"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Or will they? You see, this is what I don’t understand about MAGA congressmen. If they make Donald Trump their dictator, they are abdicating their own power and giving it to him. How is this in their best interests?
Well, two things:
One, that is a very alarmist view of Trump. He liked slinging around executive orders, but he had neither the ambition nor the audacity to be a Hitler. It simply isn’t realistic to think he’ll execute his second term by toppling the Republic, he doesn’t have visions like that, even if many people have visions like that for him (including Mike Lindel, somewhat hilariously, with his apparent attempt to get Trump to do a false flag and establish emergency powers).
Second, look at history. Inevitably, some people who release leopards do get their faces eaten, but becoming an executor of a fascist regime isn’t a loss of power, it’s a change in title at worst and, if anything, something of an increase in power. Imagining Trump becomes a fascist autocrat, that doesn’t actually mean that his whim is enough to unilaterally move things however he likes, and that is true of every leader in history. The reason for this is that his power, his authority, doesn’t come from himself, it comes from the class (or classes, historically) that support him, so he needs to make sure to keep them on his side or they will absolutely just kill and replace him. The petty Congressmen that support him know this, and are fine with working in a paradigm where they benefit from his support and are left with a broad range of things that he views as acceptable (since Trump won’t try to micromanage the whole country) in which to exert their personal agendas as they see fit.
But again, Fuhrer Trump is a fantasy. Maybe Tom Cotton poses such a threat, but Trump does not.
Does this all make sense?
Ummm there definitely is evidence against you. First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done, but we’ve seen the plans for Project 2025 to get around a lot of this.
Second, we’ve seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power.
Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.
If any of this is true, it should lead to less power for congressmen.
There is quite a lot that the President can do independently using Executive Orders. Even tasks that, on paper, require congressional approval can be subverted, and you can look at the US’s record of entering undeclared wars as evidence of that.
Beyond that, see what I already said about how there’s no such thing as an autocrat.
These are people who would do the best in an imaginary Fuhrer Trump political machine. Think of it like getting promoted to a bigger, more powerful Freedom Caucus.
People have been talking about him admiring dictators before he was elected and all throughout his first term. There’s nothing new here, no evidence that suggests something has changed.
I promise you it’s just hysteria. So there’s a chance of something beneficial happening in this conversation, I want you to just take note of this conviction you have that Trump will be Hitler and then, if he is elected, just remember it as he blunders his way through being racist and doing war crimes just the same as he did before with no particular change besides Vance leading a new rhetorical tact.
No, I won’t be doing a mirror version of this exercise. I’m a communist, so if I’m wrong and he’s a neo-neo-Nazi, I get the wall anyway and it’s no harm done.