynesian rearmament, so like Trump's gargantuan deficits.
American democracy has much deeper roots but the imminent bombing of Iran by the US air force gives pause for thought. There may be excellent reasons to knock out Iran's nuclear capability, though doing in this way, flippantly, like a power-drunk despot, conflating non-proliferation with regime change, drives the final nail in the coffin of Western moral credibility.
That said, polls suggest that almost 80pc of Americans would applaud the destruction of the Fordow nuclear site, and most would support cutting off the head of the serpent in Tehran. Trump might face a Maga revolt on the edges but the larger bounce in popularity would let him steam roll opposition to his tariff war, his climate war, and his 'beautiful big bill' – a giant transfer of income from poor to rich. I don't believe Steven Bannon's warning that intervention will 'tear the country apart', unless the bombing mission goes awry.
The strongman glow will open the window further for Trump's takeover of the deep state. He has already fired the heads of the FBI's intelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices. He has purged the justice department, now run by a Lord High Executioner from The Mikado, openly touting an enemies list of 'conspirators'. He has forced private law firms to bend the knee.
He has put in a loyalist in charge of the CIA, who inconveniently reported in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. But that was then, when Trump stood for America First, and staying out of forever wars was policy. He has fired the head of the eaves-dropping National Security Agency and its top officials. He has purged the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is independent by law, like the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
America in 2025 is obviously not Germany in 1932. The Weimar republic was already a cauldron of political violence. That year was the worst of the Great Depression. The country was seething with rage over the cultivated myths of the 1918 'stab in the back' and the Carthaginian peace of Versailles.
It is even less like Germany in 1933 when the Nazis used their three cabinet seats to take over the Prussian and federal interior ministries. Within five months the Social Democrats leadership was dead, or in Dachau, or in exile. All rival parties were shut down. No independent newspaper survived. Every organisation from the labour unions, to male choirs, sports teams and beekeeper clubs came under Nazi control.
But it is not the same America that was my home for long stretches of the late 20th century. Over the last few days alone: a Democratic US senator was manhandled to the floor, handcuffed and dragged away for asking a question; the Democrat comptroller of New York was seized and handcuffed by masked federal agents after demanding to see a judicial warrant; a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota was murdered with her husband at home, and a state senator was shot and badly wounded, both by an assassin with a hit list of 45 officials.
Judges have so far issued more than 60 rulings that curb or restrain Trump's legal overreach. A shocking number have either been threatened, directly or through their families, or face calls for impeachment.
'Our constitutional system depends on judges who can make decisions free from threats and intimidation,' warned judge Robert Conrad, director of the administrative office of the US courts, in testimony to Congress. To no avail: the House judiciary committee shrugged it off, more or less blaming the victims.
The drift of events was disturbing even before Iran offered Trump a fresh gift from Mars. I fear that many more lines in the sand will be crossed in the heady aftermath of a surgical video war on the Ayatollah, if that is where we are headed.
Play possum if you want. Trump will eat your lunch.