The familiar chaos of authoritarianism

FEMA's chief of urban search and rescue, Ken Pagurek, had had enough. He resigned yesterday, specifically citing White House delays in responding to the mass lethality of Texas floods. But "his concerns had been mounting since the start of hurricane season," reported the Times. Changes imposed from above on the Federal Emergency Management Agency were causing "chaos," said Pagurek.

His resignation follows Jeremy Greenberg's, who had led the agency's National Response Coordination Center since 2020, and that of "more than a dozen" other high-ranking FEMA employees. They quit after Trump said in late January that the agency should "go away," and pledged in March to "phase [it] out." More chaos ensued. Earlier this month, Trump flipped, claiming his own people had "fixed it up in no time."

Perhaps Trump's confidence was buoyed by a FEMA spokesperson who, after Greenberg's resignation, assured NPR that "FEMA has the right leadership in place to continue to be laser focused on our mission and are fully prepared for Hurricane season." At the highest level of FEMA's leadership is Acting Director David Richardson, who, noted NPR, has "no emergency management experience." Thus as logic would have it and the Times put it, the agency's future "remains uncertain."

FEMA's assurance that all is well came at roughly the same time that "Chaos in the White House is preventing federal disaster relief from reaching its recipients." The New Republic went on to itemize a cascade of Trump's chaos creation, all of which the White House denies. After all, FEMA had "the right leadership in place to continue to be laser focused" on its mission.

Which brings me to the point of this post: a historical analogy, one both inexact and precise. No two authoritarian regimes have ever been identical in their constituted forms and actions executed. Hitler's Germany was no Italy under Mussolini, Stalin's Russia differed from Mao's China, and Putin's despotic grip is unlike Xi Jinping's throttle. Yet certain elements characteristic of each are recognizable; most notably, of course, the regimes' brutality; less so, their internal chaos.

Still leading the foursome's authoritarian field in the latter category was Nazi Germany (notwithstanding the strong, current competition from its erstwhile foe to the east). Because Hitler's unprecedented Wehrmacht war machine easily rolled over Europe and the early Luftwaffe largely dominated its skies, popular memory has, ever since, mistaken his administration of state as one of keen and high efficiency. Such meticulous planning, such ruthlessly detailed carry-through, only a tight, well-coordinated government could have pulled off these triumphs. This remains the common conception, and it is wrong.

Hitler's ever-upward extremism, abrupt shifts in policy, wholesale absence of accountability and overlapping bureaucracies of conflicting responsibilities created a stupendously chaotic system of fascist subordinates jockeying for greater power by the only means possible: their own, ever-upward extremism. And why not? They were as unaccountable as der Führer.

Anticipating whatever Hitler might favor became the theme of his vastly disordered dictatorship. Internal struggles for primacy of office meant top party members competing with bemedaled army officers, and both tangling with the self-glorifying goons of the SS. Remarked the eminent historian Ian Kershaw, merely one of his many insights into the infinite wretchedness of it all:

Time after time, Hitler set the barbaric tone, whether in hate-filled public speeches giving a green light to discriminatory action ... or in closed addresses to Nazi functionaries.... There was never any shortage of willing helpers, far from being confined to party activists, ready to 'work towards the Führer' to put the mandate into operation.... Unchecked by any remnants of legal constraint or concern for public sensitivities plumbed unimaginable depths.

Our analogy brings us up to the present. Any American who fails to see its comparable essence at work in Trump's primordial authoritarian regime — may we please put aside references to "creeping" authoritarianism since it's already here? — is either in full-blown denial, paying too little attention, or is addled beyond hope of recovery. The above accounts of FEMA's abject chaos are but a sliver of Trump's "mandate in operation."

But in Kershaw's history there is also hope: Hitler's rank ineptitude effectively presupposed that there would be "no prospect ... of the ‘New Order’ settling into a ‘system’ of government," he wrote. The Führer's chaos fed on itself — the "rapaciousness and destructiveness present from the start" — which "ultimately undermined not only his own power," it finished Nazi Germany.

Again, there are not, and never have been, two indistinguishable authoritarian states. Hence Trump's America is not, nor can it ever be, Hitler's Germany. Yet there are similarities, perhaps the most striking of which is their unrelenting chaos. And if history is today's preface, which it is, then Trump's kakistic chaocracy, his very own thousand-year Reich of 12 years, will be shortened to four.

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