by Mark C. Eades
One of the features of an authoritarian regime is the lack of any meaningful separation between the ruling party and the state. In a democracy, political parties are separate from the state. Government officials are members of political parties, but party control of the government can change with each election, and party organizations themselves are private organizations wholly separate from the government and the state. In an authoritarian regime, however, the party is the state. Party control of the government never changes, the instruments of government and state power belong to the party, and national symbols are co-opted to serve as symbols of the party.
The Republican National Convention has made it clearer than ever that the Republican Party is now an authoritarian cult of personality constructed around the figure of Donald Trump. For the first time, the GOP doesn’t even have a party platform other than to praise Donald Trump. The prominent political presence of the Trump family at the convention suggests that the role of “Dear Leader” in the GOP may even become hereditary. This serves the interests of Donald Trump and his family, but it also serves the interests of the Republican Party for as long as the party can maintain its hold on power. Trump’s corruption, and his grip on the minds of grassroots Republican voters, have removed all limits to how far Republicans are willing to go and what they are willing to do to get what they want.
This would be laughable if it weren’t so sad and terrifying. Trump is, after all, an utterly ridiculous figure, far better suited to the pages of the National Enquirer than the Washington Post. Other authoritarian leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, at least seem to be intelligent, capable men who worked their way up to the positions they now hold. Trump is nothing but a corrupt, degenerate buffoon. Trump got to the White House partly because of an unfair electoral system and partly because of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but mostly because 63 million Americans even dumber than he is voted to put him there.
Trump’s use of the White House and other federal properties for his Republican National Convention has received a lot of attention and a lot of criticism. Most of this criticism has been based on the principle that federal properties should not be used for partisan political purposes. Americans already disgusted by Trump’s presence in the White House were further disgusted at his crass use of it for staging his RNC appearances. The role of federal employees in staging the RNC on federal property may also be a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits such activities by federal employees. Mike Pompeo’s partisan RNC speech from Jerusalem in his official capacity as Secretary of State has been widely criticized for the same reasons.
It doesn’t matter that Trump and the GOP had pre-COVID plans for a traditional convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. In the midst of the pandemic the Democrats managed to run a virtual convention without using federal property, and the Republicans could have done likewise. COVID provided an excuse for a Trump-GOP takeover of the White House and other federal properties for the RNC, and they took advantage of it. Mike Pompeo would have been speaking from Jerusalem anyway. There seems to be no norm that Trump and his GOP are unwilling to break for political gain.
Worse, however, is how the Trump RNC’s misuse of federal property and federal employees further signifies America’s descent into authoritarianism under the Trump regime. The White House, in particular, is a 220-year-old national symbol that belongs to the American people, including those who didn’t vote for whoever its current occupant happens to be. Taxpayers, including those who didn’t vote for its current occupant, pay to maintain it. Until this year, the 107-year-old White House Rose Garden was cared for by Republican and Democratic administrations alike, and included flower beds and ornamental trees planted by Jackie Kennedy. That Rose Garden is now gone.
For nearly four years, we have watched as Donald Trump and his administration have corrupted the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. government. Trump’s GOP allies in the Senate have likewise corrupted that legislative body, and Trump-appointed judges have corrupted the federal courts. Each day, there are fewer protective barriers between Trump himself, the Republican Party, and the whole of the U.S. government and state. Now they are working overtime to corrupt the 2020 election, so that they can gain a permanent hold on state power. If they succeed, then watch for one of Trump’s kids, and then maybe another of Trump’s kids, take their father’s place in the Oval Office.
The RNC’s takeover of the White House and other federal properties symbolizes this planned transformation of America into an authoritarian one-party state and Trump personality cult. Just as certainly as renaming some historic site in Moscow or Beijing after Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, it is an authoritarian seizure of national symbols to signify a new order. Donald Trump’s use of the White House as a “presidential palace” for his RNC appearances is reminiscent of Putin in the Kremlin. Melania Trump’s destruction of the Rose Garden to use as a stage for her RNC speech was a violent erasure of memory.
Their message in all of this is clear: “The White House belongs to us. America belongs to us.”
