Trump’s Dictatorship: The Dual State, the Normative Government, Trump’s Prerogative State and the Führerprinzip
Trump’s Word both Supersedes the Law and is the Law,
Donald Trump is governing as a dictator even as the superstructure of our once democratic government remains amidst the shredded remains of the Constitution. The cornerstone of Trump’s governing policy is confusion between his will and the legitimate aspects of the state. Yes, he is the elected President, but in defiance of the law and Constitution he issues Executive Orders in his name which subvert the laws and Constitution. Unfortunately the Supreme Court majority ruled last year that a President cannot be prosecuted for acts that are a part of his “official duties” thus ensuring that he will do what he wants until such time he is stopped by Congress or is removed from office.
The basis of Trump’s rule is not found in the Constitution, but rather in Nazi legal codes. The foundation is the Führerprinzip which I have written about previously in regards to Trump and his actions against the military leadership of our country, which sadly, seem to have worked in silencing any dissent in the Department of Defense.
Carl Schmitt
In in his book The Legal Basis of the Total State (1933) the Nazi political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt described a concept known as the Führerprinzip or the Leader Principle:
“The strength of the National Socialist State lies in the fact that it is [ruled] from top to bottom and in every atom of its existence ruled and permeated with the concept of leadership [Führertum]. This principle [of leadership], which made the movement strong, must be carried through systematically, both in the administration of the State and in the various spheres of self-government, naturally taking into account the [ideologic] modifications required by the particular area in question. But it would not be permissible for any important area of public life to operate independently from the Führer concept.”
Werner Best
Werner Best, a Nazi intellectual, lawyer, and high ranking SS Officer noted that Hitler’s word was thus law, and could override all existing laws. He was not given his powers by the state, but by history.
The concept had been long a part of the Nazi Party, but with Hitler’s rise to power it became the basis of the state, but it became the foundation of the Nazi state, which was in reality a Dual State, in which the normative institutions of the German state, or the Normative State, those of the Chancellory, the ministries of the government, as well as the regional and local governments remained, alongside of the Nazi institutions, the Prerogative State.
Like Hitler and the Nazis, Trump and his conditorei of criminals and thugs held the letter of the law and the institutions of the state in contempt when they were out of power, votes and elections elections were simply a means to power, even if they did not reflect a true democratic mandate to govern. Likewise, to the Nazis and Trump accepted legal norms such as the notion that people should not commit murder or acts of violence, destruction and theft, were disregarded from the outset of Hitler’s Nazi Party and Trump’s MAGA movement.
In his book The Dual State, Ernst Frankel, a distinguished German professor and scholar of the law forced to escape Germany in 1938, described Prerogative State, and by this term he means the governmental system under the supreme jurisdiction of Der Fuehrer which exercises unlimited authority unchecked by any legal guarantees. The prerogative state, which is an essentially extra-legal system that derives its legitimation entirely from the supra-legal authority of the Leader, in Nazi Germany Hitler, in the 2025 United States, Trump. In the Third Reich legal theorists like Ernst Huber explained that ‘the authority of the state and the authority of the Leader’, and made it clear that the latter always had precedence over the former. The same is true with Trump’s legal team, including officials now working in the Department of Justice as well as the White House.
Unlike Hitler’s Reich, where it took the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 to send government officials to rush over each other to get into Hitler’s good graces, too many United States government officials are making fools of themselves to get on the good side of Trump. But their attempts will come to naught as like Hitler’s Germany they will be sidelined by Trump appointees and become compliant stooges.
Sadly, that is where we are just 51 days following Trump’s second inauguration, two days short of how long it took for Hitler to become a dictator.
Until next time, be safe and watch your six.
I saw someone on youtube the other day being shown pictures of the bomb damage in London during WWII.
They were amazed - they had no knowledge that the UK was bombed by Germany! "Why weren't we taught this in school?" they said. . .
Many Americans have no idea (or very little) of what life under a Nazi regime was like. Europeans have. It is a race memory that will take generations to fade. Even if you were born after 1945 - it was an integral part of your up bringing. While American children were playing "Cowboys and Indian" European children were playing "Goodies and Nazis."
I am so afraid that this ingrained complacency is going to lead to even more damage and division within American culture, before people come to their senses - if they ever do, or, more importantly, are allowed to do.
There’s a hopeless feeling that we’re just fiddling while Rome is burning.
If we’re as pitiable and pernicious as the current fiasco indicates, we might as well just bend over and kiss our asses goodbye.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis when we had shelter drills in junior high school, that was the prevailing sentiment of Ban the Bombers. We even wore black armbands and peace symbols.