How can the United States turn into a totalitarian dictatorship by 2000?

Perhaps if European dictatorships were more successful and didn't wage war then the image of a dictatorship would be improved. Unlikely, really.
 

JRScott

Banned
This is how I believe it could happen:

Impeachment Trial of William Jefferson Clinton circa 1998. A terrorist organization uses a WMD on Washington DC, killing the House, Senate, President, Vice President, most of the Cabinet, and the Supreme Court.

The first 7 in the line of succession are dead, so someone else assumes the Presidency.

He does what he has to do and declares martial law. Ordering US airspace cleared, all ports closed etc. A working Senate could be made by those Governors able to appoint new Senators, however all states wouldn't be represented as all Governor's do not have that power and it will take months.

House Special Elections will take at least a year.

In effect whoever it is would be a defacto Dictator for at least a year, given the nature of the attack Americans would probably give a wide berth for the new President in order to safeguard against other attacks.

In order to preserve the Judicial system and in the absence of Congress being in recess due to its destruction he makes 9 recess appointments to the Supreme Court. All of course favorable to his policies and viewpoints before a Congress can fully be reformed.

He then makes recess appointments to all Cabinet positions, and a recess appointment to the office of Vice President. Even if anyone challenges them, he's already stacked the Supreme Court.....

He then issues a number of Presidential executive orders, essentially ruling by them in order to keep the country moving. To face the threat and to counter unemployment he institutes a draft forseeing the coming of war. Many young Americans taken in by the tragedy volunteer for service. A suitable terrorists nation would be chosen and invaded. Not like Iraq or Afghanistan, full blown invasion.

Life for the average American doesn't change greatly, yes there are military patrols in large cities, both air, sea and land but that's to be understood after the event. Life in rural parts really doesn't change much.

Once his government is in place and within the first month of the event ports and airports are reopened with heavy military security. Ships are subject to search and seizure by the military. People are randomly searched in airports, bus stations and train stations by military personal, and you thought the TSA was bad. But its understandable in this time of emergency.

He suspends the Presidential election in 2000 so that there is some continuity but calls for congressional elections and other elections to proceed. The cia carefully investigates all candidates for congress and governships. Leaks will makes sure that political enemies will not be able to win seats. (So now he's stacked the Congress and the Governorships). He promises a return to presidential elections in 2004 once the emergency has passed.

The foreign wars continue however they also claim some valuable resources for the United States, surely we deserve these oil fields and such due to the nature of attack on our country.

To help the citizens he passes a work progress bill to help the rebuilding and cleaning of Washington DC, while also giving improvements to critical infrastructure. In addition through executive order he passes educational funding for the poor and middle class.

By the time elections come in 2004 the American people have a favorable opinion of him. Congress, The Supreme Court and Governorships are stacked. He has control of the miltiary. Folks reelect him in thanks for stability. He suggests the repeal of presidential term limits and it passes the Congress and states.

Remember Hitler was an elected leader of Germany......
 
why a Disaster ?
the change to dictatorship goes more subtly than that, see how the Nazi take over Germany !

Because the US wasn't in a comparable situation to pre-Nazi Germany and can't be plausibly put in a similar situation?

This is a country with a much bigger middle class both in raw numbers and as a percentage than Germany did, an ingrained democratic tradition, an ingrained human rights tradition (perhaps not by our lights, but certainly in comparison to what would exist under a dictatorship), an ingrained tradition of civilian control of the military, one of the oldest and most stable governments in the world, a decentralized government that includes significantly independently elected elements, extremely large area and distinct regional populations, massive resource basis and massive internal market, a flexible economy, a flexible society with a tradition of initiative and voluntary cooperation, no history of humiliating defeats, no existential threats to national security and no experience of such threats, and so on.

If you want to make incremental changes to a totalitarian US starting in 1900, you are still incrementing away by 2012. Momentum and inertia is a historical concept just as much as it is a physics one. The US has *massive* liberal democratic inertia and to change that you basically have to smash the place down and start over again
 
If, in 2000, someone had written a near-future timeline in which George W. Bush set up a secret prison on foreign soil, where detainees would be tortured and denied access to a trial by jury, I think almost everyone would have called that ASB.

Hell, a black president sigining the 2011 NDAA, AKA the indefinite detention act, would have really ASB in 2000.
 
why a Disaster ?
the change to dictatorship goes more subtly than that, see how the Nazi take over Germany !
Germany between WWI and their taking of power was pretty disaster-ridden, look at Versailles, hyperinflation and the depression. They didn't directly put them in power, but certainly helped.
 
J Edgar Hoover moves into Politics in the early 50's. Anti-Communist dictatorship within a term of his election.
 
J Edgar Hoover moves into Politics in the early 50's. Anti-Communist dictatorship within a term of his election.

From all that I've read about JEH it's clear to me that he did have all the tools needed for making such an overhaul to the American political system at his disposal. Whether he could have succeeded had he tried is questionable, but he had the tools.
 
Are there any limits on the POD? Because if not, this is entirely possible, seeing as we have over 200 years in which to change the internal politics of this nation
 
I think I can get within forty years of 1900 for a POD that occurs to me as feasible, that is, an ongoing Civil War*, and if Lincoln gets shot, have the Andrew Johnson impeachment succeed in booting Johnson out, and, whoever replaces him faces things like recurrent draft-riots in New York City and so on to encourage heavy-handed measures in response.

Give the "junta" a couple decades to win the Civil War, and by then, the military regime imposed on the former Confederacy won't have too much of a difference from the regime running the north.


* This might look like Robert E. Lee stopped from ordering his folks to stand down from any guerilla action, etc.
 
General Leonard Wood, who supported Palmer and the Red Scare, as the Republican candidate in 1920 is elected President. Or Palmer himself, as the Democratic candidate, is elected President. Neither would themselves be a dictator, but could set a plausible timeline leading to dictatorship in the United States.

Or...

It really isn't as hard in general as people are making it out. Considering how popular the various patriot groups, government propaganda councils, and general state of violating the constitution in the name of national security was during the Great War, the Red Scare could be used as a way to keep the state of emergency going until it becomes the new normal, a long emergency. If they aren't dropped and forgotten, they won't become the badly mismanaged fringe groups that lost the support of mainstream political figures and the right-wing of labor like Samuel Gompers. Conditions can be maintained so that by the 1930's, instead of being laughingstocks, groups like the American Defense Society still have that broad coalition of widespread public support.

Basic thoughts: Carrying the WWI state of unofficial martial law through the 1930's, total war with Japan permanently embeds some very nasty things in the American psyche, as Japan indeed becomes a language (very nearly) only spoke in Hell. The war is "proof" that the Philippines can't be independent, no Good Neighbor Policy happens so the US is still running much of the Caribbean and Central America, and the old propaganda about Mexico joining the well behaved American occupied territories is acted upon. As a racist, red-baiting neo-colonial power the United States can later be in a cold war with the British Empire (or Anglo-French Union, or British led Europe or what have you), and instead of supporting African independence movements support Afrikaaner nationalists, colonial hang on regimes like OTL's attempt at such in Rhodesia, and have the US as the primary backers of Arab terrorism in a Middle East primarily divided among British and Soviet influence.
 

JRScott

Banned
No he wasn't.

Depends on your viewpoint I suppose, he was appointed Chancellor, but the Reichstag did vote to give him expanded power that turned it into a de facto dictatorship. Thus he was elected by the representatives of the people, even if not by the people themselves.
 
General Leonard Wood, who supported Palmer and the Red Scare, as the Republican candidate in 1920 is elected President. Or Palmer himself, as the Democratic candidate, is elected President. Neither would themselves be a dictator, but could set a plausible timeline leading to dictatorship in the United States.

Or...

It really isn't as hard in general as people are making it out. Considering how popular the various patriot groups, government propaganda councils, and general state of violating the constitution in the name of national security was during the Great War, the Red Scare could be used as a way to keep the state of emergency going until it becomes the new normal, a long emergency. If they aren't dropped and forgotten, they won't become the badly mismanaged fringe groups that lost the support of mainstream political figures and the right-wing of labor like Samuel Gompers. Conditions can be maintained so that by the 1930's, instead of being laughingstocks, groups like the American Defense Society still have that broad coalition of widespread public support.

Basic thoughts: Carrying the WWI state of unofficial martial law through the 1930's, total war with Japan permanently embeds some very nasty things in the American psyche, as Japan indeed becomes a language (very nearly) only spoke in Hell. The war is "proof" that the Philippines can't be independent, no Good Neighbor Policy happens so the US is still running much of the Caribbean and Central America, and the old propaganda about Mexico joining the well behaved American occupied territories is acted upon. As a racist, red-baiting neo-colonial power the United States can later be in a cold war with the British Empire (or Anglo-French Union, or British led Europe or what have you), and instead of supporting African independence movements support Afrikaaner nationalists, colonial hang on regimes like OTL's attempt at such in Rhodesia, and have the US as the primary backers of Arab terrorism in a Middle East primarily divided among British and Soviet influence.

No, its pretty darn hard. The US could certainly go in somewhat more authoritarian or less civil libertarian directions than OTL, throught the methods you describe. But that's not the question here. The question is how can the US turn into a totalitarian dictatorship. Nothing you suggest gets even close to that.

For a history site, some folks here are surprisingly dismissive of history and the kind of momentum it generates. Countries do not turn on a dime.
 
Maybe if the Bonus Army events escalate/spiral fiercely, if some folks are convincing enough to assemble reaction against the crackdown, etc.?
 
Could an earlier 20th century crisis be caused by defeated entente powers failing to pay their war debts? That might be a way to kickstart an unruly interbellum for the USA.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
I don't know, but somehow I imagine it involves the Nazis getting nuclear weapons and nuking London before they go down, FDR dying early, and the Americans and Soviets going at it all before the end of 1946
 
You can have a more totalitarian USA with a reasonable POD past 1900, but a totalitarian dictatorship would require an ASB catastrophe and general collapse of all social order since, to put it simply, up until WW2 the Federal government did not have the army or the military traditions for a President or other 'strong man' to implement a takeover of power and post WW2 I really don't see the US military ever following orders to do the things it would have to do to enforce any potential dictator's will.
 
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