Bret Stephens. After lending credence to racist ideas about Jews promoted by white supremacist “race science” last week, he casually perpetuates the myth of the “clean” Wehrmacht by referring to Erwin Rommel as a “worthy adversary” in his latest column./1
As @DavidAstinWalsh points out in this great thread, it takes quite the mixture of laziness and ignorance to not know and understand how thoroughly debunked this myth of the honorable and respectable German fighting force is – and has been for decades./2
@DavidAstinWalsh I’m also struck by the ways in which Stephens evokes Nazism and the Second WW. Think back to August, when he equated someone mocking him on Twitter with Goebbels, and the criticism he received with the dehumanization of Jews as prelude to genocide./3
@DavidAstinWalsh It’s not only uninformed – it’s also entirely opportunistic and in bad faith. Not only does he not have a firm grasp of what he’s talking about, he also clearly doesn’t care. In his columns, history – even that of genocide and total war – is just a convenient prop./4
@DavidAstinWalsh There’s never any deeper reflection inspired by the past to be found, no honest questioning of the present derived from past example. Stephens obviously thinks citing the past makes him sound educated, and evoking Nazism is supposed to give weight to his nonsense. That’s it./5
@DavidAstinWalsh At this point, it’s simply disgraceful for the NYT to hold on to this man. I also want to mention, again, how unconscionable it is for Germany’s leading weekly magazine @DIEZEIT to provide Stephens with an additional platform./6
@DavidAstinWalsh@DIEZEIT It shows how much harm the NYT is causing by championing Stephens, and not just to the political discourse in America. Internationally, Stephens is just known/presented as an acclaimed “NYT columnist,” which guarantees a huge audience. What a joke. /end
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What does the U.S. look like in five or ten years?
I was asked to reflect on this question, alongside other scholars. In a stable democracy, the range of plausible outcomes is narrow. But for America, it now includes complete democratic breakdown.
There should not have been any doubt about the intention of the Trumpists. They desire to erect a form of plebiscitary autocracy, constantly invoking the true “will of the people” while aggressively narrowing the boundaries of who gets to belong and whose rights are recognized.
At every turn, the response to the rise of Trumpism has been hampered by a lack of political imagination – a lingering sense that “It cannot happen here” (or not anymore), fueled by a deep-seated mythology of exceptionalism, progress gospel, and willful historical ignorance.
I wrote about why even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault, why they overestimated democratic resilience – about what America is now, and what comes next?
New piece (link below)
I take stock of where we are after two months of Trumpist rule, explore that space between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy where America exists now, reflect on what competitive authoritarianism means in theory and practice, and recalibrate my expectations.
I revisit “The Path to Authoritarianism,” a crucial essay Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way published in Foreign Affairs in early February. It captured their expectations at the outset of the Trumpist regime – a powerful warning that has nevertheless been overtaken by events already.
People who claim Zelensky was at fault yesterday and should have been more “diplomatic” or “respectful” are either deliberately propagating the Trumpist attack line – or they fundamentally misunderstand what the Trumpist project is and who is now in power in the United States.
There is this pervasive idea that Trump doesn’t really mean it, has no real position, and can therefore be steered and manipulated by tactical and diplomatic finesse; or maybe he’s just a businessman looking for a great deal. But that’s all irrelevant here.
Trump himself has been very consistent about his preference for foreign autocrats, especially Putin, and his (at best) disinterest and siding with Ukraine and (actually) explicit antagonism towards not only Zelensky, but Europe’s democracies more generally.
MAGA, the German Far Right, and the Transnational Assault on Democracy
A reflection on the German far right, Musk’s interference in the German election, and why the MAGA-AfD alliance isn’t nearly as irresistible as they want us to believe.
Some thoughts (and link below):
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The results of the German election are in. On the one hand: About three quarters of the voting public stuck with democratic parties. On the other: The AfD got 20.8 percent of the vote - by far the strongest result the far right has achieved in Germany since 1945.
After it was founded in 2013, the AfD quickly evolved from what was initially mainstream-rightwing-to-reactionary territory into a far-right party that fully rejects liberal democracy and is undoubtedly the political home of Germany’s rightwing extremists.
I wrote a long profile of him: He’s one of the architects of Project 2025, an avowed Christian nationalist, and a radical ideologue of the “post-constitutional” Right
Vought is at war with pluralistic democracy (link below):
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Vought will be singularly focused on bending the entire government machine to Trump’s will. He believes that any check on the power of Donald Trump, who Vought literally describes as a “gift of God,” is illegitimate. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.
Key to understanding Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives err when they try to preserve what is no more.
Russell Vought will be a key figure in the regime, as competent as he is radical. He’s one of the architects of Project 2025, an avowed Christian nationalist, an ideologue of the “post-constitutional” Right.
Key to Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives categorically err when they try to preserve what is no more.
Power now lies with a “permanent ruling class” of leftist elites who control all major institutions of life and especially the “woke and weaponized” agencies of the state. In order to defeat them, conservatives must become “radical constitutionalists” - and take radical action.