September 10, 2025

To the Editor:

Since Hitler and Stalin threw the world into chaos and ultimately the deadliest of all wars, scholars have studied how democracies fail and autocracies prevail. The great pioneer in this field was Hannah Arendt, who fled the Nazi regime herself and devoted much of her career to explaining how good people can be convinced to follow evil leaders. As she noted, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

Please note: My argument is not that Trump IS Hitler, only that he is following the same pattern that an important field of scholarship has being describing in case study after case study for the past 80 years. 

First, wannabe autocrats turn political opponents into “enemies within” who must be destroyed, not just defeated at the polls.  (“You won’t have a country anymore;” “No one is safe;” “They’ll stab you in your kitchen,” etc.)  To weaponize fear and demonize opponents all such powermongers target the same people: the press, historians, lawyers, college professors, scientists, theologians, even entertainers, anyone who might help people make “the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false.” People unite against external enemies; they divide to combat “the enemy within,” (“radical left lunatics.”) For that, they will allow a wannabe autocrat to destroy democracy and assume absolute power based on fictional threats.

As Trump follows this playbook, most of us have pretended it is normal behavior for politicians or that it’s just a temporary challenge to our otherwise safe democracy or even that he is the hero of the hour.  He began his career on a lie (“Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud”), proceeded to undermine the integrity of elections (“The system is rigged”), convinced a segment of the public he will protect them (“Only I can save this nation”), and is now moving to consolidate his power.  It’s time to face the fact that this is not normal.

In times past, the Texans I knew were too independent minded to take orders from a wannabe dictator, but Trump has now demanded that our state “deliver” five more loyal Representatives by re-gerrymandering our congressional districts. Apparently because Democrats are “destroying our country,” our congressmen must represent Trump, not Texans.  Texas Republicans didn’t even pretend they were drawing districts to better represent our state; instead, they proudly declared they were manipulating districts to consolidate one man’s power to rule over us.  Trump even shamelessly declared, “We [not Texans] are entitled to five more seats.” Fiction trumps truth. 

As Hannah Arendt noted many years ago, the aim of autocrats “has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” Texas Republicans have just verified her political theory.