Although Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States, his supporters are more determined than ever to regain control of their country, at a time when a worrying share of Americans is willing to support the behavior of an authoritarian leader, according to a recent study. “American authoritarians pose a clear and immediate danger to democracies around the world, including Canada,” says Bob Altemeyer, a retired University of Manitoba psychology professor and author of the book. Authoritarian Nightmarewhich he co-wrote with John W. Dean, a former White House attorney in the Nixon administration.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Q. You say Republican voters were critical of Trump after the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, but have since come back to him…
R. According to a poll of 4,000 people conducted by The Pew Research Center, Trump lost a quarter of his supporters after the January 6, 2021 attack. For any political movement, losing a quarter of your supporters is a significant setback.
However, these supporters have not disappeared: they have remained anchored in the same churches, the same communities, the same workplaces, and are subject to the same calls to join the movement that had persuaded them before. Result: the number of Republicans who want Trump to remain a dominant figure in the Republican Party has rebounded in 2021 and remains very high. Let’s not forget that Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016, and the only reason for his defeat is that the Democrats outclassed him in voter recruitment, producing 13 million. more votes for Biden than for Hillary Clinton four years earlier. In an ordinary election, Trump would have won a landslide victory.
Q. One of your concerns about the future of American democracy is that a significant number of Americans are “predisposed” to accept the rhetoric of an authoritarian and undemocratic leader.
R. Exactly, and you just don’t see that vulnerability in other major democracies. Last year, Morning Consult administered the standard authoritative tracking test to a representative sample of 1,000 Americans, as well as 1,000 adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, in Spain and the UK. The Canadians scored relatively low, as did the Germans. But the American average was much higher than that of other countries. The comparison of the American and German results is particularly striking, since many Americans believe that the German people are “naturally” inclined to want a dictatorship. However, the United States had twice as many citizens “ready for a dictatorship” as Germany, 41% against 17%. It is a deadly virus for a democracy, a virus which could turn into a political pandemic.
PHOTO MIRKO PETRICEVIC, FROM THE JUSTIA WEBSITE
Bob Altemeyer, professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba
It may be interesting to draw parallels with the career of another politician who, one day in November in the XXand century, led a march of several thousand supporters to overthrow his country’s democratic government. The police confronted the crowd, bullets were fired and 20 people died. The leader was sentenced to five years in prison for treason, but he was released less than a year later. He returned to political life, but this time he ran as the candidate for law and order, promising to end the civil unrest caused, to a large extent, by his own supporters. His party ended up winning enough seats in parliamentary elections for him to be appointed chancellor of his country. Within a year, the author of Mein Kampf [NDLR : Adolf Hitler] had seized power, with the consequences that we know.
Q. What are the consequences of American authoritarianism for Canada?
R. Essentially, you didn’t want to share a border with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and Canadians might not want to share one with a re-elected Donald Trump either…
During his first term, Trump showed time and time again that he didn’t like democracy, that he wanted one-man rule. We could see his affection for totalitarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, while he threatened at the same time to undo the alliances of the United States with democratic states. Let’s not forget that if a dictator were to enter the White House, he would consider a neighboring democratic country as his natural enemy.
It is for this reason that the American authoritarians represent a clear and immediate danger to the democracies of the world, including Canada. The next few years will be decisive. It is wrong to believe that Canadians will be unaffected if Donald Trump, his political allies and his tens of millions of supporters succeed in making gains in the 2022 and 2024 elections. We must do everything in our power to support the democratic institutions of the United States and avert disaster. Otherwise, we will have to live with the consequences.