The central question in American politics right now — one with global implications — is whether the Republican Party can purge itself of its most extreme elements. Obviously this relates to former president Donald Trump, but it goes beyond him as well. The current Republican congressional delegation includes people who insist the 2020 election was stolen, have ties to violent extremist groups, traffic in antisemitism and have propagated QAnon ideologies in the past. At the state level, it often gets worse. Mainstream Republicans have tolerated these voices and views for years. Can the party finally find a way to control them?
The answer to this question could well determine the future of American democracy. In a brilliant scholarly work, “Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy,” Harvard’s Daniel Ziblatt revealed the key to why, in the early 20th century, Britain stayed a democracy and Germany veered into fascism: The conservative party in the United Kingdom was able to discipline its extremists. For years before World War I, British conservatives faced a threat from anti-democratic elements of their party, particularly radicals in Northern Ireland. The Tory Party, strong and hierarchical, was eventually able to tamp down these factions and stabilize British democracy.
In Germany, by contrast, the main conservative party, the DNVP, was weak and disorganized, dependent on outside groups for help. This provided an opening for the nationalist Alfred Hugenberg, an early incarnation of Rupert Murdoch, who used his media empire and business connections to seize control of the party and try to drive it to the right. The infighting sapped the strength of the party, and many of its voters began to flock to far-right alternatives such as the Nazi Party. Hugenberg allied with Hitler, thinking that this would be a way to decidedly take control of the conservative movement. The rest is history. Continue reading.
