Chaos fascism
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Justinian in Chaos, Donald Trump, Roger Fitch Esq, US politics
Mobster rule ... Threats and blackmail ... Civil society on the edge ...
Tariffs and crashing markets are one thing ... There are also attacks on the
media, lawyers, universities, foreign students, and so-called "enemy
aliens" ... Roger Fitch files from a traumatised Washington
"Trump himself has always been an anti-liberal revolutionary, an
American Lenin for the rich and entitled. Trump doesn't believe in democracy,
just in winning at all costs. He doesn't believe in limited government, but in
the triumph of his will ... He is an authoritarian, lawless plutocrat who
admires similar characters at home and abroad. And he views government as a
machine for massive personal, family and clan advancement" - UK
Prospect
"Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United
States of America - government, law, business, education, culture, and so on -
because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call
'the Left' [which] includes all Americans ... who believe the government has a
role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net,
promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the
institutional structures Americans have built since World War II" - Heather Cox Richardson
"Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy
mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force ... Second, a bit more
stealthily, and legally - through legislation, executive decrees, and court
decisions that hand more power to the leader. Donald Trump is inventing a new
way ... chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they're so
disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them"
- New Republic
"With tariffs, Trump can exercise a kind of corruption that the
country hasn't experienced in some 150 years" - Mother
Jones
Most people
expected Donald Trump to subvert American democracy by degrees. Instead,
he attacked due process directly, abolishing
agencies, sacking public servants, impounding grants and appropriations.
Presidents cannot unilaterally dismantle federal agencies,
or do many other things, nor defy court orders, yet Trump and Musk are
doing so, faster than courts can stop them.
The Trump administration isn't "deconstructing the administrative
state", but blowing it to bits through
purported Executive Orders (EOs, 110+ so far) designed to reverse 20th century
progressive advances, evidently assuming social programs and even science have
disproportionately benefitted women, ethnic and sexual minorities, the
poor, immigrants, suspect academics and intellectuals: all the people regarded
by the Radical Republicans as unworthy of program benefits and a seat at the
table in government.
It's simple racism. That's what MAGA's all
about: making America white again.
≈ ≈ ≈
Leading civil institutions are folding under Trump's threats
and blackmail, i.e, his silly, factually baseless, often deadly
EOs.
Even before taking office, Trump began extracting sham settlements in
his frivolous lawsuits. Once in office, the rest of the media began rolling
over, e.g, referring to the Gulf of Mexico as Trump's absurd "Gulf of
America". Why not the Gulf of Chevron, or Texas? Both would pay top dollar
for naming rights.
Associated Press stood its ground
While some media reached accommodations with Trump, others (notably,
the Associated Press) bravely declined to do so,
and Trump still lacks the subservient media he craves.
He could have harnessed the US Agency for Global Media (Voice of
America), but instead, attempted something sought by foreign dictators and
authoritarian regimes since the 1940s: silencing the VOA, Radio Free Europe (more here) and other regional affiliates.
VOA is no crude propaganda effort, but a trustworthy source of
professionally-gathered news. Yet it attracted the attention and odium of
commercial media proprietors no less than foreign dictators: men like Musk and
Murdoch, who despise VOA, NPR, BBC, CBC and ABC as "state
media".
Thus far, the shutdown has failed. The RFE and VOA employees got their jobs back.
Trump still has his Truth Social platform
to carry his rants, and a White House "X" account to broadcast his
"gleeful cruelty".
Donald Trump's other protection rackets are thriving. One of them is a
shakedown of Big Law. After some top Democrat-leaning law firms were threatened
by name in childish "executive orders", several shamefully surrendered to Trump's threats
of economic ruin, in order to avoid further damage.
Perhaps the most disgraceful was the capitulation of the
Paul, Weiss law firm, who agreed to contribute $40 million in pro bono
services for Republican villains.
Other top US law firms are selling out to Trump, who, besides
punishing firms, hopes to chill pushback against his clearly illegal actions.
However, the law firms standing firm are winning in the courts. Perhaps they're better
lawyers.
Then he came for
the universities, who came for the
foreign students
George II - gave a Royal Charter for Kings College, New York - now
Columbia University
Major universities have capitulated to Trump's threats of
royal anathema and loss of grants. Make America Stupid is in full swing,
with science and learning (especially Liberal Arts) the
target. Anti-intellectualism is in vogue again.
The purges began with a venerable colonial
college. In an astonishingly-impertinent letter to New
York's Columbia (the King's College of George
II), Trump hirelings threatened to withhold $400 million in funds and grants if
Columbia didn't accede to listed demands (it largely did).
The New York ACLU replied to the letter directly, while leading constitutional law
professors responded in an open letter and the academic
organisation AAUP is fighting back in court (more here).
Harvard (whose grants total $9 billion)
and Columbia have now "re-organised" their Middle East Studies
departments, cleansing them of courses and academics deemed uncongenial: those
disfavoured by pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian groups. Other
Ivies (Penn, Princeton and Brown) also had Trump shakedowns.
Finally came the
political abductions, banishments and disappearances
Following the university capitulations, the persecutions and illegal
deportations began, mainly of pro-Palestinian foreign students. Zionist
organisations like Betar US are keeping little lists, and handing them to ICE.
In one of his faux "executive orders" issued
in March, Trump purported to invoke the Alien Enemies
Act (AEA), a 1798 law confined to wartime; it's legislation
that's clearly inapplicable absent a declared war, an enemy and enemy nationals
on American soil, and has nothing to do with immigration.
Trump has nevertheless attempted to use the AEA in
many lawless ways, mainly to deport Venezuelans without due process (some
with open asylum claims), either
"deporting" them to Guantánamo or (while pretending the flight
destination is Venezuela), deceitfully banishing them to a dungeon in El Salvador.
ICE enforcement
The deportees have no connection to El Salvador, where Trump expects them
to be mistreated in violation of the US 8th amendment.
The deportations violate federal court orders, which were flouted even while the matter was on appeal to the DC circuit and finally, the supreme court (see), where the administration admitted that El Salvador detentions
are intended to be beyond the reach of
American courts, rather like CIA
black sites.
Foreign banishment is unconstitutional, violating both American due process and international law, e.g, the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and non-refoulement.
