How US democracy will fall, if Trump is re-elected..
Published 9/9/2024, Lara Keller.
Updated 14/9/2024, [T-51?]
This article attempts to summarize the numerous threats Trump presents to US democracy. Much of the journalism about this focuses on liberals’ perceptions of the threats he poses to specific areas of interest, as opposed to examining the full range of changes Trump wants and if he has the resources to achieve them.
1. Trump is part of a global trend. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are offering to cure the problems of American Democracy by creating a far-right ethno-nationalist state. This has happened in Russia, China and India. Europe is seeing the ethno-nationalist far-right gaining ground in the leading EU countries of France and Germany. In Italy they are the major part of the ruling coalition.
This global trend is driven by a globalized economic machine that has shifted national politics from equality to exclusion, with vulnerable citizens seeing the future as belonging to included “real citizens” at the expense of the excluded.
2. Trump is a fascist. Robert Reich has enumerated how Trump’s plans for a second presidency are fascist as opposed to authoritarian, by comparing the motives of fascism compared to the more modest priorities of authoritarians ( https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-five-elements-of-fascism ).
Trump is fascist because:
- He pretends to represent the will of “real Americans”.
- He stirs violent anger against “establishment elites”.
- He restricts the idea of “Real Americans” to those who embrace historically dominant cultural and religious values.
- He promotes a radical code of ethics where aggression is strength, and strength is virtue – a path perfectly fitted to the movement he has created from the insecure and cynical.
- He eulogizes hetrosexuality, traditional gender roles and gender identity fixed at birth.
Authoritarians are much less radical, they dispassionately focus on the practicalities of gaining and maintaining power over the established system, and enhancing the power of the nation. Trump intends to permanently dismember the soul of America.
Fascists are more than authoritarian, they are ideologues who misuse any power they can access to spin out dream worlds, which become enveloping nightmares. All justified paradoxically as paths to justice, peace and freedom.
3. The crisis that enables Trump is amongst the rich. There is no economic crisis on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, although there are record levels of inequality. The deep crisis is in the economic elites who have gained tremendous wealth from globalization and neoliberal economics, who now feel threatened by the democratic power of ordinary citizens to vote for a fair share.
A prime example is China, where Western observers were surprised by the authoritarian effectively far-right turn of the regime twenty years ago. Global economic integration brought tremendous wealth for party elites, who needed to protect it from the democratic aspirations of the Chinese people. Democratic reforms were crushed, and a paradoxical far-right ethno-nationalism with a Communist fascade put in its place.
4. Trump is misleading the vulnerable. Trump has been successful in selling the idea, to a vulnerable section of the American people, that they are the “Real Americans” who are having their rightful position stolen from them by immigrants and liberals. These people have lost faith in the idea of a civilized democratic America that can share wealth, be reasonable and still be successful. The American right have put huge sums into propaganda that this is not possible. The American left have emphasized identity equality over economics which had created hidden alienation amongst traditional Americans. Trump is offering a different and uglier form of far-right identity politics.
5. Trump is very dangerous. It is difficult to read the numerous editorials in the US media, that the threat of Trump is overblown. Trump has a strong unprecedented power base to lead his assault on American democracy. The Democrats have deep problems to overcome, despite the charisma of Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz. Trump has the political resources to set US democracy ablaze. All democracies would be threatened by the collapse of the leading global democracy.
An American dictator would have the power of the state driven by the economy to escalate ideology on an ever increasing spiral. It is dictators in small states which are dependent on other countries in their regions who must be pragmatic. The very power of America is the reason its democracy should be closely guarded.
6. US checks and balances are vulnerable. The US system of checks and balances was set up in 1787 to prevent a president from using the power of the US state to turn this new nation into a European style monarchy. Since then the power of the executive branch has grown steadily to cope with the demands of a modern superpower. While public faith in the legislative and judicial branches has declined, as special interests slow the system to a crawl. This system of checks and balances depends on respect for the rules, which have been declining for decades. Trump shows absolutely no respect for the rules.
7. Trump has the resources to set US democracy ablaze.
7.1 Project 2025 and misuse of executive orders. If elected Trump will as per “Project 2025” impose ten of thousands of his loyalists to control key sections of the executive branch and its many agencies. This includes Homeland Security, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and so on. As president he can even fire the generals, and so his power extends to the Armed Forces. There is a lot of leeway for a president to interpret the statutes that codify past legislation. Even if his administration’s interpretations are absurd there is still the problem of annulling them, by enforcing rulings and ultimately gaining the two thirds majority for impeachment by Congress.
7.2 Republican Party. Trump through intimidation has eliminated all substantial resistance within the Republican Party.
7.3 Corporations and billionaires. Trump – despite his far right radicalism – still has the support of most of US corporate America, and many billionaires.
7.4 Intimidation of Congress. In the legislative branch, republicans have narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which is likely to continue. Ultimately president’s only have to secure majorities to get new legislation through Congress. Trump would use the enormous power now under his control to intimidate Republican politicians to stay in line, and find Democrat politicians with controllable weaknesses to force them to abstain.
7.5 Conservative Judges and SCOTUS. Trump in his first term was more successful in getting his federal judge appointments through than Biden has been. The judicial branch is now biased towards conservative judges, especially the Supreme Court (SCOTUS). In July 2024 (SCOTUS .v. US) they made a judgment that a President cannot be prosecuted for anything that can be argued is “official”. As one dissenting judge said, even ordering troops to assassinate rivals. Ultimately even a judicial branch that ceases to be compliant depends on the other branches to enforce its decisions.
7.6 MAGA movement. Trump heads a hard right cult like MAGA political movement, of around 15% of the US population. Many are gun owners. He has a potential militia of tens of millions to deputize to put down any resistance portrayed as “armed insurrection”.
7.7 Republican State Governments. Republicans control roughly 60% of American state governments. Republican governors can lend their National Guards to the federal government to be deployed anywhere the President claims that there is insurrectioon.
7.8 Experienced close advisors. Trump now has a team of close advisors totally in tune with his political aims. Trump and his closest allies also have four years of experience from his first presidency on how the US system can be dismembered from the inside.
7.9 Tested the system in 2021 and found it weak. Trump has tested the reaction of the US governmental system to despotism and found it weak. At the end of his first presidency Trump attempted to interfere with election results and effectively incited the storming of the Capitol (meeting place of the US Congress) on the 6th January 2021. Court cases for this and other crimes have been allowed to drag on, and have not stopped him being a credible presidential candidate in the 2024 election.
7.10 Combining legal and criminal methods. Trump’s administration will use a combination of unofficial and official power. Including protecting those who have committed criminal actions to support his administration’s coup.
8. A second Trump administration will be a rapid decline into dictatorship.
It is difficult to predict exactly how the incidenary powers Trump has accumulated for his second term will flow out from the executive branch, he intends to massively corrupt, to the agencies of the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch and the governments of the component states.
8.1 Executive orders and national emergency. Trump can rule by using executive orders, whose scope is governed by the accumulation of legislation codified in the statutes. The deliberate misinterpretation of statutes gives him further scope. The president cannot spend money without Congress approval, unless he declares a national emergency. By ignoring convention and with full control of the executive branch Trump would be able to ignore when necessary both Congress and the Courts.
8.2 Tilting the swing states and corrupting elections. Trump needs to rapidly tilt the political landscape in favor of the next MAGA Republican administration. This means focusing the power at his disposal to tilt elections in the half a dozen swing states where margins are within 3 points. By positive action such as starting or modifiying federal programs that specifically favor these states. By negative action such as prosecuting democratic politicians from these states for alleged corruption.
The American Civil Liberties Union have enumerated the tactics Trump will use to attack voting rights in any second term (https://www.aclu.org/publications/trump-on-voting-rights) .
1. Embolden and enable political allies at state level, to corrupt the election process.
2. Create sham commissions to investigate non-existent voting problems, thus legitimizing election interference.
3. Use unreliable data and procedures to aggressively purge voter rolls, using allied state officials or the Department of Justice under Trump’s direct political control.
4. Bad faith criminal investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice or allied state officials, to go after election officials or voters themselves, thus criminalizing the ballot box.
5. Send federal and allied state police officers and national guard to intimidate voters at poll stations.
6. Reversing programs to expand voting, by education, making registration easier, making poll stations more accessible etc.
7. Adding a citizen question to the census to exclude immigrants, thus reducing the resources and representation given to certain electoral districts..
The ACLU proposes to resist these tactics at the federal and state level through the courts and elected representatives. How effective these will be in 2028 after four years of a far-right Trump administration is doubtful.
8.3 Ending seperation of powers by fighting alleged corruption. Much of Trump’s rhetoric has been about the corruption of the “deep state”. It follows that he will attempt to create bodies to punish alleged corruption which are not controlled by the organizations they attempt to control, as is currently the case. These bodies would be run by the executive branch, so in principle breaking the separation of powers that are implied but not explicit in the constitution.The constitution has unwieldy powers to expel offenders by two thirds majorities, but these are seldom used.
These anti-corruption bodies would inflict temporary punishments to stop those found guilty from voting on certain issues, or taking certain cases. The quality of evidence to support allegations and the decision making process could be low. Sufficient allegations could tilt the making and enforcement of legislation in the favor of any MAGA Republican administration, who over time could ensure a permanent pro MAGA bias in these offending branches of government.
Xi Jinping has cynically applied anti-corruption as a mechanism to take absolute control of the Chinese governmental system, without needing the brutal tactics of the Mao era.
8.4 Mass anti immigrant brutality. A project of large-scale persecution of migrants will be needed to strengthen support for Trump’s ethno-nationalist coup and legitimize the creation of an official security force under his command. Trump intends to deport 11 million unauthorized migrants if elected. He claims there are twice this number of unauthorized migrants. He also wants to go after authorized immigrants who have been naturalized, by looking for fraud in their applications. He wants to end “birthright” citizenship given to children of unauthorized migrants born in the USA.
It is likely that putting these two intentions together, Trump may attempt to remove citizenship from the children of migrants accused of fraudulent naturalization applications. There would be no effective legal protections if he succeeds in political control of the judiciary. So making many millions of migrants potentially subject to deportation, or at the least the removal of their full citizenship rights. This project of persecution against migrants, will need a large brutal security force under Trump’s command and large scale detention camps. Wholesale state brutality inside America will then have become normalized.
8.5 Gagging the mainstream and flooding online media. Trump will attack the mainstream media that is hostile to him. He has already threatened to change the libel laws, cancel broadcasting licenses and intimidate hostile reporters and editors. He has already created an alternative online social media company to spread his far right ideology. Under Trump the mainstream media will be intimidated into silence, and online social media flooded with Trump propaganda.
9.0 US Democracy Is Flammable. Trump, if given a second presidential term, will set American Democracy ablaze. In any country there are legions of people who will side with the merging autocratic regime to secure a position in the new regime.
Further Reading:
Trump Dictatorship?
“America’s gathering storm: The consequences of a Trump dictatorship.” George Grundy, Aug 2024. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/americas-gathering-storm-the-consequences-of-a-trump-dictatorship,18856
“Are We Sleepwalking Into Dictatorship?” David Remnick, Dec 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20240102183714/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/18/are-we-sleepwalking-into-dictatorship
“A Warning.” Jeffery Goldberg, Dec 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/warning-second-trump-term/676117/
“Can the Constitution Survive Trump?” Editors Democracy Journal, Autumn 2019. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/54/can-the-constitution-survive-trump/
“How Democracy Could Die in 2024, and How to Save It.” Steven Levitsky, Jul 2021. https://protectdemocracy.org/work/how-democracy-could-die-in-2024-and-how-to-save-it/
“How To Build An Autocracy.” David Frum, Mar 2017. https://www.csun.edu/~hfmgt001/How%20to%20Build%20an%20Autocracy-Mar17.pdf
“Is America dictator-proof?” Leader from The Economist, May 2024. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/05/16/is-america-dictator-proof
“Is Fascism Coming to America?” William Cooper, Jul 2024. https://www.newsweek.com/fascism-coming-america-opinion-1922417
“The Danger Ahead.” David Frum, Dec 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20240729145604/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-reelection-second-term-agenda/676119/
“The Last Time Democracy Almost Died.” Jill Lepore, Jan 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20240215202254/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-last-time-democracy-almost-died
“How Trump is Following Hitler’s Playbook.” YouTube, Robert Reich, Mar 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxJRIiCNs8
“How Trump’s Proposed Radical Expansion of Executive Power Will Impact Our Freedoms.” ACLU, Jul 2024.
https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/how-trumps-proposed-radical-expansion-of-executive-power-will-impact-our-freedoms
Trump Foreign Policy?
Global freedom would suffer grievous harm in a second Trump term. Aug 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/28/global-freedom-would-suffer-grievous-harm-second-trump-term/
The Dangers of Donald Trump’s America First Foreign Policy. May 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240521100449/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/opinion/trump-foreign-policy.html