...Donald Trump... is now so openly fascist he may soon start wearing his Mussolini
Underoos on the outside
of his pants.
~ Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, Daily Kos, November 9, 2023
You might have noticed that the quiet parts are
no longer merely being said out loud, but are now being shouted
from the rooftops, in re the fascist aspirations (fascpirations?)
of 2024 GQP (un)presidential front runner Donald John Trump and his
cartel of powerful, deep-pocketed allies. Trump and gang have
made no secret of the many ways in which they intend to crap all
over the United States Constitution, and totally dismantle
American democracy, if Trump wins another term in the White
House.
Together, the Trump campaign's disturbingly authoritarian Agenda
47 and the alarming Project 2025 have all of the
makings of a fascist nightmare in progress, a dystopian novel
come to life. Moreover, in the unlikely event that Trump does not
win the rethuglican nomination, we're still not off the hook; the
backers of the extremely well-funded and well-organized Project
2025 -- the theocratic Heritage Foundation -- have
briefed not only the Trump campaign but those of the
distant-second rethuglican candidates, Nikki Haley and Free State
of Floriduh Governor Ron DeSantis. It seems pretty
clear that the Heritage Foundation is determined to force its
Christofascist agenda on the American people in the event that any
rethuglican wins the White House in 2024.
The nightmare features of Trump 2.0, including the plot to
dismantle America and recreate it in the
Trumpublican/Talibangelical image, are not really new news, of
course, but they were pushed to the front in the news cycle again
due to a report earlier this month from Washington Post. By now, everyone who has been paying even
superficial attention to reports and commentary across the media
spectrum has at least a glimmer of a notion that a second Trump
term would be a vicious revenge tour. Unfortunately, it appears
that many folks are totally fine with this. Trump may be an
authoritarian asshole, but he's their kind of
authoritarian asshole.
Behind the curtain there's not
a timid little bald man, but an army of aggressive Trump
loyalists
In case you can't get past the WaPo paywall to read the
report cited above, there are scads of other sources covering
this matter. Axios, in a piece published on November 13, 2023, is a good place to start if you want to catch up. The
article provides a disquieting summary of the preparations being
made behind the metaphorical curtain for a second Trump term.
If Trump were to win,
thousands of Trump-first loyalists would be ready for legal,
judicial, defense, regulatory and domestic policy jobs. His
inner circle plans to purge anyone viewed as hostile to the
hard-edged, authoritarian-sounding plans he calls "Agenda 47."
- The people leading these efforts
aren't figures like Rudy
Giuliani. They're
smart, experienced people, many with very
unconventional and elastic views of presidential
power and traditional rule of law.
Behind the scenes: The
government-in-waiting is being orchestrated by the Heritage
Foundation's well-funded Project
2025, which already has
published a 920-page policy
book from 400+
contributors. Think of it as a transition team set in motion
years in advance.
- Heritage president Kevin
Roberts tells us
his apparatus is "orders of magnitude"
bigger than anything ever assembled for a party out
of power.
The late poet Maya Angelou is often quoted as
having said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe
them the first time." Although many folks voted for Trump in
both 2016 and 2020 -- and plan to vote for him again in 2024 -- because
he repeatedly showed the world exactly who he is, there were many
others, at least in 2016, who were in a state of denial, not
believing that he would be all that bad once he assumed the
office of POTUS. But he was by most measures far worse than even
many of the "alarmists" had expected, and a second term
would be even more ghastly. From Axios again:
Here's what the early days
of a second Trump presidency would look like, based on his
words and our conversations with Trump insiders:
- His top obsession will be the
Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence
community — all of which he thinks conspired to
investigate him, thwart him, screw him. He's been
very clear that he's willing to unleash these
agencies against political enemies.
- The next priority will be the
Department of Homeland Security and the border, with
plans to erect sprawling detention camps, "scour
the country for unauthorized immigrants," and
"deport people by the millions per year,"
The New York Times reports. We're told Trump's top criterion for
immigration officials will be whoever promises to be
most aggressive. Trump has told allies he's confident
the Supreme Court will back his most draconian moves.
- As first
reported by
Jonathan Swan for Axios last year, a key tool for
Trump's "revenge term" would be the use of
Schedule F personnel powers to wipe out employment
protections for tens of thousands of civil servants
across the federal government. Trump allies want a
deep and wide purge of the professional staff that
often serves across new administrations.
- Officials close to the Pentagon
tell us they're worried about a plan, articulated by
former Trump official Russ Vought in the Heritage
document, to
direct the National Security Council to
"rigorously review all general and flag officer
promotions to prioritize the core roles and
responsibilities of the military over social
engineering and non-defense related matters,
including climate change, critical race theory [and]
manufactured extremism." Indeed, the Trump
allies see obstacles to remove at every level of
every agency.
The fourth item on that list, regarding the
military, should be a matter of deep concern for anybody who
cares about national security. And since we're on the topic of
the military for the moment, anyone who thinks that Alabama GOP
Senator Tommy Tuberville's ongoing blockade of military
promotions is really just about abortion access isn't paying
attention. On November 7, 2023, The Guardian published an opinion piece detailing the ways that Tuberville is in reality the
useful idiot of both Trump and the Heritage Foundation, with
goals much more far-reaching than merely sabotaging reproductive rights.
Idiots can still be
useful idiots. There are larger purposes involved in
[Tuberville's] scam kulturkampf. His subversion of
the military is not just collateral damage. It is not the
unintended consequence, but the overriding motive. His
abortion ban is both context and pretext. Tuberville has
opened Trump’s strategy for a second term to replace the
professional class of officers pledged to the constitution
with a collection of flunkies who will salute his command,
legal or not. Tuberville is a blunt instrument, but, however
crude, he is the available tool.
The Heritage Foundation – which has produced a blueprint for a Trump second term, the 2025 Transition
Project, which includes firing the entire federal civil
service and replacing it with Trump loyalists, and invoking the Insurrection Act on day one of Trump II to
deploy the military against political dissidents – has
evidently been behind Tuberville’s attack on the military.
It circulated a letter of several far-right ex-military figures to
Senate leaders demanding that they “Support Senator
Tuberville’s Fight Against Woke Military”, which they
denounced for “advancing the leftwing social agenda”.
Heritage published an article by one of its fellows claiming that Tuberville
is the “one man” standing in the way of a dastardly
conspiracy led by Biden: “Replacing the officer class of
police and military ranks with politicized ideologues who
will bend to a transformative dogma is a strategy that has
worked in places like the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela
… Tuberville, thus, is stopping the promotion of woke
apparatchiks.” Like Trump, the Heritage cadres project
their own scheme on to their enemies.
There are indicators that even the republicans
in the Senate are finally growing impatient with Tuberville, but he has already done significant damage.
The Axios report concludes with a
dire warning.
The bottom line: This
Trump-allied machine has the most power over the formation of
a potential future government of any group in U.S. history.
Trump, if elected, will leverage it to do things with
government that none of us has seen in our lifetime.
That's the kind of stuff that should be keeping
you awake at night.
The gaffes are good for laughs,
but the plans (and the fetish for brutality) are anything but
funny
The conservative Bulwark has had a lot to say as well
about Trump's dick-tatorial wet dreams. In a November 13, 2023 piece,
Charlie Sykes warned that while Trump's numerous verbal blunders
are a target-rich environment and provide ample fodder for comedians of
all stripes, we really should be focusing on his clearly stated
plans as well as his fetish for brutality. Sykes wrote:
Understandably, it’s tempting to
focus on Trump’s gaffes, which are, indeed, a target-rich
environment. The stumbles, the bumbles, the
confusion.
But the problem with Trump isn’t the
gaffes — underneath the verbal clownishness Trump is
telling us who he is and exactly what he intends to do.
He genuinely admires the brutality of
the Chinese; he finds violence exciting; and he’s a sincere
fanboy of the world’s fascists. And he keeps tell[ing] us what
his presidency will mean if and when he regains power.
There’s no subtlety here.
It’s also no secret what he thinks
about his fellow Americans.
To illustrate the latter point about Trump's
regard for his fellow Americans, Sykes compared the November 11
Veteran's Day social media messages from Trump and from President
Joe Biden. Biden's message on Xitter was clear and simple and
decent:
Today, we honor the story of our
veterans -- the story of our nation at its best.
On Veterans Day, let's recommit to fulfilling our one sacred
obligation as a nation: to prepare those we send into harm's
way and care for them and their families when they come home.
Trump, on the other hand, had this to say on
his exceedingly ill-named platform, Truth Social:
In honor of our great Veterans on
Veteran's Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the
Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that
live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie,
steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible,
whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the
American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less
sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within.
Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who
want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT
AGAIN!
And Trump amplified his message in a Veterans Day speech, in which he not only repeated the "vermin"
comment but also claimed that undocumented immigrants are
"poisoning the blood of our country." He got a lot of
blowback for these comments, which are eerily similar to the
rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini, but he and his army of
defenders have, not surprisingly, dismissed the criticism. Trump
campaign spokesmonster Steven Cheung, for example, told the Washington
Post that the critics are snowflakes. From Axios, November 13, 2023:
"[T]hose who try to make that
ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for
anything because they are suffering from Trump
Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be
crushed when President Trump returns to the White
House," Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told
the Post in a statement.
Cheung later said he was referencing
their "sad, miserable existence" instead of
their "entire existence," the Post noted.
Oh, okay. So that makes it all right. Trump and
his authoritarian army will only crush the "sad,
miserable" existence of critics instead of the critics'
"entire" existence.
On the Bulwark piece,
Charlie Sykes continued:
So, once again, it is essential to pay
attention. Trump may be clownish, but the clown car is
carrying a neutron bomb. Possibly several.
Last week, the Washington Post detailed how Trump and allies are planning to weaponize
the Justice Department to go after his opponents and critics.
Trump himself confirmed as much.
This weekend, we got a deeper glimpse at Trump 2.0 from the
NYT: “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass
Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans.”
Former President Donald Trump
is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term
crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025
— including preparing to round up people living in the
United States without legal permission on a vast scale
and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be
expelled.
Camps.
Sykes later added, "You can't say we
have not been warned."
Asleep or awake?
The big mystery to me is why so many people
still don't seem to be particularly concerned about this whole
mess. Whether they consider themselves to be conservative or
liberal, republican or Democratic, or essentially apolitical,
anybody who really cares about American democracy should be
sounding the alarms full blast.
I hate coming across like one of those intensely
annoying conspiranoids who claim that only they and a few others
are totally awake and aware, while the masses of sheeple snooze
on unaware. Truth is, I don't consider myself to be totally awake
and aware about anything. But I am awake and aware
enough to understand what Trump and his backers are trying to do
to the country I love. And so, of course, are millions of other people,
but there are also millions for whom all of the above is NBD.
Like most of us who have been blaring warnings
about Trump for years and years, I have been repeatedly accused by Trumpanzees of being an
alarmist, a snowflake, a libtard, and a victim of Trump
Derangement Syndrome (when in fact supporting Trump is
the true derangement). The accusations don't bother me.
What does bother me is that the US as a nation
appears to be sleepwalking towards authoritarianism, in the words of Professor Brian Klaas on a recent episode of "Morning Joe." Klaas
said:
I study the breakdown of democracy, and
I don't know how to say this more clearly. We are
sleepwalking towards authoritarianism, and people are not
waking up to this. And the Constitution is not written with
magical ink. It is protected by the people who make brave
choices during moments of political peril and we are in one
of those moments.
So the question is, do voters wake up as well? Because our
political class is not rising to the challenge. They're not
distancing themselves and the Republican Party from this
rhetoric. They're just sort of pretending like it doesn't
exist. And we are literally walking towards a world in which
Donald Trump is going to consolidate power, politicize the
rule of law, and break down democracy one day at a time, and
I think that's something that we have to really grapple with
as we head towards the election next year because that is the
biggest story in American politics and nothing else comes
close.
It's definitely time for more folks to wake up
and smell the fascism.
The next Big Lie is adding fuel
to the fire
America is still reeling from the effects of Trump's initial Big
Lie, i.e., his repeated, obsessive claims that the 2020
presidential election was stolen (or "stollen," as he
has put it more than once) from him. But as Amanda Carpenter and
Deana El-Mallawany wrote in a November 15, 2023 report on The Bulwark, Trump's next Big Lie -- his tall tale about
"weaponization" of various institutions whose purpose
is to uphold the rule of law -- is already here. And not only is
it adding fuel to the fire that led to January 6th, it is in
certain fundamental ways more dangerous than the original Big
Lie.
The authors warn that we should recognize the power the second
Big Lie may hold over the 2024 campaign, as well as its potential
to inspire violence the way the original lie did on January 6,
2021. In fact, as detailed on Carpenter's and El-Mallawany's
Bulwark piece, the false weaponization claims have already
inspired disturbing and credible threats of violence to witnesses
and prosecutors in Trump's various legal dramas.
But the danger to the rule of law cannot be overstated.
TRUMP’S 2020 LIES WERE AIMED at
holding on to power; the damage they caused to the rule of
law was collateral. With his 2024 lies, opposition to the
rule of law is the very purpose. No one is supposed to be
above the law, not even former presidents. Yet Trump resists
any form of legal accountability for his acts because, as he
has said,
“I was always of the opinion that a thing like this
couldn’t happen. In other words, you protect your former
presidents.”
Like many aspiring autocrats, Trump is engaging in the
democratic process in hopes of becoming powerful enough to
subvert it. Should he win the presidency, he will use his
powers as both a spear and a shield—both to “dismantle” the government and to protect himself from
accountability.
Anyone who is either unconcerned by, or
actively supports, Project 2025, Agenda 47, and Trump's whole
body of lies and his revenge agenda is very much a part of the
problem, and is either willfully blind or not very bright... or
is a fascist too. And as I've said many times before and will no
doubt say again, anybody who still supports Trump and his allies
specifically because of their rhetoric, actions, and plans deserves to live
under an authoritarian, fascist regime... but the rest of us do
not.
We have to outvote them.
Update: December 1, 2023: In
a followup to its disturbing November 13 report, Axios revealed on December 1 that it
has obtained copies of the exact questionnaires Trump allies are using and
that then-President Trump used himself during his final days in
office.
The 2020 "Research
Questionnaire," which
we obtained from a Trump administration alumnus, was used in
the administration's final days — when most moderates and
establishment figures had been fired or quit, and loyalists
were flexing their muscles. Questions include:
- "What part of Candidate
Trump's campaign message most appealed to you and
why?"
- "Briefly describe your
political evolution. What thinkers, authors, books,
or political leaders influenced you and led you to
your current beliefs? What political commentator,
thinker or politician best reflects your views?"
- "Have you ever appeared in
the media to comment on Candidate Trump, President
Trump or other personnel or policies of the Trump
Administration?"
Axios noted that similar questions are being
asked for the Talent Database being assembled by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
An alumnus of the Trump White House
told us both documents are designed to test the sincerity of
someone's MAGA credentials and determine "when you got
red-pilled," or became a true believer.
- "They want to see that you're
listening to Tucker, and not pointing to the Reagan
revolution or any George W. Bush stuff," this
person said.
Both documents," Axios added, "are
striking for their emphasis on what you believe rather than your
credentials or accomplishments." Copies of both docs can be
viewed at the end of the Axios article (here's that link again).
Reportedly, Trump himself has been irritated by all the attention Heritage and other outside allies have received for, as
Axios puts it, "the prefab administration that's being
assembled."
- The Trump campaign's top two
officials, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, issued
a statement in
mid-November saying that "none of these groups or
individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign. We
will have an official transition effort to be announced
at a later date."
- "Unless a second term priority is
articulated by President Trump himself, or is officially
communicated by the campaign," they added, "it
is not authorized in any way."
Um...okay. But I think we've heard and seen
enough from Trump himself (and his campaign) to know that he
poses a threat of the highest order to American democracy.
