Trump's long game: Executive privilege and the assault on historical memory

The destruction of historical memory is a central element of fascist politics. In our own time, the attempt to erase history continues with Donald Trump's efforts to claim executive privilege to keep secret various government documents related to his stoking of the Jan. 6 insurrection and his retention of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago. As the New York Times reports, the legal question regarding whether he has the power to claim executive privilege to retain these documents is unclear:

President Biden is not backing Mr. Trump's attempt to use that power, and many legal scholars and the Justice Department have argued that he is stretching the narrow executive privilege rights the Supreme Court has said former presidents may invoke. But there are few definitive legal guideposts in this area, and the fights could have significant ramifications.

Independent of the legal questions at stake here, there are deeper substantive concerns for democracy if we empower a former president in his efforts to erase history. Over the last year and a half, Trump has consistently portrayed the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as patriots who sought to overturn a fraudulent election outcome in 2020, and as victims of federal government oppression. In an Orwellian effort to annihilate historical facts, the late Rush Limbaugh, when he wasn't celebrating the insurrectionists, baselessly claimed that they were fueled by antifa and "Democratically-sponsored instigators."

The impact of GOP propaganda on the party base has been pronounced. About three-quarters of Republicans say they believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, thereby perverting the outcome and throwing the victory to Joe Biden. In a recent Times-Siena poll, 69 percent of Republicans said that in the wake of the 2020 election Trump was "just exercising his right to contest the election," while only 21 percent agreed "he went so far that he threatened American democracy." The former sentiment seeks to exempt Trump from culpability for the Jan. 6 attack, despite his clear incitement of the insurrectionists before they stormed the Capitol, despite his refusal to mobilize the National Guard to stop them (or his claim that he tried to mobilize the National Guard but that Nancy Pelosi stopped him), despite Republicans' groundless claim that the FBI was responsible for Jan. 6, and despite Trump's subsequent efforts to celebrate and defend the insurrectionists. Also consistent with Republican disinformation, most Republicans believe "the riot was led by violent left-wing protesters," rather than by Trump supporters. 

The Republican effort to invert reality, utilizing the rhetoric of democracy as a weapon to undermine democracy, looms over future elections and their perceived legitimacy. While a majority of Americans — more than six in 10 — believe that Trump should not run again in 2024, Trump polls far and away as the frontrunner among potential Republican primary candidates. About half of Republicans say they want him to be the 2024 nominee, double the support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and five times that of Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley or Mike Pence. With Trump and other Big Lie Republicans in unquestioning control of the party, a majority popular vote against Trump no longer appears sufficient to stop him from potentially stealing the 2024 election. As has been recently reported, about a third of Republicans running for various state offices now embrace Big Lie election-fraud propaganda.  Other estimates suggest the threat is much higher, with 60 percent of Americans voting in elections this fall where an election denier is running as a Republican. 

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It would only take a few of these Big Lie Republicans in major political positions — ratifying crucial counties in battleground states or serving in legislatures or as secretaries of state — to overturn popular majority votes going forward that favor Democratic candidates based on bogus claims of voter fraud. The easiest path to pulling off that kind of electoral coup would be by nullifying Democratic majority votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia. Looking at the election map in 2020, Trump lost the electoral vote to Biden, 306-232. Hypothetically, if the 2024 election turned out the same as 2020, Trump could prevail over Biden — or another Democrat — by stealing Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Wisconsin (16) and Georgia (16), overturning a Democratic majority vote through nullification efforts by Republican state operatives. That would produce a Trump "victory" in the Electoral College of 284 to 254.

Republicans could also cause a constitutional crisis with a lot less monkey-wrenching. If even one state were to nullify a popular majority vote and hand its electoral votes to Trump in defiance of the voters, that would set a dangerous precedent in which election outcomes are untethered from popular majorities and instead become prizes to be divvied up by partisan operatives and saboteurs. (Admittedly, this was pretty much the situation in some 19th-century elections, most notably in 1876: Who actually "won" that notorious contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden remains an unsettled question even today.)

Depending on who one talks to these days, the above scenarios are either written off as paranoia of the "it can't happen here" variety, or are seriously entertained by those who perceive Trump and his party as a looming threat to democracy. But they cannot be dismissed as outlandish, considering Trump's obvious strategic efforts to stage a successful political-electoral coup the next time around. The fact that Americans live in such radically different political universes, where for some Trump is the savior of democracy and for others he represents its doom, is testament to the overwhelming power of propaganda and the war on historical memory, evidence-based reasoning and truth. 

Without question, online, cable, and talk radio echo chambers bear much of the blame for allowing Republicans to retreat to alternate realities, where the QAnon-embracing ex-president is really a heroic liberator. But the problem's much larger than the media. The Republican Party in total has been taken over by Big Lie election propaganda and now overtly works to subvert democracy. But those efforts can only prevail through or alongside a successful effort to declare war on historical memory and political facts. 

There's ample evidence of deep rot in American political culture, where democracy itself is increasingly in question. Tens of millions of Republicans apparently long for a strongman-style leader who creates his own political realities. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans conceded before the 2020 election that there was nothing Trump could do that would undermine their support for him. That sort of personality cult is a classic warning sign of rising fascism: the mass embrace of a larger-than-life demagogue who is empowered to create and dictate his own realities, facts be damned. Those hoping that time has sobered up Trump's base must face the fact that nearly half of Republicans — 42 percent — continue to believe that "strong, unelected leaders are better than weak elected ones." It's difficult to divorce that sentiment from Trump's political fortunes, considering his large loss in the 2020 election coupled with his efforts to impose himself for a second term via a quasi-constitutional coup attempt.

For those Americans who look at their country with clear eyes, the stakes are increasingly clear. The GOP's war on truth and historical memory has a clear goal: the demise of political agency for any majority that relies on voting alone to defeat it. We desperately need to reinvigorate the American educational system, prioritizing the teaching of information literacy, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, particularly as applied to the social world. If we want, that is, to have any chance of rolling back fascist efforts to destroy electoral politics and republican governing principles as we know them. 

U.S. education, while traditionally stressing scientific reasoning when it comes to studying the natural world, has performed badly in prioritizing scientific, evidence-based reasoning to help students better understand the social world. Repairing our broken education system is admittedly made more difficult by the bipartisan focus on infantilizing American youth, treating them as neoliberal consumers and future drones in the corporate workforce and stressing the vocational uses of "education" over critical thought and active citizenship. In this context, students and parents willing to fight back against the dismantling of education become all the more vital.

Rolling back the war on history and truth won't happen simply by prosecuting Trump for any one of the many laws he's broken. It requires building a better America by re-socializing young people to value democracy rather than indulging in efforts to destroy it. It demands a return to teaching vigorous critical thinking, the only tool that can beat back post-truth propaganda and preserve the damaged ideals of an informed citizenry and a legitimate democracy.