German director Leni Reifenstahl’s seminal Triumph des Willens propaganda film from 1933, charting the rise of Hitler may need to be dusted off, if reports seeping out from the Trump-loyalist MAGA wing of the Republican party prove to be true.

It seems Trump and his allies are crafting something that reeks of dictatorship. The plan is to centralise more power by increasing the president’s authority over every aspect of federal government that now operates independent of political interference.

As well as taking over independent government agencies the plan requires getting rid of the present nonpartisan civil service, which currently provides objective continuity between changes in political direction at the top—as happens now in Britain—purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies. 

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”—Russell T. Vought (Trump’s Office of Management & Budget).

Vought now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, who envision a president who cannot be checked by the Congress or courts. Trump’s desire to fill that role is neither new, nor surprising. Political observers in the US have remarked on this since early in Trump’s administration. But what is new is the willingness of Republicans to condone such an authoritarian power-grab. 

What lies behind all this seems to be “Project 2025.” This coalition of more than 65 right-wing organisations identifying personnel and policies to recommend to both Trump, and to Republicans running in the 2024 US Presidential election. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that spearheaded the Reagan revolution of 1980. 

If Republican senators are worried by growth of the MAGA wing of their party, they have kept remarkably quiet about. At a time when elected leadership should be speaking out against usurpation of the democratic ideals on which America was founded, such silence suggests collusion. This fuels Trump’s ambition. 

Have Republicans actually embraced such radical ideology? It echoes that advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Putin or Hungary’s Orbán. Such leaders argue that the era in which democracy seemed to triumph is over; that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, etc.—weaken a nation by eroding the patriarchy and Christianity form the foundations of traditional society. They call for “Christian” democracy, which justifies governments enforcing their beliefs. 

Its blueprint is how Florida governor Ron DeSantis has gathered extraordinary power into his own hands, using it to mirror Orbán’s corruption of real democracy. Among other acts, DeSantis has:

• banned abortion after six weeks.
• banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation.
• made it easier to sentence someone to death.
• let people with neither training nor permits to carry guns.
• banned colleges and businesses from conversations about race
• exerted control over state universities
• made it harder for his opponents to vote

It is a legacy that goes Suella Braverman one better. He always goes one better than her. After rounding up migrants and shipping them off to other states, DeSantis is now calling for using “deadly force” on migrants crossing unlawfully.

Because institutions in the US are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are being used against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the FBI and the Department of Justice are both “weaponised” against Republican principles. It matters not one whit there’s no evidence of bias: the fact such institutions support democracy means ipso facto hostility towards right-wing policies. 

“Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”—Trump loyalist John McEntee, in New York Times

The roots of the Republicans’ apparent rejection of democracy lie back when Roosevelt embraced regulation of business, provided a basic social safety net, and built infrastructure. That system ushered in a period lasting to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced. 

Recently, at the Turning Points Action Conference in Florida, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—a reliable fount of Trumpian cant—compared Biden’s Build Back Better plan to LBJ’s Great Society from the 1960’s. This had invested in education, medical care and welfare. She noted that, under Biden, the US had made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.” 

For once, she was right—but she meant it as an insult and rallying cry.

Greene regards all of it as “socialism,” Yet, not just LBJ and FDR, but Republicans like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower agreed that investing in programmes that enable working people to prosper is the best way to strengthen both economy and nation. 

Luckily Greene’s and her MAGA buddies do not seem to be sweeping America as they hoped. A poll by policy pollster KFF found that 80% of Americans like Social Security, 81% like Medicare, and 76% like Medicaid. A majority of both main political parties agree. 

This provides reassurance to us fans of the USA that the lunatics are not about to take over the Congress asylum, because extremist rants emanating from the likes of Trump or Greene seldom emanate from Joe Sixpack of Chippewa Falls, who—thankfully—is more sensible than such folk as manage to get elected.

Acknowledgement: Much material for this blog was taken from HGether Cox Richardso’s Letter from an American newsletter sub well worth taking out to stay abreast of US politics.

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