How to Overthrow a Government: Part II
The January 6 coup attempt was merely Part I of Trump's quest to become President for Life
I’ve dusted off and updated a piece I published just after the November election, when I predicted a Trump putsch attempt. It remains instructive –
I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
Frau Günther, my third-year college German instructor, once assigned us to explain before the class “how to do something” in our best Hochdeutsch. Doug described how to start up a motorcycle. Kathy explained how to bake a cake. My pal Steve talked about the best way to fish for trout. Replete with diagrams on a white board, I expounded on “Wie Man eine Regierung Stürzt” - “How to Overthrow a Government.” First, seize broadcast stations. Next, quickly disseminate your propaganda. Neutralize or isolate the military and police. Then arrest opposition politicians, etc., etc. My topic, though a bit extreme, was a hit.
Fast forward a few years to my service as a diplomat overseas during which I lived through a couple of coups d’etat and witnessed politically motivated violence, arrests, guerrilla attacks, fatwas, invasions and assassinations. I learned first-hand how strongmen ruthlessly manipulate citizens and hold onto power. Thank God I was an American. It couldn’t happen here. Or, so I thought. And now to today. Donald Trump is ripping pages out of the Machiavelli-Lenin-Mao-Hitler-Peron playbooks.
In the autocrats’ playbook, power seizure begins with the Big Lie. Trump has been pursuing his false narratives accordingly:
Deny the truth
Build the lie
Repeat the lie over and over
Spread the lie via obliging right-wing media and congressional toadies
Smear the opposition daily with fabricated charges of wrongdoing
The main thrust is to bamboozle masses of “low information” citizens and confuse them until they lament, “I don’t know what the truth is.” This makes it easier for the strongman to manipulate large segments of the population. Trump “seized” the country’s most viewed TV broadcaster over four years ago. With the exception of their calling a Biden victory in November, Fox-News has been a friendly platform for Trump’s reality-defying propaganda and mostly defending him ever since.
After planting the Big Lie, the next step is to neutralize all opposition. Trump has neutralized - or more aptly, neutered - the Republican Party as well, forced out of office or high position the few GOP members of congress who dared to speak up against him. The GOP now more resembles the marionette Workers Party of his love letter pen pal, Kim Jong-un. The former president furthermore, through his very own Nikolai Krylenko - Bill Barr - had suborned justice to his will and recruited reactionary elements of law enforcement to spearhead violence against peaceful protestors. In a purge of the Defense Department that Stalin’s doomed justice minister Krylenko would admire, Trump clearly aimed to weaken the military apparatus to make it easier (at least in his deluded mind) for him to use troops to quell any mass protests. The unqualified toadies he put in place were his willing catspaws. Again, from the autocrats’ playbook:
Refuse to cede power
Declare victory
Destroy or severely damage the opposition
Suborn the security apparatus
Put stooges in charge of key ministries
Should a bloodless coup fail, resort to violence
These measures fit neatly into Trump’s goal to stay in power, Constitution be damned. And sure enough, when Pence, the military chiefs, state electoral officials and others refused to play his game, he sicced his MAGA mob on the Capitol. It was a classic banana republic tactic. Republicans since have turned on the fog machine full blast, spewing disinformation in an effort to confuse citizens as to the truth and to cover the evidence of their complicity – another tried and true ploy of authoritarians. Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively on this; he is well worth a read.
Make no mistake about it. It was America’s first coup d’etat attempt, not merely an “insurrection,” and we should call it that. As a people, we should feel ashamed as well as fearful of the future, for, as I wrote in my previous piece, January 6 merely marked the end of Act I of the Trump Horror Show. The Hunchback of Mar-a-Lago is frenetically scheming to open Act II. Should he be successful in re-taking power, bid the American Experiment goodbye and get your immigrant visa applications to the Canadian Embassy ASAP.
Frau Günther passed away six years ago at age 87. Teaching German was only a sideline for her. Margaret Günther was also a theologian, a leading thinker and writer on ethics and morality in the Episcopal Church. Were she alive today and again assigned me to explain how to do something, my topic would be “Wie Man eine Demokratie Verwirkt” -- “How to Forfeit a Democracy.”