As you say there is nothing new with the concept of a dictator who is hidden in plain sight. For the first two centuries of its existence the Roman Empire was in theory still a republic run by its Senate. It just happened that one man was "first" ("Princeps") in that institution and also commanded the army. Everyone knew the reality but …
As you say there is nothing new with the concept of a dictator who is hidden in plain sight. For the first two centuries of its existence the Roman Empire was in theory still a republic run by its Senate. It just happened that one man was "first" ("Princeps") in that institution and also commanded the army. Everyone knew the reality but very few dared to seriously object. Perhaps the constant in history has been the phrase, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
A more modern example is Vichy France, the puppet state set up after the German victory in 1940. It was in fact internationally recognized as the legitimate French government, and many in the country went along with things just as they were. The bureaucracy kept functioning, and if your neighbors disappeared and the motto on the money changed from "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" to "Job and Family", so what?
I think that last case is something like what Trump imagined could have happened after January 6th, with a takeover at the top but everything else more or less continuing as before. There might have been a real internal civil war, with some states not recognizing the government in Washington, and the military split, but maybe not. After all when the Americans invaded Morocco in 1942 the Vichy French army didn’t see the Allies as liberators. Instead they battled them for days.
But what makes this sort of slide into fascism quite possible is technology. A criticism of 1984 is that there simply were not enough loyal party members to monitor everyone who could have been a dissident. But you don't need that today. With cameras everywhere, facial recognition software, , license plates routinely read by computers, satellite monitoring, everyone carrying a tracking cell phone with every conversation recorded, and a de facto national ID system (de jure in many places, such as India) all the tools are in place. And most citizens have been conditioned to accept all of this and more! And you know once a government has more power it doesn't give it up. If anything, there is always an excuse to expand it, "for the good of the people", of course.
As you say there is nothing new with the concept of a dictator who is hidden in plain sight. For the first two centuries of its existence the Roman Empire was in theory still a republic run by its Senate. It just happened that one man was "first" ("Princeps") in that institution and also commanded the army. Everyone knew the reality but very few dared to seriously object. Perhaps the constant in history has been the phrase, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
A more modern example is Vichy France, the puppet state set up after the German victory in 1940. It was in fact internationally recognized as the legitimate French government, and many in the country went along with things just as they were. The bureaucracy kept functioning, and if your neighbors disappeared and the motto on the money changed from "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" to "Job and Family", so what?
I think that last case is something like what Trump imagined could have happened after January 6th, with a takeover at the top but everything else more or less continuing as before. There might have been a real internal civil war, with some states not recognizing the government in Washington, and the military split, but maybe not. After all when the Americans invaded Morocco in 1942 the Vichy French army didn’t see the Allies as liberators. Instead they battled them for days.
But what makes this sort of slide into fascism quite possible is technology. A criticism of 1984 is that there simply were not enough loyal party members to monitor everyone who could have been a dissident. But you don't need that today. With cameras everywhere, facial recognition software, , license plates routinely read by computers, satellite monitoring, everyone carrying a tracking cell phone with every conversation recorded, and a de facto national ID system (de jure in many places, such as India) all the tools are in place. And most citizens have been conditioned to accept all of this and more! And you know once a government has more power it doesn't give it up. If anything, there is always an excuse to expand it, "for the good of the people", of course.