U.S Headed to a One Party State Unless “Americans Wake Up”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Our next guest has advised the January 6th Committee with his expertise on authoritarianism. He’s the author of “How Fascism Works,” Jason Stanley. And he joins Hari Sreenivasan to analyze the hearings and the state of American democracy.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Jason Stanley, thanks much for joining us. First, let’s talk a little bit about the hearings yesterday. What struck you about them?

JASON STANLEY, AUTHOR “HOW FASCISM WORKS”: Well, what struck me about them is they confirmed what many have suspected, including myself, that Trump was not — if the testimony is accurate, that Trump was not a passive actor in the events of January 6th but was deeply emotionally involved and wanted to be there on the scene and was perhaps conflicted, but certainly, was not removing himself from the actual active move toward the capital.

SREENIVASAN: You know, for our audience, we should point out that at some levels you have advised the Committee and I don’t know what you can share publicly about that, but is this going according to any conversations that you might have been a party to?

STANLEY: Well, I think, for me, in my case, they asked me about coups and authoritarianism and fascism and the structure of the rolling coup that we’re seeing, they — which was not an aspect that they particularly covered. I think we have covered it in the sense that we’ve seen that everyone in Washington knew that the election was fair, everyone in Washington, all the people who surrounded the president, knew that it was – – he was lying. And went — and many of them went along anyway. And so, that, to me, is the aspect that needs the most attention for Americans, that so many of our leading politicians knew exactly that this was a lie and went ahead with this attempt to overthrow U.S. democracy.

SREENIVASAN: What about the levels of accountability or I guess, in this case, lack thereof? I mean, for the Committee to come and, you know, present people one after the other that did the right thing, partly because there was a concern that the rule of law would catch up to them. But we really haven’t seen a catch up to anybody yet.

STANLEY: Absolutely. And that’s why the coup is, as it were, ongoing. Because it’s abundantly clear that everyone surrounding the president felt that there — they were in legal jeopardy. They were in severe legal jeopardy. And that is what held them back from going ahead. We know that, state by state, from state legislatures such as Michigan to national, to Trump’s inner circle, they saw clearly and obviously that this was an illegal attempt to overthrow the United States of America. And were blocked from going forward. You know, I wish, as a philosopher, that Socrates was right that justice could be its own reward. But Socrates — interlocutors claim people are only just because they can — they are punished for it if they’re not. And what we’ve seen is the fear of punishment is what kept American democracy alive. And now, that everyone has seen that there is no accountability, that there are no consequences, that means that the next time, what is to stop the coup from succeeding?

SREENIVASAN: I also wonder about the violence, not just the day of, but the idea that there were so many people that knew that this had a very high probability of getting out of hand and yet, continued. We’re talking multiple e-mails and text going back and forth where people were in consultation and they were actually scared of what could happen on January 6th.

STANLEY: I’m very glad you asked about that, Hari. That it’s one thing that I am regularly asked about in this context. In my expertise as a philosopher of language and, in particular, in my role as an expert and scholar on rhetoric that encourages unjustified violence. What we’ve seen, as I’ve talked about on the show before, is explicit calls for violence and revenge. A narrative that lays out the justification for political violence. You know, any expert on political violence would tell you that this kind of talk is exactly the kind of talk that justifies political violence. You’re saying, take back our country. You have been betrayed. This is a revolution. All of this kind of vocabulary, the setting up — is setting up mass political violence. Then you have this new revelation from yesterday, that I really focused on, about weapons that the president said, OK, they should be allowed in with their weapons, according to the witness. Think about that in the context of the recent Supreme Court decision, allowing arms to be carried everywhere, essentially. So, this idea that we’re going to have a mass prevalence of weapons in the run up to an election that, by all indicators, looks like it will involve political violence. And then the president saying, they should be allowed to bring weapons. So, I’m very concerned about this kind of normalization of political violence. This kind of, you know, this is the American way, to carry guns, to have a militia. The Supreme Court is saying, no, the correct reading of the Second Amendment is, you know, when — you know, be armed to defend yourself against what? Against what? Well, you know, the president — really, that testimony yesterday seem to suggest that the president was building a narrative that revenge for a supposedly stolen election could involve, you know, things in the constitution that allow us to bear arms. And that kind of gelling of the narrative between the Supreme Court’s decision and yesterday’s testimony concerns me deeply.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you mentioned the Supreme Court, I want to talk a little bit about that. I mean, the cases in the last couple of weeks have indicated a court that’s kind of finding that it has the power and is willing to use it. It is also shaken for a lot of people the legitimacy of the court. I mean, public opinion numbers are down in the 20s. And I wonder what that does to a functioning democracy if we lose one branch of government or at least perceive it as similar to the others, partisan.

STANLEY: Well, a one-party state needs to ceases (ph) the courts. And this court is clearly a Republican court. I mean, this kind of started with Bush v. Gore in — 20 years ago or so. But this court is very clearly a partisan court. I don’t think — I think, you know, it’s kind of owning the libs is not actually in the constitution. And so, these rulings on Roe v. Wade, on Pence about undermining other rights, there — fulfilling a sort of kind of nakedly partisan agenda, the ruling, I believe, yesterday about the gerrymandering in Louisiana, that very severe Republican racial gerrymandering was constitutional, these certainly seem to check off — they check off Republican dream points on the platform. And you have to ask yourself, is it really the case that the founders wrote the constitution expecting to legitimate every kind of Republican wish list in recent years? I think that’s probably constitutionally dubious. I think it’s probably doubtful that the founders had access to the Republican Party platforms in the 21st century. So, it’s extremely worrisome. We had a president voted in by a minority of the population, appoint three radical right Supreme Court justices to join already some radical right Supreme Court justices. And they are fulfilling sort of point by, point a Republican Party platform to the point where Congresswoman Boebert said, you know, the founders intended the church to guide the government. This — the constitution is becoming a kind of part of this mythic past, this invented mythic past that justifies everything the Republicans — you know, that the Republicans are just inventing, justifies their political priorities. And that’s something that, obviously, is characteristic of a one-party state. And that’s where we are tilting, at the very least, into a one-party state where that party is supported only by a minority of the population. If you look at the poll numbers, the majority of Americans are not for overturning Roe v. Wade.

SREENIVASAN: I want to talk about the role of fear. Because of one of the things that came up in testimony, recently, in these hearings, is that the Committee asks witnesses, has anybody basically tried to intimidate you? And they get a series of responses that almost read like a script from some sort of a mob movie. Hey, are you going to be a team player? I’m going to remember you. You know, the day before their testimony. How is it that either the president or his supporters still have this much power and sway being out of office?

STANLEY: This is a long theme in the literature on authoritarianism and fascism. People always make a comparison between the fascist leader and a mob boss. In a rule of law state, everyone is equal, everyone is subject to law equally. In a fascist state or maybe even an authoritarian state of whatever kind of strike, it’s all about loyalty to the leader or — and loyalty to the party. It’s loyalty rather than rule of law. So, that’s how you have to think about it. So, there is a lot of literature, say, in the Frankford School, about theorizing about the relationship between the mafia boss, the mob boss, and the leader of a one-party authoritarian state, Stalin or a Hitler, because its loyalty to the leader that replaces the rule of law. And this is just classic what we are seeing. We are seeing loyalty to the leader. And the way it works is, like, you know, if the — we are headed towards a one- party state in this country, let’s be clear about what’s happening, if it’s not led by Trump, it will be led by someone else, because what we have seen shows a bunch of people what is possible. So — and there is no accountability. So, that is where we’re headed unless Americans wake up and we all do something about it together. And the way that works is, you know, the people who show loyalty will be protected, the institutions that show loyalty will be protected and everyone else will be smashed. This is really central literally on authoritarianism.

SREENIVASAN: So, what should happen to the people that supported the president? Obviously, there are trials happening to people who actually walked into the capitol right now and they are facing consequences. But relatively speaking, they are small fries in this all. The people who have the ability to stop this before it started, or even after it started, the ones who were advising the president in ways that were anti-democratic, what could happen to them? And if nothing happens to them, then what?

STANLEY: I’m really against the idea that only the small fry get punished. I mean, I think they are, to some extent, victims as well here of their leaders. The fact is that when the leaders of a country say that people should go on the streets and overthrow that country, because they have been betrayed, then many people will believe them. And so, I think the United States has been betrayed by political leaders. Some accountability must occur. If it doesn’t occur, then you will see what we see right now, which is, in state after state, election — the election apparatus being taken over by people who know that it was a complete lie that the election was stolen. And think, well, America should be run just by our team and American democracy, that’s what the enemy is. So, there must be accountability. There is a large portion of today’s Republican Party that has proven itself to be against democracy. What the January 6th Commission did that was so important for our democracy is they showed that Senator Hawley, Senator Cruz and the other senators who went along with this, knew it was a lie. So, they were part of a conspiracy to overthrow American democracy and they should not be allowed to be political leaders. I think that, to me, is the kind of accountability I would like to see. You know, I don’t think prisons need to be in the picture, but some accountability must happen. We cannot have a political party that is opposed to democracy.

SREENIVASAN: That brings me to maybe my last question here. What is uniquely American that got us into this situation, or prevented it from being worse? Are we capable of preventing something like this from happening or is our structure built where this is bound to happen again?

STANLEY: Democracy is always fragile. Democracy is hard. This idea that we will perpetually be a democracy is a fiction. We are actually a new democracy. We only became a democracy once black Americans were given the right to vote in the 1960s. So, we were — and right now, we are still a partial democracy. Democracies are fragile things by their very nature. A small sliver of humans throughout history have lived in democracies. Though democracy dates is an ancient system of government. The reason we are powerful, as a country, and the reason we are special and the reason I’m so proud to be an American is because democracy — the vocabulary of democracy is interwoven with being an American. So, unlike other countries that can sort of like, you know, use democracy sort of like as a fig leaf, the vocabulary, Americans, democracy is something that is a rallying cry. So, it’s something that the civil rights movement used. It’s something that liberation movements in America have always been able to use, from Frederick Douglass on, they’ve been able to say, we are these ideals and we are not living up to them. And that gives us a unique kind of power. And that has always, in the past, helped us in fits and starts. We always go but we often go back. But slowly move ahead, forward and then backward. Two steps forward and one step back. We are seeing that again. Those of us who study democracy, those of us who study philosophically, historically, understand that democracies are fragile because one group will always want to rise up and seize power and take it for themselves. And that’s the natural state of things. So, it’s always hard. This — and we should recognize that it’s always hard. And preserving democracy is and will always be a difficult thing to do.

SREENIVASAN: Jason Stanley, thanks as always.

STANLEY: Thank you.