Disaster Fascism: One Civilization Must Disappear So Another Can Prosper
Two Frames for Understanding Trump's Threat to Annihilate Iran; Related Convo with Ibram X. Kendi about Great Replacement Theory
Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will take place on Friday, April 10, 1-2pmET. Paying subscribers will receive a link that day at 10am to register for the Zoom gathering. Those who can’t attend will find the video at lucid.substack.com.
Our guest will be director Friedrich Moser, whose latest documentary about disinformation, How To Build a Truth Engine, was produced by George Clooney. It is now having its world premiere and Friedrich is making clips exclusively for Lucid subscribers.
You can view the trailer of this important film here. I’ll be sending out the clips on Thursday.
If you’d like to be part of these weekly sessions, you can sign up as paying for upgrade to paid here:
Here is a video I made giving two frames for understanding President Trump’s appalling threat to annihilate Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he said, giving Iran a deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz.
If you prefer to read the analysis, here are a few quick points. The second point relates to today’s Live with historian Ibram X. Kendi, author of a new book about Great Replacement Theory, so I have included the video of that conversation below.
The Peak Danger Point for a Megalomaniac
I have written essays for you about why and when autocrats go to war and what happens when megalomania gains the upper hand and/or they feel things are not going the way they envisioned and rage takes over.
This is not uncommon, given they issue orders not from solid intelligence but from their own instincts mixed with head-nodding of sycophants. Sometimes there are also flattering and manipulative statements made by foreign allies (Hitler famously convinced Mussolini to expand the scope of his war; Netanyahu promised Trump an easy and quick victory).
I had a sick feeling when Trump called his deadline to the Iranians —his threat to annihilate them— “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.” I knew what state of mind he was in.
How powerful he must be feeling right now, with the whole world hanging on his every word! What a long way he has come from threatening to stand on Fifth Avenue and “shoot someone” —one person— to having the means to annihilate “a whole civilization”!
No more slouching and appearing small around his idol Putin, as he felt compelled to do in 2018 in Helsinki. Now he has his finger on the pulse, deciding who gets to live and who should die on a world-historical scale.
Who now would dare to deny him a Nobel Peace Prize? He likely feels he is doing the world a favor by ridding it of “animals,” as he referred to Iranians, to explain why he feels that blowing up infrastructure (which would kill massive numbers of civilians) would not be a war crime.
One Civilization Must Die, So Another Can Flourish
The second frame for the idea of engineering the death of a “whole civilization” is biopolitical and ideological. We cannot separate this desire to kill off a Middle Eastern civilization from the agenda of “saving” White Christian civilization.
Every regime has a central ideological plank, an obsession that comes to dominate policy. The Trump state revolves around White Christian nationalism, not only as a domestic policy goal justifying human rights crimes to reduce the non-white immigrant population (killing, detention, deportation) but as the watchword and rationale for foreign alliances and national security policy.
You kill off one civilization so that another can survive. That is a quintessentially Fascist aim. It is also a core of the survivalism that animates Great Replacement Theory: filling people with existential dread for an enemy, so they believe violence can be justified to eliminate that enemy.
It turned out to be good timing for a long-planned conversation with fellow historian Ibram Kendi, whose new book, Chain of Ideas, traces the transnational networks supporting Great Replacement Theory, with the United States a hub along with Italy, Hungary, and other countries.
Disaster Fascism
Trump is making the United States far less safe. Since the June 2025 missile strikes, he has actively been provoking a country with a long history of plotting terror attacks against America. Here is an August 2025 assessment of Tehran’s capabilities in that area by West Point’s Center for Combating Terrorism.
Now he is calling for that country’s complete and total annihilation, using the language of genocide. It’s obvious that this makes some kind of retaliatory event directed at the United States more possible. At the very least, threat levels will be raised and national security on high alert.
These are propitious circumstances for declaring a national emergency when the time is right. The possibilities for a panicked would-be dictator who knows he would likely lose big in a free and fair election are endless. In that case, we would have an American version of the old autocratic trick of exploiting disaster to consolidate power. Disaster Fascism.
Whatever happens in the next day and onward, we will go through it together, and I will continue to provide you with informed and frank analysis.
Stay well and stay Lucid,
Ruth
I'm certain others have already noticed, but Trump does something BIG and AWFUL after a NO KINGS protest. Last October, two days after the protests, our president tore down the East Wing of the White House. This time, a little over a week later, he is threatening to destroy a civilization.
Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat: No matter what one thinks of the ayatollahs, Iran, Persia hosts a beautiful, proud civilization that reaches back to the times of ancient China, Egypt, Sumer, and was an ancient, august civilization when Greece and Macedonia began to arise as classical civilization and while Rome was still in its infancy as a simple country town with farmland and surrounded by its seven hills.
It is evil to get people used to hearing genocidal language from the high office of the Presidency, because simple people look to the President for moral as well as political leadership.
That we ourselves know better, as persons grounded in democratic principles announced by John Locke does not lessen the evil.
The average citizen has no concept of John Locke, much less of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison and The Federalist Papers. S/he is vulnerable and gullible and The Donald inflames her/him with visions of insufferable war crimes. This Presidential embrace of Aryan hatred presents a clear and present danger to our Democracy and International Law.