“Don’t get the idea that I’m one of those goddamn radicals. Don’t get the idea that I’m knocking the American system.” So said gangster/patriot Al Capone in 1929. Nearly a century later, a once and—he hopes—future president named Donald Trump hugs the American flag while romanticizing gangsters like Capone and today’s thuggish political strongmen in Russia, China, North Korea, Turkey, Hungary and other countries where authoritarian regimes hold power.
During recent rallies, Trump has thrown red meat to his base of supporters by railing that he has more lawyers than “the late, great gangster, Alphonse Capone… He was seriously tough, right?” Like a mob boss or a tinhorn dictator, Trump will demand toughness and blind loyalty if he wins the 2024 election.
In January, The Atlantic magazine ran a roster of writers on the topic, “If Trump Wins.” In its Apr. 30 issue, Time magazine echoed that title in a cover article. A second Trump term, says Time, “would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable.”
Of the members of the MAGA mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump said, “I call them the J-6 patriots” and would consider pardons for all of them. Trump also does not dismiss the possibility of political violence during this year’s election. When asked if his “talk of a dictatorship” was “contrary to our most cherished principles,” Trump answered, “I think a lot of people like it.” Sadly, he is right. Millions of Americans are ripe for the bloviating blandishments of a faux populist political demagogue with a mafioso mentality.
Trump’s trumpery for his hoped-for second term was revealed recently in the Project 2025 agenda released by the conservative Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other right-wing groups. In a lengthy manifesto called “Mandate for Leadership,” the agenda flies in the face of traditional conservative tenets like smaller government and rule of law. Instead, in the Trumpworld of Project 2025, the already formidable powers of the presidency would be increased, and policies like anti-abortion legislation, detention camps for undocumented migrants and a rollback of environmental protections would be quickly foisted upon America.
Like Trump, officials at the Heritage Foundation cozy up to Victor Orban, who was elected Hungary’s prime minister in 2010. Since then, Orban has pushed for “Christian values” and has railed against LGBTQ rights in Hungary. He has packed Hungary’s courts with lickspittle loyalists, undermined the country’s election process and meddled with the media by controlling Hungary’s public television while his political cronies control private media. Trump extols Orban’s rule, saying that there’s “no better leader” on the world stage. “He’s the boss,” says Trump of Orban.
Trump draws enthusiastic support from right-wing extremist groups and individuals today, but 60 years ago the specter of extremism haunted another political campaign. In 1964, Republicans nominated conservative Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater to run against President Lyndon Johnson in that year’s election. Johnson had occupied the Oval Office since the murder of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. The assassination and the rise of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan after the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964 put the topic of domestic extremism on the front burner during that election year.
Goldwater stirred the pot of extremism to the boiling point when he accepted his nomination as GOP standard-bearer by declaring “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Conservatives cheered while millions of others jeered. Goldwater billboards said, “In your heart you know he’s right.” Democrats countered with the slogan, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.” Goldwater lost in a landslide to Johnson in 1964 but, unlike Trump in 2020, Goldwater conceded defeat graciously: “I have no bitterness, no rancor at all,” he said. Goldwater later led the charge to remove his fellow Republican Richard Nixon from office in 1974 during the Watergate scandal, and he warned against the takeover of the GOP by religious fundamentalist extremists.
Goldwater’s assessment of Nixon 50 years ago could apply to Trump today: “The best thing he can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House.”
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