Trump's Latest Authoritarian Overture to Q-Anon Should Concern Us All Even If His Political Days Are Numbered
If republicans assume the reins of power again, particularly the White House, what we can expect is darkness, terror, and fear.
On July 26, “the former guy,” Donald Trump, spoke at the “America First Policy Institute” summit in which he called for concentration camps for the homeless, executing drug dealers, returning to the racist “stop-and-frisk” policies in cities, and overriding governors and mayors in deploying the national guard to high-crime neighborhoods.
It was a speech that would make Hungary’s fascist president Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin proud.
As Trump’s world comes crashing down around him, it’s easy to laugh and dismiss this as mere bluster, the tormented rantings of a delusional, ill-qualified, washed-up old wanna-be despot.
But we do so at our own peril.
Should Trump or anyone aspiring to be like him ever again gain the levers of power, this is part of the road map toward autocracy we can expect.
In the aftermath of Monday’s FBI raid on his Florida Mar-a-Lago home, Trump has made his pact with the violent and racist faction of the rapidly deteriorating republican party’s base all the more blatant.
Only a few hours after federal agents descended on his property, Trump posted on his official “Truth Social” page what appeared to be a campaign-style video employing background music supposedly written by an adherent of the extreme right-wing conspiracy theory group Q-Anon.
According to a Media Matters review using both Google’s voice assistant and Apple’s Shazam app, the music in Trump’s video is a song titled Wwg1wga, produced in 2020 by an artist using the name “Richard Feelgood” on Spotify. The acronym “wwg1wga” is a common shorthand in the QAnon community for the slogan “Where we go one, we go all.” Discussion of a supposedly imminent “storm” is also important in QAnon lore, referring to a prophesied event where Trump’s perceived enemies — who are also supposedly part of a global satanic cabal of pedophiles — would be arrested and possibly executed.
While this is not the first time the twice-impeached, twice-popular-vote-losing former president has nodded toward the Q-Anoners, this latest acknowledgment is being called “THE mother of all Q proofs.”
One QAnon conspiracist explained:
Image credit: Media Matters
The establishment republican party would love to see Trump fade away into history.
No one in that party establishment wants to admit it publicly, though, because they need Trump’s cult followers.
That includes the Q-Anoners and the rest of the “patriots” with a penchant for domestic terrorism.
This is more serious than we might be inclined to initially believe.
The former president of the United States, after returning to the nation’s capital a year and half after he incited an attempted coup to overthrow the government, is laying down nakedly authoritarian stances and extending a hand to the most extreme members of the republican party that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been taken at all seriously.
Former Naval intelligence officer, counter-terrorism expert, MSNBC contributor, and author Malcolm Nance writes in his recent book They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency:
The Q-Anon-infused TITUS [Trump Insurgency in the United States] supporters, enablers, and enforcers, particularly those who took part in the insurrection, have been openly and vociferously advocating the overthrow of the government and the establishment of the Trump dictatorship.
Q-Anon followers believe they have Donald Trump’s full approval as he fancies himself their knight in shining armor and bathes in their adoration. In turn, they support him politically to enable him to fulfill his duty as a rescuer of children from a satanic cabal of pedophile cannibals. No matter that it is supposed to lead to the slaughter of other Americans. They remain ready to rend the fabric of America to make it happen.
If the current trends continue, the Q-Anon conspiracy will dominate the ideology of the Republican Party platform minus the letter Q.
Nance goes on to detail how Financial Times editor Ed Luce told former republican member of Congress and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that republicans are “becoming more cultish, more Jonestown-esque as time goes on. It’s hard to find any parallel, really, in the democratic world.”
Columnist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Michael Gerson, wrote:
To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because their defining falsehood is so obviously and laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders who embrace it fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie — an act of immorality — is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.
Considering Trump is now under investigation for possible Espionage Act violations, he is “going for broke,” as the saying goes.
But even if Trump’s political days are numbered, his supporters in state, local, and federal government are ready to pick up his dangerous mantle.
Whether it’s Trump, DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, or anyone else, every one of them is going to have to pander to the “MAGA” base.
No aspiring republican presidential nominee would risk alienating it now that Trump has lowered the bar, whether they like it or not.
That means trying to out-fascist the other guy.
It’s a vision that should concern us all.
We saw where it almost got us the first time.
As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
If republicans assume the reins of power again, particularly the White House, what we can expect is darkness, terror, and fear.