Trump’s Dictator Morality

Why he and his followers will never feel guilty

Many people who oppose Donald Trump, myself included, continue to watch him with a weird combination of fascination and horror. We are fascinated by the sheer boldness of his lies, confused by his constant changing of position, and horrified by what he is doing to the country, our institutions, and ultimately democracy itself. We wonder, “How can he do this?” We think he must be immoral, dishonest, even evil. How does a man like this sleep at night or face himself in the morning? And for most people I know, that’s precisely where they get stuck.

These questions go even deeper when we shift the focus to his millions of followers, die-hards, fans, and supporters. “How can you support him?” we ask our acquaintances, family members, and sometimes friends. What about the 28 women he assaulted? What about Ukraine and the corruption of his office? What about the big lie of the election? What about stonewalling everything that might expose him? The answers come back mimicking his denials, his accusations that others are lying, his claims of lack of fairness. Once in a while, someone says: “I like his policies.” Nonetheless, we on the other side ask ourselves: How can this possibly be? How can people reconcile themselves to this, deny the reality, acquiesce to the manufacture of false facts? Are they gullible fools? Flawed people? How do they face that inner contradiction?

Richard Overy’s insightful book, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, provides insights in Chapter 7: The Moral Universe of Dictatorship. He opens the chapter with the question most of us on the other side never ask, and therefore limit our understanding: What in the world makes these dictators think they are right? Overy goes on to assert that all those inner conflicts we sense in dictators are not conflicts to them. As Overy says:

“It is unlikely that Stalin and Hitler spent sleepless nights tortured by the thought of the millions victimized at their behest. In neither case did the dictators display any outward doubts about the justice of their particular cause.”[1]

Stalin was dedicated to the great vision of communism, while Hitler focused on the purity of the German race. In both cases, these became the ultimate values to be supported by society by any means necessary. They replaced the older systems of rights and laws — the Tsarist system in Russia and the German legal tradition in Germany. Communism and Nazism were very clear about this. Overy opens the chapter with these quotations:

“Our ethics are an instrument for destroying the old society of exploiters; a struggle for the consolidation and the realization of Communism is the basis of Communist ethics.”

— V Lenin

Goring “The primary thing is not the formal law but the race; law and the life of the race are not to be separated from each other.”

— Hermann Goring

Both quotations reveal the conscious purpose of replacing an older set of moral principles and values with an ultimate value of its own. Also in both systems, the enemy was western liberal thought — its values, principles, and legal traditions. These traditions reflected Bourgeois interests in the Soviet Union and they represented the oppressive West that humiliated Germany in WWI and its aftermath. Both dictatorships constructed a new moral universe in the name of a new vision of national greatness, and both saw the old system as fundamentally destructive to that vision.

What is happening today with Trump is directly analogous to the paths these countries took to dictatorship. “Make American Great Again” is not yet a full-blown moral universe, but it has the makings of it. The “deep state” in the alt-right Trump world is the embodiment of western liberal thought — the values, principles, and legal traditions — that MAGA world believes created the downfall of America. Like Stalin and Hitler before him, Trump and his alt-right world have their bogeyman in the deep state. Trump’s first term proved that many career public servants hold the Constitution — another artifact of western liberal thought — above the notion of Trump’s making America great again. It also proved that Trump will stop at nothing to employ his vision of American greatness.

As Overy describes concerning Stalin and Hitler, Trump likely experiences none of the sleepless nights worrying about those who will be victimized on account of his vision. “American greatness,” whatever that means, is the guiding moral principle. Much like the predecessor notions of “Communist ethics” and the purity of the German race, MAGA can be used by the entire population of supporters as a moral compass. When it is supported by a universe of alternative facts, from inauguration crowd size to the assertion of a stolen election, this alternative moral compass can drive public behavior — just as it did on January 6th. That is, it energizes behavior far beyond Trump’s own or even that of his government, and just as it does for Trump, it absolves the practitioners of their moral responsibility for the outcomes and effects — at least, in their minds.

During the first year of the Biden administration, we can see the clash between these two moral universes on full display. The justice department is attempting to prosecute and hold accountable the January 6 rioters — DOJ represents the principles of western liberal democracy and the rioters represent the MAGA belief system. The same is true with the house committee investigating that same day — the committee bases its approach on the principles of western liberal democracy and Trump and others block it in defense of their greater vision. Both of these situations reflect the same conflict seen in the impeachment proceedings. It is one morality against another — more similar to a clash of civilizations right here within our own country than it is a negotiation among people of similar agreed principles.

And so we come to the point. We cannot count on moral guilt, nor on the ability to reason with these people, because the ultimate values are not shared. This is a departure from the norm Americans experienced for decades. We had a set of shared American goals. Reasonable people could disagree on how to get there, and we often did, but we would move in a somewhat inevitable fashion toward the fulfillment of those goals. Whether we were led there by Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, America’s interests were consistent. Today, the fundamental split is beyond party or political perspective — it is a split in ultimate aims. It is a division on the definition of American interests. On one side are the western liberal values of Rule of Law, private property, and individual sovereignty; on the other are the MAGA values, so far largely undefined, but clearly centered around white majority rule with Christian overtones and allowing for “any means necessary” to achieve American greatness. Lies, alternative facts, roughing up opposing protesters, supporting racists, and party loyalty over and above constitutional loyalty are some of what we see in the public sphere as “any means necessary.” “Stop the Steal” and January 6th take that ethic emanating from Trump and move it into individual action and participation. And just as in Germany throughout the 1930s, this MAGA value system inspires independent actions such as those of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, WI, the right-wing agitators who went to Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed, and the rise of law enforcement dedicated to a law of their own making rather than Constitutional Rule of Law.[2]

It is not hard to imagine edits to the Lenin and Goring quotes above that would look like this:

Lenin’s version by a Trumpian:

Our ethics are an instrument for destroying the deep state; a struggle for the consolidation and the realization of American Greatness is the basis of MAGA ethics.

Goring’s version by a Trumpian:

The primary thing is not the formal law but American greatness; law and the achievement of American Greatness are not to be separated from each other.

The misgivings Americans sense is this change in the moral universe. Far more than mere politics, America’s alt-right movement is giving voice and strength to different ultimate aims and different toleration of heinous acts to achieve those aims. We are losing the ability to talk with one another because of that difference. Neither side sees a possibility of compromise, and I would argue that certainly, those supporting Rule of Law cannot back down. The loss of Rule of Law is the loss of freedom. Even Friedrich Hayek knew that.[3] America is careening down a very slippery slope.

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For more on this:

Gadwall Jackson

Writing the unspeakable truth

References

[1] Overy, R. The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, p265. Norton, 2004.

[2] “He Calls Himself the ‘American Sheriff.’ Who’s Law Is He Following?” Politico Magazine, Mark Lamb https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/15/mark-lamb-arizona-constitutional-sheriff-elections-republicans-514781

[3] Hayek, Road to Serfdom, University of Chicago, 1944.