President-elect Trump ran much of his campaign based on retribution and absolute loyalty. As he prepares for a second term in office, what might that mean for the future of U.S. democracy? Laura Barrón-López discussed more with Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor and author of “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.”
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William Brangham:
President-elect Donald Trump ran a lot of his campaign promising retribution for his enemies and asking absolute loyalty from his supporters.
Now, as he prepares for a second term in office, Laura Barron-Lopez has a look at what that might mean for the future of U.S. democracy.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
William, according to the Associated Press, 55 percent of voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump would steer the U.S. toward becoming an authoritarian country, one where a single leader or small group has unchecked power.
Still, more than one in 10 of those voters supported him anyways.
To discuss this further, I'm joined by Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of "Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."
Professor Stanley, thank you so much for joining.
Why did voters on one hand acknowledge and express fear that the country could very well tip towards authoritarianism under Trump, but then on the other hand still vote for him?
Jason Stanley, Yale University:
The idea that democracy is a value upon which voters vote or place enormous priority on is false.
Voters prize a number of things over democracy, especially voters who have regularly lived in a country where you can replace leaders and parties by elections. The idea that democracy should be a value, well, that's something that schools and universities teach. That's something we try to emphasize, but it doesn't mean that people are born that way.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
President-elect Trump has openly embraced a number of strongman leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Trump has also said that he would be a dictator for a day. He has expressed a desire to seek revenge against his political enemies, and he's also threatened to use the military against civilians during times of civil unrest. If Donald Trump ends up governing like a strongman, what does that mean for the future of democracy?
Jason Stanley:
He will end up governing like a strongman. He generally does what he says, which is why voters consider him authentic, perhaps, rightfully so.
He's appointed Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary, whose writings show that he regards leftists, political opponents, university professors as the enemy, as the real enemy. So, every indication we have is that he's going to rule like an authoritarian and maybe not step down from power, certainly adjust the levers of power in our very flawed democracy so that Trumpism remains in power for some time to come, perhaps a very long time to come.
And we know that they have been taking advice from Orban. And for a long time, people said, including me, that the United States was too large to do what Orban did. For example, Orban took over the media, forcing the media to sell to his cronies and friends. And the thought was, the United States is too large for that.
However, couldn't Elon Musk just buy the whole media?
Laura Barron-Lopez:
You said before that the signs were there in terms of showing that voters may very well say yes to a strongman leader.
Are there any historical parallels, past examples that you think mirror the moment that the country is in right now?
Jason Stanley:
Every authoritarian situation is somewhat different, but there's regularities of structure.
Putin, for example, is an extremely popular leader in Russia, right? I mean, people would vote for him. What we're seeing here in terms of the sort of character of Trump, the sort of self-representation, as theorists like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have correctly pointed out, is something like Mussolini.
There's lots of differences in underlying ideology, but what we have got is something similar to a fascist-supporting group. We have got billionaire oligarchs and Christian nationalists, so both sort of radical and antidemocratic.
And once those two groups — once you have a large group of Christian nationalists or ethnic nationalists, plus oligarchs, together in support, it's very hard to defeat that coalition.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
What could a second Trump term mean in terms of emboldening extremists or those who hold far right views about the future of the country?
Jason Stanley:
Well, I mean, those are the people he's taken into power, he's proposing to take into power. These are people who believe that this is a Christian nation, that it's being ruined by secularists, everyone who's not a Christian nationalist or a virulent Trump supporter is a Marxist.
This is fascism when you call everyone who is not a supporter of the leader a Marxist. You call your normal political opponents Marxists. You target the schools and universities and the press. You say they're controlled by Marxists. This is the dominant vocabulary of the Trumpist movement.
And what it augurs is very problematic and worrisome. But I don't think what will result is less popularity for the strongman leader. Democracy is something you have to fight for. You have to fight for its values. You have to teach its values that every citizen is important, every citizen's perspective is important.
And those aren't values we're born with. And as they attack the institutions that defend those values, the press, the universities and the schools, we will see a democratic culture, what we have of a democratic culture disappearing.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Professor Jason Stanley, thank you for your time.
Jason Stanley:
Thank you.
