'For every thug bashing heads in an insurrection there are those in suits paving the way': authoritarian expert
August 14, 2023
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed directly at the Republican Party leaders for paving the way for Donald Trump's tyranny.
She made the comments while part of an indictment special hosted by MSNBC's Ari Melber and NYU Law Professor Andrew Weissmann, who also served as Robert Mueller's senior prosecutor.
At the close of the special, Melber addressed "serious democracy questions" that were addressed by former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) last month when she alleged GOP party officials are violating their oaths to the Constitution.
“But the reality that we face today as Republicans — as we think about the choice in front of us — we have to choose. Because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution," said Cheney.
It's a sentiment that Ben-Ghiat addressed, saying that laws are important, but it's also leaders who are attempting to defy the law and normalize breaking them.
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"Lawyers are really important now that autocrats come to power through elections a lot of the time," she explained. "So, you have to have lawyers and other bureaucrats working really hard to undermine and subvert democratic institutions in processes. Then if they get to power, you have lawyers involved along with their other collaborators in states and exceptions, states of emergency, writing the laws so you can justify all the crimes you have."
She cited the Nazi leader who developed the idea of "states of exception," which give leaders the excuse to be able to change rules at the last minute to suppress elections while appearing to still hold them.
"Today, you don't ban elections; you keep them going," she explained. "You declare a state of emergency and things that like, so not as many people can vote, or you preemptively justify having dissidents thrown into jail just while the election is going on. And so the law is weaponized and used. It's like dosed out, the repression, and that's how they maintain themselves in power while seeming to claim that they have a semblance of democracy."
Weissmann cited lawyers John Eastman and, lesser-known Kenneth Chesebro, who came up with the fake electors plot.
"This idea that in order in history for people like Donald Trump to subvert democracy, they need to have that sort of legal facade of legitimacy," he said.
Ben-Ghiat agreed, saying that one of her rules for coups goes back to people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and others.
"It's becoming more and more relevant. For every thug you see bashing a head, in an insurrection, there are people in suits who have prepared the way with legal theories, other theories, order in military uniforms," she said. "But often today, Trump couldn't get the military to play, so we had a civilian army. But there are always people behind the scenes who have prepared it and then are in place if it's successful to, kind of, be the bureaucracy of repression."
At the close of the conversation, she also cited the role of propaganda in Trump's machine.
"I just want to say how successful their information warfare has been," said Ben-Ghiat. "We're not prepared as a democracy to understand fully the effects of the assault of propaganda. Trump is a highly skilled propagandist, as are others around him. It has worked for them."
She cited polls that consistently show 70 percent of Republicans believe Donald Trump won in 2020 and a new CBS News/You Gov poll that said one out of six Americans think the indictments are purely an effort to punish him and keep him from the White House.
"So, this is working for them. When they say, why is he spending so much time on TV instead of preparing the defense, I was like, well, this is his job. Information warfare is the job," she closed.
See the full conversation in the video below or at the link here.
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