Dictatorship Is Choreographed

It’s a playbook. Shut it down.

The modern model for creating a dictatorship is the same since 1922, the year when Benito Mussolini rose to power with his fascist party that he started in 1914. The birth of the Italian word fascist was right then. And though most know the term fascist, almost no one understands Il Duce created not just the terms fascism and fascists, but also the fascism doctrine and dictatorship model. As early as 1914 Mussolini established the Fasci D’Azione Rivoluzionario group. Most don’t know fascism was characterized, born, and named in Italy. In 1919, Mussolini started up his Blackshirt commandos, his personal thugs. The thugs are a critical addition of strength to the fascist demagogue. While there must be a legal basis to start, thugs do the dirty, non-legal work to cement power. “Proud Boys Stand Back and Stand By.” Where have I heard this?

What is going on will be clear when you finish this post. I own input gratitude to Timothy Synder of Yale, Ellen Wexler and Lorraine Boissoneault at Smithsonian, and Heather Cox Richardson here on Substack.

Organized Blackshirts were precursors to Hilter’s Brownshirts. In the Kingdom of Italy, thuggery for “the cause” was tolerated. Likewise for Germany with the Brownshirts. The Proud Boys will be pardoned soon in the U.S. They work for Trump.

Mussolini and his bands of Blackshirt thugs marched on Rome. There was trouble in the land post WWI. Mussolini’s political group later became, in 1922, the well-known National Fascist Party. Mussolini took dictatorial control in 1924-25, and created a power grabbing playbook used by the leaders of Austria and Germany.

The Italian word for bundle was fascio, and the bundle of rods around an axe head could not break, as a single rod would.

Shown on Mussolini’s flag, the fascio axe head was super strong with the deadly heft to severe heads and limbs. Intimidation is a powerful tool also. Watch for this intimidation.

In times of trouble, give me your tired, your hungry—populace exploitation is key to fascists—let me bundle some together and inflame them for my cause.

There are now 57 dictatorships in the world today. https://planetrulers.com/category/dictators/

Made In Italy. Myself, I always thought Mussolini was but a bit player on the sidelines. I researched it. I find out that the architect and author of fascism is Mussolini, who wrote “The Doctrine of Fascism” published in 1932. It is the playbook for:

• the take over by fascists,

• the violence needed for “legal” absolute control, and

• the immediate dissolution of constitutional rights to cement control.

Mussolini’s book, The Doctrine of Fascism, lays out the basis for ACTION by men instead of talk. It sets an idealist tone for supremacy of the state above all else, including use of legal lethal force for the betterment of society and the state. The militant Christian right is unleashed.

The Model That Fascists Follow. It was Mussolini that established the specific modern model to establish a dictatorship. Others have since followed that same playbook: Dollfuss in Austria, Hitler in Germany, Orbán in Hungary, Putin in Russia, etc. And Trump tried it and has so far succeeded.

The Beginnings and the Settings. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 overtook Russia with simply Lenin’s socioeconomic promise and a little fight. The world was in the turmoil of WWI, and fixes were wanted by Russia’s hungry and subjugated. The quick path of takeover of Russia’s elite by the populace was a real eye opener for Mussolini in Italy.

Mother Mary Comes To Me. Let me just make clear one important thing. In times of great trouble, people look for an answer. Strongmen espousing hyperbolic promises in demagoguery are the easiest and loudest answer. Sometimes there are no other answers out there. The promises sound so good: the answers to prayers, of course, by design and for a reason. But reason that has no foundations other than promises requires critical thinking.

A gang leader who had strayed in 1914, and since 1919 with his Blackshirts, Mussolini came to power in 1922. He ruled as a dictator from 1924-25 on.

March on Rome. The March in Rome was the threat of a large insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in late October 1922. The March marked the beginning of fascist rule and meant the doom of the preceding parliamentary regimes of socialists and liberals.

Widespread social discontent, aggravated by middle-class fear of a socialist revolution and by disappointment over Italy’s meager gains from the peace settlement after World War I, created an atmosphere favorable for Mussolini’s rise to power.

On October 28, 1922, to meet the threat posed by the insurrectionist bands of fascist troops gathering outside Rome, the government of Prime Minister Luigi Facta (which had resigned but continued to hold power) ordered a state of siege for Rome, a military response order. King Victor Emmanuel III, however, refused to sign the order. This meant that the army, which might have stopped Mussolini, was not called on to oppose the fascists. (The reasons for Victor Emmanuel’s refusal have been debated; it has been suggested that he feared he would lose his throne if he refused to cooperate with the fascists, that he wanted to avoid civil war, and that he hoped to neutralize the fascists by associating them with the national government.)

Mussolini, now confident of his control over events, moved into blustering. He let it be known he was determined to accept nothing less than control of the government, and on October 29, 1922, the king asked him to form a cabinet.

Traveling from Milan by train, Mussolini arrived in Rome on October 30, before the actual entry of the fascist forces. As prime minister, he organized a triumphant parade for his followers to show the Fascist Party’s support for his rule.

The March on Rome was not the conquest of power that Mussolini later called it but rather a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution, a transfer made possible by the surrender of public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation. (Surrendering in advance as Dr. Synder advises us not to do.)

Mussolini fostered a cult of personality, projecting himself as the strongman, omnipotent and indispensable, Il Duce, the Leader. A bulldog of a man with imposing square jaw and a gift for speaking, his government and his Blackshirt thugs expelled or assassinated all opposition, including Socialist members and arrested all Communist members of Parliament. Mussolini abolished local elections and reinstated the death penalty for political crimes. They always lop off the heads of the opposition. No one else is left to speak.

In his book, Mussolini and a fellow Fascist described the state as "all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value." It was a new politic. The State Supreme. Many will support such a cause.

Mussolini gave his 1932 published playbook to and personally guided Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria. Dollfuss took dictatorial control in 1933 with the exact same plays. Adolf Hitler also took dictatorial control over Germany in 1934 with the exact same plays. Assassinate the opposition. Later Hilter helped assassinate Dollfuss, Mussolini ceded oversight control of Austria for annexation by Hitler.

Hilter was the first to follow after Mussolini. Hitler made big headlines in late 1923, and went to prison for a coup attempt in powerful Bavarian Munich. He did not stay there long. I find that puzzlingly maddening since had he finished his sentence to prison, he would not have ascended to power as fast.

Hitler stands with co-conspirators Alfred Rosenberg and Friedrich Weber during the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923.

The Beer Hall Putsch was a spectacular failure. Its notoriety also set the stage for Nazi Germany.

Hitler became a masterful demagogue speaker through practice.

Not many know of the Putsch or what happened with regard to it. In 1923, a decade before he became Germany’s chancellor, 34-year-old Adolf Hitler commandeered a beer hall in Munich, where he would make his first clumsy, fledgling grasps at power. Hilter intended to steal the microphone from another leader. Some 2,800 followers of Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the Bavarian state commissioner, assembled at the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall to hear von Kahr give a speech. As they listened, hundreds of members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA) gathered outside the venue.

These were the brownshirts. The SA grew out of the Freikorps groups in Germany at the end of World War I. The SA was a critical component of Hitler’s rise to power, and eventually counted more than 4 million members. Hitler purged this large force in The Night of the Long Knives. He replaced it with a potent military force, the Schutzstaffel storm troopers (SS). At the time the Nazi Party was small and regional.

Hilter paced inside the Beer Hall foyer, waiting for an opening inside to grab the microphone.

From Ellen Wexler, of Smithsonian Magazine,

“It came at around 8:45 p.m. on November 8, 1923. He threw his beer glass to the floor and made a beeline for the stage, flanked by armed guards. Chaos reigned in the hall; to stifle it, Hitler climbed onto a chair and fired a pistol into the air, then scurried to the stage. “National revolution is underway!” he cried. He explained that 600 armed men now guarded the Bürgerbräukeller, and nobody could leave—not alive, anyway—without his permission. The Bavarian government had been deposed, he claimed, and a new government had risen in its place.

“All of this was, of course, a bluff, but he hoped that it would be true soon enough,” writes historian David King in The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany. “He was sweating considerably. He looked crazy, drunk or both.”

The Bürgerbräukeller (Burger Beer Cellar) beer hall in Munich, Germany.

The coup attempt—now known as the Beer Hall Putsch—would swiftly be quashed. Two days after the Bürgerbräukeller spectacle ended on November 9, Hitler was arrested. That winter, he and others were tried for high treason.

That night, Hitler exited the beer hall, rushing to help his followers seize a set of military barracks and leaving the Bavarian leaders in the hands of his cronies. When he returned, he was furious to learn that the trio had been allowed to leave after promising to keep their word. Once free, they immediately turned on Hitler and crushed the coup. “The putsch was thus condemned to failure,” writes Ullrich, “since everything depended on getting the triumvirate behind the uprising.”

With no backup plan or clear destination in mind, Hitler’s supporters decided to stage a march through the city. As several thousand Brownshirts took to the streets, they encountered authorities. In the violence that ensued, 4 police officers and 16 Nazis were killed. A devastated Hitler, meanwhile, was whisked off in a getaway car. He spent the next two days hiding in a friend’s attic. On November 11, 1923, he was arrested and charged with high treason.

The defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial, from left to right: Heinz Pernet, Friedrich Weber, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Kriebel, Erich Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Brückner, Ernst Röhm and Robert Wagner

Onlookers predicted severe repercussions, certain Hitler would be jailed, deported or even executed. If the man himself wasn’t annihilated, surely any lingering political aspirations he harbored would be. November marks the 100th anniversary of Hitler’s failed coup.”

Contemporary historians emphasize how amateurish these early efforts were. Yet they also stress the lessons the future führer gleaned from his failure. Hitler stewed on this in prison, while writing his book, Mein Kampf.

And I thought that Trump read Mein Kampf as his guide. That is not so, but that is what we have been told recently by a lazy press. Few know Mein Kampf is Hitler’s autobiographical tome written when he was incarcerated for the November 1923 Beerhall Putsch. It is not like Mussolini’s book on The Doctrine of Fascism was published in 1932.

Hitler spent 1924 in jail. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and again in 1927. The fascist doctrine is not in Mein Kampf.

Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, can be bought in the original printings from 1925 and 1927 for $6400. The words in German mean My Head. Hitler came to realize the impossibility of a coup, overtaking the entire Weimar Germany.

Hitler knew his strength was in his speech making. He practiced that as an art student f rabble rousing and was delighted to see the resulting cheers. Just like Fonald Trump, is it not. I mean Hitler really practiced. Voice control was king. It was radio, sans TV. Hitler would convince the people through demagoguery to hand him the reins legally. He would use legal means to ascend, then decrees (executive orders) to further his grasp of absolute power.

Demagoguery as a practiced art form. Hilter filmed his practice sessions. Rabble rousing is hard work.

What led to the coup attempt? By the time of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was already accustomed to failure. Born in 1889, he grew up near Linz, Austria, where he was a poor student and a high school dropout. Hoping to pursue a career as an artist, he applied to Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, receiving rejections two years in a row, in 1907 and 1908. He moved to Vienna anyway, spending several aimless years living in a homeless shelter (a social project funded by Jewish philanthropists) and trying to sell his art.

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, where he was eventually apprehended for failing to register for the draft back home. (Though he returned for a screening, he failed his physical. Officials deemed him “unsuitable for combat and support duty, too weak, incapable of firing weapons.”) Back in Munich, he requested—and was granted—permission to join the Bavarian Army. “After seven years of privations, disappointments and rejections, the 25-year-old loner finally thought he had found a way out of his disoriented, useless existence,” writes Volker Ullrich in Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939.

History remembers conflicting accounts of Hitler’s military career. He expressed great pride in his service, later writing that receiving the Iron Cross Second Class was the “happiest day of my life” and that the war more broadly was the “most memorable period of my life.” More recent research, however, reveals that he was something of a loner among his fellow soldiers, some of whom shunned him as a “rear area pig,” based far from the front line. They noticed he spent considerable time in solitude, painting or reading political books.

Hitler (first from the left) during his time as a soldier in World War I, circa 1916

Weeks before World War I’s end, Hitler was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack. As he recovered in a hospital, he learned of yet another failure: Germany’s humiliating defeat on the world stage. He was incensed by the armistice, which German officials signed on November 11, 1918, and later by the Treaty of Versailles, which blamed Germany for the war and forced Germany to pay billions of dollars in reparations, plunging that country into a death spiral financial crisis.

Hitler decided he would “save Germany.” Back in Munich, he attended a meeting of the German Workers’ Party, a far-right group founded by Anton Drexler that would eventually become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi Party. At that meeting, Drexler gave Hitler a copy of his pamphlet “My Political Awakening,” which extolled antisemitic, anticapitalist ideas—ideas for which Hitler was already partial.

The party was then quite small, allowing Hitler, who had taken to making speeches at the group’s meetings, to rise quickly within it. On one occasion, he later recalled, “I talked for 30 minutes, and what I always had felt deep down in my heart, without being able to put it to the test, was here proved to be true: I could make a good speech. At the end of the 30 minutes, it was quite clear that all the people in the little hall had been profoundly impressed.”

In 1920, the Nazis publicized their 25-point platform, a haphazard mixture of antisemitism, nationalism and socialism, all tied to a furious rejection of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler’s speech giving saw him to be elected as the party’s leader the following year.

A Dire Setting. As Germany struggled to pay the WWI reparations it owed, the economy plummeted—and support for the Nazi Party swelled. Hyperinflation devastated the country, with German currency becoming increasingly worthless with every passing hour. Before World War I, 4 marks had been equivalent to one U.S. dollar. In the beginning of 1923, a dollar equaled 17,000 marks. By November of that year, one dollar equaled 2.2 trillion marks. This is a setting not paralleled in the U.S., then or now. This was well before the Depression took its final toll on the German populace.

Hitler’s lesson from the failed putsch was that he needed to pursue revolution through ‘the politics of legality’ rather than storm Munich City Hall,” wrote historian Christopher R. Browning for the Atlantic in 2022. “The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.” This is what Trump is doing today.

Timeline Facts. Mussolini had already taken over Italy when Hitler was just getting out of jail (early) and publishing his book Mein Kampf. Hilter saw Mussolini’s takeover in Italy, but Mussolini’s doctrine was not published until 1932.

Hitler had become notorious with his free publicity from the Putsch and his trial, and he then capitalized that with his book. Hitler’s book explained his autobiographical history, his extreme antisemitism, his national socialist party (Nazis), and his plans for that. Hilter’s book does not describe his ascent into power, which did not happen until late 1933, over a decade after Mussolini had taken control of Italy. I hope the timeline is as enlightening for you as it was for me.

By 1930, following a successful propaganda campaign concentrated on the government’s inability to improve economic conditions, the Nazis were the second-largest party in Germany at 37%. The Great Depression was at hand and the unemployed were nearly 50%. In 1932, Hitler ran for the presidency again. While he lost the election with only 33%, the campaign bolstered his reputation among the German public. His party was a force and the Comunists were rising.

Due to the Nazis’ growing influence and the rise of Communism, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler his chancellor in 1933. Two previous chancellors failed to assimilate a following. Hence Hitler’s regime is known as The Third Reich. Germany had just had two elections in a row. There was an economic emergency casting a pall on the land. The threat of a communist takeover loomed. Hindenburg’s intent was to thwart the growing Communists, the scourge of the elite. In this new position, Hitler began a surgical manipulation of the German political system and an exploitation of the elderly Hindenburg, using the law to do away with a number of freedoms—speech, press, due process—and shore up his own powers.

Authoritarian regimes are most easily toppled by whacking off the head. Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated 90 years ago. Dollfuss had introduced political violence into the authoritarian system and others learned from that a vile method of ascendence to the throne. He ruled from the far right. And he died by political violence nonetheless, by the hand of people who found him not radical enough. (Why do I think of Steven Miller, the architect of Project 2025’s immigration malice?)

On March 7, 1933, Engelbert Dollfuss enacted by decree their war powers act. The Austrian parliament had self dissolved on March 4, 1933.

Dollfuss saw his opening and acted fast. Their war powers act was enacted by “executive order.” In that manner, Dollfuss had brought Austrian electoral democracy to an end. (Project 2025 will rely on our Insurrection Act. Trump will follow the playbook.)

At virtually the same time as Dollfuss took total control, Adolf Hitler ascended to Germany’s throne as Chancellor (January 30, 1933), —with less than 33% of the German people’s votes. Another German parliamentary election, fouled by Nazi thug tactics, was held on March 5, 1933. Hilter in power intimidated others not to take their seats in Parliament for that election.

Hitler used the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, to exploit Hindenburg to be granted as Chancellor almost unlimited power. Thus, the Nazis, in the majority within the chamber, took total control. Two weeks after that election and with Hindenburg’s concurrence to cut off the Communists, Hitler issued the Enabling Act of 1933 giving him dictatorial powers.

Some suspect the fire at the German People’s House was set by Hitler’s Brownshirts to cause an event.

The following year, Hindenburg died. Hitler did not need to assassinate Hindenburg. Hitler, who had played his cards right, declared himself the führer. Nurtured under the guise of legality, Nazi Germany was born. Germans never voted again until after WWII.

(You, dear reader, may have voted for the very last time, as Project 2025 and Donald Trump so indicate.)

Mussolini (left) led the authoritarian movement and helped Hitler (right) with his model. Also, Dollfuss had transformed his Austrian political party with Mussolini’s guidance.

Dollfuss assimilated his new party, a few other groups, and a right-wing paramilitary into a new and powerful Fatherland (Vaterländische) Front (VF). The VF crushed the Left with armed force in February 1934, just as Hilter’s Night of the Long Knives did months later on 30 June 1934 to 2 July 1934. The close timing of all of these events astounds me. In the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler summarily executed over 150 left wingers, political opposition, and untrusted military people. He arrested hundreds more.

How do you do that much, that fast? (It takes well funded and staffed Project 2025-type planning.) Dollfuss had taught Hitler the ruthless, violent model, and both controlled all media.

Dollfuss (left) had agreed to model and to build an Austrian regime on the model from Mussolini (right). Italian fascism was defined in Christian nationalist terms for populace support.

That was not enough for the most extreme elements of the Austrian right who conspired with Germany. Hitler mounted a propaganda campaign against Dollfuss.

This picture is modified to show as propaganda a smaller than his 4’11’’ stature Dollfuss, next to the 5’8’’ Hitler. My trained eye can see the soldier in the middle (behind them). Evidently he had two right feet. The soldier’s hand at Dollfuss’s left ear has an arm of astounding length. (Masking in the darkroom is not as precise as in Adobe Photoshop.)

Propaganda stages were being set up. In July 1934, a 150-person group of SS Nazi (German) and Austrian Nazis dressed as policemen made their way into the Austrian parliament, shot Dollfuss, and let him bleed to death. Mussolini was livid as Austria was then under his stewardship. Hitler denied involvement. The rift between the two regimes eventually settled. Mussolini traded Austria’s oversight to Hitler who annexed Austria on March 12, 1938.

Control of most of Europe ceded to the authoritarians who enslaved the European industrial base. That included some of the world’s best steel production, weapons factories, and craft trades. A weapons buildup began in Germany. (Russia has always had a goal to subjugate that industrial base again. That is why we are in Europe to this day.)

In America, fascism took hold also. The economic conditions of post WWI led to a Fascist Italy. Note that the economic conditions of the Great Depression led to the rise of Nazi Austria and Nazi Germany. People in the U.S. admired the strongman approach.

What I am pointing out is that massive rises in sociopolitical authoritarianism are deeply rooted in the socioeconomics existing at the time. Cause and effect are related. 

Remember the turmoil of the late-1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression. The appeal of fascist ideas, at a tumultuous time like that, extended far beyond the fringe, reaching prominent citizens such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh went as far as praising Adolf Hitler (who kept a picture of Henry Ford in his office) as “undoubtedly a great man.” In 1940, Lindbergh’s wife published a bestseller that called totalitarianism “The Wave of the Future” and an “ultimately good conception of humanity.”

During that time, we had the advent of radio. Catholic Rev. Charles Coughlin reflected the popular appeal of fascist ideas.

Father Coughlin, as he was known, enjoyed the second-largest radio audience in the country (after President Roosevelt’s fireside chats), frequently quoted Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and praised the Nazi quest for full employment and racial purity. Yes, talk radio. The first Rush Limbaugh. Coughlin reached 40 million weekly.

Father Coughlin broke with Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, mid-Great Depression, forming his own political party aligned with popular Huey Long of Louisiana. Long was assassinated in 1935, and the effort fizzled. In 1942, the Catholic Church stepped in and silenced Father Coughlin. In 1948, Harry Truman integrated the military. 

At the time authoritarian fascism was supported by elites and mainstream writers, which seems incomprehensible today. Remember to consider it in the context of the times. Today we have the New York Times and the Washington Post deeply involved in support of the fascist candidate.

The authoritarian cause was taken up by leaders of major associations and editors of popular journals. There was a need to address the economic impact of the Great Depression. People were out of work. In his 1934 presidential address, the president of the American Political Science Association — the nation’s oldest and largest organization of political scientists — railed against “the dogma of universal suffrage” (everyone voting) and argued for abolishing a democracy that allowed “the ignorant, the uninformed and the antisocial elements” to vote. If these reforms smacked of fascism, he concluded, then “we have already recognized that there is a large element of fascist doctrine and practice that we must appropriate.” I would say that was the end of the authoritarian surge of that era. 

In an age of individualism, democracy was extremely slow to respond to the needs of the people. Administrations needed to change and new programs installed. Those new egalitarian ideas had to be formed. Proposed. Sold to the public. 

The Dust Bowl was oblivious, and starting in 1933-ish, heaped calamity on our already stressed agrarian sector. Socioeconomic progress was NOT at a standstill, it had been going backwards. FDR was elected in 1932, making changes in 1933. By 1936, he won in a landslide. Democracy surged again. WWII united the country.

Authoritarianism ceded into totalitarianism. We now know the first of Hitler’s extermination camps (Chemlo) began operations December 1941. There were, in all, 6 extermination camps built in Poland (away from the German populace’s eyes). Operating earlier, there were 8 euthanasia centers in Germany and Austria. Auschwitz was the largest extermination camp.

Neo-Nazis Today. I write because another Substack writer, purporting to be a fair journalist, indignantly suggested that, 7 years ago, someone accused Trump of being a neo-Nazi—while the indignant writer was writing under a tortured picture (meme) of Kamala Harris, making her to look extra vile.

I looked to respond in her Comment, but her paywall proved a barrier. I rather thought it would be better for me to explain what the writer does not know—she and Trump are neo-Nazi weirdos. Fascists are not necessarily racist, antisemitic, and xxx-phobics. Donald Trump is a neo-Nazi weirdo who has explicitly stated he intends to establish a dictatorship in America. Is she daft or simply devoid of knowledge as to what neo-Nazis are?

Give Me Dictatorship or Give Me Death. Essentially many authoritarians and other marginalized groups welcome that strongman and want the dictatorship. Theirs is a joint mission to gain absolute power to enforce their niche-group codes, their niche-group morals, their instructions from their niche-group God on thee. Alone as a niche group they have no chance for absolute power. As a unified bundle, power looks to be within reach. Make no mistake about that. And you know that to be the absolute truth. 

The First Step. And dictators need and must get their initial popular backing with which to begin. They seek the joint votes for power and always enlist “persecuted” Christians as a very large group. The Christian right get lots of promises. (That is not all Christians.) It is often enough to sway the election, and they are militant.

Christians Right Ratifies This Playbook. Once in power there are steps taken by wanna-be dictators. Violence ensues (generally the leader of the opposition loses his/her head. Literally.) Then the country’s war powers act is invoked. The dictator takes immediate control by mandate. The next step is to change the constitution by brute force, because no one else is left standing. If they stood, they lost their head too.

This is all a rather simple process of populace subjugation. It is very easy to lop the head off of the opposition leader to quell a movement. Ask Vladimir. Or the opposition leader falls out of a tall building. Or an airplane goes down.

Real Christians. Some studies of white evangelicals show that, among people who self-identify as evangelical Christians, the more they attend church, the more they pray, and the more they read the Bible, the less support they have for nationalist (though not socially conservative) policies.

But only 46 % now go to church. The Christian right that has gained political strength has little basis in religion, but their ranks have been swelled by secularists. 

Secularism. Here is the point that I discovered. While other Christian denominations lost members, evangelicals actually saw their ranks grow from 2016 to 2020. Believe it or not, their share of the white adult population increased to 29%, from 25%, according to the Pew Research Center. This does not make sense. Right?

How can those that follow the words of Christ adore the most immoral person ever to seek the presidency? What I found through research is that the newbies did not join a church, they joined a politic. The idea of evangelicals who don’t go to church was once unusual. Now, it is surprisingly common. In 2008, only 16% of evangelicals said they never or seldom attended church. By 2020, it was 27%.  

Evangelicalism, in short, has become more about shared political convictions, and that in and of itself explains the communality. In one survey of Christian attitudes, for example, 43% of evangelicals said they did not believe in the divinity of Christ. 

But it gets even more bizarre. According to the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, 14% of Muslims (and 12% of Hindus and 5% of Jews) described themselves as “born-again” or evangelical Christians. What was that, again? 

America has secularized. In the last 30 years, church membership dropped lower than 50%, from about 70% — partisan commitments are replacing religious affiliation as people’s overarching source of identity. Those numbers say emphatically that we are no longer a Christian nation. Church is about the sing and the good food after church. Friends. 

That means we will see more intense political polarization. And I would call it very intense. You should simply see religion as the sticky base layer, the tie that binds. People, using the term evangelicals, just came into focus for me. 

It was hard for me to understand, for example, how a Christian could be xenophobic. After all, Christ and the Pope washed the feet of immigrants. That dichotomy has caused tremendous turmoil in my soul. Hearing those I truly love in their near-rants on immigrants, was unbearable. Those loved were, in my mind, too easily cast aside with an unchristian label. I hated myself for that too-swift dustbin toss. 

I would not accept that. I had known these good people too long. Figuring out what was going on became a need within myself to open up a course of inquiry and research. I went heavily into looking for root causes. 

The demagogue’s large group of white evangelical Christian supporters was enough to swing the 2016 and the 2024 elections to Trump. Obama had asked them for their vote. Clinton did not.

My in-depth study shows the Christian right group has morphed and grown, whereas virtually all other religions shrank. Most interesting, they have not grown as evangelical Christians, per se. They have, as noted, morphed. And this is what has enlightened me the most. They are not, as I had heretofore so thought, hypocrites. They have morphed into a stench-resistant political party unto itself, able to separate and set aside their Christianity to take up arms for their Christian nationalist crusade. 

They just use the evangelical moniker for self-effacing purposes, perhaps to be overly modest and coy. Slightly less than half no longer listen to the choir. The only song they know, Onward Christian Soldiers. They are notorious for shooting those not abiding their creed. Best to heed the song written by Paul and Linda McCartney: Live And Let Die. (Score by George Martin). 

Dictators in the 1930’s and today exploit Christian nationalist’s militancy., i.e., in my country, you will “accept“ Christ and his strict creeds, period. Dictators inflame the marginalized pious into Christian nationalists, incited with “us versus them” propaganda and empowered with state mandates to oversee the specific mission for which they have so longed.

In dictatorships like that of Mussolini, above, they enforce civic Christian identity and conservatism on all, backed by and ratified by the state. Where the state military or police cannot move to do so, the dictator uses his thugs for the dirtiest work.

Therein I cannot resolve how evangelicals support the means (dictatorship) to their end. They have seen and heard of the evil to date. They use willful ignorance to hide behind. To them, democracy is expendable. They have a much higher calling, forcing everyone to their alter. Jesus told them so.

And that is what we have not been able to understand. You ask, “Do they not know that Freedom is on the ballot?” Yes, they know. Theirs is a higher “ideal”. Dictators love them some Christian nationalists: boundary-enforcing zealots for the dictator’s cause: populace subjugation. 

In America, we all want leaders with god-fearing Christian values to take up government positions. Evangelicals long for another one, the strongman, who can command the populace to their exalted mission for Christ. Their right-wing causes transcend egalitarian boundaries. You hear them. Ethnic purity…Whites Only...Christianity only…Speak…Speak English…Sanctity of (man-woman) marriage…Heteronormativity…Women should be seen… .

Christian nationalism is all about xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, political tolerance of racists, opposition to interracial marriages, support for military weapons, pronatalism (sans “childless cat ladies”), and restricting the civil rights of those who fail to conform to traditional ideals of whiteness, citizenship, and Protestantism. Hence they are not pure fascists, they simply exploit the fascist playbook. They are neo-Nazis, since they are involved in race purification.

Theirs is, as my partner Dr. Arnold (Arnie) Meagher taught me, the belief in an angry God and blood sacrifice, instead of a loving God of forgiveness whose followers uplift ALL others.

Christian nationalist soldiers may finally win this country for their one and only true God. I know they are threatened by demographic decline. They see and fear the populace change to predominantly non white. They are simply scared and think they can change the unchangeable. I think they can not. Their strongman is going to jail. We must codify safeguards for the future.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/adolf-hitler-coup-prison-beer-hall-putsch-180983207/

I know I need to say this:

Friend, I’m both delighted and astounded that you are here with me. It does my heart good that you care this much to have found my voice in this wilderness. Welcome! Thank you! 

Paid subscribers enable my efforts to get these words out. I have dedicated myself to making this country a better place not just for all of us, but also for future generations. The children are my first thought.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber; it helps more than you know. Right now, I am going full time on this effort. But regardless – I’m truly glad to see a fellow traveler, and look forward to our conversations. Comments are turned on for everyone as I want to hear your thoughts. Solidarity, friendship, and a common cause say “Let’s work together.”