Trump's Petty-Tyrant Brand of Fascism

"What are you supposed to call it when masked and uniformed federal police show up at a political rally for an opposition politician? Or when the president essentially declares martial law in the capital city? Or, for that matter, when the executive is trying to enforce its cultural policy on a nation's universities and museums? And what else to call it when the administration is trying to cook the unemployment numbers to hide a struggling economic picture?"

"What do you call it when a senior White House aide says they are "looking at" suspending habeas corpus? Or when the government deports people without due process to camps beyond the rule of law, where internees are subject to torture? Pedants will still protest that this or that detail does not align historically, and that it is not as violent, dramatic, and all-encompassing as Hitlerism or Mussolini-ism, but they can't really tar their opponents as hysterics or alarmists anymore."

The second Trump administration relies on manufactured states of exception and emergency to justify extraordinary expansions of executive power and erosion of legal norms. Masked and uniformed federal police appear at opposition rallies while the president effectively declares martial law in the capital. The executive seeks to impose cultural policy on universities and museums and to manipulate unemployment statistics to mask economic weakness. Senior aides have signaled consideration of suspending habeas corpus, and the government has deported people without due process to camps where internees face torture. The approach mirrors Carl Schmitt’s doctrine of defining exceptions and persecuting internal enemies to consolidate power.

Read at The Nation