A MAGA Senator Just Demonstrated the Fascism the Writer He Went After Warned About
Criticism of Trump and his henchmen and women is the thing a potential second Trump presidency threatens to literally destroy.
Pursuing one’s political opponents, or in authoritarian terminology, “enemies”, is one historic characteristic of fascism. And nothing screams “ENEMY” louder to a wanna-be dictator than critics in the media.
With Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements of plans to turn the United States into a strong-man Hungarian- or Russian-style dictatorship should we be foolish enough to allow him another stint in the White House, comes Ohio Senator J.D. Vance’s call for an investigation into Washington Post op-ed writer Robert Kagan for daring to write about it.
On Wednesday, Sen. Vance sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken responding to Kagan’s Nov. 30 column warning readers, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable,” and, “We should stop pretending.”
Whether he is aware of it or not, in claiming Kagan’s piece is “an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war,” Sen. Vance is proving Kagan’s point: criticism of Trump and his henchmen and women is the thing a potential second Trump presidency threatens to literally destroy. Vance has just fired the first shot in showing how a more obsequious DOJ could be weaponized to carry it out.
Kagan is no flaming liberal, neither is former republican House member Liz Cheney, who, in her new book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, joins in the growing alarm over the erasure of democracy a potential Trump second term would cause.
During a Veterans’ Day speech in Claremont, New Hampshire, the twice-impeached, quadruply indicted sexual assaulting slumlord former host of Celebrity Apprentice channeled his inner Hitler when he announced that, if re-elected next year, he would “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”
This is why a piece published last month in The Economist, titled “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024,” states:
Because MAGA Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair.
The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.
The Washington Post even ran a story admitting Trump’s rhetoric is identical to Hitler and Mussolini’s.
The Post reported:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
The Intelligencer headlined a piece “Trump Goes Full Hitler by Calling Political Foes ‘Vermin’”.
The New York Times published a piece titled, “After Calling Foes ‘Vermin,’ Trump Campaign Warns Its Critics Will Be ‘Crushed’”.
How about the New York Times: “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans,” the subheading for which reads, “If he regains power, Donald Trump wants not only to revive some of the immigration policies criticized as draconian during his presidency, but expand and toughen them.”
Remember when Trump promised “a complete shutdown of Muslims”?
One week into his presidency, he issued an executive order banning people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
Remember when he promised to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accords?
Remember his promise to withdraw us from the Iran Nuclear Deal?
He promised to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Remember when Vladimir Putin told him to threaten to withdraw the US from NATO?
Remember the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, responsible for separating more than 5,000 families for which the Trump administration kept no records?
It was just 11 months ago when he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
While Trump was a failure as a president from the perspective of a constitutionally limited democratic republic founded on upholding the rule of law, he was successful in the eyes of autocrats, fascists, and those among us who believe democracy is for suckers.
Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Believe it when Trump and those loyal to him announce their intentions to revoke our freedoms.
It has happened in other countries and it can happen here too.
This should be an “all-hands on deck,” break-glass moment.
If we fail to heed the warnings this time, the ramifications are our own fault.