The Surrender is Complete: Welcome to Vichy America!

MAGA's occupation of America is now virtually complete as Democrats and liberal activists throw in the towel. What follows is the tyranny.

Parisians stood in stunned silence as the Wehrmacht entered Paris unopposed on June 14, 1940; their leaders, riven by division and incompetence, ceded to the Germans with little resistance, despite commanding 117 divisions — 800,000 men. What followed was four years of brutal occupation. But not all Frenchmen mourned their nation’s defeat. Tens of thousands of far-right citizens collaborated with the enemy. The Germans set them up with a rump puppet state headquartered in Vichy.

Holocaust scholar Thomas White outlines key characteristics of the Vichy regime:

Post-World War I politics in France was marked by polarization between right and left. French fascism was home-grown.

In the aftermath of the shock and trauma of defeat, resignation and mutual accommodation marked the early months of the German occupation.

Humiliation and shame fostered anger in some that channeled itself into a “wait and see” attitude.

Reestablishing “family values” and “proper” gender roles were high on the agenda. Rather than facing their own incompetence

The nation, they asserted, had lost its male vigor and believed the declining birthrate were due to women entering the workforce. Laws against abortion and contraception were passed quickly.

In France women were generally seen as vulnerable — to be protected by men.

1940-1941 French authorities began imprisoning thousands of Jews in concentration camps. Mass deportations commenced in 1942.

The parallels to today’s America are striking. MAGA’s takeover and transformation of the U.S. government under our very own Pierre Laval — Donald Trump — is proceeding lightning fast with, at most, token opposition and the active collaboration now even of Democrats and the resignation of a dispirited Trump popular opposition.

I’ve written extensively equating erstwhile anti-Trump Republican politicians who turned collaborationist with their Vichy French counterparts: “The Perils of Being on the Wrong Side of History,” “What to Do With Trump and His Vichy GOP,” “Vichy Republicans and the New McCarthyism: Trump's Witch Hunt Against the FBI.”

Vichy Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and many others have long opted to cower before Trump, embracing the comfort of opportunism over the risks of moral principle. They epitomize what the father of modern conservatism Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

In the wake of the Democrats’ trouncing at the polls last November and now Trump’s assumption of office, MAGA is prosecuting its own blitzkrieg to consolidate power, taking their cue from the Third Reich’s playbook. I’ve been referring often in my essays and social media postings to the Nazis’ term for this — “Gleichschaltung” — alignment or consolidation of power to enable authoritarian control over society. It is a fitting electrical engineering term meaning that all switches are put on the same circuit to be activated by throwing a single master switch. Hence, following the earlier submission of GOP politicians and corporate and media executives, a number of Democrats are now yielding to the new occupation authorities.

The New York Times reports, “Congressional Democrats and governors now openly debate the wisdom of locking arms against Mr. Trump’s agenda, as they eventually did during his first presidency.” Scores of congressional Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act, which authorizes the deportation of unauthorized migrants who are accused but not yet convicted of crimes. Others have volunteered to work with Republicans on a border security bill.

Thirteen Democratic senators signed a letter to Republican Senate majority leader John Thune asking to be involved in Trump’s proposed legislation to change the nation’s immigration system. “We stand ready to work with you,” the senators wrote.

Heretofore MAGA nemesis Senator John Fetterman is also now getting with the program. After supping with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he soft-pedalled the president’s pardoning of over 1500 convicted J6 insurrectionists and said of Trump’s deranged notion of “buying Greenland” from the Danes, “I mean, it’s pretty reasonable, and I think it’s actually strategically a smart thing.”

Defeatism has also infected Americans in general. The anti-Trump Resistance is now acting like a vanquished force, as The NYT chronicles:

While anger — and money — drove the so-called Resistance of 2017, Mr. Trump’s second coming has been met by liberal resignation. No one in the world of politics or culture has emerged with a cogent and consistent anti-Trump message since his victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris, and the social media platforms that hosted many of the influencers of eight years ago are now owned by Mr. Trump’s billionaire allies.

And —

Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017 was met with the largest single-day public demonstration in American history. Although thousands marched in Washington Saturday and smaller protests were held in other cities, their numbers fell far short of the hundreds of thousands that rallied eight years ago.

“I feel like I’m just so much more jaded now,” one veteran protester said. She posted on social media a list of actions that she argued would make a bigger difference now than marching: plant trees, volunteer in the community, “engage with people who think differently than you and find your common ground.”

As happens in evolving dictatorships, it is a handful of brave religious figures who stand up and speak truth to power. Recently, several Catholic archbishops and bishops and Mariann Budde, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Washington have spoken out against Trump’s policies. In the 1930s-1940s, Catholic priests of the Amitié Chrétienne and Protestant pastors such as André Trocmé safeguarded Jews from Vichy police and Nazi authorities. In Germany, figures such as Catholic Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke against Hitler — the latter executed for doing so.

Meanwhile, the MAGA regime’s steps to consolidate autocratic control are coming fast and furious, beginning with dismissals of federal employees from key positions (including decapitation of the State Department’s entire senior leadership and many DOJ officials), instructions to others to become informants on those who don’t obey orders, abrupt termination of DEI efforts, unlawfully abrogating birthright citizenship, firing of 17 independent agency inspectors general, shutting down government informational sites and initial steps to intimidate oppositionist former officials (by rescinding security clearances and removing security details). The key to emplacing a griplock on power, of course, is getting Trump’s lapdog cabinet picks confirmed; with Pete Hegseth nailed down to lead the Pentagon, MAGA’s intimidation efforts against wavering GOP senators are paying off.

Mass roundups of migrants destined for mass deportation have already begun.

And this is only Day 5.

In contrast to Trump’s first administration, Gleichschaltung is well advanced this time around — to a frightening degree, in my view — thus making it easier to exploit the centers of gravity of society and impose autocratic rule. The brakes are essentially off. The MAGA regime is employing shock and awe to keep the opposition off balance. As a source who had spent a lot of time with Trump in the Oval Office told the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, “Listen, you know Donald Trump is like the velociraptor in the first Jurassic Park film. And when the children run into the kitchen and they think they’re safe and they shut the door and they’re hiding under the tables, and then ‘click’ the door turns. The velociraptors have learned to open doors.”

As a student of history and as a diplomat, I’ve deep-dived into the formation and unraveling of political systems and societies. What is shocking is how quickly they can fall apart. All it takes is social and political foundational rot, pliant leaders, a divided and dispirited population and a cunning usurper. I literally cannot believe what I’m witnessing now in my own country: an oligarchy-dominated autocracy falling into place with speed and precision — while Americans, leaders and ordinary citizens alike, merely watch it all happen, as if it were a reality TV show — or weep at curbside like the Frenchman in the photo as the occupation army arrives unopposed.

Vichy France replaced the nation’s traditional motto, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”, (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”) with “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”). At the rate the Trump 2.0 strongman cult is progressing, virtually unopposed, don’t be surprised if our “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one”) is changed to “E pluribus me” (“Out of many, me”).