Amerika beobachtet den Aufstieg eines Dualstaates

„For most people, the courts will continue to operate as usual—until they don’t.

On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was a remarkable one. It clarified what was unfolding in Berlin at the time, the catalyst for its author’s flight.

The man fleeing that day was a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel. He completed his manuscript two years later at the University of Chicago (where I teach), publishing it as The Dual State, with the modest subtitle A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship. The book explains how the Nazi regime managed to keep on track a capitalist economy governed by stable laws—and maintain a day-to-day normalcy for many of its citizens—while at the same time establishing a domain of lawlessness and state violence in order to realize its terrible vision of ethno-nationalism.

Fraenkel offered a simple, yet powerful, picture of how the constitutional and legal foundations of the Weimar Republic eroded, and were replaced by strongman-style rule in which the commands of the Nazi Party and its leader became paramount. His perspective was not grounded in abstract political theory; it grew instead from his experience as a Jewish lawyer in Nazi Berlin representing dissidents and other disfavored clients. Academic in tone, The Dual State sketches a template of emerging tyranny distilled from bloody and horrifying experience.

It was a mistake to think that even the Nazis would entirely dispense with normal laws.

As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply. (A prerogative power is one that allows a person such as a monarch to act without regard to the laws on the books; theorists from John Locke onward have offered various formulations of the idea.) In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies of the Nazi regime.

The key here is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state. The two states cohabit uneasily and unstably. On any given day, people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one. In July 1936, for example, Fraenkel won a case for employees of an association taken over by the Nazis. A few days later, he learned that the Gestapo had seized the money owed to his clients and deposited it in the government’s coffers. Over time, the prerogative state would distort and slowly unravel the legal procedures of the normative state, leaving a smaller and smaller domain for ordinary law.“

Thanks for posting the text of this unusually well-written article (The Atlantic continues to be a bastion of excellent writings in this time of dumbed-down online search results and targeted stories).

The situation in the US sure does jive with the words laid out in this story. Targeted Suppression is what we face, powered by a ruthless system with no accountability in practice. Because it’s targeted, most people abide the bullshit because they aren’t directly affected, and when they are affected, they are powerless to resist, they just disappear into the unchecked system.

If this continues into a powerful Nazi-like state, I wonder who the future allies will be, who will be the infamous French Resistance, and who will die in the millions in the new concentration camps.

Fuck a dual state.

Shit it’s been here, look at most red states and play the game „Is it the Middle East or Texas?“ When reading out various laws.

It’s likely Trump doesn’t understand the precedent he is setting with each authoritative move he makes. It’s on us, the citizens to unite to determine what is a wise political move from what isn’t, regardless of what party affiliation we pledge allegiance to. If we don’t, we will have a dynamic where all of the hot men are conservative and life will lose its meaning.

I had a nightmare years ago (like early 20s? Idk I’m almost 40 now) of two shadow puppets of world leaders arguing, but when the set was turned out to show the back, they were shaking hands with missles being shot out from below them. It’s all I really remember, but this makes me more worried now my nightmare was a warning.

Pls, don’t thank me, thank those who write these articles, the relevant people (example current/former federal employees) that make their voices heard for the mass.

They are not making things up, this is objective, not subjective.

I would recommend everyone read In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. I know there are some issues with the specific details, but the story of just how „normal“ the Nazis tried to keep things for most people parallels what we’re seeing now.