In early April 1948, three refugees and immigrants, Albert Einstein, Oskar Morgenstern and Kurt Goedel, traveled from Princeton to Trenton, the capital of the state of New Jersey, twenty miles away. Einstein, who had fled Germany just before the Nazis came to power, was a celebrity, more famous than a movie star; a phenomenon that arose as a combination of the space-time claims in relativity theory, so intriguing and incompatible with our deeply embedded experience, and Einstein’s open and hearty personality. Once, when Einstein and Charlie Chaplin came to the premiere of Chaplin’s film City Lights, and the whole audience in the Los Angeles theater applauded for them enthusiastically, Chaplin said, “They cheer for me because they all understand me, and they cheer for you because no one understands you.”
Morgenstern and Goedel were refugees from Austria after the Anschluss, both former professors at the University of Vienna and, like the vast majority of scientists, almost anonymous to the wider public. Morgenstern as an economist, along with von Neumann, started a whole new branch of applied mathematics, game theory, and today a square in Vienna is named after him. Kurt Goedel was an Austrian mathematician, born in 1906 in Brno. At the University of Vienna he specialized in mathematical logic, and in 1931 he published the so-called incompleteness theorems, a work that, in the opinion of many mathematicians, elevates him to the position of most significant mathematician of the 20th century. The theorems, and especially the proofs, are written in the highly specialized language of mathematical logic and are not easily understandable even to mathematicians whose narrow field is not mathematical logic. But the implications of the theorems shook the very foundations of mathematics, as well as our preconceived notions about the reaches of logical inference. Oversimplified, Goedel started from analogies with logical catches such as “This statement is not true”. (If it’s true then it’s not true, if it’s false then it’s true). He used mathematical logic to show that in any sufficiently complex system, like number theory, there are statements whose truth cannot be proven or disproven within the system.
In Austria, after the Anschluss, Goedel became a suspicious figure, it was known that he had been associating with Jews from the “Vienna Circle” and, when he was threatened with conscription at the end of 1939, Goedel accepted an invitation from the USA to come to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a lecturer. He journeyed with his wife, taking a train to Moscow, then the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. From there, they traveled by ship to Yokohama, continued on to San Francisco, and finally took a train to Princeton. Reclusive and solitary by nature, Goedel became friends with Einstein at the Institute and their walks together became part of the history of the Institute, which was not short of peculiar geniuses. Eight years after Goedel’s arrival, Einstein, in between discussions about the solutions to the equations of the theory of relativity that Goedel had proposed, persuaded his younger friend to take some less abstract steps, such as applying for American citizenship. The American citizenship exam was taken before a judge and one set of questions tested basic knowledge of the American Constitution. Being the pedant that he was, Goedel carefully studied all the exam materials. He confided to Einstein and Morgenstern that he had found some “logical inconsistencies” in the American Constitution. It seemed to Einstein and Morgenstern that proving contradictions in the Constitution would not be the best approach to passing the American citizenship exam, and they decided, just in case, to go to court with Goedel in Trenton.
Everything went smoothly during the exam until the judge said at one point: “You see, the American Constitution is a document that prevents a dictatorship from coming to power in the United States, as happened in Germany.” At that, Goedel sprang from his chair and began to explain to the judge how a dictatorship could come to power in the United States without formally violating the American Constitution. Einstein pulled Goedel by the sleeve to sit down, and in the end the exam went well.
The Constitution of the Weimar Republic was considered one of the best-designed legal documents of its type, in terms of guaranteeing civil liberties, equality, and the functioning of a democratic state. The flaw in the eyes of many Germans, who had emerged from a lost war, from an absolute monarchy to a republic, from a world power to a European pariah, was the fact that it was written by a Jew and a social democrat (Hugo Preuss, in 1919). For decades after World War II, lawyers and historians debated whether any part of that constitution was “to blame” for the rise of the Nazi Party to power. The most frequently cited is Article 48, which allows the president and prime minister (chancellor), with the approval of parliament (Reichstag), to temporarily suspend civil rights guaranteed by the constitution in times of crisis until the crisis is resolved. As chancellor, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to invoke this article after the Reichstag Fire. The arson, as many suspected, and as documents found after the war have proven without a doubt, was organized by the Nazis to blame the communists and expel them, as a terrorist organization, from parliament.
However, Article 48 was used several times by previous governments, and the result was not the introduction of a dictatorship. The permanent abolition of the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution happened through the gradual passing of laws in the Reichstag, in which the Nazis had a majority after the 1932 elections by the will of the citizens. Laws and emergency powers passed in an “obedient” parliament, in the end completely subverting the spirit of the Weimar Constitution, which was never formally abolished, legally led Germany into a dictatorship. The example of the coming of the Nazis to power does not show, as a well-intentioned American judge in Trenton explained to Goedel, that the Weimar Constitution was not sufficiently well-conceived, compared to its American counterpart, to prevent the arrival of a dictatorship. The Weimar constitution was 130 years “younger” than the American one, it was not inferior to it in any way, and it provided better protection against the abuse of executive power through the very division of power between the president and the prime minister (chancellor). It is more the case that the collapse of the Weimar Republic proves that a constitution, practically any constitution, when unfavorable circumstances arise, is not an impermeable barrier to the transition from democracy to dictatorship. The type of politician who will carry out such a transformation is already determined by the goal itself – the destruction of achieved democratic standards and the imposition of his own autocracy demands a power-hungry, unscrupulous, narcissistic and violence-prone autocrat.
The new-old US President Donald Trump has already had the opportunity to show his autocratic tendencies, and he did not hide them even in last year’s election campaign, which he successfully completed. As if following a textbook on the behavior of autocrats when they come to power, he first attacked with his executive powers, even exceeding his authority, those state institutions that should do socially useful work regardless of who is at the head of the executive power. Such institutions are the backbone of an open democratic society and, consistently, a thorn in the side of supporters of a closed society constrained by prejudice and an autocratically run state. The list is long, from humanitarian aid agencies to renewable energy offices, from scientific institutions and universities to statistical offices (because statistics on the impact of Trump’s moves on the economy did not please Trump). Some of the consequences are terrifying; it is estimated that the abolition of USAID, the world’s largest humanitarian agency, alone will cause the death of 14 million people, over four and a half million of them children.
When attacking his opponents, who are all those who do not unconditionally obey his authority, Trump uses a vocabulary full of insults that openly call for violence against those named. In the vocabulary of the Trump administration, fabrications intended to incite become “alternative truths”, and the telling of slander and outright lies is called freedom of speech. In this speech, progressive humanitarian organizations such as Soros’s Open Society Foundation or the Ford Foundation become terrorist organizations. This is how Vice President Vance, unaware of the similarity to the rhetoric of the Nazis after the Reichstag fire, denounces them: “They are literally subsidized by you and me. And how do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.” The real truth will not require finding hidden documents; it is clear that the “fire” in that house is being set by Trump and his administration.
Representatives of the Democratic Party in Congress are referred to as extreme leftists, thus enemies of the state, one step from terrorists; about them Trump publishes fake video messages on his media platform Truth Social in which the leaders of the Democratic Party plan to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants so that they will vote for them. The epithet “terrorists” is used without reservation for all those who promote a society in which diversity would be respected and equality of rights demanded, while encouraging inclusion in society (DEI: diversity, equity, inclusion). At the same time, on Trump’s direct orders, in the sea by Venezuela, the US Navy is killing people in boats suspected of transporting drugs, even though the Navy could easily stop, interrogate, and arrest them. In at least one case, castaways from such a sunken ship were mercilessly killed as they swam helplessly; in American war films, Nazi criminals from German submarines did this.
The US Coast Guard announced, at the end of November, the decision of the US administration that starting next week it would no longer treat the swastika as a “hate symbol,” but mere a “potentially divisive” one (what we would call in Croatia, a symbol of double connotation.) The decision was withdrawn the next day. But the fact that at a time when global threats loom over the world – from the aggression against Ukraine and the horrors in Gaza to climate change – there are people in Trump’s administration who engage in downplaying the malevolence a notorious Nazi symbol, is a terrifying message for both the US and the world. This brings to mind this year’s meeting between Vice President J.D. Vance and Alice Weidl, president of the far-right AfD, a party that, for denying and relativizing the evil of Nazism, was declared an “extreme right-wing organization” by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution. That meeting and Vance’s occasional criticisms of other German parties for distancing themselves from the AfD were interpreted as a declaration of Trump’s open support for Weidl’s party, two weeks before parliamentary elections in Germany – and as a continuation of the actions of then-omnipresent Trump financier and advisor Elon Musk, who declared that the AfD is “the only hope for Germany.”
It Can’t Happen Here is a novel by Sinclair Lewis, published 90 years ago. It was recalled from oblivion by the first election of Donald Trump as the President of the USA in 2016. The demand resulted in a new edition that climbed the US bestseller list. The main villain of the novel is an unscrupulous politician, a senator who manages to impose himself as the voice of ordinary people and traditional American values with populist promises. He defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the Democratic nomination and then wins the 1936 election. Elected president, he surrounds himself with obedient tycoons and, using the motto “order and labor”, imposes a dictatorship that is supported by a significant part of the citizenry, influenced by propaganda.
Lewis wrote this “possible immediate future” fiction inspired by the views of some specific American radical right-wing politicians, but also under the impression of the abyss that was opening in human society and civilization with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power. Somewhere around that time, the phrase “Fascism will come to America wrapped in an American flag and with a cross in its hand” was also coined.
Not only to America. The abuse of patriotism, and the substitution of hatred and intolerance for it, is a standard pattern in the activities of the radical right everywhere. It was not only Trump’s supporters five years ago, the thugs who stormed the US Congress, who were wrapped in national flags. Examples can be found from Finland to Greece, from Portugal to Poland. The more primitive and aggressive the messages, the more they are adorned with national and religious symbols. And yet, many politicians and citizen-voters in a significant part of Europe, under the pressure of the political tsunami caused by Trump, seem to have become more aware of the value of the civilizational, libertarian and, yes, anti-fascist principles on which the European Union was founded by its creators.
90 years ago, the United States, with all its problems and injustices, seemed to refugees from Nazism a bastion of freedom and democracy. Today, that role has been shifted to the best that remains of the EU – which the Trump administration, encouraging the radical, nationalist European right, is trying to destroy. Viewed in this light, Trump’s rhetoric regarding peace rings hollow, echoing the “peacemaking” oratory once used by Hitler. Will the EU be able to resist this, will the USA be able to return to the path symbolized by the spirit of the Declaration of Independence? There seem to be ever more reasons for pessimism, and fewer and fewer reasons for optimism. This is probably what many New Year’s Eves looked like in the late 1930s.
But not to end on a pessimistic note, let’s add a cheerful nursery rhyme from Alice Through the Looking-Glass (a cult classic by another Lewis); with two letters changed, for this occasion.
Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Trumpty together again.
Novosti, 31.12.2025.
Translated by the author
Peščanik.net, 12.01.2026.
