Trump Is Threatening the Very Things that Saved Democracy in the 1940s

Hate and division are stoked as a matter of political strategy. Our moral and mental defenses are fogged by a constant barrage of propaganda.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt | Library of Congress Harris and Ewing collection via Picaryl

My friends, if democracy has faced a comparable challenge, it was in 1940, after France had fallen.

Americans gathered around their radios in fear as they learned the terrible news.

Paris fell on May 14. A puppet government was installed and a negotiated surrender to NAZI power was in the works. In England, the government of Neville Chamberlain collapsed, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. He told the country that the battle of France was over, and the battle of Britain had begun.

We are in that moment.

A consolidating tyranny engulfs our federal government and overwhelms the checks and balances we counted on for protection. It has progressed to the point that this week Donald Trump ordered that every research grant from the federal government go through political screening before being awarded. It has gone so far that universities are accepting federal oversight of their admissions and their programs. It has gone so far that CBS news has allowed the administration to install a government monitor to look for signs of bias in its reporting. It has gone so far that Donald Trump is free to ignore the restraints of law that might impose some limitations on his unchecked whims.

Mr. Trump now ignores court orders and his lawyers stand accused of lying in federal court. Judges who do not rule in his favor are threatened. His administration ignores the laws passed by Congress including fiscal appropriations and the establishment of Departments. His axis in Congress have given him every increase in coercive power they possibly can — including more than $160 billion to build out a national police force accountable only to him and a network of national concentration camps to hold anyone he declares a threat.

Like many of us today, our fellow Americans in 1940 were scared.

So, on the evening of May 26^, President Franklin Roosevelt called the nation to gather around their radios for what was to be his 15^th fireside chat.

He began by describing the horror underway in Europe. He said, “Over once peaceful roads millions are now moving, running from their homes to escape bombs and shells and fire and machine gunning, without shelter, and almost wholly without food. They stumble on, knowing not where the end of the road will be. I speak to you of these people because each one of you that is listening to me tonight has a way of helping them.”

Imagine that. FDR’s effort to help Americans deal with their own fear of an exploding fascist threat began with empathy for war’s victims. For the homeless, and the asylum seekers. He reminded a frightened nation that each of us has power — power to act decently.

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He then explained the three reasons America had ignored the growing threat for so long. There were people who, in good faith believed the arguments of their fellow Americans that European threats were none of our business. There were others who sincerely thought the oceans would protect us. And there were some who deliberately closed their eyes to the threat because they just opposed his government in all things.

In our time, Americans sleepwalked into tyranny for similar reasons. First because people believed those who said that Republican efforts to bend the laws around voting rights and gerrymandering and unlimited dark money were just politics as usual. Second, because many thought America was just not vulnerable to autocratic attacks. Third, because there were those who so demonized the Democratic Party that they could not hear the warnings in time.

Those illusions now lie shattered around us. What Americans experienced in 1940 was similar, and just as terrifying.

FDR continued his talk by reviewing the ways our country was prepared for the challenge. He talked about the modernization of the armed forces. And he shared, transparently, the dollar amounts the country was spending and what that money was buying in terms of weapons and military personnel. But FDR knew that weapons alone could not protect democracy, in Europe or here in America. He said:

While our Navy and our airplanes and our guns and our ships may be our first line of defense, it is still clear that way down at the bottom, underlying them all, giving them their strength, sustenance and power, are the spirit and morale of a free people.

For that reason, we must make sure, in all that we do, that there be no breakdown or cancellation of any of the great social gains which we have made in these past years…

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify making the workers of our nation toll for longer hours than now limited by statute…

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a lowering of the standards of employment. Minimum wages should not be reduced…

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a breaking down of old age pensions or of unemployment insurance…

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a retreat from any of our social objectives — from conservation of natural resources, assistance to agriculture, housing, and help to the underprivileged…

And one more point on this: Our present emergency and a common sense of decency make it imperative that no new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad. The American people will not relish the idea of any American citizen growing rich and fat in an emergency of blood and slaughter and human suffering.

And, last of all, this emergency demands that the consumers of America be protected so that our general cost of living can be maintained at a reasonable level.

In that extraordinary passage, FDR is telling Americans that the best protection against tyranny is a strong society. The kind where we care about each other and where our shared humanity matters more than any individual’s ability to amass a fortune.

In every particular, the work FDR describes as strengthening our society and necessary for our defense is now under attack as part of autocratic consolidation underway. From health care to pensions, from equal protection under the law to working conditions, from environmental protection to profiteering, Mr. Trump and his faction are purposefully weakening our society to make us more vulnerable.

FDR closed his talk by warning of treachery. The so-called fifth column that “seeks to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis, and eventually panic.” He said that history is full of examples “where people lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action.”

He warned Americans in 1940 that “new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propaganda to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before. These dividing forces (are) I do not hesitate to call undiluted poison. … Our moral, (and) our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smoke-screen across our vision.”

That was then. In our time, those campaigns are far more sophisticated, dangerous, and effective. Hate and division are stoked as a matter of political strategy. Our moral and mental defenses are fogged by a constant barrage of propaganda.

And that is why FDR began where he did. With compassion and an appeal to the best in each of us and a reminder that we are not helpless and can still do good. Because, just maybe, if we keep our best selves, we keep our democracy, too.

Edwin Eisendrath hosts "The Big Picture" on WCPT820 AM/ Heartland Signal. He's the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools. You can follow him on BlueSky at eisendrath.net and Substack at “It’s the Democracy, Stupid.” Read the original column here.