Episode 5 - The Role of Religion, Industrialists and Tech Bro’s in Developing an Autocratic State
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Welcome back to Weimar Washington podcast with me your host Des Latham. This is Episode 5 - The Role of Religion, Industrialists and Tech Bros in an autocratic state.
In our last episode, we looked at the symbols—the fasces and the red hats—that create a sense of belonging. But symbols need a soul, and a soul needs to eat.
To truly capture the hearts of a nation, the strongman must infect not only the minds, but the consciousness of their citizens and to do this, they need money.
We’ll explore how the industrialists of Germany were enticed into Hitler’s ambit by the opportunity to make loads of dosh, and how Trump’s rise has been oiled by the financial and technology moguls of modern America, not to mention corporate USA.
First off, Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump represent a masterclass in the same dark art: the co-option of the pulpit. Neither was a man of the cloth, yet both convinced millions of believers that the survival of their faith was synonymous with the survival of the leader.
While Hitler was a 1930s dictator and Trump is a 21st-century autocrat, both have utilized a transactional theology. In Hitler’s model he signed the Reichskonkordat with the Vatican so that the Catholics of Germany were neutralised. Up until the early 30s, Germany’s Catholic Church had always been directly involved in politics. Not so much after Hitler’s rise to power.
On the other, The Trump MAGA power era has been dominated by evangelicals who view Trump as a "Cyrus" figure—a flawed, non-believing king used by God to protect the faithful. It’s not about his personal morality; it’s about his utility as a strongman for their cause — he’s been very useful and when I say evangelicals, I include African-Americans and Latino evangelicals and traditionalists who helped put Trump into the presidency. They believe he is anointed by God - the number of his concubines not quite in King David’s league — not that he isn’t trying.
The Nazi War on the Christian Churches began more moderately, Hitler was a nominal Catholic, but had railed against political Catholicism in Mein Kampf and attacked both the Catholics and Protestants for their failure to recognize the racial problem as he put it.
Trump on the other hand, used the MAGA narrative focusing on a Great Replacement Populist Myth, where they hold that the Deep State has a plot to erase traditional values. Great Replacement Theory also holds that elites and academics and Democrats are trying to dilute the number of whites in America by supporting immigration from Latino countries, Asia and Africa by introducing a secular satanism under the cloak of intellectual pursuit.
In both Germany and America, the leader is framed as the only one who can restore the natural order or divine hierarchy of the world. But if you peer closely at the events, a certain pattern emerges.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 he faced a State which was suspicious of his National Socialist agenda. Within six months he had hollowed out the offices, replacing all main members with men who would do his bidding.Donald Trump, having learned a great deal from the chaotic staff turnover of his first presidency, moved with equal speed by his second to allay the fears of the technological elite.The very tech moguls who had once publicly demeaned him, or secretly funded his opponents, slid effortlessly into his transactional worldview. He even hired the world’s richest tech bro, Elon Musk, to treat the federal government like a failing Twitter acquisition—unleashing a chaotic wave of arbitrary firings and unconstitutional AI-driven budget cuts before the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) collapsed into a administrative disaster.
Next time on Weimar Washington, we move from the capture of the public mind to the quiet execution of the state itself.
In our last episode, we looked at the symbols—the fasces and the red hats—that create a sense of belonging. But symbols need a soul, and a soul needs to eat.
To truly capture the hearts of a nation, the strongman must infect not only the minds, but the consciousness of their citizens and to do this, they need money.
We’ll explore how the industrialists of Germany were enticed into Hitler’s ambit by the opportunity to make loads of dosh, and how Trump’s rise has been oiled by the financial and technology moguls of modern America, not to mention corporate USA.
First off, Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump represent a masterclass in the same dark art: the co-option of the pulpit. Neither was a man of the cloth, yet both convinced millions of believers that the survival of their faith was synonymous with the survival of the leader.
While Hitler was a 1930s dictator and Trump is a 21st-century autocrat, both have utilized a transactional theology. In Hitler’s model he signed the Reichskonkordat with the Vatican so that the Catholics of Germany were neutralised. Up until the early 30s, Germany’s Catholic Church had always been directly involved in politics. Not so much after Hitler’s rise to power.
On the other, The Trump MAGA power era has been dominated by evangelicals who view Trump as a "Cyrus" figure—a flawed, non-believing king used by God to protect the faithful. It’s not about his personal morality; it’s about his utility as a strongman for their cause — he’s been very useful and when I say evangelicals, I include African-Americans and Latino evangelicals and traditionalists who helped put Trump into the presidency. They believe he is anointed by God - the number of his concubines not quite in King David’s league — not that he isn’t trying.
The Nazi War on the Christian Churches began more moderately, Hitler was a nominal Catholic, but had railed against political Catholicism in Mein Kampf and attacked both the Catholics and Protestants for their failure to recognize the racial problem as he put it.
Trump on the other hand, used the MAGA narrative focusing on a Great Replacement Populist Myth, where they hold that the Deep State has a plot to erase traditional values. Great Replacement Theory also holds that elites and academics and Democrats are trying to dilute the number of whites in America by supporting immigration from Latino countries, Asia and Africa by introducing a secular satanism under the cloak of intellectual pursuit.
In both Germany and America, the leader is framed as the only one who can restore the natural order or divine hierarchy of the world. But if you peer closely at the events, a certain pattern emerges.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 he faced a State which was suspicious of his National Socialist agenda. Within six months he had hollowed out the offices, replacing all main members with men who would do his bidding.Donald Trump, having learned a great deal from the chaotic staff turnover of his first presidency, moved with equal speed by his second to allay the fears of the technological elite.The very tech moguls who had once publicly demeaned him, or secretly funded his opponents, slid effortlessly into his transactional worldview. He even hired the world’s richest tech bro, Elon Musk, to treat the federal government like a failing Twitter acquisition—unleashing a chaotic wave of arbitrary firings and unconstitutional AI-driven budget cuts before the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) collapsed into a administrative disaster.
Next time on Weimar Washington, we move from the capture of the public mind to the quiet execution of the state itself.
