The Federal Trump Indictments and the Living Fascist Menace
Curb the Liberal Happy Dancing
The exonerated murderer OJ Simpson wrote a book titled If I Did It. Regarding his theft of federal government documents and his obstruction of federal efforts to get them back, Donald Trump’s book title would be I Did It. He has openly admitted his crimes on FOX News and CNN, essentially daring the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and its special prosecutor Jack Smith to hold him accountable to the rule of law. It’s clear as day.
The DOJ and Smith have been given little choice but to proceed, really, if they don’t want to essentially oversee the final collapse of constitutional rule of law, such as it is in savagely capitalist America (where “money talks and bullshit walks” with a vengeance) and surrender to the rule of an authoritarian monster, an aspiring fascist strongman and president for life.
We’re talking about hundreds if not thousands of federal documents, some likely with grave “national security” significance. And about felony obstruction and felony lying to the FBI. And numerous witnesses from within his own camp, including his former fellow putschist and chief of staff Mark Meadows.
There’s a lot that we don’t know yet about the seven federal indictments that will be unsealed against Trump in a federal court in Miami next Tuesday. The biggest and most salacious unknown is the question of whether he showed national security information to others, including “foreign actors” and even official state “enemies” of the United States.
But there’s no serious doubt that Trump grossly violated and federal Presidential Records Act and engaged in obstruction. It’s clear as day, with all due respect the ash cloud that recently fell across Eastern United States. Even his former protector and Attorney General, the Christian white nationalist Bill Barr says this.
As with the New York hush money indictments handed down against Trump in Manhattan last April, Trump has responded to the charges in an openly absurd and authoritarian fashion. He flatly denies having done anything criminal. He fumes against the supposed partisan and even “radical Left” “witch hunt” that is being perpetrated against him. He calls elementary prosecution of him for clear-cut violations of federal law “election interference” because he’s running for president in 2024 – as if being a presidential candidate places one above the rule of law. He decries the “political weaponization” of the Justice Department.
There’s nothing remarkable about that. That’s what the imaginary mob boss Trump does. (At his current stage of malignant narcissist reptilian dementia he may well believe his own fantasies of being persecuted for his own “perfect” conduct.) The more extraordinary thing is the cringing and lockstep way in which the lion’s share of his party is willing to play along with his abject defiance of the elementary rule of bourgeois law. One after another, key Congressional Republicans including the worm-like Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy have reflexively joined their Dear Leader’s preposterous claims of unjust and “radical left” persecution and the “weaponization of the law” against the Chosen One. With some exceptions, Trump’s party has lined up behind their maximalist cult leader in demonstrating cold-blooded opposition to the application elementary rule of (merely) bourgeois law
“Radical Left”? Hello? I’m “radical left,” well, revolutionary socialist. If me and people like me were running this country, Trump, the entire Republican leadership and no small number of Democrats would be behind bars for crimes committed in the advance of eco-cidal capitalism-imperialism. Trump and his fellow Republi-fascists should be glad that the dollar-drenched corporate-imperialist Dems aren’t “radical Left.”
Power mad persecution by rapacious Democrats? Seriously? The DOJ, run by deeply conservative neoliberal capitalist-imperialist Democrats who are loathe to acknowledge the fascist menace that they helped birth and that is staring the nation in the face, has if anything been painfully tardy in applying their law – bourgeois law, not socialist law – to the orange-hued beast of Mar a Lago. They’ve been overly respectful of Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump’s supposed privilege as an ex-president – an ex-president whose final act included a literal attempt to overthrow late bourgeois electoral democracy and establish himself as a de facto dictator.
They are so late to the punishment of “the most dangerous criminal in human history” (as Noam Chomsky described Trump in early 2020) that he may well avoid conviction before the 2024 presidential election, which he could frankly win given the understandably unpopular nature of the corporate-imperialist Biden presidency and the right-wing biases of the US Electoral College and campaign system.
We are seeing played out here very real divisions within the populace and the ruling class. On one side, aligned with the capitalist Democrats are those still clinging to what’s left of democracy and rule of law under US capitalism-imperialism. On the other side, aligned with the capitalist and now fascist Republican Party, are those who crossed much of the way beyond bourgeois constitutional democracy and rule of law and into the realm of Christian white nationalism – neoliberal era fascism, Amerikaner style.
The standard liberal talking line on why the McCarthys and Hawleys and FOX News are willing to defend the tiny-fingered tangerine-tinted tyrant to the end is “they are afraid of the Republican base.” Two things regarding that:
(1) try “afraid of the Republi-Nazi base.” It’s fascist to stand with a maximal white palingenetic nationalist brute of a cult leader no matter how brazenly he violates basic bourgeois law.
(2) Why assume the Republican politicos don’t share the same basic neofascist sentiments of the base, which they have helped lead and direct into noxious political revanchism of the worst kind? Most of the Congressional Republikaner delegation voted against Biden’s clear Electoral College victory on January 6, 2021. Look at all the vicious neofascistic – racist, women-enslaving, trans-bashing, book-banning, history-erasing, labor-crushing, etc., - policy the post-republican Republikaners are implementing and advancing in red states across the nation. The Republikaner politicos are vanguards of neofascism, not followers.
The liberal happy dancing – ubiquitous across social media since Thursday – over the latest Trump indictments is understandable (there’s a strong case that Trump is the single biggest asshole in the history of the human race) but childish. The country will be no less full of fascists than it was before Dear Leader Trump is federally indicted. By all indications he will remain the GOP frontrunner; that looks baked in. There seems to be nothing that The Malignant One could do that would cost him the backing of his Hitlerian base. It’s way beyond “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” by now.
If Trump falls from the nomination, the menacing Christian white nationalist Ron DeFascist steps up to a chance at the coin flip that is the US presidential Electoral College. The Republikaner Party is gearing up for major fascist retaliation. Who knows what kind of violent reaction the fascist insects of Amerika are going to get geeked up to do in response to this and other indictments coming down on their Stable Genius? The frothing fascist Fatherland News maniac Mark Levin responded to the indictment by saying the Democrats want to turn America into a “one party state,” by calling US Attorney General Merrick Garland “ a mob lawyer,” and by calling Jack Smith (who Levin called “Jack Reed”) a “rogue Soviet-style prosecutor…There was no violation of the Presidential Records Act! This is war,” Levin literally bellowed at Sean Hannity, to whom Trump admitted his criminal violation of the Presidential Records Act in prime time on FOX News. Levin added this:
“What do you mean he’s not above the law? There is no law! What’s going on here is a disgusting disgrace. It is a war on Trump. It is a war on the Republican Party. And it is war on the republic. The Radical Left is doing what the Radical Left does, while they cover up for Biden the way they covered up for Hillary…I’M DONE AND I’M SICK OF IT!!!...June 8th is the Day of Insurrection, not January 6th… We’ve never seen anything like this in the United States. We saw it under Stalin. We’ve seen it under other autocracies, Marxist regimes, fascist regimes in the Third World….they’ve taken the United States into a Hell hole…It’s humiliating. And I’m gonna tell you something. There are tens of millions of us. You have crossed the Rubicon twice, which has never been done. And we will never forgive you. Never, ever! That’s the bottom line and I’m done.”
That is essentially a call out for armed fascists to rise up in violence.
Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to suck quite neoliberally and barely note the fascism staring them and the country in the face.
The history of Trump is that he escapes. I won't believe this malevolent fascist transgressor is “done” until he's been officially declared deceased, and his coffin checked regularly for a year. But even if he is done, really, so what? Contrary to the charge of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that was constantly hurled at those of us who properly identified Trump as a fascist, it’s never been mainly or all about Trump. Yes, Trump possesses special qualities that other Republi-fascist leaders lack – an odd and perverse, deeply dangerous charisma related to his years in the media and his celebrity status coming out of New York. Ron DeFascist lacks that creepy X factor that Trump possesses. Still, Trump is hardly the source or indispensable weapon of 21st Century US Amerikaner fascisation, which will continue to menace this nation with or without him and with no small assistance from the Weimar Democratic Party of Inauthentic Opposition.
I embrace the following Twitter commentary from Refuse Fascism:
“Trump indicted on federal charges!!It’s significant that Trump, who’s always declared himself above the law & transformed the GOP & its base into a party of fascist lawlessness & violence– culminating in the Jan 6 coup attempt – faces serious charges & multiple investigations.
But we must not pin all our hopes on a mechanism that cannot and will not address the reasons we so badly want to see Trump locked up. Now is a time for vigilance, not complacency.
We must not be lulled into submission by this or future indictments and prosecutions of Trump. Whether or not Trump is able to remain the GOP presidential candidate, this indictment cannot and will not stop this fascist movement. That is up to us.
Every crisis Trump & his fascist party gets through strengthens the U.S. fascist movement, leaving a core of battle-tested and even more dangerous, genocidal, revanchist lunatics in power to set the terms for all of society.
It’s critical right now to spread the understanding of this fascist movement to the millions who righteously want to see Trump behind bars, & to actively oppose this fascism in every sphere of life. Stay vigilant. In the name of humanity, refuse to accept a fascist America.”
https://progressive.org/magazine/election-madness-Zinn/
^ This is an essential antidote to the all the presidential ellectoral obsession. "The election frenzy....
seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us. It is a multiple choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students.
And sad to say, the Presidential contest has mesmerized liberals and radicals alike. We are all vulnerable.
Is it possible to get together with friends these days and avoid the subject of the Presidential elections?
The very people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of clichés with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.
Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won’t allow them in.
No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.
I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.
But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."
Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.
The unprecedented policies of the New Deal—Social Security, unemployment insurance, job creation, minimum wage, subsidized housing—were not simply the result of FDR’s progressivism. The Roosevelt Administration, coming into office, faced a nation in turmoil. The last year of the Hoover Administration had experienced the rebellion of the Bonus Army—thousands of veterans of the First World War descending on Washington to demand help from Congress as their families were going hungry. There were disturbances of the unemployed in Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle.
This five-star essay documents all the reasons why I support Cornel West and the rest of the sane, eco-socialist candidates out there. The "tiny-fingered tangerine-tinted tyrant to the end" (love that) needs to come to the ignominious end he deserves along with the fascist Democratic Party of "Inauthentic Opposition" and its leader old Sleepy Joe. Of course it's naive to think that the phony election process in the context of the duopoly now occupying the Swamp is the path to victory. Yo, wake up America, it's revolution time. Big systemic change is the only viable answer, along with a humongous evolution of consciousness before it's too late. A Las Barricadas!