Weekly Mind Dump: "Gleichschaltung" - or How Trump is Consolidating Power

The voluntary phase is over. Next up: the coercive phase.

Week of 1/12-1/18, 2025:

Bill Gates is the latest billionaire to genuflect before Donald Trump. After a three-hour dinner at Mar-a-Largo with the president-elect, Gates said, “You know, I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”

Specifically, he was encouraged by Trump’s “excitement” about seeking cures for polio, HIV and other diseases — yes, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as head of Health and Human Services — the man who has stated that vaccines cause autism, Jews and Chinese are naturally immune from COVID, that the CIA hatched a program to impose totalitarianism by unleashing a global pandemic and whose wrong-headed advice to Samoan authorities contributed to 80 measles-caused deaths, mostly children.

I never thought of Bill Gates as a stupid man. He’s not. In fact, he thinks, by kissing Trump’s ring, he’s being smart. He’s simply just one in an extending line of powerful people who are obeying in advance, falling in line as the new MAGA regime comes to power. One corporate CEO after another bows and scrapes before Trump at Mar-a-Lago following his electoral victory, shelling out tribute in the form of million-dollar cash payouts for his inauguration and to the Trump presidential library fund (Gates, who gave $50 million to the Harris campaign, apparently has not forked over cash tribute to the Trump camp). Trump’s inauguration fund has garnered a record-breaking $250,000,000.

The news media are following suit. Just before the November election, Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, nixed editorials prepared by their editorial staffs to endorse Kamala Harris for president. The Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after her editor refused to publish a satirical cartoon she submitted depicting Bezos and other media and tech barons kneeling before Donald Trump offering sacks of cash. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit, one most legal experts believe it could have easily won. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, heretofore scathingly critical of Trump, made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago in early December for a meeting with the president-elect which he described as “extremely cordial.” Most recently, CNN exiled Trump-critical veteran journalist Jim Acosta from prime time to midnight.

This collective falling in line before an autocrat is what the Nazis called “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. Conversely, those shunned from the regime or society were subject to Ausschaltung, or switching off. Think about it. If you were a corporate CEO, a media head or other societal leader, how far would you go in criticizing a strongman regime to the extent of risking being shut off the main circuit? So, you could call Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Iger, Gates, et al. either pragmatists or cowards. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you do?

Conservative media have long known the score. Sinclair Broadcasting’s CEO David Smith once told Trump that his stations were “here to deliver your message.”

Harking back to 1930s Germany, bear in mind industrialists and major media players fell in line, one by one, in endorsing Adolf Hitler, whom many viewed as a buffoonish figure they could control. Media titan Alfred Hugenberg, who owned half of Germany’s newspapers, gave Hitler positive news coverage in his conservative-friendly publications. He also connected Hitler with wealthy economic leaders who then helped fund the Nazi Party, key to its eventual ascendance to power.

So, with the voluntary obeying in advance phase over, will a coercive phase follow after Trump’s swearing-in?

I won’t be unduly alarmist and predict a full-blown MAGA Reich will be emplaced as of 12 noon, January 20. But I do call to attention, again, the radical right’s Project 2025, a detailed road map to impose full-blown fascist rule, starting with politicizing the civil service, neutering the judicial system, and persecuting foes.

The catalyst toward potential autocratic rule will be Trump’s planned shock-and-awe mass deportation program, starting on “Day One” — essentially a plan for ethnic cleansing via extreme measures in line with Project 2025 and the white nationalist racism that pervades the MAGA movement.

Should opposition to the round-ups grow, do not rule out coercive countermeasures, starting with invocation of the Insurrection Act, which would federalize Red state National Guards and deploy them to Blue states to round up migrants and put down protesters. Trump’s thuggish “Border Czar,” Tom Homan has even threatened to arrest Blue state governors and mayors who stand in the way. Of course, Trump’s stated desire to also deploy active duty military units to join such measures would face court rulings on constitutionality.

Georgetown University history professor Thomas Zimmer lays out succinctly what we face:

Will the Trump regime’s malevolence yet again be tempered by its rank incompetence? Trump is still erratic and lazy. Many of his nominees are unqualified. But they are also willing executioners of MAGA extremism and will have more competence and preparation around them.

If the recent trajectory of the Right is any indication, every crisis situation only heightens the sense of being under siege, legitimizing calls to hit harder, more aggressively. There’s always permission to escalate, hardly ever to pull back.

One thing is clear: in contrast to Trump’s first administration, Gleichschaltung is well advanced this time round — to a frightening degree, in my view — thus making it easier to control pillars of society and impose autocratic rule. The brakes are essentially off.

This is what half of Americans voted for, and they’ll get it “good and hard” as H. L. Mencken warned. But so will the rest of us.