Führerprinzip is an odd and relatively unknown word to most Americans. Perhaps a few have heard of it in passing as devotees of old anti-Nazi popular front movies and newsreels of the 1940s. A smaller number would be those in the academy who specialize in German or Italian history. They undoubtedly know exactly what it means.
But this week a good majority of Americans are getting a crash course on the Führerprinzip in real time and in real life. A smaller but still large number might miss out. Why? Because they are deeply trapped in those media siloes where any mention of such things is verboten, that is, forbidden, as in prohibited by law or worse.
Donald Trump, our President-elect, is the head teacher of the Führerprinzip, the ‘Leader Principle.’ The first thing we need to know is that the term is always singular. We only get to have one of them, nor do we need any more. ‘The Leader’ is all-knowing and infallible. He doesn’t make mistakes, and never apologizes, even to God.
This puts Trump even a notch above the Pope. Our Francis, for example, is only infallible when he speaks ‘ex Cathedra,’ or ‘from the Throne in the Cathedral.’ Francis has never done so, so far anyway. And he frequently asks God’s forgiveness, and forgiveness from the rest of us, too. The last Pope who spoke infallibly was Pius XII 1950, declaring the Bodily Assumption of Mary into Heaven. It's a rather weird concept, but for Catholics, it's dogma, and has its own Holy Day.
But Trump is now making new dogmas for us. We get to watch 'Donald the Infallible' at work every day. Do we think it weird to name an accused molester of 17-year-old females as Attorney General? If so, think deeper. The Führerprinzip allows for Unterführers, or subordinate underlings. If they do their job correctly, the glory reflects upward. If not, their inglorious trouble is their own.
So Florida's Congressman Matt Gaetz as AG makes perfect sense as Trump's underling. How so? His job is twofold. First, get rid of the Department of Justice. All of it, save for the FBI. Then remake the FBI as an organization of Unterführers, who pledge fealty only to the Führer. Forget the Constitution. Thus Gaetz as the Creep-in-Charge is not weird at all.
Naming Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense was another stroke of Führerprinzip genius. Never mind he has zero experience with a multi-billion dollar bureaucracy and that he’s only 44 years old. What counts is that he started off his military career in Guantanamo cracking down on imprisoned but unindicted Muslims. Later he was a platoon leader in Iraq for a spell, then hopped to Kabul to teach ‘counter-insurgency,’ to ill effect, judging by the results. But what really attracted Trump was his post-military career boosting far-right veteran’s groups and causes. This included advocacy of a ‘frontal assault' against 'the top brass’ and urging pardons for those imprisoned for engaging in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. Far from lacking judgment, our Führer can spot exactly what he needs in his Unterführers.
By now the ‘Leader Principle’ should be much clearer. Tulsi Gabbard as National Intelligence Director? She’s mastered the ability to be a chameleon with as many disguises as needed. She started as a Bernie fan and peace candidate, fooling even us for a while. Then she becomes a friend of Syria’s Assad, then a defender of Putin at times, then of India’s strongman Narenda Modi, as she finally flips to the GOP and Trump. A top spook must be an expert at disguise and misdirection.
How about Robert Kennedy, Jr. as head of Health and Human Services? Again, it makes perfect sense if your goal is to take the agency down, and wreck Medicare and Medicaid in the process. Start with an anti-vaxxer in charge, one who thinks all the top health and medical scientists are just robbing you of your tax dollars anyway. There's always a method to the Great Leader's madness.
And former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel? Another astute pick. He’s known for claiming ‘there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.’ This fits perfectly with the Likud's ‘from the Sea to the River’ effort to ‘transfer out’ all those suffering under the delusion that they are Palestinians who have lived there for centuries. (Those who thought of Biden-Harris as the pinnacle of evil on Gaza might take a note here, not that the Dem policy was acceptable). Huckabee is even deeper and better than Team Blinken. Why? Huckabee also holds the Christian Zionist belief that Israel's all-sided war is the start of Armageddon, ‘The Rapture’ and 'the Second Coming.' Not too soon, though. We wouldn’t want Jesus’s rule to begin when Trump might have to submit to His Theocracy.
How about 'checks and balances'? Some might argue that even GOP Senators might object to having their powers curbed. Not if they know what’s good for them. The Führerprinzip is not only about the Great Leader. It’s a political philosophy rooted in the idea that all government and all institutions of civil society are best maintained as hierarchies within hierarchies. This matches what Trump promised to all those voting for him because of ‘the economy’: They get a spot on a rung of a ladder in an economic hierarchy where they would always have ‘the other’ to look down upon, even if their own economic lot isn’t much better.
Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt defended the purges and crimes of the Reich in 'the night of the long knives' and Kristallnacht, the 'night of broken glass.’ He exempted the party members from any guilt, individually and collectively, because the Führerprinzip stipulated that the Führer’s will superseded any contradictory law. Now recall Trump asserting all he had to do was declare ‘the border is closed’ and it was so, no legislation required.
Italy's Benito Mussolini also fancied himself as a fascist theorist, borrowing from Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’ (Superman) for his ‘Il Duce.’ The rationalism of science was to be confined within a larger irrationalism of a mystical nation-state and a sole leader that made reason itself subordinate: “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (Benito Mussolini on The Doctrine of Fascism, 1935.)”
In the months ahead, we will encounter a tendency in some quarters to limit all-round resistance to the Trump regime. We will hear arguments for letting some measures pass, or even be helped along, so we might defeat a few others. We might hear that arresting and expelling criminal ‘illegals’ without due process can be overlooked so we might protect those appearing as more harmless 'good immigrants.' Don’t fall for it. Once it starts, there is no end to the division of people into ‘dangerous’ and ‘less harmful,’ or ‘real Americans’ from ‘the Other.’ When we get to the root, we will find that all or nearly all of us are ‘The Other.’ We will do better to weed our gardens of fascists persistently and constantly, whenever and wherever we can. Do it wisely, but do it.
Carl’s LeftLinks Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
