“I can prove that the United States can be converted into a dictatorship” (by K. Gödel)

A little over four years ago, a few days before Donald Trump won the 2016 election for the US presidency, I published a post entitled Kurt Gödel and Donald Trump. In it, I recalled that the Austrian logician Gödel, in the hearing he had with a judge to acquire US citizenship in 1947, said he had found a contradiction in the American Constitution that could lead the country to a dictatorship. The entry was prompted by the serious doubts that the then candidate Trump generated, throughout that very long campaign, about his democratic qualities. Doubts that have been resolved after the final rally of his mandate, when, from one end of the esplanade that separates the White House from the Capitol, he incited his followers to march on the Capitol when the congressmen were going to vote on the election of Joe Biden, the winner of this year’s US presidential election (Trump’s speech, more than an hour long and reminiscent of Mussolini, amidst the waving of the flags, gives goosebumps; it can be seen in its entirety here).

As far as I know, Gödel never explained what the contradiction in the American Constitution was. He certainly did not do so at that hearing with the judge. Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern were witnesses at the hearing; as Morgenstern later recounted, the scene began as follows:

Judge: “Well, Herr Gödel, where do you come from?

Gödel: “From Austria”.

Judge: “Tell me, what kind of government do they have in Austria?

Gödel: “It was a republic, but the constitution was such that eventually it was changed into a dictatorship”.

Judge: “Oh, that’s terrible! But it can never happen in the United States.

Gödel: “Oh yes, I can prove it”.

At that moment, seeing the uncharted waters into which Gödel was venturing, Einstein and Morgenstern took a turn and diverted the attention of the judge (the same one who had acted when Einstein became a naturalised citizen) to less tricky matters. The events of the last few months enable us to imagine where the alleged contradiction in the American Constitution that Gödel claimed to have found might lie.