Donald Trump is right. Europe is at risk of “civilizational erasure”. Not from immigrants and Islam, as the racists in the White House have argued. But from America, where the civilization of democracy has been erased and the constitution reduced to pages of ghost letters.
Efforts to subvert democracy that began with a riot in America’s Capitol in January 2021 are now complete less than two years through Trump’s second presidency.
The visual proof of this has been given by the man himself. He is not, as many are now arguing in the US, showing signs of senility or mental decline. He is exploiting the power that he has systematically argued for and displaying the corrupting influence that absolute power has on most men.
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada declared himself the Last King of Scotland. Jean-Bedel Bokassa proclaimed himself “emperor” of the Central African Republic. Trump has circulated AI-generated agitprop of himself first as the Messiah then as anointed best buddy of Christ – the son element of the Christian trinity of God.
That is a sign not of madness but of belief in absolute power and impunity. Trump now believes that his systematic defoliation of America’s branches of democracy is so complete that he no longer has to bother with maintaining the support of Christian Nationalists, who may balk at his claims to divine endorsement.
Some of his supporters, the type who whoop with excitement when his “spiritual adviser” babbles in tongues, may actually believe that he is now ruling by divine right. They love that he’s planning to build memorials to himself: the ‘Arc de Trump’ and a $400m White House ballroom. Others think his family deserves the billion or more in cash and gifts they have made since he’s been in office.
Romania’s Nikolai Ceausescu built the Palace of the Parliament as a monument to his regime. In the Ivory Coast, dictator Félix Houphouët-Boigny built the biggest church on earth – in the middle of nowhere.
According to a YouGov poll last year, 43 per cent of Americans believe demons exist. Superstition is rife.
But Trump’s coup was made possible by more than his absurd nighttime posts on Truth Social. It has been carefully and skilfully enacted by his followers and enabled by his critics, who have left it too long and relied on a constitution that Trump has torn up to protect them.
The president’s tech-bro supporters, who have fantasies of establishing a technocratic monarchy to run America, should look to what happened to those who got close to Europe’s recent dictators.
Stalin’s top buddies were shot in the back of the head. Vladimir Putin’s closest associates are now mostly dead or in exile and stripped of the wealth he helped them accumulate when they got too rich and dangerous.
Trump moved fast when he regained the presidency. He made sure that no one should be in his power circle who could dilute, subvert, or guide it. He knew that federal bureaucracies could slow “reform”. And he understood that the Department of Justice would need to be bent to his will and intelligence agencies modelled to his whims.
He sacked military generals and leaders who could, or did, advise against the worst excesses of his rule. And he created a system of federal patronage that means that, in every walk of life, unquestioning loyalty to Trump is the only criterion for employment.
But he was more calculating with his next moves: he put incompetent cranks in his cabinet.
Pete Hegseth, the “secretary of war” is a Christian Nationalist with a record of military incompetence as a national guard officer and is known to have abused alcohol. Robert Kennedy, his health secretary, is an anti-vaxxer. Kash Patel, head of the FBI, has fired agents who worked on investigating the 2020 attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters. And Tulsi Gabbard is an open sympathiser with Putin serving as director of national intelligence.
The selection of underqualified underlings in key roles means that a leader knows they owe their jobs to him exclusively. Their lack of credentials and obvious personal limitations also mean they will never be able to build loyalty within their own organisations. So real power will only ever rest right at the top.
Bashar al Assad ruled Syria through terror. Saddam Hussein did the same in Iraq. From Baghdad to Bangui, the patterns have been similar, or identical, to what has unfolded in America. Power is deepened through the use of force that is personally loyal to the supreme leader. In America this is ICE. In Hitler’s Germany it was the Gestapo. Under Stalin, the NKVD. In Putin’s Russia it is the FSB that can arrange for his critics to tunnel off balconies.
Trump’s enablers in the Republican Party have abandoned any pretence at preserving the check and balances under the US constitution. They, like him, will have their eyes fixed on the November mid-term elections and trying to get back into power.
Media critics, US Democrats and many, or most, of those who have seen the evolution of the “coup” are deluding themselves into thinking that either the mid-terms will rebalance politics in America or that the US president will be removed by his own cabinet because they think he’s gone mad under Article 25 of the Constitution.
Trump and his followers have made it clear that they won’t accept any kind of a loss of power come November. And many in his cabinet are committed devotees of the Trump Cult. They believe his lies and conspiracy theories, even when he does not.
So how can, or will, this end?
The pattern from dictatorships elsewhere in the world is that some last decades and others just a few years. But they almost always end when the population rises against the abuses it can no longer endure. In America, Trump now controls every organ of the federal government. Law abiding citizens see narrowing avenues of protest.
Academics and friends in Africa, experts who have endured years of coup and counter-coup, are taking bets on when violence will break out in America. When a president claims he either is or is ordained by the almighty, the pattern is pretty set….there may be blood.
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