Each of Trump’s outrageous actions push us one step closer to what Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar calls a “mafia state,” — the term he uses to describe the kind of autocracies we see springing up in the former Soviet Union.
Trump equates himself with America. What’s good for him, is good for the country. That was his legal defense in Ukraine Operation Shakedown: What he was doing was in the national best interests. It also benefitted him. (Because he doesn’t separate the two).
I wrote about that in this NBC News op ed.
Magyar talks about the three stages of establishing autocracy. Stage one, the “autocratic attempt,” is when potential regime change from democracy to autocracy is still reversible. That’s where we are.
Stage two is what Magyar calls the “autocratic breakthrough.” The final stage is a full mafia state. We talk about Trump running a “shadow” foreign policy alongside (and often in conflict with) the official State Department foreign policy. Masha Gessen, relying on Magyar’s work, explains that we are “using the wrong language.”
A president—the chief foreign policy official in the nation—can’t, by definition, run a shadow foreign policy.
What he can do, however, is destroy the institutions that traditionally conduct foreign policy, in this case, the State Department, staffed by career diplomats. Mafia states—like Putin’s Russia—develop as the government takes over businesses.
As the ruler consolidates power and his hold over the nation, both wealth and power come to be concentrated in one person. Eventually, the entire state comes under the control of the head of the family. In other words, the ruler ends up owning the country.
When this happens, the ruler’s personal interests and the interests of the nation become meshed into one. Trump has been open about his admiration for Putin, the head of a powerful mafia state. So the head of a mafia state is directly analogous to a mafia don.
In this NBC Think piece (which I co-authored with Glenn Kirschner) we compare Trump’s methods to the Godfather’s.
We are in the reversible stage. For one thing, our elections still have meaning (that’s how the Democrats won big in 2017 and 2018). But Trump and his minions are seizing control of the nation’s wealth, industries, and agencies.
Unintended consequences: To save conservatism at any cost, you have to break rules. Once the rules are broken, all fairness is gone. Those who voted for rule breakers thinking they’ll benefit, but they suffer when there are no rules.
I think we’re wiser since 2016. I can’t imagine anyone other than cult members actually believing anything Barr says about Biden, or any other Democrats. The Mueller Report and impeachment proceedings showed us the playbook.
