1/31/2021 The January 6th Assault on Congress and the Fate of the GOP’s Faustian Bargain with Trump: Notes from German History News at Home by Jeffrey Herf Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor of Modern European History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His works on German history and Nazi Germany include The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard U. Press, 2006).
The attack on the Capitol of January 6, 2021 lent renewed urgency to the issue of whether or not Trump and Trumpism are a sort of American fascism. In spring 2016, I argued that Trump was not a fascist but that his rhetoric and appeal did echo both Lindbergh’s “America First” moods of the 1930s together with the conspiracy theories and yearning for the “strong man” associated with Hitler and Mussolini. Trump, many of us argued, was best understood as following in the footsteps of distinctly American demagogues who rode the currents of authoritarianism, racism, nativism, and conspiracy theories to political power. Since Trump won the Republican nomination, and especially in the aftermath of his “very fine people on both sides” comments after the racist neo-Nazi attack in Charlottesville, answers to the urgent question of whether Trump and Trumpism would destroy American democracy would be found in the response of the leaders of the traditional Republican Party. The question facing us now is whether the Faustian bargain made by the Republican establishment with Trump will hold up in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob containing white supremacists, Christian nationalists, militia members, conspiracy theorists and fellow-travelers, and incited by Trump.