Das Alt-Reich

Upon Trump’s first successful campaign for the White House, we witnessed—during the campaign and his first administration—an alarming re-emergence of extremist right-wing politics in the United States of America. This sparked an unpleasant creeping of “sophisticated,” openly ostentatious rhetoric and conduct by politicians, influencers, and members of all strata in American society; the world then saw the would-be alt-führer’s persona manifest in long-established Western democracies—the very same that tout such fanciful ideas of human rights, equality, and progress, all while circumventing these principles when upholding them frustrates the status quo.

Make no mistake—today’s politicians are as two-faced as their predecessors. Upon closer inspection, we find these modern-day Tartuffes feign progress from behind their Janus-like masks and doublespeak, looking nostalgically to an exclusionary and repressive past. This is not just resurgent populism. It is a reactionary performance poorly dressed as democratic rebuilding and barely hidden by language that evokes conditional freedom.

Let us begin our analysis with the United States since the lands and peoples it occupies—physically, legally, and psychologically—continue to suffer with little recourse. Many a reader will doubtless know the United States as “the land of the free,” “the land of opportunity,” the place where one can achieve the so-called American dream—so-called because it was (and in many cases remains) almost exclusive to whites, whether by law in the past, presently-outlawed (and hard to prove) discriminatory practices, or by virtue of white privilege. To deny this is to further injure marginalized communities; in the words of Dr. King, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

On 21 August, the Texas House Of Representatives shamefully passed a redistricting map to add an additional five Republican-leaning seats in an “88-52 vote. Just the day before, Texas Representative Vincent Perez highlighted his disappointment “in the willingness to mask the racial realities of this map underneath the guise of partisanship,” citing court rulings against racial discrimination stemming from partisanship. He then went on to cite facts and figures regarding the makeup of Texas’s population and the consequences of redistricting: Hispanic and white Texans separately comprise 40 percent of the state population. The result? 70 percent of Texas’s congressional delegation is controlled by white-majority districts, with three Hispanic votes to equal the weight of one white vote and an astounding five Black votes to carry the same influence. It’s racial erasure couched as political representation. While the maps shift representation, public attention remains captivated by spectacle—on social media, at rallies, and in National Guard deployments to Washington, DC.

Trump’s 2016 campaign was one of misinformation, hateful rhetoric, ad hominem attacks unbecoming of anyone occupying the Oval Office. With collusion with a foreign adversary of the United States added to the mix, it’s clear that this was dangerous political strategy. As our attention was consumed by constant drama that entertained as easily as it outraged, these became the bread and circuses of the Trump era.
The “alt-right” never cared about ideas; it cared about a particular identity. Trump’s rise created the opportunity for something older and more sinister: a return to exclusion and abuse of power. The goal has always been control. In Fahrenheit 11/9 (dir. Michael Moore, 2018, 1:44:04–1:44:33), Moore reads a front-page editorial:

This Jewish weekly in Germany published a front-page editorial saying that everyone should calm down. Now that the Nazis are in power, we don’t believe that Herr Hitler and his friends will do all the things that they promised. They won’t suddenly take away the constitutional rights of German Jews. They won’t lock us [German Jews] in race ghettos or unleash the murderous mobs on us. They can’t do these things, because the constitution won’t let them.

The editorial exemplifies how complacency and disbelief can allow structural oppression to take hold. Like the Jewish people of 1930s Germany, we imperil ourselves tomorrow by ignoring today the aggregation of legal and procedural maneuvers (outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025). Whether or not a Fourth Reich or similar structure emerges, the architecture of exclusion and performance is clearly here. Recognizing, resisting, and dismantling it is our urgent, unremitting responsibility.