Trump Politics Rooted In Nazi Germany’s Leading Philosopher
Former Vice President Mike Pence said the other day that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president. Anyone who asks someone else to put them over their oath to the Constitution should never be president again.”
According to the latest trump conspiracy indictment, “co-conspirator 4” said there was no “outcome-determinative” fraud in the 2020 election and that if trump “remained in office nonetheless, there would be ‘riots in every major city in the United States.’ ” To which co-conspirator 4 responded, “Well, that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
In response to the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, Trump, in fact, considered invoking the Insurrection Act which enables the use of the military to suppress civil disorder, insurrection or rebellion. Trump wanted thousands of troops on the streets of Washington and other cities, and he had repeatedly urged top military and law enforcement officials to confront protesters with force. “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump reportedly said. “Crack their skulls!”
As referenced by Pence, Trump did put himself above the constitution and did discuss using the military to suppress civil disorder. These very acts are not aberrations but rather they are the very qualities heartily supported by many of trump’s most rabid followers. They are also rooted in the philosophy of an infamous Nazi advisor whose believed that, in government, the “rule of law” was indistinguishable from the “rule of men.”
After his latest indictments, trump responded on his Truth Social platform that “The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes.”
Trump may not know it but his right wing advisors very likely were aware that he was repeating the logic of law and lawlessness that was voiced in Nazi Germany by Carl Schmitt. It was reflected in trump’s 2016 comment that “I alone can fix” what he claimed was the crisis facing America; and in 2020 when he said that “when somebody is president of the United States, his authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be”; or in 2022 that he had the power to declassify any and all top-secret documents and that his followers should know that “I am your justice, I am your retribution.”
Schmitt argued that effective states need a sovereign leader who is not hemmed in by constitutions, laws and treaties. He said that a truly sovereign president will cut through red tape and take whatever action is necessary.
Schmitt was a vocal critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism, the idea that all people are members of a single community and are world citizens. Cosmopolitanism promotes universal moral standards, establishing global political structures, or developing a platform for mutual cultural expression and tolerance. The same antagonisms are entrenched in trump’s policies, from his plan to withdraw from NATO, his hatred of Muslims, his plan to wall out Mexican immigrants and his support of white supremacy.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that “Schmitt was an acute observer and analyst of the weaknesses of liberal constitutionalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. But there can be little doubt that his preferred cure turned out to be infinitely worse than the disease.”
Schmitt’s philosophy helped the Nazis force through the passage of the Enabling Act of 1933 in March, which changed the Weimar Constitution to allow the “present government” to rule by decree, bypassing both President Paul von Hindenburg, and the German legislature, or Reichstag.
A similar frightening dilemma faces the U.S. today and many have chosen to support trump, and in turn, Schmitt, in supporting claims of unquestionable rule by trump and infallibility in the face of laws.
Schmitt said the ruler wields the only power in times of conflict, as when the Nazis seized power from the faltering Weimar Republic. At such times, the ruler does what is necessary to protect the nation, and can ignore existing laws and rule, according to Schmitt and mimicked by trump.
“The sovereignty of law,” Schmitt declared, “only means the sovereignty of those men who draw up and administer the law.”
Schmitt was born on July 11, 1888, and died on April 7, 1985, at the age of 96. He was known as the “Crown Jurist of the Third Reich”
This year is the 90th anniversary of the day in Cologne, when Schmitt, a widely respected and politically conservative professor of law, signed up for his membership card for the Nazi Party. Schmitt was the 2,098,860th member of the party. The philosophy of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Workers Party or Nazi Party fit neatly with Schmitt’s beliefs.
As a member of the Nazi Party, Schmitt defended the Nuremberg Laws, which revoked the citizenship of German Jews. He also referred to Jews as “racial parasites” and praised the brilliance of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s hodge podge autobiography and guide to his intentions of world dominance.
Schmitt supported the party in the burning of books by Jewish authors, celebrated the burning of “un-German” and “anti-German” material, and called for a much more extensive purge, to include works by authors influenced by Jewish ideas. His theories became the ideological foundation of the Nazi dictatorship and a justification of the Fuhrer state.
Schmitt was the chairman of an October 1936 law teachers’ convention in Berlin when he demanded that German law be cleansed of the “Jewish spirit” and that all Jewish scientists’ publications be marked with a small symbol.
Today, Republicans across the country are backing the latest iterations of anti-Semitism, and Christian nationalism through widespread book banning in libraries and schools.
In June 1934, Schmitt was appointed editor-in-chief of the Nazi newspaper for lawyers, the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung. A month later, he published, “The Leader Protects the Law,” a justification of the political murders of the “Night of the Long Knives” with Hitler’s authority as the “highest form of administrative justice.” The Night of the Long Knives was a series of political extrajudicial executions in 1934 that Hitler ordered to consolidate his power and ostensibly to stop an alleged imminent coup by the SA, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
The parallels with the politics of trump and trumpism are too strong to ignore, specifically with the right wing’s widespread twisting of the facts surrounding the Capitol insurrection by trump supporters who claim it was an act of patriotism that was inflamed by FBI informants.
Schmitt said that for government to be capable of decisive action it must include a dictatorial element. The dictatorial rule is required under a so-called, “state of exception” which, according to Schmitt, frees the executive from any legal restraints to its power that would normally apply. Through the state of exception, Schmitt included all types of violence under the authority of Hitler, leading to the principle that “The leader defends the law.”
Schmitt’s “state of exception” doctrine has enjoyed a revival in the 21st century. Formulated 10 years before the 1933 Nazi takeover of Germany, Schmitt claimed that urgency justified special executive powers, suspension of the rule of law and derogation of legal and constitutional rights.
In other words, trump is acting under a state of exception, as defined by Schmitt.
To understand the clear line from Schmitt to trump, it is important not to fall in the trap known as “Godwins Law,” a term that originated on Usenet. Godwin’s Law states that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law has effectively forfeited the argument.
Schmitt was captured in 1945 by American forces and spent a year in an internment camp. He returned to his home and never regretted his role in the creation of the Nazi state.
Trump’s political philosophy, a mirror of Schmitt’s philosophy, has found enormous support in right wing circles, particularly in the media. These are some of the media comments a day after trump’s most recent indictment.
Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have gone “full banana republic.”
“Now, Garland and the other Democrats at the DOJ (Department of Justice), they’re now trying to jail Joe Biden’s chief political opponent, all in the lead-up to an election. And they want Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his life,” Hannity said.
Fox News host Jesse Watters predicted that trump will eventually “unleash hell” on his political enemies following his third criminal indictment.
“This is only the beginning of politicians putting other politicians — and their families — in prison. Sad we had to go down this road, but this is where we are and now we have to finish it,” Watters said.
Fox News’ Mark Levin said Special Counsel Jack Smith has started “a war against the country.”
“Jack Smith has destroyed our electoral system. That’s what he’s accomplished. I’ll say it. Nobody else will. Jack Smith has destroyed our electoral system,” Levin said.
Newsmax contributor Dick Morris claimed that to vote against trump is to “endorse a dictatorship.”
Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty said trump will be on a “four-year revenge tour” if he’s elected.
Far-right online personality and former bounty hunter Stew Peters called for “EXTREME accountability and SEVERE justice for those complicit in selling out this country.” He said a “Nuremberg type tribunal against members of the government” is necessary to prosecute “crimes against humanity and treason against the United States of America.” The Nuremberg tribunal involved trials of high ranking Nazis arrested after World War II.
Another right wing radio host, host Dan Bongino said, “The republic is now officially dead. They are coming for you next. These people aren’t dicking around. They’re not effing around. These people are now full-blown tyrants.”
Right-wing talk show host Steve Deace tweeted that the reason for the indictments and convictions is so that Democrats can claim they are “running against ‘convicted felon Trump.’” He claimed that the point of the indictment is to “interfere with the 24 election.”
Radio host Mark Levin posted, “Un-elected reckless prosecutors and un-elected Democrat DC grand jurors are trying to decide the presidential election.”
Benny Johnson of Turning Point USA, a far right, pro-trump organization, suggested that the indictment shows that trump did have a basis to claim the 2020 election was rigged.
“If they really did beat Donald Trump so badly in 2020 — why are they psychotically lashing at him with ***everything*** they have to keep him from running in 2024? Logically — you’d assume they would just let him run, right? Easy win right? Beat him again right? Now you see,” Johnson tweeted.
Former Trump administration official Peter Navarro claimed on Newsmax that the indictment is part of “a coordinated effort to stop Donald John Trump from running successfully for president.’” He said the investigation is nothing more than a “seditious conspiracy that Jack Smith is running in coordination with Joe Biden and the White House and others in the deep administrative state.”
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a co-conspirator in the current indictment, was on Newsmax and said that “I would seriously consider indicting them for 18 USC section 241, for indicting a man for exercising his right of free speech. That’s a conspiracy against rights.”
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Smith “should be indicted for stupidity” and that Smith has a “disreputable habit of bringing politically-driven prosecutions by contorting the law and mangling the evidence.”
Former California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, now CEO for trump’s Truth Social network, said on Newsmax, that the Department of Justice and FBI have long been after trump.
“Do we have to remind people of the Mueller hoax? Do we have to remind people of the Ukraine impeachment hoax and how the DOJ and FBI hid information from the Congress while we were doing impeachment of President Trump over a phone call to Ukraine?” Nunes said.
The “Mueller hoax” refers to the investigation of alleged links between Russia and trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted, convicted or gotten guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies, including top advisers to President Trump, Russian spies and hackers with ties to the Kremlin. He did not conclude that trump colluded with Russia and said his investigation did not have the authority to indict a sitting president.
Trump’s 2019 phone call to Ukraine involved a conversation between trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in which trump pressured Zelensky to find politically damaging information about Joe Biden.