Where is our Churchill? A new book wonders who will rise to meet the challenge of Trumpism
Posted August 31, 2024 2:50 pm.
If elected to a second term, former U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to be a dictator but “only on day one.” Whether or not that remark was tongue-in-cheek, Trump has expressed admiration for the likes of Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in the past. Now, a new book looks back at the rise of dictators like Adolf Hitler during the first half of the 20th century and what can be learned from them.
Journalist and author Ken McGoogan says he had the idea of Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship as far back as 2016.
“I got to talking to a wealthy American woman at a private event and I said, ‘I’m concerned about what’s happening politically with the emergence of this Donald Trump.’ And she said, ‘Well, that’s not your concern. You’re Canadian. You don’t get to vote.'”
“So, being a Canadian, I very politely let the matter drop,” he said. “But I’m not letting the matter drop anymore, because the United States is the most powerful country in the world, and it is right next door to us.”
Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once said, “living next to the United States is a lot like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast…one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” McGoogan agrees.
John-Ackermann-speaks-to-Ken-McGoogan-author-of-Shadows-of-Tyranny
“‘Yeah, you Canadians, you should just keep your mouth shut’ – that’s not going to happen as long as I am able to get hold of the odd microphone!”
Shadows of Tyranny looks at the rise of Adolf Hitler, and whether there are parallels between interwar Germany and our current age.
“So, the question was…what happened the last time a powerful nation elected a fascist demagogue,” he said. “That took me to the story of the rise of Adolf Hitler and what then ensued.”
McGoogan looks at the era through a decidedly Canadian lens — from the warnings of legendary war correspondent Matthew Halton and Ontario-born press baron Lord Beaverbrook to the overly sympathetic view of Hitler held by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
“He went to visit Hitler as late as 1937, so he was on side with Neville Chamberlain, you know, the British Prime Minister, who waved his piece of paper saying, ‘Peace in our time, all is going to be good,'” he said.
History doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes, as the old saying goes. McGoogan sees similarities between Hitler’s nativist rhetoric and Trump’s America First views.
“Here’s where you see history rhyming, you know, the same things are emerging. I mean, it’s incontrovertible as far as far as I can see.”
One question McGoogan raises is, “Where is our Churchill?” — meaning, where is the figure today who will meet the challenge of Trumpism, just as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rose to challenge Nazism.
“I feel the question has been answered,” he said. “[US Vice-President] Kamala Harris has emerged. She is our contemporary Churchill figure. She is the one who is unifying the resistance to the fascism that is emerging from the cult of Donald Trump. That’s how I see it.”
Harris, who accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Aug. 22, has narrowed the gap in support, with many polls placing her and Trump neck and neck ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Ultimately, McGoogan feels Trump is less like Hitler and more like Buzz Windrip, the fictitious U.S. dictator from the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here. But he hopes Shadows of Tyranny serves as a call to action.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen an election on par with this one, where the stakes are so high,” he said. “I’d like people to wake up and start watching and start thinking about ways we’re going to resist if Trump gets elected.”
“All I can do is sound the alarm and say, ‘Folks, we have a problem here.'”
Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship is published by Douglas & McIntyre.
