A Nazi psychiatrist's 1945 warning proves prescient in 2025 America: Is the US Supreme Court making the right decision?
Summary
What Douglas Kelley Discovered
After World War II, an American psychiatrist named Douglas Kelley examined Nazi leaders at Nuremberg. He expected to find monsters. Instead, he found ordinary men. They were ambitious. They wanted power. They manipulated people through fear and emotion. But they were not uniquely evil or insane.
Kelley's alarming conclusion: men like them exist everywhere, including America. If they gained control of government, they could perpetrate similar atrocities. He spent the rest of his life warning Americans about this danger. He died in 1958, haunted by his findings.
Why Kelley Matters Now?
Historian Jack El-Hai extended Kelley's warning in 2013. Kelley identified a pattern: ambitious leaders gradually dismantle checks on power through institutional capture. They appoint loyalists as judges. They fire officials who resist unlawful orders. They obstruct legislative oversight. They normalize discrimination through bureaucratic procedures.
This pattern happened in Nazi Germany. Kelley warned it could happen in America.
It is happening now.
The Supreme Court Decision and What It Means
On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed immigration police to stop people based on how they look and what language they speak. A lower court judge had said this is racial profiling and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overruled her—without explaining why.
When the lower court's ban was in effect for 2 months, ICE arrests dropped 66 percent. This proves racial profiling was the system. The Supreme Court's decision allows this to continue nationwide.
The Institutional Capture
That Kelley Warned About
Between January and September 2025, 5 institutional captures occurred:
(1) Judges: The Trump administration appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who defer to executive immigration authority.
The Court issued immigration decisions without explaining reasoning.
(2) Agencies: An executive order subordinated independent agencies to White House control. Institutions that checked executive power lost autonomy.
(3) Officials: Career government employees can now be fired at will if they resist unlawful orders. Loyalists replace them.
(4) Congress: Executive orders bypass congressionally-established constraints. Congress's power weakens.
(5) Oversight: In January 2026, Congress tried to visit ICE detention facilities. ICE refused. Congress could not conduct oversight. Democratic accountability broke.
All 5 institutional captures now complete.
How Evil Becomes Routine?
Philosopher Hannah Arendt studied how the Holocaust happened. She discovered that ordinary bureaucrats perpetrated atrocity not through malice but through routine task-performance.
Transportation officials moved people. Administrative officials processed paperwork. Police officers arrested.
Camp administrators maintained facilities. No individual felt personally culpable. Each performed their job. But the system, taken whole, constituted genocide.
Contemporary immigration enforcement mirrors this mechanism. Each ICE officer claims to exercise legitimate judgment based on multiple factors.
No single officer perceives themselves as perpetrating discrimination. But the aggregate system is systematic racial profiling.
The Nuremberg Lesson?
At Nuremberg, courts established a principle: individuals cannot hide behind "just following orders" or "administrative necessity." Officials bear responsibility for executing unlawful directives.
The Supreme Court's immigration decision inverts this principle. Officials can now frame racial profiling as lawful administrative procedure. The Nuremberg check on state power collapses.
The Historical Timeline
Nazi Germany 1933-1935
(1) March 1933: Legislature subordinated to executive
(2) June 1933: Legal profession purged
(3) 1935: Racial laws institutionalized
America January-September 2025
(1) February 2025: Independent agencies subordinated
(2) June 2025: Career officials subject to at-will firing
(3) September 2025: Racial profiling legalized
The pattern is identical. The timeline is compressed.
Why It Matters?
Kelley warned that democracies fail incrementally through norm erosion and institutional subordination, not dramatic coups. Evil becomes routine when bureaucratic systems fragment responsibility and no individual feels culpable.
The Supreme Court's immigration decision represents the institutional moment Kelley warned about: when courts cease protecting rights, when judges defer to executive authority, when discrimination becomes procedurally legitimate.
What Happens Next?
Democratic institutions can still arrest this erosion: Congress can use budgetary authority; states can obstruct federal enforcement; courts can resist appellate pressure; citizens can protest. But the window is closing. Once evil becomes bureaucratic routine, democratic restoration becomes immeasurably harder.
Kelley's final warning: democracies fail not when tyrants seize power, but when ordinary ambitious people systematically dismantle checks whilst decent people accept erosion as normal. That moment has arrived.
