The following is the third of a three-part series. In the final essay we examine the potential cost of appeasing insurrection. In the first part the role of the big lie of the stolen election was examined. The second part discussed how economic libertarianism contributed to the insurrection. In the third and final part the focus is on the price of appeasement.
The Lesson has not been learned.
Senate Republicans have failed to convict former president Trump -- again; this time for inciting the January 6th Insurrection. Doing so, the GOP showed cowardice. They have appeased the mob and its leader.
Today’s Republicans have become the modern equivalent of Neville Chamberlain. Like the British prime minister they have failed to deter a growing threat to democracy. In October 1938 when it was necessary to show courage, Chamberlain cowered. Instead of standing fast for Constitutional process the GOP encouraged future demagogues to engage in insurrection. Republicans – with few exceptions – followed Chamberlain’s example. Appeasement, history repeatedly demonstrates, only emboldens would be tyrants.
By not convicting the ex-president on Saturday Republicans have let the Trump movement grow unimpeded. It will continue coalescing around dangerous people such as Lara Trump, U.S Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Mike Lee. If left unchecked, they will present an even greater danger to both democracy and a healthy form of capitalism -- all while discrediting conservatism and destroying the Republican Party.
Perhaps Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) exhibited the greatest show of spinelessness. If anyone could have delivered the ten necessary votes to convict, it was he. But instead of displaying moral fiber, the Senate Minority Leader chose to punt. Giving a schizophrenic explanation of his vote against he placed the blame on of the insurrection squarely at the feet of the ex-president yet shied away from voting for conviction.
The senior senator from Kentucky hid behind an “originalist” constitutional doctrine that many well-respected conservative legal scholars believe non-existent. He hinted that the ex-president would be liable for criminal charges for this part in the insurrection This had no deterring effect. If anything it showed that Senator McConnell wanted his cake and eat it too. He did not want to alienate the Trump voter base. So he only chose to castigate when deterring punishment was the order of the day.
Senator McConnell allowed himself to be bullied by a voting bloc that has strayed from democratic norms. False notions of liberty and unreasonable self-interest have led them astray. His failure to cauterize Trumpism from the GOP brand revealed the unwillingness to endure short-term loss for the sake of democratic principles.
In time, Senator McConnell may discover that by placating more radical members of his Senate caucus, he actually laid the groundwork for his own demise. Would any of us be surprised if the clique of Cruz, Hawley, Lee and others may plot to overthrow McConnell from his leadership position? That has been the fate of many conservatives who have tried to control more radical elements within their ranks.
Those who seek power without accountability will always push until they encounter firm resistance. That is the lesson of Munich in 1938. In that historical moment of shame British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, sacrificed a “faraway” democratic republic, Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid confronting Hitler. The irony was that if he had chosen to block the German dictator’s annexation of his neighbor, there were forces in Germany ready to overthrow the Nazi leader’s dictatorship. But because Chamberlain chose to back down, the tyrant was allowed to occupy first the Sudetenland, in March 1939 the rest of Czechoslovakia, and then engulf the world within the flames of war.
But the Munich Agreement of 1938 was not the only chance to stop a tyrant in its tracks. There were other missed opportunities – just as we missed opportunities to stop our tyrant in the making.
OTHER MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
The historical parallels are difficult to ignore. Just as Weimar Germany imploded from nefarious forces fro within the United States is danger of following a similar path. The first opportunity to stop Hitler was after his arrest for leading the 1923 Munich Putsch. That too was a failed insurrection designed to take down a fragile republic. But while Hitler was convicted of high treason he was given the lightest sentence allowed: Five years of which he only served eight months. The court’s failure to impose a sentence designed to deter future insurrection was the first of several missed opportunity to defend democracy.
How did this occur? The answer is simple: Those who prosecuted and convicted Hitler were conservatives who, though disapproved of coup d’etat, sympathized with fascist grievance. Here began the fatal miscalculation by German mainstream conservatives that Hitler and his followers were controllable. It is the same illusion now infecting today’s GOP.
Instead of being isolated in prison, Hitler was actually feted, receiving visitors and given a relatively comfortable cell. It was while serving his eight months he authored Mein Kampf, his diatribe outlining his plans for war and genocide. Upon his release, the future dictator did learn one critical lesson: The more radical Right can manipulate more traditional conservatives to gain empowerment. With this in mind the Nazis changed tactics and began using the instruments of democracy as the means to destroy democracy.
Likewise there were missed opportunities for the law to stop the ex-president and his movement early in the game.
While Trump was showing signs of presidential ambitions New York Democrats had the power to investigate the real estate developer’s shady business practices. Perhaps because of campaign contributions, they often looked the other way. That missed opportunity echoed the German judiciary’s failure to act more strenuously to the threat of the 1923 Putsch.
In 1931, a young German lawyer named Hans Litten served as a private prosecutor in the Eden Dance Palace attack. The previous year, Hitler had stated under oath that he renounced violence as a means of achieving power. But on November 22, 1930 Nazi S.A. brown shirts shot up a Berlin club frequented by Communists. As we see today, street violence is a convenient tool for more radical elements of the Right. In Weimar Germany there was indeed a strong Communist presence. Street violence between Communist and Nazi gangs was common and was seen as a threat to domestic stability. Conservatives when given a choice duped themselves into believing that by working with Hitler on the inside that the S.A could be brought to heel on the outside. By 1929 it was inaccurately believed that Hitler disapproved of S.A. street thugs.
Litten intended to prove that Hitler gave tacit approval to the attack and thus had violated his oath. A perjury conviction would mean either prison or expulsion back to his native Austria. With that in mind, Litten put the future Fuhrer on the witness stand while prosecuting the Eden assailants. Litten then attempted to arouse his anger. In short order he did and was on the verge of trapping Hitler in a perjury. Unfortunately, the judges, perhaps thinking of their own future, rescued the Nazi leader from further questioning. Litten paid the price by dying in Dachau eight years later.
In the present day, we were warned about Trump’s contempt for American democracy. And as with the opportunities to prevent the Nazi rise to power, our opportunities to thwart the rise of American fascism are being squandered. The opportunity to end the Trump assault against democracy presented itself in the first impeachment trial. Once again, Senate Republicans dared not alienate a block of questionable supporters. Trump was acquitted. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) famously quipped, “he learned his lesson.” He did not.
In his closing argument, impeachment trial, Congressman Adam Schiff presciently declared, “He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What's right matters even less, and decency matters not at all”
Instead, the Republican Senators, like Chamberlain, appeased a bully and his metastasizing movement at his first trial and then again at his second trial. Unless sufficiently challenged, the morally cynical that desire power at any cost will never be constrained.
Right now, with seven exceptions, the GOP’s members of the upper branch of Congress appear have bought into another false promise of “peace in our time.” They have learned nothing from history, particularly the failure of those charged with defending democracy by acquiescing to fascism.
THE NECESSARY RESPONSE
Attempts to overturn legitimate democracy must be answered with a determined response. This is not call for cruelty but for appropriate justice. The would-be usurpers in both 1930s Germany and today’s United States share a goal: Their idea of freedom is not majority control with an eye towards protecting the rights of the minority. They instead seek control by their minority faction so as to impose their will on both the majority as well as minorities they see as “the other” – people of color, progressives and immigrants. Those who seek such outcomes must be met with firm deterrence.
With few exceptions, today’s GOP House members and U.S. Senators are replicating the errors of the Munich court in 1923, the Berlin court in 1931 and of course that of Chamberlain in Munich in 1938.
The lesson here is quite simple: When enemies of democracy have turned their words of anger into acts of insurrection, the punishment must strong enough to deter any future such action. Those responsible for the proximate cause of the violence must be discouraged from future acts of insurrection. Firmness is the watchword of the hour.
But it is not enough to just mete out prison sentences, an impeachment conviction and possible other removals from office. The philosophy that girds and brings together such grievance – radical economic libertarianism – must be thoroughly refuted. It is this philosophy that is driving modern conservatism, not only threatening that political philosophy but also American Democracy itself.
This is the GOP’s Munich moment. Just as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain failed when he had to choose between stopping evil in its tracks or appeasing a demagogue and violent movement, so too did the Republican members of the United States Senate.
It will be all of us who will pay the price for Senator McConnell’s cowardice. Shortly after the Senate’s verdict was announced an ominous warning came from the ex-President in Mar-a-Lago: “Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement … has only just begun”