After Donald Trump announced that he would run for president on June 15, 2015, Jon Stewart, who had already announced he was leaving The Daily Show, mimicked having an orgasm. He thanked Trump for the comedy gift that would bring joy to his last six weeks as host. Later, a handheld camera panned through the show’s office. The POV camera allowed us to see staff writers leap for joy and launch into action. This was a moment of exigency. Comedy material was coming their way, and they needed to be ready. Trump jokes would fall from heaven, almost fully formed, only needing a little tweaking, maybe nothing more than a setup or a raised eyebrow from Stewart. Of course, Stewart and the writers for The Daily Show assumed we were living in normal times and that Trump’s candidacy would be no more than a fleeting diversion, a few sound bites on the evening news, a side story on page 8, below the fold. They sincerely believed, as I did, as most of us did, that Trump would receive a small percentage of the vote in early primaries. Then, he would drop out, deferring to Jeb Bush or some other analog politician. Trump had, after all, run for president before without being taken seriously.
Stewart and his staff were thinking only of recent history and the Trump of New York tabloids. They were not looking further back. Mussolini and Hitler were also comical, too easy to parody and too easy to dismiss as a threat. Even after Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, many writers, artists, and ministers felt they could work with him This, even though he had made his intentions clear in Mein Kampf, published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926. Trump also had his own book: Trump: The Art of the Deal, ghost-written with Tony Schwartz, published in 2004. He presented himself as an exceptional businessman, loving husband, and compassion father. At the time, his ambitions were more modest. He just wanted to rule Manhattan real estate. He just wanted to be adored.
In 2015, a comparison between Trump and fascists would have been inappropriate, but things have changed. Especially when we acknowledge that Trump, like a mob boss, expresses his wishes as hints rather than direct commands. Leading up to the January 6th insurrection, he asked his followers to come to DC because “it will be wild.” At the rally that morning, he asked them to march on the capitol. He wanted them to demand that Pence do the “right thing” and refuse to certify the 2020 election, which Pence did not have the power to do. Trump never said, “storm the capitol” or “hang Pence,” but his followers internalized his anger as an order from their leader. At their trials, many of the insurgents justified their actions on January 6th by saying they were just following Trump’s orders. The following-orders excuse, which includes following orders that were never given directly, has its own history. In 1170, King Richard II said of Thomas Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” A few of the king’s loyal followers heard this as a command. They assassinated the “turbulent” Becket. In more recent history, at the Nuremberg Trials, prominent Nazis justified their complicity in the Holocaust by saying they were just following orders.
In the early days of Trump’s 2024 campaign, he has already called those Americans who oppose him “communists and vermin.” Many reporters commented on the connection between “vermin” and Hitler’s rhetoric, but Hitler usually fused three terms: Jews, communists, and vermin. Communists were considered Jews because Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky had Jewish ancestors. Most communists, however, were not even remotely Jewish, and Russia has its own history of anti-Semitism. In his dusting off of Hitler’s phrase, Trump left out “Jews.” He probably assumed that segments of his audience would supply the missing word, as if taking a fill-in-the-blank test in high school. He also knew that Christian fundamentalists, many of whom are supporters of Israel, will not fill in the blank. Or, that they will find a way to be simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel. Trump also knew that, if reporters called attention to the gaps in his remarks, as they did, he could say, “I didn’t say that,” or, “I was just joking,” or “That’s fake news.” Sometimes, Trump deflects. Sometimes, he doubles-down. It seems entirely random. But he never admits that he made a mistake. He never apologizes.
After his “communists and vermin” comment, he said that he had never read Mein Kampf, easy to believe but hardly a vindication of his words or values. He has directly said that we need to “rid” ourselves of these “vermin” because they are “polluting our blood.” Those of us who read history are horrified. Those who do not read history see something myth—a strong leader who can fix all of our problems. They never think that they are part of the problem or that the strong-arm tactics will be directed toward them. This is the Big Lie of Totalitarianism—the state will always eradicate someone else, someone who deserves it. This Big Lie was exposed in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, written 1914-1915, published in 1925. Josef K., the protagonists, is put on trial, and he cannot figure out why. (We all need to be rereading Kafka now.) The Big Lie was also exposed in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, the 1940 novel about the trial of Nicholas Rubashov, a loyal member of the Communist Party who is jailed, tortured, and put on trial for no apparent reason, except maybe for being too loyal. In more recent history, we have witnessed Trump turn on some of his most loyal supporters. Loyalty, for Trump, moves in one direction.
Reporters have, of course, commented on Trump’s nods to racism, fascism, and totalitarianism since the beginnings of his 2016 campaign. They have called it “dog whistling.” Over the last seven years, Trump has whistled less and pronounced more. The Heritage Foundation has published “Project 2025,” which details how the next Republican president can “rescue the country from the grip of the radical left.” Apparently written with Trump in mind, it is a blueprint for transitioning into something like totalitarianism. Trump himself has said that he wants to be dictator for a day, just enough time to deal with his enemies. In an interview shortly after Trump said he wanted to be a dictator, Sean Hannity threw him a softball question, as he often does: “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” The easy answer—the easy lie—would have been: “Of course not. I will never abuse the power of the presidency.” But Trump doubled down: “Except for one day.” Later in the interview, he added, “I love this guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, other than one day.’” When in American history has a presidential candidate said, “If elected, I will be a dictator”? Even if for only one day? When in world history has a dictator willingly relinquished power after a day? Or ever?
In commenting on his 2016 campaign and his presidency, reporters often used the word “unprecedented.” Nixon might have wanted absolute power, but he never publicly voiced it. He undermined democracy with dirty tricks, but even he did not hint that he would like to be president for life. Even before the announcement of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015, underneath his efforts to present himself as the new Ronald Reagan, he broke norms. He was already testing the waters, trying out strategies, testing themes and phrases. Over the last seven years, his rhetoric has become less like that of Reagan and more like that of Hitler and Mussolini.
Trump is not Nixon or Reagan, nor is he Hitler or Mussolini. He is a new kind of threat to democracy. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt could have said that Hitler and Stalin were just run-of-the-mill authoritarians. She didn’t. She wanted us to understand something new had appeared in the world. This was, to a large extent, due to new forms of media—the daily newspaper, radio, and film. As Hitler and Stalin found ways to control these media, they went beyond trying to centralize and control as much political power as possible. Hitler and Stalin wanted to control every aspect of an entire culture—this is the ”total” of totalitarianism. Because the world had changed by the 1930s. because the state could use newspapers, radio, and film to shape thought, because bureaucracies had become more efficient and present in our lives, Hitler and Stalin could attempt to control every aspect of the lives of ordinary citizens. They even wanted their “fixed idea,” to borrow a phrase from Melville’s Moby Dick, to become the reality of the entire world. And so they expanded their boundaries. As Arendt has said repeatedly, the totalitarian government decides what reality should be and then they change reality to match their vision.
Even when he was president, Trump did not have this kind of power. Even within the White House, advisors like John Kelly, his chief of staff, talked him off the ledge. If Trump is reelected, Project 2025 provides him with a plan. He will likely avoid hiring “the best people.” He will evolve into something new, not a twentieth-century totalitarian, but something else.
Following Arendt, I am suggesting that we look for the origins of Trumpism but that we also try to see him as he is—a phenomenon that emerged in a time of rapid change. The media of 2024 are even more powerful than the media of 1933. We need to use all of our resources to see the Trump phenomenon as it is, a new moment in history. This doesn’t mean ignoring lessons from history; it just means that we need to read and apply history cautiously. In The Federalist Papers, it is evident that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay read history, especially Roman history. They learned that power and greed corrupt, and they developed a system of government with checks and balances to moderate the worst traits of human nature. They failed to learn that institutions are ultimately just collections of people, and a collection of people can also be corrupted, often easier than individuals. They were writing before political parties had fully formed in the United States and before a political party could become so driven by the adoration for a leader and a vague ideology—more a collection of resentments than a coherent set of policies—that it becomes a cult. The cult of Trump has spread across institutions transforming checks and balances into collaborations. Is this totalitarianism? No. Might it evolve into something like totalitarianism? Yes.
What would bring about this transformation? If we learn from Arendt, Timothy Snyder, and others who have written about totalitarianism, we could say Trump and his followers need three things: thugs in the streets to shut down democratic discourse (now, the “streets” include social networking platforms), a secret police to destroy privacy and make us fear speaking openly even to family and friends (now, this might include algorithms that monitor what we write on our computers in our own homes), and control of the army (now, it is easier to sow discontent among the troops through talk radio, reddit forums, and even church). Trump is operating in an expanded media landscape. In many ways, the cyber reality of media is more real than the world we walk through, the material world of sensations and hard facts. This cyber world will likely preclude the development of totalitarianism, which would mean complete control of all public media, while it simultaneously destroys democracy. I don’t know what Arendt might call this, but I think she would say it is something new. She might call it Alt-Totalitarianism or Digital-Fascism. If we hope to save democracy, we need to understand its origins, but we also need to understand its evolution.
That is what I will be doing here. This is the first essay in a series on rhetoric in the time of Trump. I will be writing specifically about the Trump phenomenon as well as his rhetoric, but I will also be writing about the new political rhetoric of our times, a rhetoric tansformed by digital media. Occasionally, I will branch out into other areas of American culture. I hope you join me. If you subscribe to the free newsletter, you will receive weekly short pieces that are more focused reflections on current events. If you become a paid supporter of this project, you will gain access to longer essays like this, which will go into more depth and lay the foundation for the shorter newsletter posts. I hope you will join me.