The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy

134 Pages·2017·1.23 MB·English

by  Brian Klaas

To Ellie,
Always there,
Always right.
CONTENTS
Foreword by David Talbot
Introduction: American Authoritarianism?
1. Doublethink
2. Fake News!
3. Lock Her Up!
4. From Russia with Love
5. How to Rig an Election
6. Divide and Rule
7. Flood the Swamp
8. The Deep State
9. Take Your Kids to Work Day
10. The Despot’s Cheerleader
11. The Ghost of Despotism Yet to Come
Conclusion: How to Save Democracy
Acknowledgements
Notes
FOREWORD
The world is burning, and yet the firelight illuminates the way out. The times are
dire, even catastrophic. Nonetheless we can sense a grand awakening, a growing
realization all around the globe that “people have the power, to dream, to rule, to
wrestle the world from fools” in the prophetic words of Patti Smith.
But in order to rouse ourselves from the nightmares that hold us in their grip,
we need to know more about the forces that bedevil us, the structures of power
that profit from humanity’s exploitation and from that of the earth. That’s the
impetus behind Hot Books, a series that seeks to expose the dark operations of
power and to light the way forward.
Skyhorse publisher Tony Lyons and I started Hot Books in 2015 because we
believe that books can make a difference. Since then the Hot Books series has
shined a light on the cruel reign of racism and police violence in Baltimore (D.
Watkins’ “The Beast Side”); the poisoning of U.S. soldiers by their own
environmentally reckless commanding officers (Joseph Hickman’s “The Burn
Pits”); the urgent need to hold U.S. officials accountable for their criminal
actions during the war on terror (Rachel Gordon’s “American Nuremberg”); the
covert manipulation of the media by intelligence agencies (Nicholas Schou’s
“Spooked”); the rise of a rape culture on campus (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s
“The Hunting Ground”); the insidious demonizing of Muslims in the media and
Washington (Arsalan Iftikhar’s “Scapegoats”); the crackdown on whistleblowers
who know the government’s dirty secrets (Mark Hertsgaard’s “Bravehearts”);
the disastrous policies of the liberal elite that led to the triumph of Trump (Chris
Hedges’ “Unspeakable”); the American wastelands that gave rise to this dark
reign (Alexander Zaitchik’s “The Gilded Rage”); the energy titans and their
political servants who are threatening human survival (Dick Russell’s
“Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”) And the series continues, going where few
publishers dare.
Hot Books are more condensed than standard-length books. They’re packed
with provocative information and points of view that mainstream publishers
usually shy from. Hot Books are meant not just to stir readers’ thinking, but to
stir trouble.
Hot Books authors follow the blazing path of such legendary muckrakers and
troublemakers as Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs,
Jessica Mitford, I.F. Stone and Seymour Hersh. The magazines and newspapers
that once provided a forum for this deep and dangerous journalism have shrunk
in number and available resources. Hot Books aims to fill this crucial gap.
American journalism has become increasingly digitized and commodified. If
the news isn’t fake, it’s usually shallow. But there’s a growing hunger for
information that is both credible and undiluted by corporate filters.
A publishing series with this intensity cannot keep burning in a vacuum. Hot
Books needs a culture of equally passionate readers. Please spread the word
about these titles – encourage your bookstores to carry them, post comments
about them in online stores and forums, persuade your book clubs, schools,
political groups and community organizations to read them and invite the
authors to speak.
We’re engaged in a war of ideas, a war for the hearts and minds of the
American people. For too long, this war has been dominated by Fox News, right-
wing talk radio and the bestsellers that they manufacture. And by the corporate-
sponsored discourse of the liberal media -- including the New York Times and
NPR-blessed authors and pundits who keep their social commentary within
acceptable boundaries.
It’s time to go beyond this packaged news and propaganda. It’s time for Hot
Books…journalism without borders.
David Talbot, 2017
INTRODUCTION
AMERICAN AUTHORITARIANISM?
It could never happen in America. Right?
Two years ago, in Minsk, I met with Mikalai Statkevich, a presidential
candidate in Belarus—a country often called the “last dictatorship in Europe.”
During his campaign, Statkevich had spoken out in favor of democracy and had
organized a peaceful protest against the dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. For
those “crimes,” Statkevich was beaten, then abducted. Thugs from the ruling
regime grabbed him, put a bag over his head, and forced him into a van. For an
hour, they drove around without telling Statkevich where they were heading. His
mind was racing. Was he being taken to a secluded forest to be shot? A dirt road
to be beaten to death? Would he ever see his family again? As it turned out,
Statkevich was tossed into a cold, dark, bare jail cell and left to rot. The regime
allowed him to speak to his family for only one hour per year. Other dissidents
from the opposition were tortured, handcuffed onto a medieval-style rack, and
stretched until their bones cracked and they “confessed.” In that horrifying
environment, Statkevich watched five years of his life slip by, day after bleak
day.
When Statkevich finished his story, both of us were shaken by what he had
just told me. Then, Statkevich looked me straight in the eye and said: “You don’t
know how lucky you are. Never take your democracy for granted. You won’t
realize what it’s worth until it’s too late.”1
I study despots. The president of Belarus is one; Donald Trump, the current
US president, is not. But Trump is acting like a despot’s apprentice—an
understudy in authoritarian tactics—who threatens to corrupt democracy beyond
repair. A year since his election in November 2016, he has already done serious
damage—and it could get much worse.
Trump is no Mussolini or Hitler, no Stalin or Castro. Anyone who makes
those comparisons is an alarmist, belittling the suffering of millions at the hands
of those tyrants. Trump is hardly an evil mastermind. Instead, he is a
democratically elected leader, operating within the confines of one of the
world’s most stable and robust democracies. His behavior is constrained by
democratic institutions, and his decisions are scrutinized by a robust and free
press. Even if he wishes it were otherwise, Trump cannot rule by decree. In fact,
during his campaign, Trump promised to enact ten major pieces of legislation
within his first 100 days. He has, so far, enacted none of them. How can a man
who has struggled even to change the health care laws or build a wall be
authoritarian?
Over the years, I have learned that most despots are not only twisted, but also
incompetent. They are often bumbling, tragicomically unready characters who
are defined not by their disciplined efficiency or effectiveness but by their
reckless authoritarian instincts and impulses. Sometimes, those instincts are
married to a destructive ideology, such as Nazism or Communism. But much of
the time, despots are driven by narcissism, an unquenchable ego that yearns for
fame, public adoration, and stardom. For many authoritarian leaders throughout
history, their greatest fear was that they would be nobodies—once gone, soon
forgotten. Despots dread being, as Trump often says in his most stinging insults,
someone “that you’ve never heard of.”
Take Paraguay’s longtime dictator, Alfredo Stroessner. He ruled the South
American nation for thirty-five years, until a military coup in 1989 forced him
into exile. During his reign, Stroessner wanted to make sure that everyone was
constantly thinking of him. He erected a giant flashing neon sign with his name
on it overlooking Asunción, the capital city. Photos of Stroessner were
everywhere. His name was everywhere. He even renamed a city after himself:
Puerto Stroessner. But he also wanted to make sure that you knew he was the
best despot—like you’d never seen before. To make sure his subjects knew he
was getting things done, bigly, he referred to himself as “El Excelentísimo.”
Stroessner’s ego was deadly. Challenging his cult of personality was
dangerous. One senator who dared, Carlos Levi Rufinelli, was tortured six
separate times. The regime used torture to enforce its narrative of what was true
and what was false. “When they put the needles under your fingernails,”
Rufinelli later recalled, “you tell them anything, you denounce everybody, and
then they say, ‘See, you were lying to us all the time.’” In one particularly
barbaric episode, Stroessner’s regime recorded the screams of a schoolteacher,
Martin Almada, as he was being tortured for the “crime” of advocating for
higher teacher pay. Thugs from the regime then called Almada’s wife and played
the recording for her. Next, they delivered his blood-soaked clothes to her house.
An attached note instructed her to come and collect his corpse. Her husband
wasn’t actually dead, but she died of a heart attack at the shock.2
Stroessner’s impulses grew more destructive because he was operating in a
system that indulged rather than blocked them. When people could have stood
up to him, they backed down. Over time, Stroessner got away with worse and
worse abuses.
When someone with authoritarian instincts and autocratic impulses enters any
political scene, there are three major ways to stop them becoming a despot.
First, there’s preventing them from getting into power. Demagogues are a
dime a dozen. They are harmless if nobody listens to them. Most would-be
demagogues and despots just scream into the wind, because their dangerous
fantasies are never married to real power. Stroessner or Stalin would have been
“nobodies” had they remained an irrelevance on the fringe.
Second, the political system can block a would-be demagogue in power from
becoming a despot. When a dictator seizes power in a place like Turkmenistan or
Equatorial Guinea, there aren’t any serious checks and balances in place to stop
them from becoming a tyrant. However, in many countries, such as the United
States, robust institutions exist that were conceived and established to divide
power rather than consolidate it. Those institutions are helpful at blocking the
rise of a despot, but they are not failsafe.
If those institutions fail, the final roadblock to despots is the people.
American-style checks and balances are not imbued with magical powers—they
are only as strong as those who deploy them when democracy is under duress.
Physically, the US Constitution is no more than ink on a piece of parchment.
People, not institutions or documents, protect democracy. If the citizenry allows
democracy to wane, it will.
Donald Trump has authoritarian instincts and reckless autocratic impulses that
have already been boosted since he acquired presidential power. Still, American
democracy is resilient. The democratic institutions and democratic values of the
people are a serious bulwark against any effort to advance authoritarianism. For
example, when Trump repeatedly said during the campaign that the United
States should bring back torture because “it works,”3 politicians, journalists,
activists, ordinary citizens, and even the military pushed back. He has dropped it
—for now. Democracy in the United States will not fade easily. But it could still
fade, ebbing away day after bleak day, until it’s too late. Well-established
democracies like the United States don’t usually die with a bang. If
authoritarianism is going to establish a beachhead on America’s shores, it will
creep up on us, and democracy will go out with a whimper.
Democracy is fragile. Like a sandcastle, it takes a long time to build and even
longer to perfect, but can be washed away with a single powerful wave—like a
military coup d’état or a revolution. Thankfully, those powerful waves are
unlikely in the United States. But democracy can also be eroded gradually, as
each wave takes a few grains of sand with it, year after year. The Trump waves