As Republicans across the U.S. continue to echo Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that he was robbed of victory in the 2020 presidential election victory due to widespread voter fraud, the party is moving to undermine democracy by imposing state voter suppression laws and measures to subvert future election results. According to a recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 19 states enacted 33 laws that further restricted access to voting in 2021. Moreover, Trump supporters are making death threats targeting election officials across the nation.
Democrats meanwhile have failed to enact any legislation to safeguard voting rights and democracy. While the House has passed the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, conservative Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona have blocked any reforms of the filibuster that would allow passage of these bills.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Vancouver, Canada recently wrote an opinion piece that gained international attention, “The American Polity is Cracked and Might Collapse, Canada Must Prepare.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with professor Homer-Dixon about the warning signs he sees that U.S. democracy could unravel as soon as 2030, and what America’s neighbor to the north should do to prepare to meet the threat of an American right-wing dictatorship.
THOMAS HOMER-DIXON: The point of the article really was to bring attention to my fellow Canadians the nature of the crisis. I think that in Canada, we were — frankly — most of us were deeply traumatized by the Trump presidency. It was a very difficult time for most Canadians. Donald Trump has supporters in Canada, but they’re a minority of the population, a small minority. So when President Biden was installed, there was this great sigh of relief and we thought we could sort of get on with other things. And unfortunately, as most Americans know who are concerned about these issues, the situation has actually deteriorated substantially in the United States since the inauguration. And I was trying to outline for Canadians why that’s the case, what the underlying causal dynamics are that have produced this crisis and why it could take the United States to a very dire place in coming years.
There are some fairly clearly identifiable stages. There’s the upcoming midterm elections for the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. There’s a reasonable chance that the Republicans will capture both houses at that point. And then of course, you have the likelihood that Donald Trump is gonna run for president again in 2024. Biden at the moment looks really quite weak if he’s a Democratic nominee. And then the question is, If Trump were to be re-elected, what would that mean for the United States and for democratic institutions?
Lots of people are talking about civil war in the United States. At this point, I didn’t really focus on that. I was more focused in this article on the collapse of democratic process in the United States, and then the consolidation potentially of a right-wing regime. I put a very stark label on it. I called it a right-wing dictatorship because when you have the subordination of power to an individual who puts himself above the rule of law, that’s what I would call a dictatorship.
SCOTT HARRIS: I wanted to ask you about the armed groups that have been affiliated with the Republican party. It certainly is unique in my memory of American history that an American political party had an armed wing like we see at present with the Oath Keepers, other assorted militia groups, the Boogaloo Boys, a whole range of armed groups have aligned themselves with the Republican party and the Republican party has not declined that alliance. From your reading of history and other failed states and failed democracies, what can we learn about political parties that decide to accept an affiliation with armed groups?
THOMAS HOMER-DIXON: So it is a significant development, the association of these paramilitary groups with a major political party. And I think it’s been recognized and understood. But I’m not sure all the historical parallels have been thought through. One always has to be very, very careful in talking about the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany. I mentioned Weimar in the article and I actually identify a series of parallels with Weimar which are quite striking between what’s happening in the United States and what happened in Weimar in the 1920s and ’30s. But one of the things that is important is that the SS, the storm troopers, the brown shirts were a wing of the Nazi party that basically created chaos and intimidated potential opponents. Now, they were much, much more violent and prevalent than what we’re seeing in the United States now.
They emerged from the chaos following World War I, when there was there was a sort of breakaway elements of the German military that became paramilitary groups and eventually consolidated themselves into private militaries for various political parties, including right-wing German nationalist political parties. So it’s a very different history and situation, much more radicalized and extreme in Germany during the ’20s.
Nonetheless, one of the things I noted when I was consulting with people to write my article for the Globe and Mail, one thing they kept saying to me is that — and it gets back to the point I was making earlier — that many Republican moderates are afraid now. They fear for their physical safety and they fear for the physical safety of their families because of the operation of these groups. And that’s exactly the kind of thing that the brown shirts did, that the SS did in Weimar Germany.
They intimidated people who otherwise would’ve been inclined to be more moderate. And there was for a period of time, you know, quote unquote, a moderate component of the national socialists in the ’20s. But they intimidated them, drove them to the extremist wing of the party. And, we can see that happening now. Either moderate Republicans shut up or leave the party, don’t run for re-election or end up basically acquiescing to the extremist rhetoric, the most extreme rhetoric and Trumpist rhetoric within the party.
So, you know, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Boys. I mean, they are following a pattern that is established in other declining polities that is quite identifiable where you have military groups that are associated with a leading political party and actually kind of do the dirty work — create chaos. And the more chaos there is, the more people say, “Oh, we need a strong man to, you know, bring order to things.” And, so it’s all part of heightening the fear and the anger and the sense of disorder that actually leads people to want an extremist, a strong man to basically bring peace and order to the situation.
Thomas Homer-Dixon is executive director of Canada’s Cascade Institute and author of the book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. For more information on Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, visit cascadeinstitute.org.
