Creeping neo-fascist coup

Paul Garver says Trump 2.0 threatens the American constitutional system and democracy much more than Trump 1.0

Donald Trump was as surprised as the rest of us when he won the presidential election in November 2016.  He was unprepared to govern, let alone to consolidate power.  First term President Trump blustered through a series of chaotic interventions that suited his impulses of the moment, augmented his personal gain, or indulged his desire to throw raw meat to his MAGA followers.

His attempted coup in January 2021 looked scary enough, but neither Trump nor the motley crew of followers who invaded the Capitol grounds had any serious plan to consolidate an overthrow of Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump 2.0 is a much more serious threat.  He claims an extensive electoral mandate that entitles him to carry out the sweeping plans of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, including disabling any checks and balances that could rein in the rule of an imperial president-king.

The first three weeks of this Trump administration can best be described as a “creeping coup”.  It has unleashed a barrage of “flash bang” actions designed to bewilder his opponents and distract the media.  However, this time there are insidious structural elements being hammered into shape that surpass one man’s personal whims.  This is no longer a buffoon’s comic opera.

The Republican Party no longer exists at the national level as anything other than MAGA enablers.  Republican Senators are voting unanimously to confirm outrageously incompetent grifters, oligarchs and shysters assembled to form a Cabinet.  The only qualifications deemed significant are personal loyalty to the President, egregious conflicts of personal financial interest, and a passionate commitment to cripple and undermine the work of the agencies they will lead.

Employees of the federal government are coming under sustained fire.  Officers of the FBI, CIA and Justice Department who had anything to do with upholding the law against either the January 6 insurrection or Trump’s various crimes are suffering witch hunts, including threats to their families” physical safety.   Whole departments like Environmental Protection, Education, and the US Agency for International Development are threatened with being shuttered.

The justification and mechanism for the wholesale attacks on these departments is the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), for which leading billionaire and oligarch Elon Musk is responsible.  Under the guise of improving government efficiency, and rolling back agency efforts at Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI), Musk has been granted virtually the status of Trump’s Co-President.   Musk brings with him a pack of “Musk Rats”, opportunistic young IT experts from his various businesses, who have been granted full access to confidential files in several departments, including Treasury, without any security clearances or oversight other than from Musk.

Most of the Democratic Party’s leadership are still recoiling from electoral defeat, afraid to offer more than token opposition to Trump’s most outrageous executive orders that are targeted against vulnerable scapegoats, whether immigrant or trans people.  Senate Democrats are vigorously questioning Trump’s appointees, and casting votes against endorsing some of them, but without effect because Republicans are acting like a monolithic bloc.

However, resistance to the illegal measures is rising, not least among government employees” unions, some progressive Democratic politicians and state attorney generals, leading to some lower-level court injunctions.   But court relief is slow and uncertain and, with the US Supreme Court controlled by right-wing Republicans, not likely to prevail soon enough in the absence of mass protests.

Organizations in and around the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are working together to shore up resistance to this creeping neo-fascist coup.  The Working Families Party, Progressive Democrats of America, Our Revolution, MoveOn, and Indivisible are leftist, non-socialist member organizations trying to collaborate.   A small cadre socialist organization, Liberation Road, together with Convergence Magazine, has been working with the more pragmatic caucuses of DSA, Socialist Majority and Groundwork, to encourage democratic socialists to become part of this emergency united front.

On the international side, I serve on the Steering Committee of DSA’s International Committee, and in that capacity am helping analyze the rather contradictory international gestures of Trump 2.0. 

Why is Trump targeting the US Agency for International Aid Department for demolition? USAID has been a core feature of US foreign policy for many decades.  Arguably it represents the kind of “soft power” that props up the US imperium, rather than the more brutal threats favored by Trump.  But vulnerable people in many world regions have come to rely on the services it provides.  What, if anything, would replace it?

It is difficult to know whether Trump’s bluster about acquiring Greenland, reacquiring the Panama Canal, or cowering Mexico into submission pose actual threats or not.  So far, he has put Cuba back on the list of terrorist states (Biden took Cuba off much too late), and threatened Mexico and Canada with mostly 25% tariffs for specious reasons, only to suspend them for 30 days after meaningless gestures in return.  Claudia Sheinbaum announced already laid plans to send 15,000 more Mexican troops to its northern border, where they will likely focus on blocking arms trafficking into Mexico from the USA.

Unfortunately, at least in the Western Hemisphere the administration has reverted to threatening tariffs and gunboat diplomacy to bully sovereign states.  DSA is developing closer ties with mass Left parties in government in Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico, and supporting more fragile Center-Left governments in Chile, Colombia, etc. whenever possible.

Although Trump’s feeler about acquiring Gaza and relocating its residents may not be seriously intended, his bromance with Netanyahu threatens to embolden even more extreme Israeli measures in the West Bank and Gaza.   DSA’s International Committee has been coordinating pro-Palestine actions on many campuses and within several unions.

DSA’s International Committee also has an active International Migrant Rights Sub-Committee that is rapidly mobilizing DSA chapters around the country to work together with immigrant rights groups and worker centers at local and state levels to resist Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Trump 2.0 is posing many simultaneous challenges to democratic socialists in the USA. 

We intend to Keep Calm and Carry On as best we can.