by PATRICK COCKBURN
The problem is that the president’s vision of the Middle East is made up of gobbets of neo-conservative propaganda supplemented by the self-serving views of Israeli and Saudi leaders Chip PHOTO/Somodevilla/Getty Images
As one commentator put it, there are more unpredictable ‘moving parts’ than ever before in the different crises, parts which may break loose at any moment
When Donald Trump was sworn in as president at the start of last year, many predicted that he would be a less explosive presence in the White House than he had been during the campaign. They hoped that he would be restrained by the permanent political and bureaucratic establishment in Washington and argued that radicals in power turn into compliant conservatives and seek to preserve the status quo.
At about this time, a friend sent me a clipping of a New York Times editorial dated 31 January 1933, with the title “Germany Ventures”. The writer recognised that there were qualms at the appointment as the head of the German government of a man who “has openly scorned it” and threatened to destroy it. But the editorial is reassuringly confident that this would not happen, citing many reasons such as the opposition of his cabinet colleagues who would oppose him “if he sought to translate the wild and whirling words of his campaign speeches into political action”.
Other limitations on the new leader’s power also suggested that nothing much would change: German finances were in strong and conservative hands; attempts to establish a dictatorship would provoke a general strike; German foreign policy would be unchanged; and President Paul von Hindenburg could unmake the new chancellor just as quickly as he had made him.
In a classic piece of political miscalculation, the editorial writer reassured readers: “It may be that we will see the ‘tamed’ Hitler of whom some Germans are hopefully speaking,” he said. “Always we may look for some such transformation when a radical demagogue fights his way into responsible office.” Judgement of the new German leader should be suspended until he had shown if he was more than “a flighty agitator” who would “compel the German people to take a leap into the dark”.
I took the point at the time that the friend who had sent me the clipping was seeking to point out how easy it was to underestimate the degree to which demagogues can be even more power-hungry and destructive in office than they were before. But I did not use the clipping because I felt that it was premature to compare Trump to the elected dictators of the past – of whom Mussolini and Hitler are only the worst examples – who won a majority at the polls and then tried to eliminate all opposition to their authority at home and abroad.
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