It’s very useful to read some Nazi history nowadays. In particular, here in America it’s 1933 all over again; Mark Greif explains what phase of fascism we’re in.
In historical terms, the event we are witnessing is an attempt at Gleichschaltung. The Nazi term is usually translated “coordination,” sometimes “consolidation” or “streamlining.” In this phase of totalitarianism, the Movement, now elected to power, uses its hold on the legitimate authority of the state to try, illegitimately, to align neutral, nonpartisan, or independent institutions with the extra-state Movement, forging an obligation to the Leader rather than to the constitutional state.
The hallmark of totalitarianism at this stage isn’t genocide or extremes of violence. It is doubled or twofold organization. The Movement (here MAGA) or its party (here the Republican Party, parasitically devoured and replaced from within) generates a vision of second institutions, however hallucinatory or inverted, with which original or real institutions are then coordinated.
The task of coordination is to reshape, refound, purge, and, by all means foul and fair, shake the underlying basis of institutions and install new, arbitrary ones. Because institutions only subsist by their personnel, a Gleichschaltung should unnerve the committed participants in institutions, first within government and then in civil society, and mold minds toward constant doubt and adjustment. Personnel should feel that they require alignment with the leader, or acknowledgment of arbitrary or irrelevant Movement goals, simply to continue to work and to avoid baseless investigation or denunciation.
Here’s another source defining the term, with a focus on the Christian resistance to Naziism. One of the early goals of National Socialism was to align the churches with their vision of the Reich.
“Gleichschaltung” (coordination) is a term coined by the National Socialists that actually trivializes the massive restrictions on fundamental rights and freedoms. Immediately after Hitler’s still entirely legal seizure of power on January 30, 1933, the National Socialists set about “coordinating” all public and private life in Germany, particularly in the areas of politics, social associations, the economy, the press, and culture.
In concrete terms, this meant that all movements and opinions that were not explicitly National Socialist—not to mention oppositional and critical ones—were suppressed and banned. In many cases, organizations were transformed into corresponding Nazi organizations.
One of the signs that this is going on isn’t that stormtroopers are taking over institutions by force — rather, the institutions are sown with doubt and uncertainty, so that they are hesitant and avoid disagreement. One recent example: a guest on one of these ubiquitious talk shows says I Might Lose My Job For Saying This, But What Trump’s Doing Is Insane, and the host nervously scrambles to downplay it. It’s not insane, the CNBC host says, it’s a tactic. She’s right, but you know, it can be both. What’s worrisome is the desperate need for our news sources to pretend to be neutral, so they can overlook the insanity going on before their eyes.
One of the tools the current regime is using is the Office of Management and Budget. They’re putting out memos strangling the budgets of various offices of the federal government. If they have to walk them back, or if a court decision stops them, no worries — they’ve done their job of fostering uncertainty, and forcing otherwise independent institutions to second guess their decisions, tip-toe around their jobs to avoid the hassle or more MAGA shit-stirring. Gleichschaltung accomplished.
This halt in the circulation of oxygen through the social body—or, in constitutional terms, illegal impoundment of funds authorized by Congress—had the purpose of making all agencies search themselves, their programs, and their recipients for any “activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders”—those “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.” A follow-up clarification enumerated seven listed executive order areas whose echoes were specifically to be searched out: those to do with immigrants (“Protecting the American People Against Invasion”), overseas aid, the environment, energy, race and gender or other diversity, trans people (“Defending Women . . . and Restoring Biological Truth”), and abortion.
They’ve also got a convenient scapegoat: trans people.
One thing Trump’s current coordination lacks is Jews; instead of the Jewish pollution, he has transgender. Trans persons are a comparably small minority to Jews, in government as in the general population, but they exist as phantasms ripe for exorcism. The actions so far against trans rights furnish an invitation for ordinary people to distinguish themselves as bigots—hurrying to change bathroom signage or, like the NCAA, rushing to prohibit athletes from sports.
The Jewish population is an inconvenient scapegoat. The far right has tied itself to Israel at the behest of the lunatics of evangelical Christianity, so MAGA can’t outright persecute them, even though there are so many Jewish groups protesting American actions in the Middle East and at home. Those trans weirdos, though — nobody cares about them, MAGA can do what ever criminal actions they want against them without alienating conservative allies. Expect them to make being trans even more criminal than it already is.
Haven’t you noticed yet how thoroughly they’re isolating our trans friends and family? They’re shutting them out of military service, mention of them is banned and grounds for loss of funding, they’re obsessed with demeaning Sarah McBride, Trump is claiming that the existence of transgender people is “hurting women very badly”. But still, it’s the bigotry that many people happily claim as their own righteous belief.
Another American institution that is being undermined by cowardice in the face of the MAGA threat is higher education. Oh no, our universities shouldn’t speak out about the lessons of history, they shouldn’t take a side against fascism, because they are so devoted to neutrality and free speech (well, except for speech against tyranny or genocide).
In 2024 Dictionary.com chose “demure” as the word of the year. On college campuses (or at least in their presidents’ offices and board meeting rooms) the word of the year, in the wake of the war in Gaza and the campus protests that followed, was “neutrality,” which has a similar vibe. One might think that those who embrace neutrality do so either because they have no strong views, or because they do and are afraid to express them. Some university leaders, following the University of Chicago, have tied themselves to the more agreeable notion that were they to weigh in on issues, this would chill speech on campus—that others will be encouraged to speak up if they keep their own mouths shut. The august American Council of Trustees and Alumni has urged all trustees to preserve “the high purpose of our academic institutions” by ensuring that their institutions stay out of political disputes—silence is golden, especially when the heat is on.
Right. We have all this information at our fingertips, we hold a reservoir of deep historical knowledge, but we must not apply it in any practical sense. Don’t make any judgements! This is the core idea The Chicago Principles, that odious chickenshittery that cowardly universities across the country are adopting right and left.
The Chicago principles, also known as the Chicago Statement, are a set of guiding principles intended to demonstrate a commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of expression on college campuses in the United States. Initially adopted by the University of Chicago following a report issued by a designated Committee on Freedom of Expression in 2014, they came to be known as the “Chicago Statement” or “Chicago principles” as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) led a campaign to encourage other universities across the country sign up to the principles or model their own based on similar goals.
Since 2014, a number of other universities have committed to the principles, including Princeton, Purdue, Washington University in St. Louis, and Stanford University. As of September 2024, FIRE reported that 110 U.S. colleges and universities had “adopted or endorsed the Chicago Statement or a substantially similar statement.”
That’s Gleichschaltung. The first hint is that it was cobbled up by FIRE, a reactionary conservative organization that crusades for “content neutrality” on campuses. Nazis should not be condemned, but instead must be allowed to speak with institutional endorsement.
It’s not all bad news. Greif has some ideas about how to fight back.
Simple advice can be offered to anyone in a decision-making role at an institution. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. If you can find solidarity with other institutions like your own, do it. But even when you can’t prevent others from defecting, there need be no solidarity in weakness. Prepare to stand on your own for a bit. Reach into reserves if they exist. Delay programs if you must. Don’t change, or kneel, or find hostages to feed into a slobbering maw. Don’t coordinate yourself, don’t align yourself, don’t appease, when it may yet prove unnecessary.
There may well be normalcy again. But it lies on the other side—not in accommodation to this malevolent insanity, run by lackeys and toads. The risk of overreaction is trivial compared to the risks of accommodation.
Don’t give in! That’s hard, though, when the agents of chaos are holding the purse strings. They know the universities are potential sources of opposition (at least, those that haven’t already caved in to the “Chicago principles”) and moved fast to shock-and-awe them with threats to indirect costs and federal research grants. It’s hard to stand strong when they’re cutting your budget, while some of your fellow institutions are surrendering.
Odd as it may sound, the antidote to totalitarianism, recorded by those who lived through it, is associational life. De-atomization, and the creation of loyalties to other people that can’t be, or simply aren’t, coordinated with a regime. In a time of temptation to the bad, or to the worse, association is what lets people find the courage to refuse, and the practical standing to do so. If things get very bad, it is also associational life that helps people circulate information, hide, escape, and travel. Combinations of associations like churches, clubs, professional or activist societies, local government and local agencies, stretching from close-range to middle-range, are practically efficacious in kinds of details that can’t be seen from above, or aren’t seen until too late and are too banal to punish: accidentally failing to find or arrest someone, sponsoring and sheltering, and passing money.
In past weeks, the emergent centers of refusal and opposition to coordination have been two kinds of institutions, at drastically different scales and positions in the nation-state system: public sector unions, specifically the unions of federal employees of individual agencies; and state governments. Before this month I had not thought anything or even known of the existence of the National Federation of Federal Employees, or the National Treasury Employees Union, or the American Federation of Federal Employees, or the American Foreign Service Association, or for that matter the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents’ Association or the Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Association. They, along with state attorneys general, have been filing suits to block the decimation of the workforce.
At every level, people will need to think of decoupling, alongside whatever strengthening of associational life is possible now. Any institution, at any scale, would do well to prepare to sever dependencies or necessary links with organizations larger or higher, even as it thinks of gatherings or sympathies or mutual aid with peers or organizations its own size. Decoupling is a means to halt contagion, preserving the fabric of society in its separate fibers, until a later date. It’s a curious and seemingly contradictory situation to be in, but, again, a means of strength: signal every solidarity you can, but cut the mooring lines that lead from a captured state to a free people.
Does Trump have any ideology apart from self-enrichment? He doesn’t have any empathy, so he has no problem scapegoating trans people or any other group but this is done cynically to placate his supporters.
If his hand is slapped hard enough, he can be deterred.
What the fascists do is try to take over all institutions of society and either co-opt them or destroy them.
That includes the news media.
They’ve partially done that, with the Washington Post, Fox NoNews etc..
It’s a lot harder these days because there is a large internet system of independent news.
Higher education.
Going to be hard.
There are 4,000 colleges and universities in the USA.
Religion,
They already own the fundie xians.
OTOH, the rest of the xians don’t like them or Trump.
It’s going to be harder to take over in the USA for a variety of reasons.
.1. Trump is weakening the Federal government drastically.
“Obey us or we will cut your agricultural subsidies, Department of Education funding, or FEMA disaster aid,” Oh wait, we abolished the USDA, the education department, and FEMA,.
They are losing their leverage and ability to coerce people.
It is showing with ICE and the immigration crackdown.
It isn’t going anywhere.
As many pointed out long ago, ICE doesn’t have the money, people, or facilities to find and deport 11 million people.
.2. The 50 US states have a lot of autonomy under our Federal system of government. The Blue states aren’t going to just fall in line and turn into MAGA Red states.
And the Blue states are a lot, at least half the population of the USA and most of the economy.
.3. And, the Trump/Musk GOP fascist regime doesn’t have anything to offer the vast majority of the citizens.
The first thing they’ve done in 2 months is destroy the economy.
They are going to try to destroy Social Security and already, that is looking like it won’t happen. They are backing off right now.
After wrecking science and medicine, they’ve set the USA up for a generation or two of decline. These were the driving forces of our civilization.
The wild card is whether we are going to start wars of conquest against our former friends, Canada, Panama, Greenland, Mexico, or wherever.
They won’t be popular.
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks their life would be better if we attack Canada.
”By all means, foul and fair.” Oh, yeah. But… I don’t think many of us would support a military campaign against Canada, or Europe, or Greenland. We can’t be that stupid, can we? When it comes down to blood, I suspect Trump is asking too much for his fantasies. I hope, anyway.
willj:
Do you remember how the right shut down opposition to our misguided Middle East adventures by invoking “Support Our Troops”? If you opposed the wars, you were somehow undercutting our troops. Discussions got pretty hot at times. After the Iraq War, there were even victory parades in many cities as though we’d just won WW3. As soon as our soldiers set foot in Canada or Greenland, they’d do the same thing today. I’m under no illusions. If Trump orders a Putinesque invasion, and there were major street protests, he’d come down hard. He’s been itching to do it ever since the George Floyd protests.
Cryptic crossword clue of the day:
Joke – of kind – sees Trump getting irritated? (9,4)
Answer: President Musk (anagram of ‘kind sees Trump’)
@John Watts
The Iraq War was sold to the US people as “revenge” for 9/11. There was a coordinated effort by the Bush regime to create a false connection in the minds of people by always mentioning the two together. Without 9/11 whipping the US citizenry into a frenty there would have been hardly any enthusiasm for it.
How would that work with Canada or Greenland? Trump wants Canada and Greenland basically just because he thinks planting the star-spangled banner over Ottawa and Nuuk would be neat as if he’s playing a 4X videogame. Yeah, I don’t think he’ll find all that much support for this even among the brainwashed MAGA morons.
AugustusVerger@6,
I wouldn’t bet on it. Following an all-out trade war, causing a serious economic crunch, and both widespread consumer boycotts of American goods and government measures taken against US-owned tech companies, in Canada and the EU, another large-scale terrorist outrage – real, or false flag – could be “traced” to those places. After all, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
Except Saddam was a guy who was already considered an evil dictator the US had previously fought a war against and Iraq was but a nation of “brown” people with a “terrorist religion”. None of that can be applied to Canadians.
You also think people care about Canadian economical retaliation against the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk? I think there’d be just as many people cheering them on for it.
Hitler staged the Gleiwitz Broadcast incident against Poland, and Poland itself was hated in Germany because they had received several Germanic regions after WW1…but it failed to actually ignite any sort of enthusiasm for the war Hitler was about to start. In fact, it took until the defeat of France for the average German to actually see the war positively.
Walter Solomon@1,
No, Trump probably doesn’t hate/despise transgender people much more than he does everyone else. But a considerable section of his support base does, so do a significant proportion of those who otherwise oppose him, and no section of his support base is going to object to them being persecuted.
AugustusVerger@8,
Reasonable points. But does Trump need actual enthusiasm for such a war? Acquiescence would likely be enough – and he’s busy ensuring the armed forces are led by people ready to obey illegal orders. And at least in the case of Greenland, there would be very little actual fighting involved, if any at all. The USA already has a base and troops there, and could fly in more easily (although getting them from the base to the main settlements wouldn’t be easy). Denmark only has a few naval vessels patrolling the coasts, easily outmatched by a fleet sent from the USA’s east coast.
More than half ot America already disapproves of Trump’s conduct in the White House. A gratuitous war which will gain the US nothing but cost them a lot in various ways will not turn this around, it’ll just make him even more hated.
This is the dilemma Trump faces, there’s nothing obvious he can do that would get people who hate him to get behind him or to even quietly support him. Hitler had dismantling the Versailles Treaty and overcoming the post-WW1 humiliation as a rallying cry that he could get the majority of Germans behind yet even the MAGA drones see little benefit in a trade war or straight expansionist warfare. How will that make the eggs cheaper? Are there many chicken on Greenland?
Americans are actually pretty difficult to coax into a war. In WW1 it took the Germans starting to attack American shipping to get them involved. In WW2 it took a pretty darn cowardly sucker punch by Japan to get this effect. Korea and Vietnam ran under the Red Scare. Gulf War One was sold as a humanitarian effort with UNO backing and as I said, Afghanistan and Iraq were tied to 9/11 and general anti-brown people/Islam bigotry.
There simply exist none of the necessary groundwork to sell a war against Canada or Denmark.
It always takes
Thanks for the post, and the reference, PZ. Very insightful. One thing in the article I disagree with:
First, I think there has already been damaged caused that will not be recovered from quickly or easily. Indeed, this would have been so even if Trump had been defeated and the Democrats had won both houses. One of the two main parties in a highly resilient duopoly had already been captured by fascism 2.0, and a large minority of the population was in full support of the destruction of democracy if that was necessary to impose their beliefs on a resisting population. So had the Supreme Court, which had already shown itself ready to overturn precedent in the interests of religious bigotry. Now, the federal government has already suffered serious damage, most of the media and notably the tech giants are irredeemably compromised, the main and only significant opposition party is in disarray. Essential research data on climate, the environment, social issues has undoubtedly been destroyed already. And so on. Yet Trump and Musk are still benefitting from the delusion that they can’t really intend what they appear to intend, that “it can’t happen here”. Not only can it; to a considerable extent, it already has.
Everyone in our organization wishes schumer would just crawl off and die. He is a LIAR, a COWARD and a TRAITOR. He is aiding and abetting the fascists trying to run this country.
You would think that he would not want to be seen wearing the bloodstained clothes of a MUMP fascist.
He is pushing us downward on the Death Spiral!
I don’t think the USA’s current rulers (Trump, Musk, Vance, the other oligarchs) have any intention of allowing themselves to be ejected from power through free elections. That being so, do they really care if they are hated? The Emperor Caligula is reported by Suetonius to have said something like: “Let them hate me, as long as they fear me.” Of course Trump has an insatiable need for praise, but he gets that in plenty from those surrounding him, as well as from foreign sycophants such as Starmer. The insouciance with which he now admits there might be a recession as a result of his tariff wars strongly suggests that he’s not bothered by his poll ratings. And in geopolitical terms, if as seems likely we’re leaving the era when there was at least lip service to international law and in particular a restraint on straightforward territorial expansion by force, and returning to simple “might makes right”, the USA targeting Greenland, Canada and Panama for annexation makes strategic sense (Gaza, not so much – I’m pretty sure that will be left to Israel) .
Remember how Caligula’s “term” ended?
schermanj@13,
Of course Schumer can find justifications for his cowardice: “The Democrats would get the blame”, and “It would give Trump even more power”. But of course he’s wrong – refusal to collaborate is his simple duty, and each act of collaboration makes the next more difficult to resist.
AugustusVerger@15,
I do. But no tyrant thinks that will happen to him – he’s too smart, he thinks, indeed in Trump’s case “a very stable genius”. And Caligula’s mistake seems to have been alienating too many of the elite, including commanders of the very troops meant to protect him. Of course it may well be that Trump, andor Musk, andor Vance, will do the same. But the techbro oligarchs at least, know they have a stupendous bribe coming their way. And remember also that the imperial regime survived Caligula, and even the longer reign of Nero. The Republic was never restored.
My point is that Caligula inspiring so much hatred led to his demise, so his boast was actually quite ironic. Nero was murdered as well, so why are you taking emperors that deposed of themselves as examples here?
Also, no shit no one ever tried to restore the republic, What would have been the point? It had proven to be incapable to deal with a Rome that had grown far beyond the borders of Italy and its last century was one of constant strife. Of course there was no one who seriously thought about its return. And technically Rome wasn’t a monarchy until the reign of Diocletian anyway.
AugustusVerger
To your point, the entrance into Vietnam took the fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. And you forgot the Spanish-American war took the explosion of the Maine.
Anyway, since it usually takes one major disaster, even one that was caused by American negligence or malfeasance, to coax Americans into a foreign war, I wouldn’t call doing so “difficult.”
Even if we were to launch Trump and his buddies on a one way trip to the sun, the USA is forever changed. We’re not going back to what we were.
AugustusVerger @18
Wasn’t the Roman Kingdom ruled by the Tarquins a monarchy?
Without the Red Scare the Gulf of Tonkin incident would have done little to enthuse the populace for a war abroad and the Spanish-American War was fuelled by the Monroe doctrine.
On the other hand when the Japanese attacked the Panay, the result wasn’t a war on Japan and the sinking of the Lusitania didn’t bring the US into WW1. So no, the US do not declare war on the drop of a hat without there being some sort of groundwork laid first, especially not against a nation that is culturally and ethnically very close and where waging war might actually see American cities get attacked in retaliation.
That Rome was a monarchy first is irrelevant because KG talked about no one bringing the Republic back after the principate was installed.
re: Roman monarchy, the assassination of Caligula and the attempted restoration of the Roman Republic.
Complex subjects, one and all. But some key points to note are as follows:
In the chaos of the aftermath of Caligula’s murder in 41AD there was (according to the Jewish historian Josephus) an attempt to restore the republican form of government to Rome. This did not get off the ground, and the senators who organized it (led, probably, by one Lucius Vinicianus) were outmaneuvered by a faction of the Praetorian Guard who supported Claudius (Caligula’s uncle) as emperor on the same model. So there was some enthusiasm for restoring the republic at this point, albeit nobody then living could actually remember it when it was functioning as normal.
As to why nobody managed to restore the republic, several things should be noted. First of all, there was little groundswell of popular support for the republican system among the vast majority of ordinary Romans. In their eyes things were much the same, and their role in the politics and governance of Rome hadn’t materially changed. They still had their comitia to vote in, the Centuriate Assembly and Tribal Assembly, except now these bodies ratified decisions made by the emperor, the aristocratic families ijn the senate and the appointed magistrates drawn from these families, rather than decisions made by the last two alone. The republic, to most ordinary Romans, meant power struggles between the elites and the patronage of several ancient families, where the principate meant slightly different types of power struggles between the elites and the patronage of one really powerful noble family. That it was senators from old families that formed the core of the brief attempt to restore the republic in 41AD is not surprising, for it is their class that lost its traditional primacy in state affairs – though just as many adapted to the new situation, because the emperor needed the senatorial class to run the empire and do all the jobs they had done previously. Imperial patronage could be a powerful leg up for aspiring aristocrats.
Indeed, Tacitus famously begins his annals with the phrase “urbem Romam a principio reges habuere”, which is often translated as “Kings held the City of Rome in the beginning”. But the preposition “a / ab” doesn’t mean “in”, it means “from”. So the sense is actually that “Kings held the City of Rome from the beginning” – i.e. Tacitus is implying that even during its republican period when there were no formal hereditary monarchs, and the principate when emperors used any language but that of explicit kingship to describe their power, Rome was still practically and psychologically beholden to kinglike rulers. The aristocrats during the republic, jostling for magistracies and military commands were, in Tacitus’s eyes, not much different from kings, and the emperors obviously so. Everyone else was, by implication, in the same kind of slavish subordination to the rulers of the day that one would expect from servants of a king – for all its vaunted rhetoric of liberty, in Tacitus’s eyes Romans were essentially a people who welcomed their own subjection.