Goose stepping in Texas

Ken Paxton rewards citizen informants for spying on their neighbors.

German soldiers goose-step. Photo credit UK Telegraph

In the 1930s, a conservative social movement took root in Germany urging good citizens to hype their nationalism and reassert ‘pure’ German virtues. Promoting social cohesion, the movement demonized intellectuals and attacked racial and sexual diversity in all forms. In 1933, the movement began to ban books scorned as “intellectual,” eventually burning books that supported diversity of thought or culture of any kind.

Along with banning books, the state issued edicts controlling the content of the press. By the early 1940s, the state began to encourage- then it required- citizens to spy on and report their neighbors.

It’s no longer past as prologue. It’s present.

It used to be easier to relegate the horrors of Nazi Germany to the past, thereby confining them to history, even while struggling to understand how Germans let it happen. It’s no longer a struggle. Every day under Trump 2.0, the mystery unravels: Trump keeps trotting out one horrific act of lawless cruelty after another, and Americans keep going to concerts, taking the children to school, living their lives. Last week when a conservative UFC fighter said the cult-like frenzy of Trump rallies showed him “how Hitler happened,” it was relatable.

“How” is no longer a mystery, and comparisons are no longer hyperbole. As of 2026, 23 Republican-led states have passed laws reminiscent of Nazi Germany, including laws that ban books and discussions, laws that force media content, laws through which the state controls private medical decisions, laws that mandate Bible study in public schools, and, most ominous of all, laws that encourage vigilante citizens to turn on their neighbors for a state reward.

Led by a grievance-obsessed president who keeps lying to the American public about everything—Iran, the price of gas, climate change—authoritarianism is America’s newest deadly virus.

Perpetuation of cruelty and lies

Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen has so successfully infiltrated the GOP that over 130 election deniers are running in November’s midterms across 35 states from North Carolina to Arizona. But no state has embraced Trump’s lie and attendant barbarity more than Texas.

Although Texas is well known for paying bounty hunters to hunt down scared women seeking an abortion, Gov. Greg Abbott became a national poster boy for cruelty after he intentionally stripped Medicaid from two million Texans, most of them children. He also vetoed a state proposal to feed them during a SNAP freeze, despite increasing childhood hunger through state-forced births.

Not to be outdone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, now campaigning for U.S. Senate, led 17 GOP states in a lawsuit before the US Supreme Court trying to set aside Joe Biden’s election win in 2020. As argued by the Lawyers Defending American Democracy, Paxton was trying to “cast doubt on whether truly democratic presidential elections” would ever be held in America again.

Paxton’s resume of corruption includes indictments on two counts of first-degree securities fraud, counts he later settled by paying restitution. Shortly after his legal stunt to unseat President Biden, Texas State Bar officials urged regulators to discipline him for serious ethical misconduct. In an unrelated case, eight members of his staff reported Paxton to the FBI for accepting bribes; after he fired several of them in retribution, they were awarded millions, at taxpayer expense, under Texas Whistleblower laws.

Citizen informants, in the original German

In the early 1930s, as Hitler was beginning his political ascent in Germany, one of his first moves was to encourage citizens to relay information about their neighbors, family, and friends to the state. The Gestapo, which grew into Hitler’s most effective instrument of terror, soon operated with a network of thousands of informants.

Texas has passed replica initiatives, calling on members of the general public to report on their neighbors. If you see a masculine looking woman in the bathroom, if you think your neighbors are providing their minor with private gender medical care, or if your teenager thinks a girl in his class is pregnant and may be planning an abortion, Paxton has a “hotline” waiting for you.

Texas’ anti-abortion law specifically set up a citizens’ gestapo reward system whereby Texas authorizes private citizens to enforce the state’s abortion ban by suing abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman seeking an abortion in any way, including her husband, parents, neighbor, friends, family members, even her taxi or Uber driver. If the lawsuit shows the state’s draconian 6 week abortion ban was violated for any reason, the vigilante, under state law, collects a bounty of at least $10,000 and attorneys’ fees, a feature designed to intimidate.

Draw your own conclusions

Ken Paxton’s goal of an all-powerful state with unfettered powers to dictate speech, generate hate, and control thought by force should alarm anyone with a passing knowledge of history.

Using the power of the state to turn citizens against each other, encouraging, rewarding, and requiring vigilantism, is sinister and unAmerican. Texas’ expansion of state power not only mocks Paxton’s campaign brag that he “takes on” governmental overreach, it also marches in goosestep with one of the most dangerous regimes known to man.

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.