How Capitulating Oligarchs and Politicians Are Worse Than Quisling

Say what you will about Vidkun (and there's quite a lot), he acted out of conviction.

The first quisling (1887-1945), National Archives of Norway.

I note with interest that a Norwegian biopic of Vidkun Quisling received a favorable review last month in Variety when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. I hope it will be released in theaters or streamed here in America, because we’re having a moment of quislingry in the runup to the election, as one supposedly powerful person after another bends the knee to Donald Trump. I’ve been documenting this parade of capitulations in The New Republic, posting a first installment last week about Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, and others, then following up today with a second installment featuring Mark Zuckerberg, William Barr, USA Today, and others. It’s happening so fast that it’s hard to keep up with the falling dominos. I fear that before Election Day I may have to write Part Three.

As is usually true of historical figures who become symbols, Quisling doesn’t really conform to contemporary notions of what it means to be a quisling. The term is applied typically to describe somebody who surrenders out of cowardice or opportunism. But say what what you will about Vidkun Quisling, he was a committed fascist: a traitor to his country, yes, but not to his convictions. He resigned as defense minister of Norway in 1933 to create the Nasjonal Samling, an overtly fascist political party, and he urged Adolf Hitler to occupy Norway even before the Wehrmacht invaded in April 1940. His post-invasion attempt to seize power failed, but his faithful service to the occupation government thereafter was rewarded in 1942 when the Nazis named him “minister president,” in which capacity he sent about a thousand Norwegian Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. After Norway was liberated in May 1945 Quisling was arrested, tried, and executed by firing squad, a fate he richly deserved.

I’m inclined to judge those who collaborate with evil understanding full well that it is evil more harshly than those who collaborate out of deranged conviction. By that (narrow) yardstick, Bezos, Dimon, and the others in my rogue’s gallery are worse than Quisling. The real quisling is Elon Musk, who signed on enthusiastically out of some admixture of proto-fascism, mental illness, and drug dependence. That’s not to say Musk doesn’t also have opportunistic reasons to endorse Trump, including, according to reporter Jack Ewing in today’s New York Times, the prospects of lower taxes, union-busting, deregulation, and cancelled subsidies to Tesla’s rivals.

Anyway, please read my latest New Republic piece documenting further instances of collaboration horizontale among America’s leadership class. For the record, I don’t think President Kamala Harris should shave their heads and march these men—they’re all men—through the streets. History’s judgment will be sufficient punishment.