Article about the rise of a Dual State

[Doublehalf]

This is a very interesting Article that I think clearly lays out what a lot of people are feeling right now but have trouble putting words to. Obviously this post will be met with some vitriol and proclamations of how there was already a 'deep state' but this seems much more well thought out and illustrated than vague platitudes. Even if you disagree with the sentiment of the article I would be interested in some civilized discourse from those that may disagree. I've bolded a  passage at the end I find to be the most concise in explaining the meaning of the article. The point is not to compare people to Nazis to invoke images of genocide but rather how they were able to set up a dual system.

 

 

 

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."

 

"Yet, Fraenkel insisted, it was a mistake to think that even the Nazis would entirely dispense with normal laws. After all, they had a complex, broadly capitalist economy to maintain. “A nation of 80 million people,” he noted, needs stable rules. The trick was to find a way to keep the law going for Christian Germans who supported or at least tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the führer’s directives against the state’s enemies, real and perceived. Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.

Fraenkel was born in Cologne in December 1898 in the comfortable home of Georg Fraenkel, a merchant, and Therese Epstein. After his parents died, Ernst and his sister were taken in by their uncle in Frankfurt, where Ernst became interested in trade-union activism. Despite his socialist leanings, he joined the German army and was sent to Poland in April 1917, then on to the Western Front that July. He later wrote that he’d hoped “the war would mean the end of antisemitism.” Fraenkel survived the trenches, and after his discharge in 1919, he earned a law degree, eventually securing work in Berlin as a labor lawyer.

The war did not, of course, end anti-Semitism, but his military service did save his livelihood, at least for a time. On May 9, 1933—only a few months after the Reichstag burned—Fraenkel and other Jewish lawyers received an official notice prohibiting them from appearing in German courts. But Nazi law made an exception for Jewish lawyers who had served in World War I. And so, while many fled, Fraenkel remained in Berlin, representing litigants such as members of the German Freethinkers Alliance, a leader of the Young Socialist Workers, and a man arrested for insulting a National Socialist newspaper as “old cheese.”

Often, he had to resort to unorthodox strategies. In the last of those three cases, Fraenkel persuaded his client to plead guilty, limiting his arguments to the sentence’s severity. This gambit worked: The man was duly convicted, and received a light sentence, avoiding the fate of others acquitted under similar circumstances. In at least one case, a Gestapo agent appeared as soon as the judge declared a not-guilty verdict, took the defendant into custody, and said, “Kommt nach Dachau” (“Come to Dachau”). Eventually, Fraenkel’s name made it onto a Gestapo list. He and his wife fled first to London, then to Chicago.

Today, we are witnessing the birth of a new dual state. The U.S. has long had a normative state. That system was always imperfect. Our criminal-justice system, for example, sweeps in far too many people, for far too little security in exchange. Even so, it is recognizably part of the normative state.

What the Trump administration and its allies are trying to build now, however, is not. The list of measures purpose-built to cleave off a domain in which the law does not apply grows by the day: the pardons that bless and invite insurrectionary violence; the purges of career lawyers at the Justice Department and in the Southern District of New York, inspectors general across the government, and senior FBI agents; the attorney general’s command that lawyers obey the president over their own understanding of the Constitution; the appointment of people such as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who seem to view their loyalty to the president as more compelling than their constitutional oath; the president’s declaration that he and the attorney general are the sole authoritative interpreters of federal law for the executive branch; the transformation of ordinary spending responsibilities into discretionary tools to punish partisan foes; the stripping of security clearances from perceived enemies and opponents; the threat of criminal prosecutions for speech deemed unfavorable by the president; and the verbal attacks on judges for enforcing the law.

The peril of the dual state lies in its capacity for targeted suppression.

The singular aim of these tactics is to construct a prerogative state where cruel caprice, not law, rules. By no measure does the extent of federal law displaced in the first few months of the Trump administration compare with the huge tracts of the Weimar’s legal system eviscerated by the Nazis. But it is striking how Donald Trump’s executive orders reject some basic tenets of American constitutionalism—such as Congress’s power to impose binding rules on how spending and regulation unfold—without which the normative state cannot persist.

The CEOs who paid for and attended Trump’s second inauguration can look forward to the courts being open for the ordinary business of capitalism. So, too, can many citizens who pay little attention to politics expect to be unscarred by the prerogative state. The normal criminal-justice system, if only in nonpolitical cases, will crank on. Outside the American prerogative state, much will remain as it was. The normative state is too valuable to wholly dismantle.

For that reason, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump’s lawyers—despite running roughshod over Congress, the states, the press, and the civil service—were somewhat slower to defy the federal courts, and have fast-tracked cases to the Supreme Court, seeking a judicial imprimatur for novel presidential powers. The courts, unlike the legislature, remain useful to an autocrat in a dual state.

Building a dual state need not end in genocide: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore have followed the same model of the dual state that Fraenkel described, though neither has undertaken a mass-killing operation as the Nazis did. Their deepest similarity, rather, is that both are intolerant of political dissent and leave the overwhelming majority of citizens alone. The peril of the dual state lies precisely in this capacity for targeted suppression. Most people can ignore the construction of the prerogative state simply because it does not touch their lives. They can turn away while dissidents and scapegoats lose their political liberty. But once the prerogative state is built, as Fraenkel’s writing and experience suggest, it can swallow anyone."

 

[Offthemat]

AI, tell me Trump is Hitler without telling me Trump is Hitler. 

[jross]

Similar thoughts here.

The Nazi parallel inflates the severity and coordination of Trump’s actions beyond what evidence supports.

[Offthemat]

9 minutes ago, jross said:

Similar thoughts here.

Ignoring everything done during the previous administration.  Such as:

06.03.2025

Grassley Oversight Unveils Disturbing Extent Of FBI’s Anti-Catholic Bias

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records revealing the Biden FBI’s anti-Catholic Richmond Memo was widely distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country before it was publicly disclosed by a whistleblower in 2023.  

Per the Grassley-obtained records, the Biden FBI's targeting of Catholics based on biased sources was more widespread than previously known. In fact, Grassley found the FBI produced at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). One FBI agent admitted over email, “[O]ur overreliance on the SPLC for hate designation [of traditional Catholics] is ... problematic.”  

A second FBI memo, released by Grassley, was drafted by the FBI Richmond field office for Bureau-wide distribution. The draft memo repeated the unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism, but was never published due to backlash following the Richmond Memo’s public disclosure. The existence of this second memo contradicts former-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony that the Richmond field office only produced “a single product.” 

Grassley is urging FBI Director Kash Patel to continue producing records related to the Richmond Memo’s origins, as well as former-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s misleading and obstructive response to Grassley’s oversight of the memo. 

“I’m determined to get to the bottom of the Richmond memo, and of the FBI’s contempt for oversight in the last administration,” Grassley wrote. “I look forward to continuing to work with you to restore the FBI to excellence and prove once again that justice can and must be fairly and evenly administered, blind to whether we are Democrats or Republicans, believers or nonbelievers.” 

Find Grassley’s letter and the released FBI documents HERE

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-oversight-unveils-disturbing-extent-of-fbis-anti-catholic-bias

[JimmySpeaks]

Like this is something new.  

[JimmySpeaks]

The OP is a teacher at the U of Chicago?  If so wow 

[Caveira]

1 hour ago, JimmySpeaks said:

The OP is a teacher at the U of Chicago?  If so wow 

University of Chicago is a very left Leaning college.  

[JimmySpeaks]

Just now, Caveira said:

University of Chicago is a very left Leaning college.  

Most colleges are 

[Caveira]

8 minutes ago, JimmySpeaks said:

Most colleges are 

This is more left than most.  

[Doublehalf]

10 minutes ago, JimmySpeaks said:

Most colleges are 

I always find it funny when people on the right chastise colleges for being left leaning like it's some kind of cult that drinks kool aid. Sure, there are some professors that want to push agendas just like there are evangelicals that push theirs but for the majority it is not a tool for indoctrination.

Using some minor critical thinking skills will get you to the simplest answer of why colleges tend to have more people that lean left and it's because it is a place where people are educated and exposed to diverse groups of people. When this happens there is generally greater acceptance for those that are different and understanding that most topics are nuanced. Being a person pointing their finger at educational institutions as bad because they lean left is really just a self own that you think knowledge, new experiences and diversity are not cool because people become free thinkers...

Also, focusing on that part is completely missing the point of the article.

Edited June 9 by Doublehalf

[Tripnsweep]

It's funny how Jimmy speaks and Caveira have a discussion with himself. 

[uncle bernard]

2 hours ago, jross said:

Similar thoughts here.

The Nazi parallel inflates the severity and coordination of Trump’s actions beyond what evidence supports.

The comparison is to the structure of the state. As the article says, it doesn't mean it ends in the same place. Even so, you would say the exact same thing if someone was comparing 1933 Nazi Germany with what they ended up doing. 

But it's pretty indisputable that Trump is doing something radically new right now. As Vak pointed out a while ago, in the past, when administrations got an unfavorable ruling, they filed appeals and tried to be heard by different courts - a process laid out in our legal structure. Trump has simply ignored rulings he doesn't like and his team have constantly attacked the entire Judicial Branch as unelected tyrants. That is a radical challenge to the constitution and the American government that shouldn't be handwaved away because we've become used to Trump's unorthodox style.

[jross]

34 minutes ago, Doublehalf said:

Also, focusing on that part is completely missing the point of the article.

True

34 minutes ago, Doublehalf said:

Using some minor critical thinking skills will get you to the simplest answer of why colleges tend to have more people that lean left and it's because it is a place where people are educated and exposed to diverse groups of people. When this happens there is generally greater acceptance for those that are different and understanding that most topics are nuanced. Being a person pointing their finger at educational institutions as bad because they lean left is really just a self own that you think knowledge, new experiences and diversity are not cool because people become free thinkers...

The statement is not true. Education and diversity do not automatically produce leftist views, ignoring factors like faculty self-selection, cultural trends, and institutional policies. It also mischaracterizes critics of left-leaning colleges as anti-knowledge or anti-diversity.

[uncle bernard]

48 minutes ago, Caveira said:

University of Chicago is a very left Leaning college.  

It's actually not. The UChicago Economics department is the historical locus of the modern conservative political model. They are hardcore, true believers in unfettered capitalism. It was the training ground for conservative economists who were then dropped into the right-wing coup dictatorships we installed in Latin America to redesign their economies away from any sort of social-democratic model. They called it Shock Therapy.

[uncle bernard]

4 minutes ago, jross said:

True

The statement is not true. Education and diversity do not automatically produce leftist views, ignoring factors like faculty self-selection, cultural trends, and institutional policies. It also mischaracterizes critics of left-leaning colleges as anti-knowledge or anti-diversity.

There's a really strange myth out there that professors are preaching radical left politics. That's really not what happens. In fact, most student activists are frustrated with their professors' lack of radicality. I know I was.

The radical left politics of college students are built online and within activist communities outside of the classroom. It's those dual pressures - connecting people digitally and bringing them in close physical proximity - that cause this effect.

I went into college (at a large state school) far more conservative than I am today. I never once had a professor preach any sort of political message. What shifted was I became friends with a bunch of new people from all over the world with diverse ideas instead of the guys I grew up playing sports with who all looked like me, had parents like me, and believed the same things I already believed. Once those alternative ideas were shown to me, I slowly began to *actually think* about what I believed. And thus, became more left-leaning.

Let's look at a counter-example that might help you see this more clearly:

Who are typically the most conservative students on campus? Frat boys. Why? Because they self-select a fairly homogenous social group that tends to come from more conservative family backgrounds. Frat culture embraces a conservative, masculine aesthetic. They often self-select for majors that lead to lucrative career paths and are more practically oriented, less focused on critical thinking skills. So, there's very little socio-cultural pressure to abandon their historical political views.

 

[jross]

11 minutes ago, uncle bernard said:

The comparison is to the structure of the state. As the article says, it doesn't mean it ends in the same place. Even so, you would say the exact same thing if someone was comparing 1933 Nazi Germany with what they ended up doing. 

But it's pretty indisputable that Trump is doing something radically new right now. As Vak pointed out a while ago, in the past, when administrations got an unfavorable ruling, they filed appeals and tried to be heard by different courts - a process laid out in our legal structure. Trump has simply ignored rulings he doesn't like and his team have constantly attacked the entire Judicial Branch as unelected tyrants. That is a radical challenge to the constitution and the American government that shouldn't be handwaved away because we've become used to Trump's unorthodox style.

I understand the ‘dual state’ concept, but the Nazi comparison is overblown. Trump’s pushback on judges counters their bias, like shielding illegal immigrants, not building a lawless Nazi-style system. I support his tough talk and want more staff to expedite legal deportations. The U.S.’s checks are holding... I’d like future presidents with Trump’s business acumen to actually cut wasteful spending while keeping borders tight.

[Caveira]

15 minutes ago, uncle bernard said:

The comparison is to the structure of the state. As the article says, it doesn't mean it ends in the same place. Even so, you would say the exact same thing if someone was comparing 1933 Nazi Germany with what they ended up doing. 

But it's pretty indisputable that Trump is doing something radically new right now. As Vak pointed out a while ago, in the past, when administrations got an unfavorable ruling, they filed appeals and tried to be heard by different courts - a process laid out in our legal structure. Trump has simply ignored rulings he doesn't like and his team have constantly attacked the entire Judicial Branch as unelected tyrants. That is a radical challenge to the constitution and the American government that shouldn't be handwaved away because we've become used to Trump's unorthodox style.

The left campaign strategy was literally don’t elect Hitler.  And he will take your right to vote away permanently and declare himself dictator.  
 

pardon me if I’m board with yet another attempt to make him Hitler. 
 

either he is Hitler and the right likes it

or

We’re tired of this lazy narrative that everything conservative is fascist / Hitler / dictator.  Bla bla bla. 
 

You can pick.  

[JimmySpeaks]

1 hour ago, Doublehalf said:

I always find it funny when people on the right chastise colleges for being left leaning like it's some kind of cult that drinks kool aid. Sure, there are some professors that want to push agendas just like there are evangelicals that push theirs but for the majority it is not a tool for indoctrination.

Using some minor critical thinking skills will get you to the simplest answer of why colleges tend to have more people that lean left and it's because it is a place where people are educated and exposed to diverse groups of people. When this happens there is generally greater acceptance for those that are different and understanding that most topics are nuanced. Being a person pointing their finger at educational institutions as bad because they lean left is really just a self own that you think knowledge, new experiences and diversity are not cool because people become free thinkers...

Also, focusing on that part is completely missing the point of the article.

I always find it funny when a left leaning individual that pushes his agenda in the classroom doesn’t think that people that don’t agree aren’t critical thinkers that haven’t  experienced diverse groups of people.  It’s far from a self own. It’s a fact.  
 

Also, it wasn’t my first comment on the article so saying that’s my focus on the article is wrong. 

Edited June 9 by JimmySpeaks

[Offthemat]

According to Harry Enten of CNN, the majority of Americans favor Trump’s policies on immigration. 
 

 

Edited June 9 by Offthemat

[jross]

10 minutes ago, uncle bernard said:

There's a really strange myth out there that professors are preaching radical left politics. That's really not what happens. In fact, most student activists are frustrated with their professors' lack of radicality. I know I was.

The radical left politics of college students are built online and within activist communities outside of the classroom. It's those dual pressures - connecting people digitally and bringing them in close physical proximity - that cause this effect.

I went into college (at a large state school) far more conservative than I am today. I never once had a professor preach any sort of political message. What shifted was I became friends with a bunch of new people from all over the world with diverse ideas instead of the guys I grew up playing sports with who all looked like me, had parents like me, and believed the same things I already believed. Once those alternative ideas were shown to me, I slowly began to *actually think* about what I believed. And thus, became more left-leaning.

Let's look at a counter-example that might help you see this more clearly:

Who are typically the most conservative students on campus? Frat boys. Why? Because they self-select a fairly homogenous social group that tends to come from more conservative family backgrounds. Frat culture embraces a conservative, masculine aesthetic. They often self-select for majors that lead to lucrative career paths and are more practically oriented, less focused on critical thinking skills. So, there's very little socio-cultural pressure to abandon their historical political views.

That's an opinion not grounded in facts.  The claim that diverse friendships alone make students lean left ignores how liberal professors, campus rules, and woke cultural trends push progressive ideas. Helping my daughter plan her college courses, I rolled my eyes to see she’s forced to study ‘cultural analysis in women’s gender and sexuality studies.' It’s not just frat boys staying conservative... plenty of us, especially guys drawn to traditional values like strength and independence, hold firm despite campus pressures.  The older I get and the more diversity I experience, I’m more empathetic but also more conservative, even finding Christianity’s moral clarity appealing as an agnostic.

[JimmySpeaks]

Again, this isn’t something brand new to America.  It’s happened in our history on more than one occasion. 

[JimmySpeaks]

58 minutes ago, Tripnsweep said:

It's funny how Jimmy speaks and Caveira have a discussion with himself. 

Is this English? 

[Offthemat]

College courses are rarely geared toward critical thinking, but more toward memorizing what’s presented. 

[Caveira]

Isn’t u of Chicago one of those colleges that refuses to play the national anthem at events?

[Scouts Honor]

1 hour ago, Doublehalf said:

 

Using some minor critical thinking skills will get you to the simplest answer of why colleges tend to have more people that lean left and it's because it is a place where people are educated and exposed to diverse groups of people.

LOL