Trump administration 2024-2028
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Brad Sallows
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I have observed, in my time spent in my kitchen, a peculiar process wherein a chicken is placed raw in a metal box. If I press the appropriate buttons and am sufficiently patient, at a certain point in the near future, that box beeps to tell me that at that precise moment the chicken has transitioned instantaneously from ‘raw’ to ‘cooked’ and is now ready.
I have no idea what’s happening in that box in that intervening time, but I’ve also noticed this really tantalizing phenomenon where partly through the time I’m waiting, my kitchen begins to smell the way a chicken does when it’s cooked.
It’s the damndest thing.
Brad Sallows
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That pretty much summarizes the phenomenon. People ordinarily rational in their thinking are determined to squint hard and participate in internet myth-making, despite ample contrary evidence.
McG
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Corporatism was important to Fascists in Italy and Spain, but the Nazis rejected corporatism's tenants as early as the 1920s. While the Nazi regime claimed to be corporatist, it differed significantly from traditional corporatism by prioritizing state control over the autonomy of corporations and worker representation. Wikipedia doesn't even mention corporatism on its rather large fascism article (Fascism - Wikipedia).
Regardless, Trumps relationship with billionaire oligarchs does have similarities to the relationship of an authoritarian corporatist state with its "corporate groups" ... even to where employee groups interests are subordinated to government and employer group interests. But, we have seen Trump wield (or threaten to wield) the power of the state to coerce "employer group" organizations to his will. Universities, law firms, and media have all be subject to such manipulation. He signed an EO demanding pharmaceutical companies lower prices. He has also signed EOs ordering increased production of Coal and of minerals (the later leveraging emergency authorities of the Defense Production Act).
So, okay. Trump maybe more Hitler than Mussolini or Franco on the corporatism front.
Yep. Examples include a great big birthday parade, domestic deployments of Army & Marines, some of the self-congratulatory antics after a sortie to Iran, and also the "Big Beautiful Bill" has a rather massive pool of funding to expand & further militarize ICE.
Yep. The federal legislature is completely subservient to Trump. Some lower courts are still resisting, but SCOTUS is keeping them down so MAGA can do its thing.
Yes, I get that MAGA is not an identical repetition of Europe 100 years ago. But there are a lot of similarities and common warning signs, and maybe its time to say "this is not okay". Maybe it is time to stop apologizing for MAGA because maybe some policies are okay and they have not yet installed ovens in the concentration camps. Despite "Fascism" and "Nazi" having been tossed about in the rhetoric of political hyperbole, it is time to take seriously the analogy. Stop focusing on the lines he has not yet crossed, and take a moment to consider all the lines already crossed.
If the claim were pure hyperbole today, there would not be so much written on in.
Donald Trump and fascism - Wikipedia
Is Trumpism a form of fascism? Two historians debate
Marc Lazar, a specialist in Benito Mussolini's Italy, believes the American president is establishing an illiberal democracy rather than true fascism. Conversely, Olivier Burtin a historian of the United States, argues that the similarities between Trump's politics and fascism are more...
www.lemonde.fr
Fascism shattered Europe a century ago — and historians hear echoes today in the U.S. - Berkeley News
After the mass death and destruction of World War I, with their economies shredded by inflation and unemployment, Italy and Germany turned from democracy to dictatorships. UC Berkeley scholars see troubling parallels in contemporary American democracy.
news.berkeley.edu
No, Trump is not a fascist. He is a hypercapitalist and just as dangerous
Trump wants to free big capital from the constraints of democracy by dismantling it.
Brad Sallows
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Unsurprising. What Mussolini started is what fascism is. Hitler's grab-bag of bits and pieces of ideologies is sometimes (mostly colloquially) called "fascism", but it's fragmented nature is usually recognized as only "partly". I've watched the contents of the Wikipedia entry changing over the years. People are trying hard to fit "fascism" to particular circumstances rather than evaluating circumstances against a proper (original) meaning of "fascism". As with all things political, Wikipedia becomes increasingly unreliable.
It's pointless to squint at something and say, gee, that looks a bit like "X". People ought to stop trying so hard. If you're going to acknowledge in one paragraph that the Nazis weren't strictly corporatist, then it makes no sense to sound alarm bells in the next about something more tenuous. Republicans have been supposed to be the party of corporations and billionaires for decades. It isn't proto-fascism.
Hand-waving about "manipulation" is just propaganda if it isn't specific; in particularly, if there are legal questions to be resolved, it is not "manipulation" to resolve them. "But the law is being used to pursue disfavoured people!" - sure, maybe; was it a poor choice for prior administrations to open that box and use colour of law to go after corporations, or lawyers, or reporters, or any other inconvenient people/critics? Undoubtedly the usual sufficient excuse applies to all those prior instances - it looked like laws were being broken, and no-one is above the law.
The parade is one-and-done. I doubt it will be a repeated or even annual event to match what happens in actual totalitarian countries. It highlights the stupidity of pointing to single examples and crying, "Look! A mark of totalitarianism!". I doubt domestic armed forces employment will become habitual either. "Mission accomplished" antics are just posturing; it isn't mere bluster when one president does it and proto-fascism when another does. The US has habitually over-militarized its enforcement agencies for decades; again, it only seems to be proto-fascism when the Trump administration does it.
Nonsense, if you're referring to the recent ruling that the 600-odd district courts have been admonished to narrow the scopes of their orders.
No line that was crossed by any previous administration (excluding Trump's) should be on that list, so I suppose that list is really, really, short. War-making, acts of war? Renditions, detentions? Enforcing laws, and protecting the people and infrastructure responsible for enforcement? Any authority exercised by a previous president isn't "fascism" just because people disagree on policy or dislike the buffoonery and braggadocio.
In 2029 Trump will depart the WH, and all pretensions of "fascism" will have to vanish. If the next president is someone like Vance the paintbrush will still be used, but the independence of Congress, courts, military, press, academia, etc will all still exist. Elections will continue to be held; critics will still openly declare their opinions.
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Meanwhile, no more USA-sourced information in Cantonese into CHN ....
hongkongfp.com
... with most of the listeners apparently in Hong Kong, which was handed back to CHN 28 years before the day the service ends tomorrow.
Radio Free Asia halts Cantonese service in face of Trump's funding cuts
Radio Free Asia has halted its Cantonese-language service after 27 years due to funding cuts by US President Donald Trump's administration.
hongkongfp.com
McG
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In 2024, people were warning Trump’s policies would lead to concentration camps, and the apologists said it would not happen.
In 2025, the concentration camps have started to appeared with funding for more to come, and the apologists say “well, he will leave peacefully in 2029.”
If you are declaring things are fine and we are just seeing a continuation of pan-partisan trends, you are apologizing and you are leaning heavy into the two wrongs fallacy.
In 2025, the concentration camps have started to appeared with funding for more to come, and the apologists say “well, he will leave peacefully in 2029.”
If you are declaring things are fine and we are just seeing a continuation of pan-partisan trends, you are apologizing and you are leaning heavy into the two wrongs fallacy.
PrairieFella
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That is extra salient as of this week now that US Supreme Court just gutted the ability of the lower federal courts to prevent harm by the government.In 2024, people were warning Trump’s policies would lead to concentration camps, and the apologists said it would not happen.
In 2025, the concentration camps have started to appeared with funding for more to come, and the apologists say “well, he will leave peacefully in 2029.”
If you are declaring things are fine and we are just seeing a continuation of pan-partisan trends, you are apologizing and you are leaning heavy into the two wrongs fallacy.
Not precisely. Courts will be more limited in the breadth of their orders’ application. It just means a lot of parallel litigation at lower levels.
Brad Sallows
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I assume you refer to "Alligator Alcatraz"? There are previous examples of detention centres, and you suppose you can declare them out of bounds as evidence for continuation of pan-partisan trends? There's no day-zero reset for these things.
A way to avoid having to detain large numbers of people in a country illegally is to successfully prevent them from entering in the first place. Lax border enforcement policies arguably "lead to" this situation.
A widespread immediate amnesty would be a humane and productive solution, but only fools would do that without very-difficult-to-abrogate conditions to prevent "rinse, repeat". I understand Democrats would like to solve only the part of the problem that they think is to their advantage, but the country is too evenly divided for that.
Brad Sallows
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Constant repetition of argumentum ad hitlerum bait has the predictable and predicted effect of raising the question of what is permissible to resist "practically Hitler", which leads to everything from obstructive and disruptive conduct to violence and worse, especially by ignorant irrational intemperate impulsive people. When that happens, authorities cannot be faulted for acting to contain at least the violence.
Overwrought propaganda about fascism imminently descending on the US is unsupportable and unwise.
Overwrought propaganda about fascism imminently descending on the US is unsupportable and unwise.
Brad Sallows
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McG
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Regular Marines in LA with so many National Guard along side that the state can't address wildfires is, perhaps, not a sign supporting that conclusion.
www.ctvnews.ca
Military requesting to pull 200 troops back from California protest duty
The top military commander in charge of troops deployed to Los Angeles to respond to protests against immigration raids has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if 200 of those forces could be returned to wildfire fighting duty, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Monday.
www.ctvnews.ca
PrairieFella
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Its a de facto gutting, because the people who will need it most in the coming years, namely the undocumented and the asylum seeker, will most likely not be able to afford the exorbitant fees a class action will cost.
There are a lot of lawyers and advocacy groups motivated to fight these, and an injunction in a single case can still apply broadly within a given court’s own territorial jurisdiction. Remember also that these orders aren’t rulings on the merits; they’re interlocutory in nature. The actual merits based arguments will be proceeding in the meantime, will in all likelihood move urgently given the seriousness and irreparable harms in play, and will definitely see consolidation of cases as they climb the appellate ladder.
Back story: Musk is slamming Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, and threatening to fund primary attacks on fiscally conservative Republicans who support it. He takes issue with how much more debt it will add. The bill has passed the Senate and is going back to the House for a vote. It’ll be close due to the seat distribution in the House.
Musk spent over a quarter billion on the 2024 election. Members of the House have to win a primary and get re-elected every two years. The threat to primary Trump supporters is a potent one that Musk can easily deliver on.