Washington DC in 2025 is a far cry from Berlin in 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power. Fragile though it seems, American democracy is far more firmly rooted in the national psyche today than Germany’s young republic was back then.
But there are some unsettling parallels. Hitler was indicted and jailed in 1923 for an attempted coup in Munich. Donald Trump was indicted in 2023 (but not jailed) on charges of conspiring to overturn an election he had legitimately lost. Hitler liked military parades and mass rallies; so does Trump.
Both men are known for their preference for direct action over due process, institutional government and democratic outcomes. Those preferences show clearly their disdain for such concepts, even (in Trump’s case) after a lifetime spent enjoying the freedoms and protections they offer.
Hence the 2025 Trump revolution. And a revolution it most certainly is: a radical root-and-branch restructuring of government, thrusting aside all the above democratic principles and many more besides, which Simon Bevilacqua eloquently identified and dissected in The Mercury 10 days ago.
Trump’s revolution seeks to reverse America’s first revolution of the 1780s, a political experiment founded on the consent of the governed and the rule of law. The public consent for Trump’s action is debatable – he won re-election by the fifth smallest margin of the 32 presidential elections since 1900 – but no-one can deny that the rule of law has been tossed aside.
Trump has made such concepts seems almost quaint, relics of a bygone age ruled by the US Constitution and three co-equal arms of government: congress, president and judiciary. The congress was to make laws, the president was to implement them, and the judiciary was to ensure the laws were applied fairly and equitably. This president seeks to control it all.
At stake is far more than the well-being of the United States. At the end of World War II 80 years ago, aiming to prevent states like Hitler’s Germany from going rogue, the US and its allies set up NATO and other military alliances. They also created the United Nations, centrepiece of a network of bodies seeking to even out the global playing field for all nations and people.
Every imaginable international concern – finance, trade, commerce, law and justice, public health, climate and environment, communication, food and other aid, displacement, refugee protection… you name it – came within the purview of one or other of these bodies.
Multilateralism in all its forms is in Trump’s crosshairs. Like all grand experiments (including the US constitution) this vast and complex network has many flaws and failings, but the global forums it offers are essential components in the perennial quest for world order.
Multilateral diplomacy recognises that some nation-states are more powerful than others, an inequality that’s reflected in the structure of the UN. But fundamental to the UN charter is the principle that rules and obligations are equally binding on all members, including superpowers such as the United States.
Equality among nations is anathema to a president who twice came to power on a promise to make America great again. The MAGA theme is based on the same simple notion of greatness employed by dictators down the ages – nothing positive or profound, just “do as I say”. That message underpins everything the US has been doing at home and abroad since Trump’s inauguration.
The frantic pace of change from day one of this administration clearly aims to dominate the news cycle, not just in the US but globally, by flooding it with decrees and a running commentary on social media, while surrogates work feverishly behind the scenes implementing those decrees and drafting new ones.
The shock tactic is working. Is it legal for Trump’s “Deep State” cleanup team under billionaire Elon Musk to raid government offices, seize documents and sack officials? Or for Trump to order the Department of Justice to drop an advanced corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’s help to jail illegal migrants? Almost certainly not, but Trump and his people simply don’t care.
The Adams case saw seven top Department of Justice lawyers in Manhattan resign their posts last week because the Trump demand would set what the chief prosecutor called “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent”: putting loyalty to the President ahead of her duty to uphold the law.
Trump’s example affects everybody. Fear, admiration, ambition, profit, prejudice, territorial ambition… any number of negative sentiments are pulling the pernicious influence of Trumpism across national borders. The question for us all is, how far are we prepared to go in defence of civil society and simple human decency?