I can't say that any of Trump's post-election behavior is surprising to me. He has done a bit of a Spinal Tap, taking the act to an 11, but I think that most of us who have followed him long-term expected nothing less.
People seem taken aback by the GOP enabling him, but look at the facts. Even with Trump's "deplorables" base, the GOP is a minority party in terms of demography. Then consider the very real possibility that the president is probably not averse to teaming up with far right media to create a third party, and that such a third party might conceivably outnumber "classic" Republicans. Trump could, of course, by founding such a third party, relegate the GOP to near-term powerlessness rather quickly. This Sword of Damocles third-party threat means that Trump has tremendous leverage over a corrupt, self-absorbed Republican leadership. The GOP might not love the idea that Trump wants a 2024 go at the presidency, but they simply do not have the ability to dissuade him because he owns that third-party-founding potential. He has them by the scrotum.
This third party threat has been implicit in Trump's entire run, including the 2016 primary leading up to his election. It's part of the reason that the GOP establishment has treated him with kid gloves the last four years. My personal conservative guesstimate is that Trump has the capability to siphon off at least 25% of the Republican electorate into a third party population, and he has always had this capability. The sycophantism of "normal" Republicans is therefore understandable. If they don't keep Trump in the GOP fold, they risk losing any semblance of their current power.
White Identity Politics
White nationalism is inextricably threaded through Trump's hard core base. Mainstream American media has done a good job connecting many of the dots. "The Vast Far-Right Web Behind the Hunter Biden Story," a November 3 piece by HuffPost reporter, Luke O'Brien, is a fine detailed specific exploration, while Sean Collins' July 21 piece in Vox, "Trump once flirted with white nationalism. Now it's a centerpiece of his White House" is a broader overview.
Any new third party will undoubtedly feature, with decreasing subtlety, hard core white nationalism. Allow me, a non-political creature, to make an obvious observation. To borrow a 1970's Captain America storyline, the Fourth Reich is here. And it's American.
Nobody wants to call it what is, but if my estimate of Trump potential for siphoning off GOP voters is correct, the United States is home to somewhere around 20 million members of what could reasonably be designated The Fourth Reich. Keith Olbermann refers to these folks as Trump's Brownshirts (Braumhemden), and he's absolutely correct. They are currently firmly embedded in the GOP general electorate until such time as Trump asks them to extract themselves and recruit for his third party.
The way to recruit in 2020 is to start an online media network and then grow it into a national brand that doesn't require much in the way of advertising. Trump is more than capable of launching a state TV well beyond the content limitations of Fox.
The Months Ahead
Right now, the GOP is being held hostage by a large but likely minority chunk of its own party. Donald Trump controls the playing field. His loss in the 2020 election with his threat of a 2024 run, in fact, fits almost perfectly into much of the Q-anon conspiracy prophecies. According to Q-anon, Trump is fated to disappear for a time, at the conclusion of which he will arise from the shadows with his allies in key military positions. They will then arrest all of the decadent pedophiles and save us from the New World Order and ourselves.
If Trump plays along with this conspiracy mythology, we will be treated in the years ahead to a growing body of conspiracy theories and an increasingly fervent, expanding Q-anon base. Twenty million Brownshirts is not a small political movement, and it will grow.
Buckle up. As for me? I'm not concerned. I am, after all, German.
Bob Dietz
November 18, 2020
