Most Americans believe the United States is immune from the same fates of democracies that have become dictatorships.      

Not so New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Appearing on the November 13 edition of The PBS Newshour, she warned: 

“Since 2015, [Donald Trump] started….using his rallies and campaign events for radicalizing people. And he started saying, oh, in the old days, you used to hurt people. The problem is, Americans don’t hurt each other anymore.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Humblewarrior, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“So now he’s going into a new phase of openly dehumanizing his targets so that will lessen the taboos in the future. And we see that, in 2025, he’s got plans for mass deportations, mass imprisonments and giant camps.

“So you need people to be less sensitive about violence, either committing it themselves or tolerating it. And I see that as….the reason he’s using this dehumanizing rhetoric now, to prepare people.”

A historical example: The Weimar Republic, the constitutional federal republic in Germany which lasted from November 9, 1918 to March 23, 1933. 

During its 14-year existence, the Republic granted Germans rights they had never enjoyed—and which would be ruthlessly suppressed during the 12-year Third Reich that replaced it.

Among those rights:

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of assembly
• Privacy of mail, telegraph, and telephone
• Free and secret elections
• All citizens were eligible for public office

But the Republic had dangerous enemies—Communists on the Left, and Nazis on the Right. And it was plagued by charges of illegitimacy and even treason—for its members’ having signed the Treaty of Versailles ending World War 1.

Adolf Hitler, joined the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in 1919—the year after World War 1 ended.

Adolf Hitler

In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.

After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.

He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election.

When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.

Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.

Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer—who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.

In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.

Paul von Hindenburg

Hindenburg considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.

So, on January 30, 1933, he reluctantly appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor—the equivalent of  Attorney General.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President.

His rise to total power was now complete.

In 2015, Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President.

At that time: 

• The country was technically at war in the Middle East—but the fate of the United States was never threatened, as it had been during the Cold War.
• There was no draft; if you didn’t know someone in the military, you didn’t care about the casualties taking place.
• Thanks to government loans from Barack Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
• In contrast to the scandals of the Ronald Reagan Presidency, the Obama administration had been scandal-free.
• Nor had there been any major terrorist attacks on the country—as had occurred on 9/11 under President George W. Bush.

Yet—not 17 months after announcing his candidacy for President—enough Americans fervently embraced Donald Trump to give him the most powerful position in the country and the world.

Donald Trump

The message of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign had been one of hope—“Yes, We Can!”

That of Donald Trump’s campaign was one of hatred toward everyone who was not an avid Trump supporter: “No, You Can’t!”

White supremacists comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. Birthrates among nonwhites were rising. By 2045, whites would make up less than 50 percent of the American population.

The 2008 election of the first black President had shocked Fascistic whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.

Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might be followed by a woman: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And the idea of a woman dictating to men was strictly too much for them to bear.

President Joseph Biden is 80—six years younger than Paul von Hindenburg when he died—and capable of dying literally any day.

His Vice President, Kamala Harris, is widely perceived as unprepared for the Presidency. 

Meanwhile, Donald Trump—like Adolf Hitler—is waging an all-out campaign to make himself dictator. And—like Hitler—he’s using the democratic system to destroy democracy.

The year 2024 will see the re-election of Joseph Biden—or the end of American democracy.