303 - How Fascists Gain Control: Inciting Violence and Vilifying Opponents

            What have these United States come to when a presidential contender blithely, consciously, abuses the First Amendment protections of free speech to incite followers to violence?  Not to mention lying left and right, tilting the pre-election discourse against his rivals by deploying vicious racist and class images to vilify other candidates.  Along with Putin, Trump is a clear and present danger not only to his fellow Americans, but to electoral democracy everywhere.

            “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within," Trump said on Fox News.  He added: "We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.’’  

            "The enemy from within" is Mussolini and Hitler-like speech.  Trump utters the phrase often, recently against Congressman Adam Schiff, a leading Democratic contender for the open Senate seat in California.  "Outside agitators" are added often used words to arouse his followers to go after those who are -- even in slight, or imagined ways -- anti-Trumpers.

            "We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country.’’ That is another, oft-repeated, line to make certain that Trump's followers will join him in unleashing venom and even physical retribution on those who are -- falsely and without even a shred of evidence -- accused of letting immigrants "overrun" this country.

            In Pennsylvania, Trump piled calumny on calumny: “They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

            The mayors of Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, both say that their towns welcome and need new immigrant influxes. Yet the blustering candidate described the city of Aurora as a "war zone" controlled by Venezuelan gangs, even though authorities in Aurora say such a designation is totally false. “I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,’’ Trump said, but his accusations are absolutely unfounded.

            Likewise, he and Vance said that Haitian immigrants were eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, when officials in that city and even the Republican governor of the state made it clear that nothing similar had ever occurred. Moreover, Haitian immigrants are excellent workers and essential to the rejuvenation of Springfield. It is an industrial town now on the rise thanks, especially, to incoming Haitians.

            Trump promises to "deport" millions - 10 million, 25 million? -- allegedly illegal immigrants, and to do so forcibly (and illegally).

            He promises to weaponize the military to do the deportations and, for good measure to sic soldiers on his opponents -- the Bidens and Hillary Clintons - who deride him

            Other repeated falsifications of the facts include telling the Detroit Economic Club that California was consumed by "brownouts or blackouts every week...the place is stone cold broke, no electricity."

            But even more dangerously, and purposely inciteful, are frequently repeated statements that big cities are riddled with crime when homicide numbers and nearly all other forms of crime are much more reduced in quantity than during his presidency. In big cities "you can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped." In fact, Boston (which leads the way statistically) and New York had upwards to 100 percent fewer killings in 2023 than in, say, 2019 and 2020, when Trump presided.

            Obviously, Trump's words are meant to resonate with a receptive audience. He builds (even though the New York Times says that many enraptured listeners think he is more talk than likely action) upon their fears and antagonisms -- on their ardent desire to lock the door against newcomers following in their or their parents' and grandparents' footsteps.

            What Trump understands so well is that his voters are angry. Their statuses have been depressed. Others, especially immigrants from strange lands and peoples of color generally are getting "too much" for free. They are thus -- in perception and theory -- taking good things and the good life from those who are whiter and who have lost traditional manufacturing jobs in America's heartland. Perception is all, facts be damned.

            There are millions of Americans who are excited when Trump says and gets away with saying all of the hateful things that they have long been muttering to themselves. Since he can voice such things, and even threaten violence, they are empowered -- some even to the point of threatening election workers and harassing and objectifying Federal Emergency Management employees rescuing North Carolina. Even meteorologists have been attacked for allowing hurricanes to occur as part of an alleged nefarious Democratic plot.

            Trump enables mad conspiracists to proliferate and to try to act out against imagined dangers.  These incidents punctuated the years of his presidency (recall the child molesting supposedly taking place in a Washington, D. C. pizza parlor?) but they are more frequent now, and much more endangering since Trump began this year implicitly to promote violence against Democrats and the ills that they are supposedly but erroneously responsible for damaging the livelihoods of his followers.

            None of this is any good. None of his nasty name-calling against Vice President Kamala Harris ("mentally disabled") or President Biden is appropriate in electoral contests or in any other political contexts.

            If Trump were not a former president and a candidate he presumably could be prosecuted for bending or exceeding the bounds of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court's holdings in New York Times Co. v Sullivan (1964). He certainly exceeds the strictures John Stuart Mill imposed on free speech in the nineteeth century.

            But the real dangers to America are more palpable.  Trump yearns in public and doubtless in private to be positioned so that his narcissistic impulses need not be restrained by laws and norms. He very much desires to be able to rule without checks and balances, without being compelled as an executive to follow regulations made by predecessors or to respect legal rulings.  Before his first presidency and his years since he hardly knew with how much he could get away. Earlier he did not know how fully his private wants would succeed with potential voters.  Nor did he know how thoroughly he could cow the entire pusillanimous Republican establishment and strike mortal fear in the electoral prospects of Congresspeople.

            Now he is going for broke. And woe be the American Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian Republic if he succeeds.  He wants to "go after" his opponents. He wants to lock up those who are not "loyal."  He wants to fire the entire Department of Justice and upend civil service protections for anyone who --imagine! -- does not faithfully believe and say that he won the 2020 election. 

            A lot of these rantings can be considered bluster.  But the rantings betray intention and, worst of all, inflame persons throughout the nation who a) feel themselves done to, and b) believe that taking action against officials and elites is and will be sanctioned by Trump.

            The road to fascism in the United States is often paved by the likes of extremists such as Charles A. Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlin.  But never has anyone campaigned for the presidency as a hate monger, a serial liar, a convicted felon, a sex violator, and a dunderhead.  This last adjective is in tribute to Trump's supreme ignorance. He is the consummate knownothing against whom we must save what is left of our tattered democracy.

            Some of this palpable antidemocracy explains why Trump refuses to say that he will accept the results of the 2024 election peacefully. He also explains why he befriends Putin, Viktor Orban, and other autocrats.  He likes authoritarian strongmen and, wannabe that he is, would like to be accepted by them and inducted into their ranks.

            Given a politicized and recalcitrant, much less a straight-thinking Supreme Court, the very being of these United States is imperiled. Some say that even if Trimp loses on Nov. 5, we should be prepared for the chaos he and his followers will unleash.

            Presidents John Adams and Washington did not prepare the twenty-first century republic for such an outrageous candidate spewing hate, slander, purposeful misinformation, and withoutr checks of civility and legal recourse.  Nor, before recent Supreme Court decisions, could a candidate presume that speech that was being used to inflame would be enshrined. But honest officials, even former generals, genuinely fear what could happen, and prepare for assaults and lockups. Armed retribution knows no place in American political life, but it now exists.

            This Newsletter reaches only a minuscule portion of the electorate. Thus, readers please spread the word far and wide about how dangerous this moment is for our democracy, for the orderly transfers of power, and for a republic that could easily slide headlong into autocracy.