How wrong we were
#302
My Dear Friend of Democracy,
Populists, autocrats and dictators are often laughed at on their way to power.
Especially by the better-off. The academics, the intellectuals. How these populists behave and what they say do not correspond to the habitus and level of knowledge of the educated. Populists are, therefore, often seen as harmless at the beginning of their careers. People believe that they lack IQ, cunning and strategy.
But the real stupid ones are those who think they are particularly clever.
Those who thought years ago that Donald Trump could never become president. Too egocentric to think in long-term strategic terms. Too unimaginative to develop a successful campaign strategy. Too simple-minded not to step into every faux pas that his political opponents throw at him.
How wrong we were!
Because we thought populists were who they claimed to be. As if their habitus and language were their true selves, and not a strategy to gain power. As if the simple and false messages were conviction, not a plan to win votes.
When JD Vance told the story of the lack of freedom in Europe at the Munich Security Conference last weekend and styled himself as a freedom fighter, he did not do so because that is his view of the world but because he knows that only if this story of freedom catches on will he and his clique be able to stay in power in the long term. Americans love the idea of living in freedom. As long as the (especially the white male) majority lives in this idea, Trump and Co. will not have to fear for their power.
The problem with populists is that they are underestimated.
That's how Trump made it to the White House. And even when he was re-elected, people laughed at him. Only now are jaws dropping. Nobody expected this. That someone like Trump would be so capable of learning. That he had learned the lessons from his first term in office. That he knows how to tighten the reins so quickly and so tightly that everyone involved gets dizzy. Trump the clever head. The cunning strategist. Who learned how a populist can become an autocrat.
Now, no one laughs at him anymore. Because there is nothing left to laugh at. Because autocrats have to start showing their true colours. A colour that uses all available means to secure its power. Anyone who stands in his way must expect anything, including imprisonment and death, in an advanced stage of autocracy. Trump and his entourage have embarked on this path. Democracy is now their biggest enemy.
See you in Democracy,
Johannes
📸 Image by Tibor Janosi Mozes from Pixabay
Painful truths that we must all now face. This is the face of raw evil. Massive theft. Epic dehumanization. Global subjugation. And a steady march toward wider and wider genocide— racial, ethnic, gendered, economic, medical, and of course environmental. Everything and everyone we have ever held dear is now at stake. At yesterday’s No Kings Day protest in front of the US Capitol, one of the closing speakers began the Patrick Henry line from the Revolutionary War, “Give me liberty or” — and here the crowd roared back with a readiness and resolve that stunned me — “give me death!”
Our sheltered, far too isolated life in America is waking up to the reality that, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of our taking down a king, we must now summon all of the humanity and Light that our forbears did to denounce, defy, and resoundingly defeat dictatorship, enslavement, fascism, and death that could dwarf all of history’s plagues combined.
Now is our time to come together to stand up, speak truth to power, and act like our very lives depend on crushing this menace. Because they do.
It’s hard to even face the words that you and I are writing.