This is number twelve in a series illustrating how Trump’s MAGA movement is the new American fascism. We use a template laid out in an article published in 2003 by historian Lawrence Britt, which analyzed seven fascist regimes and the common threads linking them. You can read last week’s blog here.
Week XII. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
The MAGA movement has embraced violence against its opponents since the day Trump descended the golden elevator. Trump enthusiastically embraced a tough guy persona. His initial resort to intimidation tactics and heavy dependence on Twitter for garnering media spotlight only intensified upon assuming office, including proposing drastic measures like shooting asylum-seekers and political demonstrators, and culminating in the assault on Congress on January 6, 2021. We will review that history, and what it teaches us about the evolution of a police state should Trump and his adherents return to power.
His political rallies in the 2016 campaign provided the template for what came after. “Part of the problem … is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.“ “The audience hit back. That’s what we need a little bit more of.“ “In the good old days this doesn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough.“ “Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court, don’t worry about it.” “I’d like to punch him in the face.” “Knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously.” “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
In office, Trump used violent rhetoric both in public and in private, encouraging or endorsing police violence. In a speech to Long Island police officers: “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’” Speaking approvingly of an extra-judicial killing of a suspect by police in Portland, OR: “That’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”
Protests in Seattle and Portland drew his ire in private discussions with staff, including General Milley, as detailed in a book by New York Times and Wall Street Journal columnist Michael Bender. Trump would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior. “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!” Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes. “Just shoot them,” Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts. When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds. “Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot,” Trump said. “But be hard on them!”
Publicly, Trump immediately sided with the police over the George Floyd killing, and the violent aftermath. After demonstrators in DC were only dispersed after the use of tear gas, Trump tweeted that had protesters breached the White House’s fence, they would “have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.” And he said that if needed, the federal government “will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.” Praising the role of the National Guard in suppressing protests in Minneapolis, he suggested the National Guard be used in “other Democrat run Cities and States.”
We have seen the same drumbeat of violent rhetoric since Trump left office, leading to the example of the headline at the top of this piece.
Of course, it is not just Trump. Without going through the long litany of threats and violence from his supporters, including public officials, just look at the language Republican legislators are now using to describe fellow lawmakers, Biden administration officials and witnesses. “The nature of Trumpism is to embolden extremism,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, a Black Democrat from New York.
What does all of this rhetoric and normalization of violence and racist language presage for law and order in Trump’s second term, should such a catastrophe come to pass? It is preconditioning for the installation of a police state.
We already know of his plans to compromise the independence of the Department of Justice in order to transform it into an instrument of revenge against his perceived enemies. We know of his intent to use the military and National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention camps to await deportation. How will Trump accomplish such a massive undertaking? Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, has publicly declared that the administration will create a private red-state army under the president’s command. Miller says a reelected Trump intends to requisition National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and then deploy them into Democratic-run states whose governors refuse to cooperate with their deportation drive.
Think about it. Governor Murphy refuses to cooperate with a scheme to round up undocumented migrants, and the Louisiana National Guard will come knocking at your door to check the basement.
Oh, and Trump says he would deploy the National Guard to cities dealing with high levels of crime - like it or not. And require local law enforcement agencies to use the controversial police practice of stop-and-frisk in order to receive some Justice Department funding. We all know who gets stopped and frisked….
It will be a long, dark night for the American soul if we do not utterly reject this odious ideology in November.
Next week: Rampant Cronyism and Corruption