Constitutional protections suspended. The government purging “alien enemies” and the “enemy within.” Three months into Trumpist rule, despotism is rising in America
Wondering when you will provide a way to financially support your work, especially now that you have had to leave the US and establish a new life back in Germany. We are very grateful for your years of insight into our descent to this terrible moment, and value your clear-eyed analysis. Please let us know when we can help.
I appreciate that so much - thank you! Going forward, I will indeed have to rely on support from readers in order to continue. I am currently in the midst of organizing the transition from my old life and job to my new existence as an independent writer; will update everyone soon!
No stopping the Messenger of the Gods. He's creating the Immaculate Recession. Next stop: the death of the American dollar, followed by the selling off of the entirety of the country for scrap, to be hoovered up via crypto by the tech bros and the christian fascists. You and I will be locked down somewhere, dreaming of 3 squares and a cot...
I am so tired of talk about a "looming" constitutional crisis, or how we're "on the brink" of one. We've been in a constitutional crisis since November 2016, when we elected as president a man who has never made a secret of his disdain for the Constitution and what it stands for and his desire for absolute power. While of course you're right that this "debate" over "constitutional crisis" is nonsense and distracting, it is a little bit nice to see a few people in the national discourse finally catching up to the reality that's been a boot stomping their face for the last nine years.
I never believed Trump when he disavowed knowledge of Project 2025 during the campaign. What has happened & is still happening since he took office is the official agenda & in the playbook of P2025.
Thank you for your concise description of what our country is experiencing.
During the campaign, Kevin Roberts praised Trump for strategically lying about his connection with P2025. He claimed it was necessary because of "misrepresentation" in the press.
You'd think the proper answer to "misrepresentation" would be to correct the errors, instead of flat-out lying.
And remember: Kevin Roberts claims to be a champion of Christian values.
In MAGA-thought, the "real" America has been under existential threat from "the Left," which supposedly infiltrated and commandeered virtually every institution for a "Marxist" agenda - but somehow hadn't addressed the Republican advantage in our political system.
Conservative activists used to aim for expanding their voice in the culture, since "politics is downstream from culture." Now the Trumpers are using political power in an effort to reengineer the culture by force. They claim to be "fighting back" against a mortal peril to "American culture," and thereby justify their heavy-handed tactics as part of a righteous mission to "save America."
Thank you for this piece. Given the references to the Volk and Blood and Soil you clearly think this isn't just despotism but specifically fascism.
While I think your argument about the definition of constitutional crisis ("A pointless focus on definitional questions, on lines that are drawn only to be constantly re-drawn and pushed further out") applies to fascism as well, in my opinion, Stephen Miller is clearly on a Hitler revenge tour. There were many other interwar fascisms and the term is admittedly hard to define but it seems that Miller has a pretty clear idea.
To me, this particular definition IS important to use. When MAGA declared people who are trans, a group that makes up between half and one percent of the population, it has historical resonance with the Nazi focus on people who were Jewish in Germany in 1933 who represented almost exactly the same percent.
It seems were in almost exactly the same place as Germany in mid 1933 and the MAGA leaders want to get to Nazi Germany 1938. Explicitly.
If they are using a particular playbook shouldn't we identify that specific playbook so we can better understand where they are trying to go? Readers may think I'm only referring to the Holocaust when in fact I'm only sorta referring to it. The Holocaust *wasn't the plan* in 1933. Othering Jewish people was, though (which led to the Holocaust, a fine but real distinction), but so was invading Poland and Ukraine. So was ending Democracy.
And they did it through political theater and spectacle while replacing legal democracy with violence and threats of violence through the SA.
Until Hitler had most of the SA murdered.
Dr. Zimmer knows all this, I'm not saying this for his benefit at all.
I am asking him, shouldn't we call a duck a duck here? It's not just that this fits Paxton's definition of fascism, it's that people like Miller both have huge influence on Trump AND Miller isn't interested in competitive autocracy or Mussolini's fascism. I'm not even convinced Miller wants fascism for fascism's sake so much as he wants to prove Hitler was 'right' or some such horrific bull poop.
Frederico Finkelstein, professor at The New School for Social Research, articulated how dismantling the rule of law and the institutions of law is at the core of any effort to establish a fascist regime-
'The fascist destruction of legality. Then and now' / March 11, 2022
"Donald Trump’s past and ongoing attempts to use the law to subvert the law should not be taken lightly. The same goes for his escape from any legal repercussions for his actions during a failed coup in January 6th of 2021 and the dubious claims that he should be shielded from legal investigation as recently claimed by Jeffrey Toobin and before him by James Comey and many others. This failed leader escapisms from the law are harbingers of democracy’s demise if they go unchallenged. These attempts to escape the law threaten to stand as harbingers of democracy’s demise and must not go unchallenged. And they are already having global repercussions.
Across the globe, wannabe fascist leaders understand that democracy fails if the law does not apply to them. This applies to electoral results as well as the treatment of enemies...
Many years ago, General Juan Peron, the populist leader of Argentina said, “to our friends we give everything but to our enemies not even justice should be given.” Peron meant that enemies should be considered outside the legal system...
In the Argentine case the justice system forgot its role and accompanied the de facto power from the beginning. It was also in the 1930s that Carl Schmitt, the infamous legal theorist of the Nazis presented his dangerous idea that legitimacy stands above legality.
In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler represented himself as “the supreme judge of the nation.” Schmitt, stated in 1934 that the Führer was the embodiment of the “most authentic jurisdiction”. Schmitt had careerist and ideological intentions. Schmitt ended up becoming a full-fledged Nazi by legitimizing the Führer with his legal personality and ultimately giving legal cover to the fascist idea that the leader is always right.
For him, if a government is popular is it therefore “legitimate” and this why legitimacy is more important than the preexisting legal framework. This theory led Schmitt to argue that the leader’s word is the source of law and that defending order has extra-constitutional legitimacy...
All these examples, and especially Trumpism, illuminate the worrying actualization of an anti-democratic tendency (anti-constitutional and anti-liberal) of those who think that power and the legitimacy of power authorize them to exist above the law. In the name of “Law and Order” legality is destroyed. Democracy could be next."
At the beginning of his historical survey of how fascists subvert the rule of law, Prof. Finchelstein highlights the danger of forgetting the hisotry of fascism, which is precisely what fascists want is to do-
"They perform a new sort of revisionism. This reflection presents a historical perspective on the attempts of the current aspirants to fascism to subvert the legality in the name of the law. And they do so by denying the history of legality that eventually defeated and judged their predecessors. Why do populist leaders want to forgive or displace the actual history of Nazism? Because as these leaders draw from the well of fascist ideology, rhetoric and tactics, they have to neuter the history of fascism to normalize their politics. Revising the history of fascism then renders it mythical rather than historical, presenting the fascism of the past as not that bad — or not even fascism at all."
Sobering, but a thorough examination of where we find ourselves. Alarming? Yes, of course, but not at all alarmist. Just a reflection of things as they stand.
Invaluable insights and judgments! As with your great podcast co-hosted by Lilliana Mason, "Is This Democracy."
In case you post this somewhere that corrections might be useful: the section about the kidnapped student Rümeysa Öztürk says "she was on her way home in Sommerville, Massachusetts..." The city nicknamed the "Brooklyn of Boston" (or, less boosterishly, "Slummerville") has only one "m": "Somerville."
Thanks for this post. I'm teaching the deportation cases to students in India (in a segment on the rule of law in a course on democracy; the parallel is with “bulldozer justice” in India), and I intend to assign it!
Excellent observations. The aspect I would like to contribute is the side that allows for the political climate we are in: what we all know, or, our common font of knowledge.
Making sure our education system is free from the malevolent influence of special interest groups and that it is uniform across the nation is the other part of why we are where we are. Without this component, neither media nor social media could have succeeded as resoundingly as they have.
There is a good reason why Trump, all the way back in 2015, exclaimed that he loves the uneducated.
Starting in 2010, in parallel with his rise, we have seen conservative reformers take control of local and state education boards, suppressing, bit by bit, the various components of our education that makes our society wiser, smarter, and more knowledgeable in the choices we make, in a general sense.
Nations whose populace don’t have a common font of knowledge break apart. We’ve been seeing signs of that for years now. Not only do we know different things, depending on where in the US we live, what media we consume, but also where on the social strata we happen to be.
Along with the decline in public education and common understandings that come from it, is the fragmentation of our media system that came about with a rise of cable television. Media consolidation has played in enormous role as well. Allow allowing the same corporate parent to own most of the media in the same market is disastrous for democracy.
Is it fair to comment that the alien and sedition act was not Evan used for 9/11? Or is the fair to comment that the 9/11 perpetrators/terrorists received more due process than the people sent El Salvador? For the true Trumper’s, trumpers forever—right or wrong, “due process need not apply”. An important group of Americans are still trying to figure out do process. Would comparisons to 9/11 help?
The actual "perpetrators" all died in the planes they hijacked. The person that financed the act was shot some 10 years later during a US military incursion into a sovereign country, nominally a US ally. The guy who came up with plan was killed by a US drone strike in Afghanistan. The only other person who was involved was tortured so badly during his renditions to various locations that it was deemed impossible to prosecute him under US jurisdiction. But the reaction to 911 certainly set the precedent of ignoring US laws and judicial processes the Trump administration is currently doing.
Wondering when you will provide a way to financially support your work, especially now that you have had to leave the US and establish a new life back in Germany. We are very grateful for your years of insight into our descent to this terrible moment, and value your clear-eyed analysis. Please let us know when we can help.
I appreciate that so much - thank you! Going forward, I will indeed have to rely on support from readers in order to continue. I am currently in the midst of organizing the transition from my old life and job to my new existence as an independent writer; will update everyone soon!
Been there, thought that.
No stopping the Messenger of the Gods. He's creating the Immaculate Recession. Next stop: the death of the American dollar, followed by the selling off of the entirety of the country for scrap, to be hoovered up via crypto by the tech bros and the christian fascists. You and I will be locked down somewhere, dreaming of 3 squares and a cot...
The question is: do you think lack of liberty will become better or worse in 6, 12 or 18 months?
If you think worse, the question becomes: shouldn't you act now, before it is completely impossible to be successful?
And I mean in real life, not online.
I think you have a very short window of opportunity here. When it closes, you might as well start saying "blessed be the fruit"
I am so tired of talk about a "looming" constitutional crisis, or how we're "on the brink" of one. We've been in a constitutional crisis since November 2016, when we elected as president a man who has never made a secret of his disdain for the Constitution and what it stands for and his desire for absolute power. While of course you're right that this "debate" over "constitutional crisis" is nonsense and distracting, it is a little bit nice to see a few people in the national discourse finally catching up to the reality that's been a boot stomping their face for the last nine years.
Thanks, Thomas. Well done, as usual. I hope you are hanging in there.
I never believed Trump when he disavowed knowledge of Project 2025 during the campaign. What has happened & is still happening since he took office is the official agenda & in the playbook of P2025.
Thank you for your concise description of what our country is experiencing.
During the campaign, Kevin Roberts praised Trump for strategically lying about his connection with P2025. He claimed it was necessary because of "misrepresentation" in the press.
You'd think the proper answer to "misrepresentation" would be to correct the errors, instead of flat-out lying.
And remember: Kevin Roberts claims to be a champion of Christian values.
In MAGA-thought, the "real" America has been under existential threat from "the Left," which supposedly infiltrated and commandeered virtually every institution for a "Marxist" agenda - but somehow hadn't addressed the Republican advantage in our political system.
Conservative activists used to aim for expanding their voice in the culture, since "politics is downstream from culture." Now the Trumpers are using political power in an effort to reengineer the culture by force. They claim to be "fighting back" against a mortal peril to "American culture," and thereby justify their heavy-handed tactics as part of a righteous mission to "save America."
Via no one caring about their media diet: https://open.substack.com/pub/publicenlightenment/p/charlie-kirk-is-a-billionaire-psyop?r=2xd80&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for this piece. Given the references to the Volk and Blood and Soil you clearly think this isn't just despotism but specifically fascism.
While I think your argument about the definition of constitutional crisis ("A pointless focus on definitional questions, on lines that are drawn only to be constantly re-drawn and pushed further out") applies to fascism as well, in my opinion, Stephen Miller is clearly on a Hitler revenge tour. There were many other interwar fascisms and the term is admittedly hard to define but it seems that Miller has a pretty clear idea.
To me, this particular definition IS important to use. When MAGA declared people who are trans, a group that makes up between half and one percent of the population, it has historical resonance with the Nazi focus on people who were Jewish in Germany in 1933 who represented almost exactly the same percent.
It seems were in almost exactly the same place as Germany in mid 1933 and the MAGA leaders want to get to Nazi Germany 1938. Explicitly.
If they are using a particular playbook shouldn't we identify that specific playbook so we can better understand where they are trying to go? Readers may think I'm only referring to the Holocaust when in fact I'm only sorta referring to it. The Holocaust *wasn't the plan* in 1933. Othering Jewish people was, though (which led to the Holocaust, a fine but real distinction), but so was invading Poland and Ukraine. So was ending Democracy.
And they did it through political theater and spectacle while replacing legal democracy with violence and threats of violence through the SA.
Until Hitler had most of the SA murdered.
Dr. Zimmer knows all this, I'm not saying this for his benefit at all.
I am asking him, shouldn't we call a duck a duck here? It's not just that this fits Paxton's definition of fascism, it's that people like Miller both have huge influence on Trump AND Miller isn't interested in competitive autocracy or Mussolini's fascism. I'm not even convinced Miller wants fascism for fascism's sake so much as he wants to prove Hitler was 'right' or some such horrific bull poop.
Frederico Finkelstein, professor at The New School for Social Research, articulated how dismantling the rule of law and the institutions of law is at the core of any effort to establish a fascist regime-
'The fascist destruction of legality. Then and now' / March 11, 2022
(from the website European Memories https://europeanmemories.net/magazine/the-fascist-destruction-of-legality-then-and-now/)
"Donald Trump’s past and ongoing attempts to use the law to subvert the law should not be taken lightly. The same goes for his escape from any legal repercussions for his actions during a failed coup in January 6th of 2021 and the dubious claims that he should be shielded from legal investigation as recently claimed by Jeffrey Toobin and before him by James Comey and many others. This failed leader escapisms from the law are harbingers of democracy’s demise if they go unchallenged. These attempts to escape the law threaten to stand as harbingers of democracy’s demise and must not go unchallenged. And they are already having global repercussions.
Across the globe, wannabe fascist leaders understand that democracy fails if the law does not apply to them. This applies to electoral results as well as the treatment of enemies...
Many years ago, General Juan Peron, the populist leader of Argentina said, “to our friends we give everything but to our enemies not even justice should be given.” Peron meant that enemies should be considered outside the legal system...
In the Argentine case the justice system forgot its role and accompanied the de facto power from the beginning. It was also in the 1930s that Carl Schmitt, the infamous legal theorist of the Nazis presented his dangerous idea that legitimacy stands above legality.
In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler represented himself as “the supreme judge of the nation.” Schmitt, stated in 1934 that the Führer was the embodiment of the “most authentic jurisdiction”. Schmitt had careerist and ideological intentions. Schmitt ended up becoming a full-fledged Nazi by legitimizing the Führer with his legal personality and ultimately giving legal cover to the fascist idea that the leader is always right.
For him, if a government is popular is it therefore “legitimate” and this why legitimacy is more important than the preexisting legal framework. This theory led Schmitt to argue that the leader’s word is the source of law and that defending order has extra-constitutional legitimacy...
All these examples, and especially Trumpism, illuminate the worrying actualization of an anti-democratic tendency (anti-constitutional and anti-liberal) of those who think that power and the legitimacy of power authorize them to exist above the law. In the name of “Law and Order” legality is destroyed. Democracy could be next."
At the beginning of his historical survey of how fascists subvert the rule of law, Prof. Finchelstein highlights the danger of forgetting the hisotry of fascism, which is precisely what fascists want is to do-
"They perform a new sort of revisionism. This reflection presents a historical perspective on the attempts of the current aspirants to fascism to subvert the legality in the name of the law. And they do so by denying the history of legality that eventually defeated and judged their predecessors. Why do populist leaders want to forgive or displace the actual history of Nazism? Because as these leaders draw from the well of fascist ideology, rhetoric and tactics, they have to neuter the history of fascism to normalize their politics. Revising the history of fascism then renders it mythical rather than historical, presenting the fascism of the past as not that bad — or not even fascism at all."
Sobering, but a thorough examination of where we find ourselves. Alarming? Yes, of course, but not at all alarmist. Just a reflection of things as they stand.
Thank you.
Invaluable insights and judgments! As with your great podcast co-hosted by Lilliana Mason, "Is This Democracy."
In case you post this somewhere that corrections might be useful: the section about the kidnapped student Rümeysa Öztürk says "she was on her way home in Sommerville, Massachusetts..." The city nicknamed the "Brooklyn of Boston" (or, less boosterishly, "Slummerville") has only one "m": "Somerville."
Thanks for this post. I'm teaching the deportation cases to students in India (in a segment on the rule of law in a course on democracy; the parallel is with “bulldozer justice” in India), and I intend to assign it!
Excellent observations. The aspect I would like to contribute is the side that allows for the political climate we are in: what we all know, or, our common font of knowledge.
Making sure our education system is free from the malevolent influence of special interest groups and that it is uniform across the nation is the other part of why we are where we are. Without this component, neither media nor social media could have succeeded as resoundingly as they have.
There is a good reason why Trump, all the way back in 2015, exclaimed that he loves the uneducated.
Starting in 2010, in parallel with his rise, we have seen conservative reformers take control of local and state education boards, suppressing, bit by bit, the various components of our education that makes our society wiser, smarter, and more knowledgeable in the choices we make, in a general sense.
Nations whose populace don’t have a common font of knowledge break apart. We’ve been seeing signs of that for years now. Not only do we know different things, depending on where in the US we live, what media we consume, but also where on the social strata we happen to be.
See the education portion of my piece, starting at about past half of the way in: https://open.substack.com/pub/rimaregasblog42/p/new-euphemisms-for-imperialist-behavior?r=bfvi&selection=3d67c85b-d701-4721-b872-03ce184e127b&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
Along with the decline in public education and common understandings that come from it, is the fragmentation of our media system that came about with a rise of cable television. Media consolidation has played in enormous role as well. Allow allowing the same corporate parent to own most of the media in the same market is disastrous for democracy.
Is it fair to comment that the alien and sedition act was not Evan used for 9/11? Or is the fair to comment that the 9/11 perpetrators/terrorists received more due process than the people sent El Salvador? For the true Trumper’s, trumpers forever—right or wrong, “due process need not apply”. An important group of Americans are still trying to figure out do process. Would comparisons to 9/11 help?
The actual "perpetrators" all died in the planes they hijacked. The person that financed the act was shot some 10 years later during a US military incursion into a sovereign country, nominally a US ally. The guy who came up with plan was killed by a US drone strike in Afghanistan. The only other person who was involved was tortured so badly during his renditions to various locations that it was deemed impossible to prosecute him under US jurisdiction. But the reaction to 911 certainly set the precedent of ignoring US laws and judicial processes the Trump administration is currently doing.