By Curtis Johnson
This past week, Rachel Maddow warned in a way that feels increasingly brave given Trump’s attacks on the media, America today is a different country than before Trump 2.0 came to power. The reality is clear now, she said, America has an authoritarian leader who is consolidating a dictatorship. She is right.
This is the case despite it being important to understand that Maddow’s perspective is hindered by belief in America and its “basic goodness” and “perfectibility”. This includes basic support for its military, despite its role as a worldwide enforcer of brutal empire. The reality is, America both is, and is not a different country. Or better said, it IS, but this is based on a previous foundation and history of slavery, genocide, war and oppression.
Nonetheless, the country is quickly being wrenched into a new form of consolidated fascist rule. A departure built on existing institutions of oppression. A rule where previous norms-formal democratic rights, due process, separation of powers including especially relative independence of the Department of Justice and FBI from the executive, and the rule of law in general-are being eviscerated and replaced with raw dictatorial power. Power that is concentrated in Trump above all, and his sycophantic minions and accomplices throughout the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court, military and law enforcement.
Yes, Maddow says, people continue to live their lives, go to work, to shows and concerts, fall in love and out of love, in and out of faith, etc. But she says, we live in a different country with secret and unaccountable masked police, detention prisons, and destruction of due process. “The things we worried about and feared are here”.
To differ on one point however, Maddow says the U.S. has detention camps, but not death camps, say as Nazi Germany did. But it must be said, Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as death camps. But as the situation accelerated especially with invasion of the Soviet Union, they were turned into death camps, built on the logic of Nazi ideology and its hatred of Jews and belief in “Aryan” superiority. One should ask, can anyone argue that the ideology of the Trump regime just would never lead it to this in what it considered “an emergency situation?”
Maddow showed powerful testimony by a woman in Lincoln Nebraska at a town hall meeting held by MAGA mouthpiece Congressperson Mike Flood. The woman demanded, with the millions being spent on concentration camps and for ICE to illegally detain people, “how much do the taxpayers need to spend for a fascist country?”
ICE -Fascism’s Battering Ram
Maddow highlighted again, as she has stood out for among mainstream media, protest around the country against Trump and ICE. She told the story of a young Korean woman, Yeonsoo Go. Yeonsoo came to the U.S. in 2021 with her mother, a priest in a famous Episcopal church in NYC. Despite being a person with legal status, no charges against her, and no history of illegality, (or maybe BECAUSE of this), ICE kidnapped her and sent her to a detention camp in Louisiana.
At the end of the show, it broke that ICE had been forced to release her after much protest by leading religious figures, which is wonderful.
But in general, there is no pullback by ICE, despite important and serious resistance in LA and elsewhere. Indeed, ICE raids continue and have escalated throughout the country. And now billions are becoming available by Trump’s ugly new fascist bill, to recruit tens of thousands more secret police and expand concentration camps countrywide.
Under Trump, ICE is playing a key role as a Nazi-style Gestapo for the elimination of democratic rights and due process. Immigrants being the initial target for kidnapping, mass imprisonment in concentration camps, and suspension of legal rights. Democratic representatives are arrested. Armed troops are sent into LA and MacArthur Park, a center of immigrant gathering. LA is targeted for “liberation” as “Ice Barbie” Kristi Noem puts it, from democratically elected officials. They’ve sent people to off-site gulags in El Salvador and elsewhere while Trump muses about “the homegrowns are next”. They’ve built Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in the Everglades with plans and money allocated for many more, and are protested by Japanese Americans for plans to reopen a former concentration camp for the Japanese during World War II.
In LA and elsewhere, ICE Gestapo has targeted people based on appearance and skin color-including U.S. citizens who’ve been jailed, usually released as far as we know. And continued on until they were somewhat limited by a judge who had to almost unbelievably make a ruling that “no, you can’t target people based on appearance. You must have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing”. Which the regime is appealing and aiming for the pro-fascist Supreme Court to rule on.
All these previous norms- supposedly the hallmark of U.S. “justice”-innocent until proven guilty, not being targeted because of your skin color or the way you look and given due process, etc.-now under conversion to, “we can do anything we want to anyone, as long as we can get away with it”. (Of course the previous norms talk rings hollow for Black and other people of color, for whom law enforcement and the imprisonment system has always been a tool of oppression, including unrelenting murder by police.) But now the attempt is to do so openly, routinely, gleefully, and as a matter of official policy from the highest level, first aimed at the Latino population but to be extended as needed.
The state is locking up a great majority of people who have no charges against them and those that do are primarily minor charges. Many kidnapped even have legal status. It’s ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing as a means of establishing fascism. Ethnic cleansing to create a scapegoat who can be blamed and held responsible for all the problems the country faces. Ethnic cleansing to whip up the worst, most racist, backward and ignorant sentiments among primarily the white populace and appeal to their wanting to unleash their anger and resentment against an “enemy” who has nothing to do with causing their deteriorating conditions of life and emptiness of their existence. Ethnic cleansing to intimidate and threaten any and all who would oppose fascism and racism. And to put in place the apparatus, means and norms for repression of the entire populace to eliminate opposition, protest and dissent. And the majority of people aren’t for it.
The Daily Drumbeat
What we see from the fascist authorities are at least daily measures to establish new fascist norms throughout the institutions of power. They understand well, keeping up the momentum of fascist consolidation is key. Never openly backing down or apologizing, continuing to replace truth, science and logic, with lies and the “logic” of fascist power, is key.
Trump orders Texas republicans to redistrict congressional districts in a blatant power grab to ensure the GOP’s hold on Congress. No legal or legitimate reason is given to justify this and increasingly, the new norm is not even to offer any. This is to assert and demonstrate openly, that raw power is all that matters. Nothing else is required than, “we can, so we will”. In a sense, it is stunning, but perhaps shouldn’t be shocking, how easy it has been for fascists to take hold of the previous oppressive institutions and convert them fully, openly, unapologetically into tools of corruption and naked power.
Trump’s EPA announces their move to wipe out the endangerment finding under which greenhouse gases could be limited as they fuel the unfolding climate catastrophe. This, just one part of the Trumpian effort to do away with any limits to fossil fuel production or even the concept of study, concern or tracking of climate change.
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes statistics for May jobs report, Trump fires the head of the department., demonstrating once again the campaign to replace facts, truth with fascist propaganda. This is not just standard “governmental lying” as always seen in class society, but part of a plan to convert truth and the standard of truth from one based on reality demonstrable with evidence to whatever the “leader” says is true. Trump never offers evidence and the press never demands it.
Trump moves nuclear submarines closer to Russia in a power move to threaten around settling with the U.S. over Ukraine and Putin says they no longer have any obligation to abide by previous nuclear treaties. So, danger of world war increases. Attorney General Pam Bondi directs DOJ to investigate Obama and former Obama officials for allegedly creating fake intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 elections. So, the actual repressive moves against the opposition ratchet up. Even official ruling class figures, former presidents and heads of intelligence agencies now targeted!
And now, Trump has announced his regime will take over the Washington D.C. police and send in the National Guard because of the threat from “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth.” Despite the fact, announced by D.C.’s Attorney General, that the crime rate in the city is at a 30-year low.
Fascism accelerating by Trump here is fueling and being fueled, by fascism and genocide by Israel in the Middle East. Twin fascisms pushing each other forward with mutual support. Odeh Hadalin, a contributor to the Oscar winning movie “No Other Land” is murdered by a Zionist settler who then is released and seen hanging out with the Israeli police and helping direct them to arrest other Palestinians in the West Bank. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson visits the community where Odeh has just been murdered and declares, “The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people.”
As the world in the main, horrifically, stands by and watches, Palestinian people are starved to death. Images of children with flesh hanging off their bones flash worldwide and starvation stalks the entire population. Netanyahu announces Israeli plans to annex all of Gaza and Trump says that’s up to them. The U.S. who has funded, armed and given political support to Israel throughout the genocide, under Trump has teamed up with Israel to further starve the population by the elimination of 400 UN feeding stations to set up just four phony, Israeli controlled stations where over 1000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli troops after being herded together like animals.
Again On the Language of Fascism
As fascism accelerates here now in the U.S., I keep returning to reading about the language and ideology of the Nazi Third Reich that comes out in study of Victor Klemperer’s diary of life in Germany. In particular his second volume, “To the Bitter End”. This relates to a piece I did previously in Counterpunch.
Klemperer’s diary, especially in 1944 and 45, constantly touches on speculation of the Jewish population and others more broadly, including himself, as Germany is increasingly being defeated in the Soviet Union and in the west after the invasion of Normandy, about “how long” the regime will last.
At this moment, Klemperer speaks of the general fear that even in defeat, the remaining Jews will be slaughtered, as so many others already have been. That in revenge, the rest will be mass murdered at “five minutes to midnight”. The fear is ultimate, suffocating in cases. Alternately it creates apathy and refusal to believe it will actually end, because believing and then having hopes dashed would be suicidal after all that has already been suffered. Living in slavery, as Klemperer calls it.
Even as Germany is losing on all fronts and allied troops enter Germany territory east and west, the Hitler regime continues to espouse the coming victory based on “Aryan superiority”, new weaponry, and the love for country and Fuhrer of the German population.
Klemperer writes in September 1944, “The NSDAP’s (Nazi Party’s) ‘word of the week’ (Dresdener Zeitung, 18th September) goes: ‘The coming victory will be the victory for us all. Today we must all accept responsibility for it, fanatically and unconditionally, Dr. Goebbels.’ (Always: Dr., their famous university man, always the worn out ‘fanatical’.) The headline above this text, which also sets the tone for the subsequent commentary. ‘The Creed of the National Community’. Final words of the commentary, ‘Now more than ever!’-This while there are battles on German soil, the English are twenty miles from Cologne and in Holland, they are air landing troops are on the right side of the Rhine delta! I ask myself again and again what kind of effect it has, whether it rouses people against the Allies or against the Nazis, whether it is the height of stupidity or the height of cleverness. Only success can answer that question. I believe by turns (changing my mind six times a day) that Germany must collapse in the next six weeks, and that Germany will stand its ground. And again and again: my reason hopes and believes but my heart doubts.”
Then next, he speaks of more articles in the press and banners in shop windows, “’Our will to live is stronger than our enemies’ will to destroy’. ‘Only a strong heart withstands the harshest test.’ An article by a Lieutenant Colonel Ellenbeck. ‘Daily reflection. What can I do to help my nation?’ Content: One minute of reflection every morning. Then weigh every word, show no weakness, be convinced of victory. Encourage those who show weakness, denounce defeatists. The really interesting thing about this sermon is its style. For the LTI, (Lanuage of the Third Reich) there is only the Goebbels-Hitler pattern-all the run-of-the-mill is imitation of that. “
The Goebbels-Hitler pattern. The propaganda never stops, the denial of reality, the assertion of final victory is eminent. Sound familiar? The Trump regime operates with the same logic. Why? They must destroy the ability of people to learn the truth, and believe any admission of weakness will turn into further weakness, defeat, and losing the whole thing. A desperation. The Nazi language always asserting “Aryan” superiority, specialness, unprecedentedness, historic nature, the virtues and awe of their great “Fuhrer” who is invincible, “ordained by Providence”. As if bluster and assertion alone can overcome or supersede reality.
Sound familiar? So Trumpian! So reminiscent in language and approach. Yes, a very different country, different parameters, history and without a pre-determined path. Yet, consistent in language and basic goals of unchallenged power.
And no, the position of the defeated German Reich is not reflected in the actual situation of the Trump regime. But in ideology and method the same and so revealing of an underlying weakness. Where every sycophant and lackey in the ruling party must of necessity worship and heap ridiculous, outlandish, even silly praise on for the amazing insight and great leadership of Trump. Who, falsely as it’s claimed, “the American people so overwhelmingly elected” to create all the horrors he has. (Despite polls of 37% in support vs. 59% in opposition.). The leader who “God has chosen”. So transparently and demonstrably false.
Without substance, hollow and false, and yes, desperate.
Who knows where this all ends up. But truth matters and reality asserts itself. At least truth can matter if fought for consistently. The regimes’ defeats are not primary. I would argue they are unfortunately mainly succeeding. Things are increasingly dangerous, and they could win out in the drive to fully consolidate fascism.
But also underlying, there is desperation and danger for them. Exactly so because of what they are doing to so many, how open and outrageous they are doing this, and how they are turning so many against them. The protest and resistance to Trump and the system in general matter a great deal, especially in this context. Yet even so, there is a tremendous need to reach new levels where millions consistently and without pause put this regime on the defense and turn things so it can no longer govern in this way. This could be accomplished. Will it be? Without the people making this happen, no one will save us- humanity, and the planet. .
For the Planet and Humanity 