NOT FASCIST? REALLY, MS. LYMAN?
Dr. Common Good
On a recent airing of CNN’s Abby Phillips NewsNight, panelist Brianna Lyman from The Federalist rolled her eyes and muttered “oh, come on” when Trump administration actions were described as fascist. Well, Ms. Lyman, if you think that is an unfair characterization, maybe you need a reminder with respect to the facts. Here are a few:
Mobilizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for purely personal vendettas and political prosecutions – Don’t even try to claim that Trump’s and Pam Bondi’s slew of charges and indictments against political opponents are a reaction to the purported politicization of the DOJ under Biden. There is no comparison. Not only was then-Attorney General Merrick Garland exceedingly cautious, but all of the cases against Trump and other 2020 election conspirators arose because there were actual, egregious violations of the law, documented in painstaking investigations by the DOJ and by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who, by the way, was appointed specifically to distance those prosecutions from the DOJ and avoid any potential political entanglements. The evidence in those cases was overwhelming, and it is a national travesty that Trump, through legal manipulations and delays, was able to escape accountability. Trump clearly attempted to commit blatant fraud in Georgia by demanding that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” votes so that he could win. In another call, he demanded that Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston hold a special legislative session to overturn the Georgia election results, asking Ralston “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” All of this and more is clearly documented fact. It is also very clear that Trump absconded with an entire trove of classified documents after leaving the White House and refused to give them back, even after prolonged requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lying to the FBI that he had returned all documents and destroying evidence that he had them, a criminal obstruction of justice. These are felonies. The FBI did not “go after” Trump or invent charges. He violated the law repeatedly and with public belligerence. Then of course there were his actions on January 6, 2021, fomenting and supporting the unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters who attempted to stop the vote certification process, resulting in destruction of property, and multiple deaths and injuries, including injuries to 174 police officers. All of this does not even count the illegal and unconstitutional actions he undertook during his first term in office.
By contrast, Trump and his DOJ (yes, “his” DOJ, even though it is supposed to be the people’s DOJ) have cooked up allegations and indicted many of the people who publicly opposed his abuses, including James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and others. To do so, Trump has had to illegally appoint prosecutors to replace sitting U.S. attorneys who refuse to engage in such baseless and fraudulent prosecutions. He has even commandeered the DOJ and other Federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to find anything, even in personal mortgage records, which could be used as a rationale to prosecute. So there you have it. QED. The prosecutions are generated by motives against the person, not violations of the law. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as their personal weapon to silence and intimidate, and to remove opposition.
Defying or ignoring court orders. As a corollary to the previous point, Trump and his administration have repeatedly defied court orders or ignored them altogether. In an analysis of 165 court orders earlier this year, the Washington Post found that Trump had resisted the order in at least 57 of those cases (about 34%), by responding very slowly, misrepresenting facts in filings, and ignoring the orders outright (reported in the July 21 Independent). This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as subordinate, in the way, or even as an enemy.
Illegally sending the National Guard to American cities – but only if they are “Blue” (Democrat) cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Washington, DC, when they are not requested (by governors) and for which there is no actual justification. Trump invents an “emergency,” and that becomes a pretext for the troops – who, most of the time, have no idea why they have been deployed. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake “emergencies,” and use that cover to deploy the military for political intimidation. It is unconstitutional, and a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Illegally sending ICE shock troops with masks into American cities (again, primarily “Blue” cities) and yanking immigrants or those who “look like” immigrants, including mothers and children, off the streets, out of schools, even out of court legal proceedings, shoving them to the ground, pushing them into unmarked cars and hustling them off to un-named detention centers where they cannot even contact family – without even a pretense of due process. And then sending them off to detention centers far afield, where they have no family, no contacts, no support. Not only that, in absolute contradiction to the lies coming from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE has seized almost 200 citizens, and about 75,000 people with no criminal records (around 70 percent of those seized), a flat out contradiction to the Trump Administration’s claim to be focusing just on criminals. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake crises, and use that cover to deploy – in this case – thugs with masks for political intimidation. Due process is cast aside, even though it is a cornerstone of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Suppressing free speech. This includes the use of government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (which grants licenses) in attempts to force broadcast outlets to suppress any programming or commentary that criticizes or opposes Trump and his policies, and even to call for the firing of specific individuals. It also includes limits and restrictions on the White House and Department of Defense press corps, allowing only “friendly” media representatives who won’t ask serious questions or contradict Trump or his administration’s spokespersons (Karoline Leavitt is a prime example, a routine purveyor of glaring lies) – this of course allows for control over what is reported to the public. It also includes the extortion of universities, under threat of massive fines and the loss of research grant funding, as a means of controlling campus speech and controlling the content taught in classrooms. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They quash opposition and control the narrative by eliminating dissent, restrict the information available to the public, and label as enemies of the people those who voice dissent. It is a classic technique.
Treating the government as a personal domain. Trump has sought, and had some success, in expanding his control over government agencies, and rendering himself immune from any criminal prosecution (aided and abetted by the Supreme Court which he stacked in his favor). And he has visibly, and illegally, appropriated buildings and American cultural institutions, like the U.S. Institute of Peace or the Kennedy Center, taking them over, and renaming them for himself, when they are in fact not “his” to control or rename. In a recent shocker, Trump – without any authorization, only his personal whim – destroyed the East Wing of the people’s White House, in order to build a cheap, gaudy monument to himself. To a degree never seen in US history, Trump has used the office of presidency to glorify and enrich himself, his businesses, his family and loyalists, mixing business deals with government business, pardoning people who effectively bribe him with investments and cash (as in the pardoning of Changpeng Zhao, founder of the crypto exchange Binance, which had closed a multi-billion dollar deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto business). Furthermore, to legitimize his “domain, he has surrounded himself with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads who are little more than obsequious sycophants – one has only to watch a televised Cabinet meeting to see the obvious parallel to a meeting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s ministers. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. It is right out of the classic fascist/dictator playbook. They treat the government as merely an instrument of their personal will, and government leaders as servants of that will.
Using the military to pursue wars and extrajudicial killings under false pretense and without any legal authorization. Trump and his mindless minion Pete Hegseth have been systematically launching missile attacks on small boats in the Caribbean that are allegedly running drugs, ostensibly threatening U.S. national security, entirely without any proof and without Congressional authorization. And in doing so, Trump and Hegseth kill the boat occupants – recently even circling back after an initial attack and killing defenseless survivors, which amounts to the crime of “murder on the high seas” and is a violation of international human rights law. Now Trump is threatening to use the military to attack or invade Venezuela, again a violation of international law and our own Constitutional requirement for Congressional authorization, this time claiming that Venezuela is a terrorist country and, more recently, that the U.S. has the right to forcibly reclaim oil assets nationalized in the 1970s. No matter what one thinks of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, this is just naked aggression, hardly different than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They use the nation’s military at their own whim, disregarding law and civilian control, simply to pursue power and control.
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So, Ms. Lyman, what do you call this? In what surreal world do you live where any of this represents the democracy this country is supposed to embody? Yes, while presidents and their administrations have, over the years, violated democratic principles and the rule of law in specific instances, we have never seen the stunning totality and ubiquity of abuse perpetrated by this administration. It is unprecedented in American history. To be blunt, you are a fool to laugh it off.
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As the philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell once said, “The technique of acquiring dictatorship over what has been a democracy…always involves the same mixture of bribery, propaganda, and violence” (from Power: A New Social Analysis, 1938).