Throughout history, democratic societies have repeatedly failed to recognize the dangers posed by figures who threaten vulnerable groups while simultaneously claiming victimhood themselves. When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, German media and institutions treated his explicitly violent rhetoric as political hyperbole while he positioned himself as a victim of unfair treatment. By 1933, it was too late. False equivalence framed as a need for “balance” enabled devastating consequences.

This historical pattern is repeating today. Elon Musk, as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is now saying nobody’s life matters except his.

Elon Musk tells Donald Trump’s cabinet he’s getting ‘death threats’.

This victimhood claim comes after he previously tweeted concern about the lack of assassination attempts against presidential candidates, and then doubled down when challenged:

Nobody has “even tried” to assassinate a prominent public figure is the point he’s trying to make, from his occultist costumed Twitter avatar?

The calculated asymmetry becomes clear when you consider the context: while claiming victimhood, Musk has simultaneously used visceral and violent language against federal workers.

This systematic dismantling of federal workforce protections—executed without transition periods—creates institutional chaos that experts describe as terminal.

“Once you do this damage, it’s going to be incredibly hard to rebuild the capacity of these organizations,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan.

Approximately 350,000 federal employees have reportedly been terminated, creating what experts call an “unprecedented internal vulnerability” in America’s institutional defenses. This gutting of expertise across agencies responsible for public safety, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure represents a massive degradation of government capacity, while Musk celebrates terminal events as “efficiency” and signals intentions to expedite death.

This violent dehumanization of government workers echoes historical patterns where civil servants are first rhetorically transformed into enemies before being systematically destroyed, even murdered.

When someone in power harms hundreds of thousands while simultaneously portraying himself as a victim, it creates a dangerous dynamic. Historians like Hannah Arendt identified this calculated asymmetry in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a strategic inconsistency that authoritarians exploit: demanding democratic protections while undermining those same protections for others.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls such theatrical displays “anticipatory propaganda” of tyranny – a technique that conditions audiences to accept actual institutional violence by first presenting it as performance or spectacle:

The human impact is significant: careers terminated midstream, institutional knowledge lost, and critical government functions compromised. These are measurable harms affecting real people, not abstract policy differences.

Historian Robert Paxton identified this as a key feature of Trump’s fascist movement: the leader who positions himself as simultaneously all-powerful and perpetually under threat. Musk’s background in apartheid-era South Africa in a Hitler-promoting family claiming vulnerability to Blacks, during the rise of the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) Nazi Party claiming vulnerability to Blacks, is foundational to his worldview of violent racist authoritarian control as a goal.

This pattern of disregard for collateral damage extends beyond government to decades of his corporate behavior, where critics have repeatedly sued over safety concerns involving his vehicles being minimized and critics silenced. The corporate pattern foreshadowed the larger-scale threats and institutional violence we now witness.

The growing death toll associated with both his corporate and governmental roles follows the same pattern: claim victimhood while creating mass casualties. Democracy itself will be the actual victim, with many lives lost in the near future, unless we recognize and respond to these warning signs from history.