Nightmare Fascist Administration
Trump and his people have exhibited no interest in the legally required transition process. I suspect it's for two reasons:
1) As of 2019, they have to sign certain ethics pledges, AND reveal all conflicts of interest. I don't think they want to do that.
2) The purpose of the transition process is to teach the incoming Administration what it needs to know to run the 400+ federal agencies in the Executive Branch.
"The entire panel of MSNBC's "The Weekend" was left speechless before dissolving into nervous laughter after a noted expert on authoritarianism detailed how Donald Trump managed to get himself re-elected and what to expect now that voters have handed him another four years in office.
"It turns out that tragedy and farce are not mutually exclusive. With this week’s election, America has chosen to Groundhog Day its future through a past it can’t yet shake.
Trump expects to dismantle nearly all of them, so doesn't care how to run them.
I know I'm right about 1).
If I'm also right about 2), we'll likely know late on Jan 20, or early morning Jan 21, because Trump would then sign a series of sweeping Executive Orders which would fire thousands of federal employees, including all the people who run virtually everything.
I've heard Trump is also requiring personal loyalty oaths and NDA's from everyone who wants to remain employed. Including (wait for it).... all senior officials--generals, admirals, etc--in all the armed forces.
I suspect most of them will be unemployed by Jan 22.
He'll replace them all with toadies and sycophants who will do his bidding.
I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I think on Trump's first two or three days, he will sign EOs intended to end most of the Exec Branch, and transfer all of what remains to his personal desk.
I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I'm convinced Trump intends to shock and terrify the world, and frighten us all into obedience, in his first forty-eight hours.
Do. Not. Comply.
I won't list what I think will be in those Exec Orders.
Read Project 2025. All at once.
PS. People can say, "You're being silly. It would take an act of Congress to do what you're implying."
It would. Or at least, it should. But if Trump orders it, who will dispute him? A Republican Congress won't.
There will be lawsuits trying to stop it. Trump will ignore them.
I'm not doomposting. The best minds in America are working on how to stop this destruction. They're smarter than I am.
I'm just telling you what Trump voters have wrought, and the morons who stayed home rather than vote for Harris.
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-- @dcpetterson
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Co-host Michael Steele prompted historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat with, "I want to get your thoughts of what we can now say is the emerged, the realized form of American fascism that the American people, by some 50-plus percent decided, 'Yes, let's do that.'"
"I mean there is much to say," she began. "We are here now, you know, Donald Trump was very skilled at conditioning Americans to think that democracy and American democracy in particular was failing."
"He called America a garbage can. He spread with his allies disinformation about the economy, said that America was failing and praised foreign dictators so he could bolster his own idea of leadership, which is 'I alone can fix it,'" she elaborated.
"And all the slogans we have seen for years from him add up to this kind of strong men model of leadership which depends on having an enemy and an internal enemy, the enemy within," she continued.
"So you can justify these kind of crackdowns on the vulnerable, these repressions," she predicted.
"And so this is all very unfortunate but he did a good job of conditioning over and over. We've have had eight years of this, Americans to see democracy is inferior to something else. That something else would be strong men ruled by him."
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We’re face to face again with not just Trump but the peril of what he promises to do, and what an election will deliver to him. With all the talk of detention and deportation, I want to look at some parallels between today and the past, to see what they can tell us about what comes next, and to address what civilians can typically do in the face of the most likely threats.
This will be a long post, so pace yourself and digest it in pieces if you need to. [ed-- I've only posted about 1/3 of the piece here]
Across the last century, demagogues worldwide have managed to acquire power through a variety of entry points: after election or appointment, by seizing control in a violent coup, by shifting from a quasi-conventional leader into a full-blown authoritarian one, or via some combination of the above.
Each path to power brings with it certain limitations and opportunities once the strongman begins exerting both legal and extralegal power. The setting for Trump's return to office borrows a little from each past authoritarian strain. And each one tells us a little bit about what could happen next in the U.S.
Three historical cases
The first category listed above—those who came to power through conventional mechanisms used legally or after bending the law—would include Adolf Hitler being appointed chancellor in January 1933 after the Nazi strength shown in multiple elections the previous year. The Nazis began brutalizing their political opponents immediately, and within weeks, were setting up ad hoc concentration camps. But Hitler's role as dictator would not be fully entrenched until the death of President Paul von Hindenburg.
Five years of propaganda and legislation stripping German Jews of citizenship and rights would take place before the Nazis began rounding them up en masse to detain them in concentration camps, including a stint where Germany worked hard to host the 1936 Olympics and make everyday life appear to outsiders as if nothing were amiss.
An example of the second case—of seizing power through violent means—would be Chilean generals triggering a coup starting with using jets to bomb La Moneda, the office of the president, deposing the elected government in September 1973. Confident in the support of the U.S., they immediately began rounding up and detaining thousands of political opponents. Only after outcry around the globe did they have to dial the public violence back a little. It would take an assassination on U.S. soil by Chilean secret police in 1976 to create real pressure from Washington against the government to tamp down the worst abuses. Yet Pinochet would remain in power until 1990.
The third case would cover leaders like Vladimir Putin—who surrendered the presidency of Russia (though not his control of the country) in 2008 after two terms, as required by law, before returning to assume dictatorial powers. Given that he was a KGB agent early in his career, it's no surprise that he committed abuses from his first years as President. But it was after his return to power that he abandoned the economic reforms he'd once encouraged, massively expanded the Russian national guard to suppress political protests, ramped up his elimination of political opponents by assassination or imprisonment, seized Crimea, and launched a decade of war in Ukraine.
How these historical examples apply today
Trump’s return has some similarity to each case. On Tuesday [November 5th, 2024], he won the race for an office that U.S. courts should have disqualified him from after his role in spurring the January 6 insurrection.
Hitler had tried to seize power years before, too, and had even gone to jail. But laws were stretched to give him access as a candidate before his appointment. Trump will likewise enter office with more legitimacy, because he outright won office after laws were ignored to make him a candidate. The system is now in place to deliver him more power than any president has ever wielded.
As for the Chilean case, Trump will not have to seize power in a coup, as the generals did. But his rhetoric and planning for his agenda after his January 2025 inauguration are framed as if he's overthrowing the existing limits on the presidency and the government itself—as if his January 6, 2020 coup has finally succeeded.
Trump has mused about a third term, which is unconstitutional, and has repeated a frequently made promise to end birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
He has threatened to unleash the National Guard on immigrants, with Stephen Miller suggesting that where governors (who control the guard within each state) resist, troops could be sent from a Trump-supporting state into the unfriendly state against the will of the people and governor there: “You’re going to go in an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, there would just be Virginia doing the arrest in Maryland.”
Trump has threatened special prosecutor Jack Smith with deportation, and said that criminal charges should be brought against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, journalists, Hunter Biden, and countless others he believes have unfairly opposed him.
What he will be able to accomplish is an open question, but he’s openly announcing plans to establish police powers and upend the constitution—the language of coups.
Like Putin in the third example, Trump is returning to an office he left without ever really giving up control of his party. And his party is so thoroughly cowed that he can try to implement his plans without concessions to them.
... Republicans are currently likely to hold the trifecta of power for the American government.
Under these conditions, how does history suggest that his power might be furthered or constrained?
Realistically, it appears that, like Putin, he will be more aggressively authoritarian than he was during his first stint in office. He’s already promised to be a dictator on day one.
He will be less concerned with stocking his advisors and cabinets with people who will appease anyone in the Republican Party—he effectively is the Republican Party, and he has defeated those inside it who opposed him.
As for the Chilean case, a coup makes a show of force quickly and violently to demonstrate control and discourage opposition. There is little question at this point whether Trump will assume the presidency in January.
But everything about how he's framing his arrival is presented as if he still needs to unleash widespread violence and punishment.
The list of enemies he’s threatening to punish and the need to show he can do physical harm to vulnerable groups and to any protections offered by other branches of government are bad signs. They suggest he's gunning for powers beyond those held by prior presidents and aims to subvert our current system of government.
As for the German example, Trump will enter office a second time with more power than Hitler had in his first months. Meanwhile, a Supreme Court unwilling to rein him in has effectively given him carte blanche for unlawful acts.
It's possible that he will act so egregiously that it will shock the country enough to make the Court respond, but he already has a bedrock of public support for mass deportations. It's what he ran on. And a national propaganda system has already captured his supporters and remains dedicated to any agenda he chooses. He’s starting out on third base in terms of mobilizing the potential for repression.
With so much talk of mass deportations, I think it’s helpful to look at examples of foreign countries that have endured (and sometimes embraced) authoritarians or concentration camps. Sometimes it’s easier to understand a situation you can look at from the perspective of an outsider.
But make no mistake, the U.S. already has its own history with these kinds of camps. And remember that most Japanese Americans rounded up and detained during World War II were American citizens, stripped of the rights of citizenship by the president, with the tiptoeing approval of the Supreme Court.
In addition, the kind of repression Trump is threatening other groups with is very much the kind of reactionary use of police powers in the segregated South and elsewhere in America, then and even after desegregation. It’s important to recognize the preexisting domestic variant of what has likewise happened around the world.
A little good news
The biggest news in America’s favor is that rarely in history does something like this happen in such a way that those who would oppose the despot have more than two months to plan and prepare. That is a precious gift. People who want to make a difference or put up roadblocks can use that time wisely to build networks and prepare. There [sic] still time to get over grief and being stunned and to act.
The second piece of good news is that Trump at this point doesn’t have control over the military (recall his earlier alleged whining about wanting generals like Hitler’s). This is extremely unusual when dealing with a wannabe tyrant.
While various parts of domestic and border law enforcement are already fully backing him, and while there are surely Trump fans and extremists at every rank in every branch, the U.S. military is built to move slowly, to respect walls that have been established for a long time about the use of force domestically, and to resist overtly political activity.
It will take time to break that down across the board, and he may not be able to do it quickly enough to hinder future elections.
The third piece of good news is that elected officials are preemptively standing up against Trump’s plans, announcing that they will refuse to help carry out his illegitimate deportation effort. Among them are Governor Maura Healy of Massachusetts, Attorney General Letitia James in New York, and Governor JB Pritzker in Illinois.
This kind of regional and local resistance will be very difficult to continue for any extended period, especially if federal funds are withheld. But it will be critical for as long as it lasts.
Fourth, we still have a partially functioning court system and a massive bureaucracy that currently helps a lot of people in this country. They will face destructive forces and be used to do harm, but it will take time to dismantle that bureaucracy and to circumvent or replace more independent judges.
Disruption of the bureaucracy that helps a huge percentage of the population will be the hardest thing to get House Republicans to go along with, because representatives will lose their seats in two years if benefits are substantially interrupted.
In the meantime, people will still get help, and some courts will still stall or slow down the worst of Trump’s plans.
The fifth piece of good news is that the Trump team isn’t actually very smart. Selling hate and ignorance is easy. Smashing things is easy. Instilling fear is easy. Using a playbook of hatemongers and infinite money from billionaires to poison people's minds is easy.
Many of the people running things and appointed to carry out tasks will be incompetent.
In addition, the interests of the billionaires is sometimes going to conflict with the goals of those who want to wreck the economy through tariffs and deportations. There will be infighting, they will bungle things—sometimes in ways that do additional harm, but more often in ways that trip them up.
Given this mixed picture, let's look at what Trump has said he'll do. I want to consider four key issues, and then move on to what people can do to help, if anyone is interested in thoughts on that."
