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As a historian and university professor currently living in New York, I am accustomed to thinking in terms of possibilities and relationships, looking for causal connections and inquiring into consequences. I know how, historically, democratic societies have slid into the authoritarian abyss – or else they were intentionally pushed into it by quite specific people and interest groups under quite specific circumstances. I also know that the present is historically still up for grabs, that no outcomes are inevitable, and that there are very few unstoppable, irreversible developments. And I am one of those people who believe that most human beings strive to lead lives free of fear, in peace and comfort.
»Historically, democratic societies have slid into the authoritarian abyss – or else they were pushed.«
In August of 2000, I moved to the United States for the first time to study contemporary history at a small Midwestern college. This was during the election thriller pitting Al Gore against George Bush jr. the outcome of which hinged on a mere 537 votes out of the nearly 6 million cast. Those events helped me get to know and understand the USA’s political system. The worst that anyone could image at the time was that Bush might be re-elected despite the Supreme Court’s having handed him the election, regardless of his illegal war against Iraq, and despite the failures of his administration after Hurricane Katrina. And that is exactly what came to pass in 2004.
And now precisely the same thing has happened again, although – very likely – with incomparably more far-reaching consequences. In spite of – or actually because of – his fascistic, protectionist, and reactionary program, his conduct in the White House, and his defeat in 2020, Donald Trump was re-elected by a narrow yet clear majority. He won not only the Electoral College vote but even the popular vote, with 49.7% of all votes cast.
»Trumpism is not just a movement of the heartland.«
You could get an inkling of this even in liberal Manhattan. Most people I talked to outside of academia said that they »of course« would vote for Trump, since he was simply »better for the economy.« A few of my very engaged and left-wing students announced emphatically that they would not vote at all, and certainly not for Harris »because of Gaza.« When Trump held his final election rally in Madison Square Garden on October 27 (»DREAM BIG AGAIN«) outside the arena there were barely 100 opposition demonstrators, holding up demure banners begging »Please, not Trump.« In fact, there have been plenty of MAGA products in the souvenir shops here in New York – and not just in the wake of the rally. Trumpism is not exclusively a movement of the heartland. It is a broadly popular movement transcending any social and ethnical boundaries and with a truly national reach. Yet here the obvious analogy is not 2004 but 2016, when Trump won the presidency for the first time. The experiences of those years, extending from the anti-Muslim »travel ban« to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and including the last few months‹ discussions of his fascist tendencies, have led many to conclude that literally anything and everything is to be expected this time around. This country, now imagined as a rudderless, drifting ship, is getting a government that »Project 2025« hopes will restore »the Republic to its original moorings.« »Welcome to the real America!« commented one passenger resignedly yet realistically on the train to Washington on the day after the election.
Of course, circles within the Democratic Party have been searching for the causes of Kamala Harris‹ defeat (which, given the extraordinary circumstances of her campaign, hardly should be considered a blowout). But the realization that there will in fact be a revolution from the right has led Democratic leaders to adopt a posture that vacillates between mourning and defiance. Protests are small, scattered, and almost inward-looking. Women, especially, are mobilizing under the ambiguous motto »we’ve got us«. In the weeks after the election, friends, colleagues, and students who, before it, did not want to say a word about November 5 or couldn’t talk about anything else wore black for days on end, got sick, and sat with teary eyes through their classes. They feared for the many horrors to come – the horror close at hand of spending the holidays at home in Texas, or the global horror thereafter. Many of them intend to avoid the news until January 19, the day before »day X« when Trump takes office. In between those extremes, there are a few classically optimistic voices: surely it won’t be so bad, just wake me up when it’s over. After all, they continue, America is so rich, diverse, and complex that an authoritarian makeover of the Republic will not succeed...
»People are bracing themselves against the consequences of the scorched earth campaign already announced for educational and cultural policies.«
Meanwhile, citizens‹ initiatives and grassroots action plans from the period around 2016 are being dusted off, networking schemes are in the works, and historical lessons are being debated. Businesses are rethinking their information policies as they affect the visa status of employees, and they are obtaining legal advice in hopes of preventing or at least impeding the forcible deportation of »illegal« people. University administrations promise to be »overprepared« this time. They are setting up advisory councils and task forces as people steel themselves against the institutional, economic, and individual impacts of the scorched earth campaign by the incoming Trump-Vance administration against educational and cultural institutions.
And what about political satire that plays out every evening on America’s television screens? The satirists are trying to stick to humor, yet the »most satanic year in US history« (Saturday Night Live) ended in a mood of deadly serious defiance and a deep sense of responsibility. Kash Patel, a son of Indian immigrants, lawyer, hater of the »deep state« and Trump’s nominee to become the new FBI director, has stated that he intends to imprison the members of the House of Representatives‹ Committee charged with investigating the insurrection of January 6, 2021. In response, America’s most influential late-night comedian, Stephen Colbert, speaking both for himself and his colleagues as the cameras ran, proclaimed: »Oh, really? You see me shake, Kash? Let me help you remember me, OK? I’m the middle-aged, brown-haired, white guy with an 11:30 network show. And I will never bow down to authoritarians!«
And yet the justification for this attitude of both mourning and defiance – and its utter inadequacy – finds its clearest expression in Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter, who had been found guilty of several crimes. The fact that the 46th president decided to take this step even though it flouted his own inner convictions underscores, perhaps more pointedly than everything else that has happened, the severity of the authoritarian threat now facing the USA. A justice system based on the rule of law guarantees its citizens a measured application of punitive power based on judicial discretion. Hunter Biden, too, would have had a right to such discretion, except that his father had to assume that a justice system operating under Trump and committed to retribution would have given Hunter the maximum allowable penalty for his offenses: 25 years in jail. This highly unusual grant of a pardon by a Democratic president is one of the more striking signs of the depth of the crisis confronting the American republic.
In this context it is worth recalling the two basic principles on which every genuinely democratic order depends, according to political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky: Respect for rather than hostility toward political opponents (»mutual toleration«) and restraint in using executive powers (»forbearance«). In the Republican party both principles had become obsolete long before Trump. Instead, ever since the Reagan years that party has been laying the groundwork for a deal with right-wing religious organizations (think of the Heritage Foundation here, for example) to launch a »conservative revolution« against the »long march of cultural Marxism.« Starting January 20, it can put that project into effect, one that the European right has dreamed of since the 1920s.
On the other hand, Democrats in the United States have adhered to those principles longer and more consistently. But that has also had negative consequences, not least that, between 2014 and 2016, Barack Obama failed to prepare the country sufficiently for the dangers of a Trump presidency. Now Biden has followed the Republicans‹ precedent in abandoning at least one of those principles in order to save his son. But then again, he may have realized that one cannot counter this authoritarian menace by relying solely on hitherto cherished principles and methods. »At a certain point you have to stop bringing a melon baller to a knife fight«, as journalist Jonathan Capehart commented on Biden’s unprecedented decision.
For a decade now the MAGA movement has shaped not only the political agenda and culture of the United States; it has also influenced other countries and societies around the world in numerous ways. Many Americans worry about what it might mean concretely that Trump, with his 2024 electoral victory, was able completely to take over one of the two foundational parties of this country. Still, the number of those who do care is clearly too low, as indicated not least by a once-again lower voter turnout rate of just over 60%. As long as the balance is so mixed, there are reasons for confidence and for despair – especially if viewed from the outside, with so many other uncertainties and ongoing crises around the world.
One thing does seem certain on the eve of a second Trump presidency. The question of how liberal societies can push back against illiberal yet democratically legitimated forces is not one for the USA alone to answer. It has become acute in many other democracies as well, many seething with authoritarian tendencies. Anti-authoritarian forces will have to find strategic and programmatic responses without themselves becoming undemocratic. It depends on their success whether liberal democracy on the whole will have a future in the 21st century.