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The Chaos is the Point
Trump’s plan to “flood the zone” is a move straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
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When Adolf Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in 1933, he didn’t storm the Reichstag with torches and pitchforks.
No, first, he lit the figurative match.
The Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933, wasn’t just a devastating blaze that gutted Germany’s parliament building; it became a political inferno that consumed the last embers of the Weimar Republic. Hitler blamed the fire on communists, whipping up enough public hysteria and convincing a frightened public that drastic measures were necessary to save the nation. Within hours, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree, suspending civil liberties across Germany.
It took Hitler only 53 days to overthrow the Weimar Constitution.
Freedom of speech, press, and assembly were dissolved overnight. The streets, once lively with debate and dissent, grew silent under the weight of fear. Political opponents were arrested en masse. Neighbors whispered suspicions about each other. Many Germans, overwhelmed by economic despair and political instability, welcomed this authoritarian efficiency. Others, too afraid to resist or hopeful that stability would return, chose to stay silent.
Overnight, civil liberties hardened to an overcooked schnitzel. Democracy? Terminated. Critics? Arrested. Everything that didn’t scream “Heil” was silenced faster than a bad karaoke performance.
The chaos was deliberate. By flooding the public with rapid, sweeping changes, Hitler left little room for resistance. Decisions came too fast for citizens to process, much less oppose. Each new decree seemed to reinforce the urgency of the last, and by the time Germany realized what had happened, democracy was gone.
Flash forward to today, and Trump is playing a disturbingly similar tune, albeit with more cheeseburgers and fewer operas. Trump’s self-declared strategy is to “flood the zone,” an elegant phrase that translates to “create so much chaos, nobody can keep up.”
