loading . . . Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It David Axelrod is far better known these days for occasionally wagging his finger at his fellow Democrats than for breathing partisan fire, so it caught my eye when he posted this on X Wednesday: âSo far, the ICE gang has shot & killed an unarmed man & lied about the circumstances; shot a woman 5 times for obstructing their vehicle; roughed up elderly women and zip-tied small children; shot a clergyman in the face with a pepper ball; marched through downtown Chicago, masked and armed. And theyâre not going after the âworst of the worse,â [_sic_] as promised. Most of the people theyâre snagging have clean records. Some are citizens. To be clear: This is NOT making Chicago safer. Itâs state-sponsored mayhem; dangerous political theater calculated to provoke.â
Historians sometimes say that when societies are descending into fascism, it can be hard for the people to notice it in real time. Well, historians of the future, Iâm here to tell you: We are noticing. Millions of us are noticing. And we are horrified and enraged. We are well aware: We once lived in a country that, for all its frequent imperfections, was a place where the rule of law was a broadly shared value and where leaders acted with democratic restraint. We now live in a country where there is no rule of law; where leaders, especially the president but also others who support him, spit on the idea not only of democratic restraint but of democracy itself; and where the timorous first reflex of nearly every member of one of our two political parties is, at virtually all times, to do precisely what the leader wants.
Thatâs fascism. It may beâfor nowâa comparatively mild form of fascism. Political opponents arenât being jailed or shot, opposition media outlets arenât being shuttered, and books arenât being burned. But a lot of things _are_ happening that are terrifying. And last year, we lived in a country where the three scenarios I just listed were barely conceivable. Today, we live in a country where they are more likely only a matter of time.
Letâs go back to Axelrod, and specifically, his use of the phrase âstate-sponsored mayhem.â That is exactly what President Trump is imposing upon Chicago. To take just one of the incidents Axelrod cites: Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church was with a small gaggle of protesters outside a Chicago ICE facility. Three agents stood on the roof of the two-story building as Black and the others stood on the sidewalk maybe 15 feet away from the building. Black raised his arms to the sky, as if in prayer. Someone who appears to be a fellow protester approached Black to confer with him. Next thing you see in this video is a considerable puff of smoke explode from Blackâs forehead as he falls to the ground. Thatâs a clergyman. Exercising his First Amendment right (heâs fine, and heâs suing). Black later told CNN: âWe could hear them laughing.â
Shooting an unarmed and peacefully protesting pastor is by definition an act of state-sponsored mayhem. State-sponsored mayhem starts at the top, with the presidentâs thuggish, lawless threat to imprison the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago (by the wayâGreg Sargent speaks to said governor, JB Pritzker, on his _Daily Blast_ podcast today). From there, the people with the uniforms and the badges and the guns get the message, and they go out and do the things Axelrod listed above.
Administration officials pile lie upon lie upon lie. With respect to Portland, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refers preposterously to âthe radical leftâs reign of terrorâ there. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declares antifa to be âjust as dangerousâ as ISIS, which was killing perceived apostates by the thousands at its peak and raping little girls. Stephen Miller, Trumpâs deputy chief of staff, rants nightly about armed confrontations that either donât exist or exist solely because the administration creates them so it can have the footage that will air over and over on its propaganda network, Fox News. Itâs all toward the purpose of erasing dissent, erasing democracy. As Zeteoâs Kim Wehle put it last week, reporting on two Trump-issued ânational securityâ directives: âThe president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America.â
When a president and his aides are doing that, itâs no longer America.
When masked government thugs take potshots at a priest, itâs no longer America.
When a handpicked hack prosecutor with no prosecutorial experience indicts two honorable American citizens within a month of the president ordering their prosecutions, and when two real prosecutors quit rather than pursue these obscenely political prosecutions, itâs no longer America.
When the third-ranking official in the country, the speaker of the House of Representatives, delays the swearing-in of a duly elected member of that body because he knows she will vote to release files that potentially may shed light on unsavory behavior by the president, itâs no longer America.
When the presidential administration announces that itâs going after nonprofit charitable groups that have operated unmolested in this country for decades under Democratic and Republican administrations because they donate to causes the president disfavors, itâs no longer America.
When naturalized citizens are canceling overseas trips because they canât be certain theyâll be welcomed back _to their own country_ upon return, itâs no longer America.
When the Department of Education is bullying universities into agreeing to a âcompactâ under which theyâll promise not to âbelittleâ conservative ideas, itâs no longer America.
When the president and his family have used his office to enrich themselves to the tune of $3.5 billion in nine months, and when the Congress, controlled by the presidentâs party, refuses to do a thing about this rancid, dictator-level corruption, itâs no longer America.
When the Supreme Court of the United States has sold its soul to all this barbarity, itâs no longer America.
And when this thuggish dictator-wannabe is also a buffoonish man-child who sits there in his breathtakingly tacky Oval Office with his fake face and fake hair next to another head of state (the president of Finland) as he boasts yet again about passing a simple dementia test that a 10-year-old could ace, and we realize that this man-child is the sitting president, itâs no longer America, at least for anyone who cares about how we look to the rest of the world.
Historians of the future: Rest assured, millions of us know all this in real time. We are horrified, shocked, enraged, and ashamed. We are acting, in a thousand ways, to oppose it. This cannot, and will not, be how the United States ends.****
_This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky.__Sign up here_ _._
https://newrepublic.com/post/201625/trump-fascism-memo-future-historians
