reflectivepundit

Of Power, Violence, and Fear

By Brigitte L. Nacos

A prosecutor in a New York court room told jurors in the trial of famous music producer Sean Combs, “The defendant used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted.” This sentence in a news report was most interesting—not as it may or may not apply to Combs but rather for its usefulness to highlight the pillars of tyrannical rule and rulers:  Power. Violence. Fear.   

In her book “The Origins of Totalitarian Rule,” Hannah Arendt provides the probably shortest and most profound definition of tyranny, namely, that it is “a lawless government where power is wielded by one man.” She seems to apply the same definition to dictatorship and despotism.

More recent scholars of tyranny, such as Timothy Snyder, and fascism, such as Robert O. Paxton, have provided lists of characteristics serving as signposts for democracies changing to  tyrannical rule.

Professor Paxton, who hesitated to call Donald Trump a fascist during much of the first presidential term, did exactly that a few days after January 6, 2021 because of Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election…”

Professor Snyder who recently moved from Yale University to the University of Toronto noted, “If you let a horrible authoritarian who destroys institutions come to power, people are going to leave.” Here, Snyder does not use the term “tyranny” or tyrant but rather “authoritarian.”

One can also add strongmen rule here as does Ruth Ben-Ghiat in her book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

Furthermore, Hannah Arendt describes totalitarianism as the most extreme and most brutal form of government implemented by Hitler and Stalin and the respective masses in Germany and the Soviet Union.   

Even the most rudimentary survey of definitions for non-democratic rule shows how difficult it is to describe and differentiate between the multitude of term.

The types of rules mentioned above share that the power is in the hand of one, typically male leader and that he uses both fear and violence to achieve his objectives. With these three characteristics in mind, what is the situation in American governance today?

Press Freedom or Selling Out to Authoritarian Bullies

By Brigitte L. Nacos

I just finished reading the historical novel “The Director” based on the actual life of film director G. W. Pabst and his family, in which the German author Daniel Kehlmann explores how a seemingly decent person makes a pact with the devil—in this case with Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. When given a choice between persecution and concentration camp or unlimited resources for making motion pictures for the glory of the Third Reich, he answers with the “Heil Hitler” salute and full compliance.

While I read the gripping narrative, I could not help thinking of our predicament today here in the United States of America. To be sure, we are not living close to what happened in Hitler Germany. But unless we completely ignore the news, we see and hear day-in and day-out the ever more brazen attacks on democratic law, political convention, and empathy for the suffering of people here and abroad.

The democratic fabric weakens and the authoritarian markers strengthen.

Attacks and threats against institutions and individuals in the media, education, court, and corporate systems become more frequent and more harmful.

Taking the example of the news media, it seems that the owners are bending their knees when facing the wrath of a vengeful president, who has attacked the non-Fox-like media frequently as “the enemy of the people.”

Last Sunday, ABC News which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, suspended correspondent Terry Moran after he posted on social media that White House chief of staff Stephen Miller was “a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” and called him “a world-class hater.” Moran also described Trump as “a world-class hater.” ABC News declared in a statement that it “stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others.”

It was not prudent in terms of securing his journalistic position for Moran to characterize Miller and Trump the way he did . But what he wrote is true. After all, these two powerful men were instrumental in the dismantling of America’s global USAID network and thus prevented the distributing of available food in storage houses in the Third World to starving children and adults. We all know whom and what they hate.  And when it comes to name calling, Miller and Trump have a long history of the most extreme kind of insulting rhetoric.  

But ABC News and the Walt Disney Company bent their knees quickly to prevent another defamation suit after they settled another one by Trump last year by paying $16 million. In that case, Trump resorted to legal action because TV-anchor George Stephanopoulos reported that Donald Trump had been "found liable for rape" in the E. Jean Carroll trial. The actual guilty verdict was for “sexual assault” but as the trial judge Lewis Kaplan said, the verdict did not mean that Carroll "failed to prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.' Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that."

There is also a pending lawsuit by Donald Trump against CBS News claiming that the network's "deceitful" editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during last years’ campaign misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him.

Most legal experts agree that Trump has little chance winning this law suit.

Yet, Paramount and its controlling owner, Shari Redstone, do not want to stand up for press freedom but seek a law suit settlement with Trump at a time, when they seek approval by the FCC to sell the company.

Protesting the corporate bosses’ “heavy-handed” interference with “60 Minutes,” the long-time executive producer of the popular show, Bill Owens, resigned a few weeks ago.  

These cases (along with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, who exercises censorship of the newspaper)  demonstrate how the chilling effects of presidential hostility against the First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression/press and corporate self-interests can and do short-circuit press freedom.  

That brings me back to the historical novel “The Director” and the price of selling out to authoritarian bullies.  

What are the alternatives? Collective dissent? Courageous opposition leaders?

Those are the questions to ponder…