It’s very useful to read some Nazi history nowadays. In particular, here in America it’s 1933 all over again; Mark Greif explains what phase of fascism we’re in.
In historical terms, the event we are witnessing is an attempt at Gleichschaltung. The Nazi term is usually translated “coordination,” sometimes “consolidation” or “streamlining.” In this phase of totalitarianism, the Movement, now elected to power, uses its hold on the legitimate authority of the state to try, illegitimately, to align neutral, nonpartisan, or independent institutions with the extra-state Movement, forging an obligation to the Leader rather than to the constitutional state.
The hallmark of totalitarianism at this stage isn’t genocide or extremes of violence. It is doubled or twofold organization. The Movement (here MAGA) or its party (here the Republican Party, parasitically devoured and replaced from within) generates a vision of second institutions, however hallucinatory or inverted, with which original or real institutions are then coordinated.
The task of coordination is to reshape, refound, purge, and, by all means foul and fair, shake the underlying basis of institutions and install new, arbitrary ones. Because institutions only subsist by their personnel, a Gleichschaltung should unnerve the committed participants in institutions, first within government and then in civil society, and mold minds toward constant doubt and adjustment. Personnel should feel that they require alignment with the leader, or acknowledgment of arbitrary or irrelevant Movement goals, simply to continue to work and to avoid baseless investigation or denunciation.
Here’s another source defining the term, with a focus on the Christian resistance to Naziism. One of the early goals of National Socialism was to align the churches with their vision of the Reich.
“Gleichschaltung” (coordination) is a term coined by the National Socialists that actually trivializes the massive restrictions on fundamental rights and freedoms. Immediately after Hitler’s still entirely legal seizure of power on January 30, 1933, the National Socialists set about “coordinating” all public and private life in Germany, particularly in the areas of politics, social associations, the economy, the press, and culture.
In concrete terms, this meant that all movements and opinions that were not explicitly National Socialist—not to mention oppositional and critical ones—were suppressed and banned. In many cases, organizations were transformed into corresponding Nazi organizations.
One of the signs that this is going on isn’t that stormtroopers are taking over institutions by force — rather, the institutions are sown with doubt and uncertainty, so that they are hesitant and avoid disagreement. One recent example: a guest on one of these ubiquitious talk shows says I Might Lose My Job For Saying This, But What Trump’s Doing Is Insane, and the host nervously scrambles to downplay it. It’s not insane, the CNBC host says, it’s a tactic. She’s right, but you know, it can be both. What’s worrisome is the desperate need for our news sources to pretend to be neutral, so they can overlook the insanity going on before their eyes.
One of the tools the current regime is using is the Office of Management and Budget. They’re putting out memos strangling the budgets of various offices of the federal government. If they have to walk them back, or if a court decision stops them, no worries — they’ve done their job of fostering uncertainty, and forcing otherwise independent institutions to second guess their decisions, tip-toe around their jobs to avoid the hassle or more MAGA shit-stirring. Gleichschaltung accomplished.
This halt in the circulation of oxygen through the social body—or, in constitutional terms, illegal impoundment of funds authorized by Congress—had the purpose of making all agencies search themselves, their programs, and their recipients for any “activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders”—those “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.” A follow-up clarification enumerated seven listed executive order areas whose echoes were specifically to be searched out: those to do with immigrants (“Protecting the American People Against Invasion”), overseas aid, the environment, energy, race and gender or other diversity, trans people (“Defending Women . . . and Restoring Biological Truth”), and abortion.
They’ve also got a convenient scapegoat: trans people.
One thing Trump’s current coordination lacks is Jews; instead of the Jewish pollution, he has transgender. Trans persons are a comparably small minority to Jews, in government as in the general population, but they exist as phantasms ripe for exorcism. The actions so far against trans rights furnish an invitation for ordinary people to distinguish themselves as bigots—hurrying to change bathroom signage or, like the NCAA, rushing to prohibit athletes from sports.
The Jewish population is an inconvenient scapegoat. The far right has tied itself to Israel at the behest of the lunatics of evangelical Christianity, so MAGA can’t outright persecute them, even though there are so many Jewish groups protesting American actions in the Middle East and at home. Those trans weirdos, though — nobody cares about them, MAGA can do what ever criminal actions they want against them without alienating conservative allies. Expect them to make being trans even more criminal than it already is.
Haven’t you noticed yet how thoroughly they’re isolating our trans friends and family? They’re shutting them out of military service, mention of them is banned and grounds for loss of funding, they’re obsessed with demeaning Sarah McBride, Trump is claiming that the existence of transgender people is “hurting women very badly”. But still, it’s the bigotry that many people happily claim as their own righteous belief.
Another American institution that is being undermined by cowardice in the face of the MAGA threat is higher education. Oh no, our universities shouldn’t speak out about the lessons of history, they shouldn’t take a side against fascism, because they are so devoted to neutrality and free speech (well, except for speech against tyranny or genocide).
In 2024 Dictionary.com chose “demure” as the word of the year. On college campuses (or at least in their presidents’ offices and board meeting rooms) the word of the year, in the wake of the war in Gaza and the campus protests that followed, was “neutrality,” which has a similar vibe. One might think that those who embrace neutrality do so either because they have no strong views, or because they do and are afraid to express them. Some university leaders, following the University of Chicago, have tied themselves to the more agreeable notion that were they to weigh in on issues, this would chill speech on campus—that others will be encouraged to speak up if they keep their own mouths shut. The august American Council of Trustees and Alumni has urged all trustees to preserve “the high purpose of our academic institutions” by ensuring that their institutions stay out of political disputes—silence is golden, especially when the heat is on.
Right. We have all this information at our fingertips, we hold a reservoir of deep historical knowledge, but we must not apply it in any practical sense. Don’t make any judgements! This is the core idea The Chicago Principles, that odious chickenshittery that cowardly universities across the country are adopting right and left.
The Chicago principles, also known as the Chicago Statement, are a set of guiding principles intended to demonstrate a commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of expression on college campuses in the United States. Initially adopted by the University of Chicago following a report issued by a designated Committee on Freedom of Expression in 2014, they came to be known as the “Chicago Statement” or “Chicago principles” as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) led a campaign to encourage other universities across the country sign up to the principles or model their own based on similar goals.
Since 2014, a number of other universities have committed to the principles, including Princeton, Purdue, Washington University in St. Louis, and Stanford University. As of September 2024, FIRE reported that 110 U.S. colleges and universities had “adopted or endorsed the Chicago Statement or a substantially similar statement.”
That’s Gleichschaltung. The first hint is that it was cobbled up by FIRE, a reactionary conservative organization that crusades for “content neutrality” on campuses. Nazis should not be condemned, but instead must be allowed to speak with institutional endorsement.
It’s not all bad news. Greif has some ideas about how to fight back.
Simple advice can be offered to anyone in a decision-making role at an institution. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. If you can find solidarity with other institutions like your own, do it. But even when you can’t prevent others from defecting, there need be no solidarity in weakness. Prepare to stand on your own for a bit. Reach into reserves if they exist. Delay programs if you must. Don’t change, or kneel, or find hostages to feed into a slobbering maw. Don’t coordinate yourself, don’t align yourself, don’t appease, when it may yet prove unnecessary.
There may well be normalcy again. But it lies on the other side—not in accommodation to this malevolent insanity, run by lackeys and toads. The risk of overreaction is trivial compared to the risks of accommodation.
Don’t give in! That’s hard, though, when the agents of chaos are holding the purse strings. They know the universities are potential sources of opposition (at least, those that haven’t already caved in to the “Chicago principles”) and moved fast to shock-and-awe them with threats to indirect costs and federal research grants. It’s hard to stand strong when they’re cutting your budget, while some of your fellow institutions are surrendering.
Odd as it may sound, the antidote to totalitarianism, recorded by those who lived through it, is associational life. De-atomization, and the creation of loyalties to other people that can’t be, or simply aren’t, coordinated with a regime. In a time of temptation to the bad, or to the worse, association is what lets people find the courage to refuse, and the practical standing to do so. If things get very bad, it is also associational life that helps people circulate information, hide, escape, and travel. Combinations of associations like churches, clubs, professional or activist societies, local government and local agencies, stretching from close-range to middle-range, are practically efficacious in kinds of details that can’t be seen from above, or aren’t seen until too late and are too banal to punish: accidentally failing to find or arrest someone, sponsoring and sheltering, and passing money.
In past weeks, the emergent centers of refusal and opposition to coordination have been two kinds of institutions, at drastically different scales and positions in the nation-state system: public sector unions, specifically the unions of federal employees of individual agencies; and state governments. Before this month I had not thought anything or even known of the existence of the National Federation of Federal Employees, or the National Treasury Employees Union, or the American Federation of Federal Employees, or the American Foreign Service Association, or for that matter the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents’ Association or the Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Association. They, along with state attorneys general, have been filing suits to block the decimation of the workforce.
At every level, people will need to think of decoupling, alongside whatever strengthening of associational life is possible now. Any institution, at any scale, would do well to prepare to sever dependencies or necessary links with organizations larger or higher, even as it thinks of gatherings or sympathies or mutual aid with peers or organizations its own size. Decoupling is a means to halt contagion, preserving the fabric of society in its separate fibers, until a later date. It’s a curious and seemingly contradictory situation to be in, but, again, a means of strength: signal every solidarity you can, but cut the mooring lines that lead from a captured state to a free people.
