What unites Trumpism with all the other isms of every age is the demand for authority.
What makes authority attractive is that it seems safe. It feels like unity. It lets you believe that you’re protected from threats. In a time of rapid, accelerating change, with “experts” questioning whether people are even necessary, that’s attractive.
Nationalism does its magic based on the place you live, and who your parents were. Communism and capitalism do it based on economic class. Religions base it on shared values.
Democrats dismiss demands for unquestioned authority as immature, even childish. It is child-like behavior, but that just means it’s natural. Childishness is something different, acting out in the name of nothing but ego. An authoritarian leader may act in a childish way, bullying followers into believing falsehoods, but the followers are childlike.
Calling for democracy is difficult, because it means calling for uncertainty. Democracy demands acknowledging that your argument may not be followed. It is an adult approach to life, but we all have difficulty being an adult when our lives and livelihood are on the line.
The call to authority is global. Every country now has an authoritarian movement, an authoritarian leader, their own mini-Trump. In the Netherlands, where I was last month, it’s Geert Wilders, who has bleached his hair since he was in his early 30s and who identifies immigrants, specifically Muslims, as the deep threat to society.
The Real Danger
The rise of a dictator who demands followers believe 10 lies before breakfast, forces democracy to discipline itself in ways that appear authoritarian. Hard choices must be made. There’s a strong temptation to leave unpopular groups to the mob, knowing that trampling them will just whet the mob’s appetites, but hoping the mob will be too distracted tearing the victims apart to chase you quite so avidly.
The natural result is to create division at precisely the moment when unity is required. The result can be catastrophic defeat, one that a smart authoritarian, or a smart authoritarian movement, can use to maintain power even when their views are clearly in the minority.
This is the prize the follower covets, and it’s why authoritarianism is so dangerous. To know you’re lying, that you’re following a liar, that you’re hurting your neighbor, but you do it anyway, because it seems to benefit you, that’s the point when the toady becomes the bully, when the good German becomes the Good German. It’s happened everywhere, at every point in human history.
It could be happening right here, right now.
Growing Up
Democracy can be regained after it has been lost. Authoritarians tend to overthrow themselves. They wind up being pulled bodily out of sewer pipes. Given enough rope they hang themselves, often in fights with other authoritarians.
Winning requires more than confronting the machine. It requires that democrats build machines of their own, dedicated to adult behavior and mutual respect. It requires democrats to access the childlike, authoritarian mindset of others, and find ways to convince some adversaries they’re only hurting themselves.
Most of all, fighting authoritarians requires courage, a willingness to take casualties, even to become a casualty yourself. It requires patience, and its own kind of faith in the better angels, even when such goodness isn’t readily apparent.
Every nation has faced this threat, and most are facing it now. But the most important thing to remember, the most adult thing to remember, is that there is no such thing as “once and for all.” There are setbacks, there are losses, but the struggle for growth is continuous, and victory is always possible.
