The Heritage Foundation among others have just allegedly signaled an intention to purge America of democracy.
In mid-September, as tech billionaire Elon Musk intensified his efforts to elect Donald Trump as president, a wave of letters arrived at the Department of Transportation, asking the agency to turn over any emails and text messages that federal workers sent about the world’s wealthiest man and his sprawling technology empire. …Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, is responsible for a substantial share of the requests. “We’ve been planning for some time what to do if there’s turnover in the administration.” …submitted around 65,000 requests to federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that governs public access to records produced by the government. […] America First Policy Institute, a group [named after President Wilson’s platform to expand the KKK] with close ties to Trump’s transition team, has also requested agencies turn over training materials about diversity programs and any records that outline all senior level positions.
From its earliest days, American democracy has been shaped by systematic purges to preserve white male dominance. The 1776 revolution itself began with local “committees of safety” collecting data on and purging “unreliable” colonial officials who might remain loyal to a monarchy that was starting to question slavery. By 1789, the new Constitution’s “good behavior” standard for federal employment was already being used to remove those who questioned the preservation and expansion of tyrannical (slaveholder) practices in an alleged republic.
After crushing more democratic state constitutions of the 1780s that had expanded voting rights, the counter-revolution of 1787-88 established lasting mechanisms for institutional purges. The Federalists pioneered using loyalty investigations and selective prosecution to remove opponents, reaching a peak with the 1798 Sedition Act’s criminalization of criticism.
But let’s be clear here that it was Jackson (Trump’s stated favorite President) who in 1829 truly systematized purges, using personnel records to remove officials who opposed his plans for racist genocide (Indian Removal). By 1913, Woodrow Wilson’s “America First” platform had perfected these practices to help rebirth the KKK, systematically cataloging federal employees’ race to enable mass firings and segregation, leading into the “Red Summer” of racist mob violence and widespread lynchings with mass graves (e.g. 1921 firebombing of Tulsa).
American history is such that by 1933 a century of innovations in data-driven political purges and violent attacks very clearly caught the attention of a particular German who thought he could get away with it like Americans could: Adolf Hitler.
Today, the Heritage Foundation’s mass collection of federal employee data represents the latest chapter in this American story. By requesting 65,000 sets of communications and personnel records, while specifically targeting diversity programs and senior positions, they follow a familiar playbook. Just as Nazi officials methodically gathered information on civil servants’ political leanings and racial backgrounds before their 1933 takeover –directly copying American methods — this effort appears designed to identify targets for removal and intimidation.
The focus on diversity programs and senior leadership positions particularly echoes how authoritarian movements historically identified “unreliable” elements for removal. These patterns of systematic information gathering before purges trace directly to American precedents:
- Wilson’s administration collected records on federal employees’ race to enable resegregation
- Nazi bureaucrats used personnel files to identify Jewish civil servants and political opponents
- McCarthy’s investigations gathered detailed records on government employees’ associations and beliefs
The modern twist is using FOIA — a law designed for government transparency — as a tool for creating target lists while maintaining plausible deniability. This mirrors how historical movements often weaponized existing legal mechanisms for authoritarian ends.
From Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson to Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump, a disturbing pattern emerges in how white nationalist movements attack democratic institutions through manufactured victimhood narratives. While the specific contexts and recorded numbers of mass harm differ dramatically, understanding these recurring tactics can help us recognize dangerous political patterns before they fully develop into widespread violence.
Jackson’s presidency established an early template for weaponizing “democratic” rhetoric to justify racial violence. His populist appeals positioned white settlers as victims of both Native Americans and an “elite” government that protected tribal rights. He defied the Supreme Court’s Worcester v. Georgia decision protecting Cherokee sovereignty, reportedly declaring “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” This brazen defiance of constitutional limits while claiming to represent “the people” would echo through later movements.
Wilson’s presidency marked a high point of white supremacist power in American governance. His administration resegregated federal offices, screened “Birth of a Nation” at the White House, and promoted Lost Cause mythology that painted white Southerners as victims of Reconstruction. This institutionalization of white grievance politics, called “America First” — KKK propaganda meant to emphasize being a default unlike African/Asian/Hispanic Americans — provided the template that Hitler studied and admired.
Hitler explicitly praised America’s racial laws and institutions in “Mein Kampf.” He saw in both Jackson’s Indian Removal policy and Wilson’s America a model for how democratic institutions could be used to enforce racial hierarchy while maintaining a veneer of legality, even striving for Jackson’s legacy of genocide and Wilson’s industrialized segregation. The Nazi regime’s early racial laws openly said they drew direct inspiration from both American Indian Removal policies and Jim Crow.
Just as Hitler built upon earlier American examples while operating in a different context, we see concerning echoes in modern politics. These tactics remain remarkably consistent:
- Manufacturing False Crises
- Jackson: “Savage” threat to frontier settlers
- Wilson: “Black domination” during Reconstruction
- Hitler: “Jewish conspiracy” and Reichstag fire
- Trump: Fabricated immigration emergencies and election fraud claims
- Corrupting Legal Institutions
- Jackson: Defying Supreme Court on Indian rights
- Wilson: Using federal power to enforce segregation
- Hitler: Transforming courts into tools of Nazi ideology
- Trump: Attempting to weaponize DOJ and courts for political ends
- Claiming Victimhood While Pursuing Dominance
- Jackson: Settlers as “victims” of Native Americans
- Wilson: “Lost Cause” mythology
- Hitler: “Stabbed in the back” myth
- Trump: “Great Replacement” theory
The Supreme Court’s dismantling of Reconstruction-era protections offers a particularly relevant warning. The Court ruled that the federal government couldn’t protect citizens from private violence through the Enforcement Acts — a decision that enabled decades of racial terror. This same legal logic could be weaponized today in reverse: not to limit federal power to protect minorities, but to expand federal power to target them under the guise of “emergency” or “security.”
An insidious modern tactic involves appointing leaders specifically chosen to destroy the very institutions they head — a form of institutional sabotage that would have been familiar to Hitler’s strategists.
Consider these parallels:
- Placing officials hostile to civil rights in charge of civil rights enforcement — echoing how Reconstruction’s protective mechanisms were turned into tools of oppression
- Installing partisan loyalists in intelligence agencies — reminiscent of how Hitler transformed professional intelligence services into instruments of party control
- Appointing department heads explicitly committed to dismantling their agencies’ core missions — similar to how Nazi officials hollowed out German civil service
- Using loyalty tests to purge career officials while installing partisan actors — matching how professional bureaucracies were transformed into party instruments
The strategy of institutional destruction through targeted appointments shows sophisticated evolution from historical patterns. Consider these specific mechanisms:
- Election Administration:
- Installing officials who reject election results they dislike
- Placing partisan actors in neutral oversight positions
- Removing professional election officials who defend integrity
- Environmental Protection:
- Appointing industry lobbyists to regulatory positions
- Dismantling scientific advisory boards
- Replacing career scientists with political loyalists
- Intelligence Agencies:
- Installing leaders who dismiss foreign interference evidence
- Removing officials who raise national security concerns
- Politicizing intelligence assessments
- Justice Department:
- Appointing officials who view prosecution as a political tool
- Targeting career prosecutors who maintain independence
- Converting law enforcement into a mechanism for political retribution
- Education:
- Placing opponents of public education in leadership
- Dismantling civil rights enforcement mechanisms
- Using educational institutions to promote partisan ideology
This systematic approach to agency capture goes beyond mere political appointments. It represents a sophisticated strategy to:
- Identify key positions that can be used to paralyze agency functions
- Install loyalists who will ignore legislative mandates
- Remove career expertise that could resist politicization
- Transform agencies into instruments of partisan control
- Use institutional powers to target political opponents
Key patterns to watch for:
- Manufacturing crises to justify emergency powers
- Demanding personal loyalty over institutional duty
- Using courts to selectively apply constitutional principles
- Inverting protective mechanisms into tools of oppression
- Claiming victimhood while advocating violence
- Appointing institutional saboteurs to key positions
- Transforming professional agencies into partisan weapons
History teaches us that would-be authoritarians don’t just attack democratic institutions directly — they corrupt them from within by inverting their purpose.
Jackson turned “popular sovereignty” against tribal rights. Wilson transformed federal power from protecting Black citizens to enforcing their subjugation. Hitler studied these American examples to learn how democratic systems could be turned against democracy itself.
Today, we see similar inversions under “America First” that have been its meaning since it developed out of nativist anti-immigrant violence of the late 1800s: Claims of “election integrity” used to restrict voting rights. “Law and order” rhetoric deployed to justify lawlessness. “States’ rights” selectively invoked or ignored based on whether they serve white nationalist ends. The Department of Justice and courts — institutions created to protect rights — at risk of becoming tools for their destruction.
The challenge isn’t just protecting specific laws or institutions, but recognizing how those very protections can be weaponized. Democracy dies not only through outright revolution, but through intentional manipulation of its own mechanisms. When we see these historical patterns beginning to repeat, the window for preserving democratic governance is already closing.
The task of Americans who are loyal to their Constitution is to recognize these tactics for what they are: not legitimate political discourse, but the calculated dismantling of democratic systems using democracy’s own tools. They must enforce an intolerance for fraud that is paradoxically drawn to preserve tolerance.
The echoes of Jackson, Wilson, and Hitler in modern politics aren’t just historical curiosities — they’re urgent warnings that demand immediate action to protect democratic foundations before they’re corrupted again beyond norms of political repair.