Trump's Wall With Mexico Follows in the
Footsteps of Authoritarian Leaders Throughout History
From China to Germany, walls have
been used for centuries to spread fear, closed-mindedness and isolationism.
By Nina Khrushcheva
January 11, 2019
Instead of leading the world away from its worst impulses, as
America did for most of the 20th century, President Donald
Trump’s demands for a wall on the U.S. southern border look to be leaning closer to the
autocratic acts and optics of tyrannical regimes.
Throughout history, autocratic leaders have relied on walls to
control their people. From the fierce tyrant who first began building
China’s Great Wall in roughly 220 BC to Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev (my
great-grandfather as it happens) who ordered construction of the Berlin Wall in
1961, walls have represented undemocratic forces.
This symbolism alone should have given a president pause.
Instead, Trump continues his vehement demands — and insisted
on forcing a partial
government shutdown once Congress balked.
From the fierce tyrant who first began building China’s Great
Wall to Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev (my great-grandfather as it
happens), walls have represented undemocratic forces. His opponents, meanwhile, argue that it is practically
unnecessary and ideologically demeaning for the U.S. to protect itself in such
an outdated manner.
New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has called Trump’s
demands “immoral and unwise.” Speaking to CBS News
on Sunday, Pelosi pointed out that Trump “would
like to not only close government, build a wall, but also abolish Congress so
the only voice that mattered was his own.” That authoritarian voice indeed.
Trump, with his affinity for branding and ability to connect
through tweets and soundbites, has tried to sell the wall as simple,
impenetrable and ultimately protective. But as a historical concept,
walls often connote fear, closed-mindedness
and isolationism.
So which is it? The president has already shown that he is
comfortable with problematic and, indeed, unwise illusions. He talks of
“America First” — a slogan favored by American fascists as they sought to keep
the United States out of World War II. He regularly labels the media the “enemy of the people” and recently went as
far as to brand journalists “crazed lunatics” — though even
despotic Soviets were wary of such characterizations. In the late 1950s, after
Joseph Stalin’s death, Khrushchev banned the phrase “enemy of the
people,” when he denounced the dictator’s “cult of personality.”
But this wall has proved one step beyond Trump’s usual boasting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example, hardly a model of democratic
governance, is now criticizing Trump’s desire for the wall, pointedly suggesting that “the wise
man builds bridges.”
Ironic, since China’s Great Wall remains the model, and
metaphor, for divisive borders. Emperor Qin Shi Huang, founder of the Qin
Dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China, built the immense,
self-enclosing structure during his reign 220 to 210 BC. He connected various
smaller walls into a powerful defensive border to guard against invasion,
protect trade and control immigration.
His wall became, however, a warning to other emperors and empires.
Future Chinese rulers continued to expand its battlements, yet they avoided
referring to the structure as “the wall.” They didn’t want to be associated
with Qin’s reputation as a
tyrant.
Centuries later, during World War I, the demarcation between
German-occupied Belgium and the Netherlands was an electrified barbed-wire
fence. This German construction in the middle of No Man’s Land became known as
the “wire of death.”
Many Belgians died trying to escape into neighboring (and free)
Holland. By the middle of the Great War, reportedly 3,000 people had been killed
at the electrified wall. These deaths contributed to the region’s hatred of
Germany — a sentiment uncommon in Holland and Belgium before the barrier was
erected.
Then, of course, there was the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev’s effort
to separate East Berlin and West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. The wall
was designed to prevent East Germans from escaping communism to live under
democracy in the West. Countless lives were lost, and, over the decades, the
wall became the stark symbol of Soviet oppression.
Public protests finally destroyed the Berlin Wall starting in 1989. This stunning act
initiated the fall of communism, and, ultimately, the end of the Soviet Union.
It also solidified the negative symbolism of walls as inefficient and inferior
ways of protecting nations.
To some extent, this feeling remains today. Hungary’s
conservative prime minister Viktor Orban sparked an international outcry in
2015 when he instituted a “keep [migrants] out” policy and
constructed his own giant wall. Never mind the criticism, Orban’s 100-mile
long, 13-feet-high razor wire fence separates Hungary from Serbia to this day.
This brings us back to Trump’s wall, which he talked about
throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, and which was originally supposed to
be concrete and paid for by Mexico. His recent proposal suggests the finished barrier could be
iron or steel — and paid for by U.S.
taxpayers.
Regardless of the building material, the Democrats in Congress
are refusing to fund it.
Around the globe many see this fight as a defense of American
democracy. The White House, Trump’s critics insist, should not be allowed to
dismantle the U.S. principles of inclusion, not exclusion. They ask why
Republicans are not doing their job and providing checks-and-balances to
Trump’s worrying autocratic tendencies.
The good news is that some House and Senate Republicans
have begun to express
disagreement with the president and the GOP leaders about the government
shutdown.
They should be moving faster, however. As a former citizen of
the Soviet Union, which used walls to lower the quality of life of its
citizens, I fear that the longer Trump’s party allows him to act with impunity,
the harder it could be to restore America to normalcy after he is gone.
© 2019 NBC News
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Nina Khrushcheva is a professor of international affairs at The
New School and the author of “The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of
the Russian Mind.”
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while
the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially
their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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