Our Fascism Alarm Is Worn Out from Overuse Right When We Need It
However you classify the federal government's new offensive against protesters, it's hard to write a sentence about it that conveys how bad it is
(Photo via ICE’s Flickr account)
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The situation as far as I can tell is that a vaguely-defined federal task force including officers from the US Marshals Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) all decked out in military-style gear, is now assigned to patrol protests, pursuant to a presidential order to protect federal monuments and government buildings from “anarchists and left-wing extremists” in direct defiance of the will of local authorities.
Members of this task force—so far relegated to Portland, but that’s expected to change soon—have started interpreting their mission so broadly that protecting federal property somehow meant, on July 12, shooting a protester named Donavan La Bella in the head with some kind of impact weapon, breaking his skull. Then late last week, these troops started hunting protesters down on sidewalks, swarming them, and hauling them off to a federal courthouse in unmarked white vans without explaining why.
From my perspective this is the sort of thing the United States government typically does in secret, and then has to cop to months or years later when some damning dossier gets leaked or declassified. But instead it’s happening now, and being reported immediately by fringe independent media outlets like CNBC:
Ideologically, or politically—or just from the standpoint of whether or not this is good or bad—I guess you’d have to call this task force a “divisive issue,” by which I mean, everyone with political power is running to their usual corners.
For instance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the use of unmarked federal officers to patrol protesters back in early June, issuing an open letter about how this sort of thing “undermines accountability, ignites government distrust and suspicion, and is counter to the principle of procedural justice and legitimacy.” Then this month Pelosi escalated her condemnations by calling the troops “stormtroopers,” and told President Trump to keep them inside federal buildings. Meanwhile, Tom Cotton, the famously bloodthirsty Republican Senator from Arkansas has claimed that the protesters are "little different from the insurrectionists who seceded from the Union in 1861 in South Carolina and tried to take over Fort Sumter."
BRIEF ASIDE: Comparing US protesters to the thousands of confederate troops who surrounded and took over Fort Sumter in 1861, kicking off the Civil War, is preposterous on many levels, but the one I’d like to highlight is just how un-militant, and relatively docile US protesters are, even when people start rioting. To wit: compare any footage you’ve seen of US protesters squaring off against cops with this footage of French protesters trying to beat back French riot police by throwing glass and metal earlier this month in Paris:
When you consider how quickly there would be a body count if US protesters did this, it becomes obvious that US anti-government movements are already pre-repressed before any troops even start repressing them. Anyway, back to my main point.
By continuing to write letters and give statements when it’s clearly time to start legislating, Pelosi is, if you want my opinion, not so much bringing a knife to a gunfight as bringing a nectarine. She’s issuing stern condemnations. We have no condemnations stronger than the famous “you are acting like Hitler.” But Tom Cotton’s big floppy ears work as far as I know, so I’m pretty sure he can hear Pelosi’s Nazi comparisons, and he has made it clear that he has nonetheless recategorized protesters as traitors and/or enemy combatants, and that he wants to make them dead.
Pelosi is fighting a war of words while Cotton and the Republicans are declaring plain old war. It appears it simply does not do anything at this point to issue condemnations or make unfavorable comparisons.
And people aren’t just tweeting these words. No less an august intellect than Dr. Cornel West—perhaps the single most well-read person in America, or a very close runner-up—regularly calls Trump a “neo-fascist gangster,” in interviews on cable news. For my part, I first investigated Trump’s fascism way way back in December of 2015, the same month as the San Bernardino mass shooting. The journalist Alex Koch says he went a step further the following year and attempted to get Vice News to run a piece comparing Trump to Hitler, and failed (I worked for Vice dot com back then, not Vice News).
So what I’m saying is, if there was ever any water to be pumped from the “Trump is a fascist” well—and I would argue there probably wasn’t—it is now totally dry.
And meanwhile, Trump, for his part, says he’s about to roll out his domestic paramilitary pseudo-army in major cities across the United States. Specifically, he plans to send 150 troops to Chicago. Other cities he has name-checked include New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, and Oakland. And if the justification for all these potential invasions is meant to be the protection of post offices or veterans’ cemeteries or something, Trump’s not doing a very good job of maintaining that pretense. Evidence is pretty compelling that inside of Trump’s own mind, these are general purpose crime fighters going in to use force that the local cops can’t use because they’re hamstrung by liberal governments. Here’s an unedited extract from the press conference he gave on the topic Monday (text is from the White House website):
THE PRESIDENT: But what’s happening in New York, a place I love—I love New York. And look at what’s going on over there. The woman who was shot because she said, “Could you please not light off fire crackers?” And they turned around and shot her eight times, and she died. That’s not our civilization. That’s not about us.
And then the police are afraid to do anything. I know New York very well. I know the police very well—New York’s Finest. And the fact is they’re restricted from doing anything. They can’t do anything.
Q: So what are you planning on doing?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m going to do something—that, I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these—Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.
In 2017, Trump famously threatened to send troops into Chicago to stop the “horrible ‘carnage’.” Is this the culmination of that threat? Yes, this is obviously the culmination of that threat. Donald Trump is not complicated or subtle.
Maybe the problem with all the cries of “fascism!” over the years is the lack of specificity. What exactly are we saying will happen? As Noah Berlatsky pointed out last year in Pacific Standard, right-wing authoritarians in the US have expressed a desire to crush their enemies—not just radical leftists, but liberals—since long before Trump. In the heyday of Pepe Twitter, there used to be accounts dedicated to the “Pinochet helicopter rides” inside joke, which is basically that Trump would eventually start disappearing Social Justice Warriors in the style of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, by simply flying them over the ocean in helicopters and pushing them out. There was a mass shooting in 2015 at a showing of an Amy Schumer movie, brought on by the shooter’s antipathy toward liberals.
What happens when there are federal troops all over America’s major cities, dressed in combat gear, threatening to attack or disappear protesters, without any real accountability for their actions, and completely beyond the control of local authorities? (Worth noting: There is evidence that Portland cops have been cooperating with the federal troops despite condemnations from their mayor.) What happens when perceived sedition can land you in a federal lockup, potentially indefinitely, since Barack Obama signed a law in 2010 making it possible for terror suspects to be held for any length of time without trial?
To be clear, I’m not overreacting to Berlatsky, and insisting that MSNBC fans will suddenly be shipped off to concentration camps, so I’ll be specific about what does worry me:
What worries me—apart from the probable detentions, injuries, and deaths of some of the protesters who wind up in the crosshairs of these troops—is that this could work. These paramilitary troop/cops really will quell this wave of disruptive protests. If protesting means staring death in the face, I’m worried that this uprising, which fills me with optimism will go out of style for good reason. I worry about a return to the helplessness I felt in the George W. Bush days, when it felt like no one was protesting anything. I will, once again, feel stupid for getting my hopes up. And I’m worried that this hopelessness will outlast the Trump presidency.
And how exactly might that happen?
While these troops aren’t technically members of the military, it might be helpful to look at how the US military treats protesters. Look at what happened when US troops faced Iraqi protesters in 2003. Back then the US did things like put duct tape over protesters’ mouths, and cart them off in humvees for the crime of “making anti-coalition statements.” At least once, US troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd and killed 13 people at once.
Or, a little closer to home, you could look at the way the US treats protesters out our southern border. In 2018, US troops teargassed a crowd of angry migrants, including young, crying children. Trump later explained, "[Troops] were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas." "Here's the bottom line,” he added, “Nobody is coming into our country unless they come in legally.”
All of which is to say that Trump is physically very far away from most US protesters. He’s not a representative of their local government, and in fact he has expressed contempt for their local politicians. He sees these actions as troop incursions into hostile areas, and he doesn’t express regret when innocent people get hurt by a actions he calls for.
If you don’t agree with my military comparison, another parallel I’ve used before is the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force that operated in Northern Ireland during the Northern Irish Conflict, a.k.a., The Troubles, from the 1960s through the 1990s. The event that more or less kicked off The Troubles, was called The Battle of Bogside in the city of Derry. If you’ve got an hour, there a lot worse ways you could spend it than by watching this 60 minute documentary about it.
What you’ll see is how a paramilitary wing of a police force, a protestant only special forces division of the Royal Ulster Constabulary called the B-Specials, whose organization had been a killing force half a decade earlier in the Irish War of Independence, helped bring about what was essentially a three-day siege in Derry. The B-Specials weren’t cops, and they weren’t military, but local catholics knew their bloody history, which means their mere presence was a threat from the British government: if you protest, these violent guys will show up and do violence to you.
I got a bit far afield there, so just bear in mind that I’m trying to sound an alarm that’s worn out and broken from being sounded so many times in the past few years. So I’ll leave you with this Twitter thread about how CPB has already been terrorizing people at the border. These are the people our president is sending into our cities. I recommend clicking and reading through the whole thing.
Note for people who read all the way to the bottom: Hi. If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please subscribe and spread the word. I’m hoping to post these more often, with a paid tier, and more in-depth reporting, etc. Earning more subscribers is the only way to make that possible. —Mike