Throughout history, efficiency has been touted as one of the benefits of a dictatorship. The trope “German efficiency” derives from the organized and deliberate manner in which the Nazis came to power. Hitler’s oratorical style and propaganda campaigns were highly efficient, tapping as they did into the fear, anger and insecurity of the German people during the Great Depression. In public speeches and media, he scapegoated Jews and communists, promised security and stability to the masses, and negotiated contracts with the industrial elites who funded his campaigns. He summarized his organizational approach in the term Führerprinzip (“leader principle”), which was “unconditional authority downwards, and responsibility upwards.” Though his principle did not amount to delivering economic stability so much as it vested the Führer with absolute authority, we still consider it to be an example of German efficiency.
The DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), an unofficial department headed by the world’s richest man, similarly uses efficiency to mask control of government spending, which federal law and the Constitution do not allow the executive branch to exercise. But the true purpose of the DOGE is not efficiency or to reduce government spending. It is to threaten and purge political opponents and to create an instability that only the President can fix. In short, the DOGE is a mechanism to help vest Donald Trump with the powers of a dictator.
A December 2022 article by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman for the Carnegie Reporter notes that before the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009, there were 98 countries in the world with free governments and 80 with governments controlled by dictators. By 2015, the number of democracies had fallen to 87 and that of dictatorships had risen to 92. The article characterized these newer dictatorships (for example, those of Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez, Viktor Orbán, Mahathir Mohamad and Nursultan Nazarbayev) as “spin dictatorships.” Unlike the big, massively destructive and globally dominant dictatorships of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, these spin dictatorships are relatively inconspicuous: “We see all these rulers as converging on a novel—though not unprecedented—approach that can preserve autocracy for a while in even modern, globalized settings. The key to this is deception: most dictators today conceal their true nature.” This new breed of dictators, of which Donald Trump is one, maintain power in the way that the old-school dictators did—they repress opposition, control media and communications, punish or threaten critics, impose their political ideology on the masses, attack the ideal of pluralist democracy and block cross-border flows of people and information—but they conceal their motives to consolidate power.
The DOGE, which itself is an abuse of executive authority, has received a lot of attention for its firing of federal workers under false pretexts and without just cause. What the news media are not so focused on is Musk’s clear intent to purge the government of those who would oppose a Trump dictatorship. Though Trump claims that the DOGE is routing out “waste, fraud and abuse,” the claim is a subterfuge to conceal what every dictator in history has done to acquire power: punish political opponents and dissenters, impose loyalty by threats and intimidation, eliminate foreign political influences and remove obstacles, legal and cultural, that would stymie their efforts to gain total control of government. Elon Musk is not firing civil service workers and other non-political, non-judicial employees for the sake of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. He is not making government more efficient. That would require audits and departmental analyses to find out where the inefficiencies may be. No, his intention is to purge the federal workforce of those who are not politically aligned with his effort to establish a Trump dictatorship.
This may sound extreme, but Musk is not a new character in the history of dictatorships. Industrial magnates have repeatedly funded the election of dictators. Hitler courted Germany’s “conservative elite,” who were the old ruling class and the new business class, by promising them “stability,” which in business jargon means stable markets and steady profits. On February 20, 1933, thirteen days before Germany’s national elections, Hitler held the Secret Meeting in Berlin that was attended by 25 of Germany’s wealthiest industrialists. Among the attendees were the poison gas manufacturer I.G. Farben, the electronics manufacturer Siemens, the automotive company Opel and the arms manufacturer Krupp, who all received government contracts in Germany’s wartime economy. The reason for the Secret Meeting, as Hitler stated it, was that “private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy.” The not-so-secret purpose of the meeting was to fund the Nazi Party’s electoral victory on March 5, 1933. Once the Nazi Party had a two-thirds majority in parliament, they were able to pass the Enabling Act, which gave the Chancellor, Hitler, the authority to imprison anyone he deemed an “enemy of the state” and to pass laws without adherence to the constitution.
Germany’s wealthiest industrialists poured money into the Nazi Party campaigns much like Musk poured $274 million into Trump’s campaign. When the Nazis got their two-thirds congressional majority, thanks to German efficiency, the road to dictatorship took less than a week to build. On March 21, they passed a law called the Malicious Practices Act, making all expressions of dissent—“gossiping” or “making fun” of the Nazi regime—punishable by imprisonment. On March 24, they passed the Enabling Act. The Malicious Practices Act inspired fear in the social democrats and effectively suppressed their vote against the Enabling Act, which enabled Hitler to go from chancellor to dictator.
Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony and his urging of Germany’s far right to forget the atrocities committed by the Nazis Party were not inadvertent. They were a public acknowledgement of his support for dictatorship. Musk, like Germany’s wealthiest industrialists, knows that the ownership of monstrous private fortunes is incompatible with true democracy. He knows that true democracy would deprive him of tax breaks, government contracts, political bribes and threats, immunity from civil and criminal prosecution and the intoxicating power to adversely affect the lives of roughly 300 million people. As Bernie Sanders stated in his Prepared Remarks on February 4, 2025, “Since Trump’s election, Mr. Musk has become $154 billion richer, Mr. Bezos has become $35 billion richer, and Mr. Zuckerberg has become $43 billion richer.” Our industrial elites know who butters their bread: the dictator. They also know that the road to dictatorship involves purging and dismantling democratic institutions.
The effort to conceal Project 2025, which was a plan to give Donald Trump total control of the government and the ability to override the Constitution, seems to have worked. That roadmap for vesting the President with the powers of a dictator included gutting the civil service, because that organ of government institutes safeguards for consumers, makes allies of politically unstable countries, limits the environmental ravages of private industry and taxes the rich. Most civil service workers are a staunchly democratic. Though Trump never concealed his intention to “drain the swamp,” he did conceal his intention to purge government of those who support democratic institutions and oppose a one-party, one-branch fascist dictatorship.
Many in the civil service want to make the world a better place for all people, because it gives their lives meaning. They are dedicated to building alliances abroad, maintaining our national parks and forests, funding scientific research, educating our citizenry, providing disaster relief, eradicating disease and holding the private sector accountable to the rule of law. They derive personal satisfaction from making America a force for good in the world. They oppose economic and ethnic nationalism, totalitarianism, wealth and power stratification and handing public services and property over to the private sector. Most importantly, they are in staunch opposition to the US becoming a dictatorship under Donald Trump. To Trump, on the other hand, these do-gooders are “the enemy within,” and getting rid of them is the task he has assigned to Elon Musk, the robber baron with the upside-down smile, his smirking mask of efficiency.