We Cannot Compromise With Neofascist Authoritarianism

The following post is by Robert Reich:

I keep hearing that one of America’s biggest problems is we’re “divided and polarized.” For example, New York Times columnist David French: “We’ve known for a long time that America is deeply polarized, and we’ve known the problem is only getting worse.”

This is bullsh*t. The problem is not that we’re divided and polarized. 

The problem is that a significant portion of America is buying Trump’s violent, hateful, lawless crap. Some of those buying it are white supremacists. Others are conservative fundamentalist Christians. Others are xenophobic nationalists.

 

I feel compassion for those who’ve been seduced into supporting Trump after being brutalized and mistreated for years by employers, big corporations, Wall Street, and America’s oligarchs. As I warned 32 years ago, widening inequalities of wealth, income, and opportunity would eventually persuade some on the losing side to support a demagogue.

But an explanation for why some of Trump’s followers have bought into his neofascism isn’t a justification for them to do so. And it’s certainly no reason for us to put aside our differences and compromise with them.

 

As you undoubtedly know, Trump has created a violent police state inside America. He is conducting an illegal war abroad. He has usurped the powers of Congress and defied court orders. He is taking bribes. He’s criminally prosecuting his enemies and pardoning his criminal supporters (he has even set up a slush fund to compensate them). He has gotten his Justice Department to immunize him and his family from any future tax audits. He is silencing critics. He is fomenting racism and bigotry.

 

None of us should fall for the false equivalency between this, and opposition to it. The contest today is not between “right” and “left,” as the two sides have traditionally been understood in America. It’s not even between “Republicans” and “Democrats,” as we’ve defined the two major parties over most of the past century.

 

No, the contest today is between democracy and authoritarianism. It’s between tolerance and bigotry. Between a multiracial, secular, inclusive society and one that believes in white Christian nationalism. Between the rule of law and neofascism. 

The two sides in this contest do not merit equal weight. If we are going to have a decent society, the nation must come down on the former side. 

As long as Trump has followers who support his bigotry, racism, corruption, and violence, the nation will remain divided and polarized. That is necessary and proper. 

We shouldn’t “reach out, or “meet halfway,” or “find middle ground,” or “split the difference,” or any other of today’s hackneyed expressions for putting aside what divides us and agreeing. 

Generations of Americans fought and died for the ideals of democracy, freedom, social justice, the rule of law, and equal opportunity. We have never fully achieved them, but they remain our ideals. Tomorrow we celebrate Memorial Day to honor those ideals and the memories of those who died for them. 

There cannot be, must not be, any compromise with neofascism.

A Majority Of Voters Say The U.S. Now Has An Authoritarian Government

The chart above is from the Navigator Poll -- done between January 29th and February 1st of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Loyalty To Trump Will NOT Result In Protection When He's Gone

The following is part of a post by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report: 

You’re out there defending Donald Trump’s lawbreaking, cheering his attacks on judges, prosecutors, immigrants, journalists, and even the Constitution itself. You defend his bribe-taking, the jet from Qatar, the violence of ICE, and his hotel and crypto grifts. You say it’s necessary for him to abuse power to “get things done,” that the other side is worse, that he’s strong and that’s what the American people need.

History is littered with people who believed the same things. . . .

Here’s the uncomfortable (for you) truth: authoritarian leaders like Trump and Putin treat loyalty like a disposable resource. Just look at all the Republicans who served in Trump’s first term and he’s now trying to throw into prison. Loyalty, for narcissists and authoritarians like Trump, is always a one-way street.

So long as you’re useful, you’re protected, but the moment Dear Leader no longer commands power you’ll become a liability, an offering to be thrown out to appease the angry mob.

And when the prosecutors come calling for you after Trump’s gone, they won’t start with your elegant speeches or proclamations that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “domestic terrorists.” They start with your memos, phone calls, pressure campaigns, documents, and quiet threats; they’ll go after your “find the votes” activities, the cooked reports, the arrests without cause, the orders that violated others’ civil rights. . . .

Right now you may feel powerful. You’re on TV, retweeted, and praised by Trump. The base cheers, the fundraising money pours in, the billionaires are chummy, and it feels like history is being written by your side.

But history has a funny way of circling back:

— Nixon’s aides told themselves they were protecting the presidency, but they destroyed their own lives instead.

— The seniormost Nazis told themselves they were saving Germany, but they were prosecuted as war criminals.

— Mussolini’s ministers told themselves they were stabilizing Italy, but they ended up dead or disgraced.

— Pinochet’s enforcers told themselves they were fighting communism, but they ended up in prison.

And there’s no statute of limitations on some of the crimes you’re now waving away. . . .

You may tell yourself — like all those people before you told themselves — that Trump will protect you. But Nixon didn’t protect his people; he left the White House and never looked back to watch his underlings fall. History’s strongmen never look back. When the heat gets intense enough, they point at others, not themselves. . . .

The courts won’t ask whether you believed in the cause: they’ll ask what you did.

Did you pressure an official? Did you sign that order? Did you participate in killing those fishermen with a missile? Did you move the funds? Did you authorize those deportations to foreign torture centers? Did you look the other way? Did you help cover up the child rapes?

That’s when you’ll discover the very real difference between a political appointee and the defendant you’ll become. . . .

Presidents can walk away, but staffers, lawyers, deputies, agency heads, cabinet officials, and enablers can’t.

You still have time to choose which side of history you’re on, and which side of a courtroom you never want to sit in.

Because the lesson of every fallen strongman is the same: abusive power-by-association today becomes criminal liability tomorrow.

The Detention Centers Are Just The First Step To Authoritarianism

 

From Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:

Amnesty International’s new report on the U.S. detention sites Alligator Alcatraz and Krome is a warning flare for every American who believes in the Constitution, the rule of law, and the basic dignity of human beings. 

We’ve seen governmental cruelty before in our history, but these facilities mark a new level of calculated dehumanization on U.S. soil, and Amnesty is calling it what it is: torture, enforced disappearance, and a deliberate system designed to break people.

What makes this report so chilling isn’t just the details, although they’re horrifying enough. It’s that the government has begun giving these places cute, theme-park-style nicknames like “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Cornhusker Clink,” as if they’re attractions instead of concentration-camp-style black sites. 

Authoritarian regimes always begin by softening the language, making the abuses sound like logistics, law enforcement, or processing rather than cruelty. If you want to condition the public to accept state violence, you start with euphemisms.

Investigators found people packed into filthy tents and trailers where toilets overflowed onto the floors and into sleeping areas. Water was sometimes rationed. Food quality was lousy. Insects swarmed at all hours. Lights were left on day and night. Cameras reportedly pointed at showers and toilets, in clear violation of privacy and human dignity. 

This wasn’t an accident. These were choices.

The so-called “box” at the Florida concentration camp may be the most grotesque example. It’s a two-by-two-foot outdoor metal cage where detainees, shackled and already vulnerable, were left in blistering Florida heat, exposed to mosquitos and biting flies, denied water, and forced to endure punishment sessions lasting up to 24 hours.

These are exactly the kinds of stress-position torture techniques our nation once condemned when used by dictatorships abroad. Today they’re being used in our name, by our government, on our soil.

At Krome, Amnesty documented prolonged solitary confinement, routine shackling even during medical transport, denial of legal access, and a pervasive system of intimidation and retaliation. Medical care was often delayed or unavailable. People needing lawyers were blocked from communicating with them. 

This is not a “processing system”: it’s a punishment regime. It’s brutality done with your and my tax dollars and in our names.

The report makes clear that these are not isolated violations: they’re the design. 

This administration has woven cruelty into policy, permitting state-run detention networks to operate as if constitutional rights simply evaporate when you cross a razor-wire perimeter. 

The crisis for American democracy isn’t just that the camps exist; it’s that they’re being normalized, bureaucratized, branded, and replicated. Amnesty warns that DHS is already planning more such sites, using “emergency” authorities and no-bid contracts to create an extrajudicial detention network beyond the reach of meaningful oversight.

This is exactly how authoritarian systems evolve. They never begin with political opponents: instead, they begin with people the majority already sees as powerless. Immigrants. Refugees. The poor. Non-citizens. Those without family or money or social standing. 

When the public tolerates a government treating one group of human beings as disposable, that system is inevitably expanded to inflict that same treatment on others — dissidents, politicians, people like you and me — whenever it becomes politically useful.

We’ve seen this in nation after nation that slid from democracy into authoritarianism. The first victims are always those considered “outsiders” or “threats to the order” the regime promised to maintain. 

Once the public is desensitized to cages, beatings, disappearances, and secret courts, it becomes frighteningly easy to redirect those same tactics toward dissidents, journalists, labor leaders, activists, and political opponents.

This Amnesty International report isn’t just a humanitarian alarm bell: it’s a constitutional one.

When due process is suspended for one class of people, it’s suspended in principle for all. When the government can hide detainees in swamp camps with no legal representation, it’s already established the machinery necessary to detain anyone it wants to silence. When the public is conditioned to see cages and brutality and think “this is fine,” the moral system of a nation starts to collapse.

We forget that the Constitution doesn’t protect itself; it’s protected by norms, culture, public outrage, legal oversight, and a shared belief that the state doesn’t get to brutalize human beings no matter who they are. 

When those norms erode, when brutality becomes invisible-but-known or acceptable, authoritarianism doesn’t arrive with a drumbeat. It arrives quietly. It arrives bureaucratically. It arrives through “temporary measures” and “emergency facilities” and “processing centers” set up for “those people over there.”

Amnesty is demanding the immediate closure of Alligator Alcatraz and any similar state-run black sites. They call for an end to emergency-authorized detention, a prohibition on outdoor punitive confinement, the restoration of access to legal counsel, real medical care, due process, judicial oversight, and a halt to no-bid construction of new concentration camps in America.

 

These aren’t radical demands. They’re the bare minimum for a nation that claims to believe in the rule of law.

Because if we let our government continue to create a network of secretive, cruel, extrajudicial detention facilities for one set of powerless people today, tomorrow it will inevitably turn those same systems against anyone who challenges their power. 

That is how every authoritarian regime in history has done it.

And unless we stop it now, it’s how this one will, too.

Trump Is Trying All 12 Markers Of An Authoritarian

 

From The New York Times

Trump Actions Are Authoritarian (And Set Precedents For Future Presidents)

Donald Trump joked during the last campaign that he would only be dictator for his first day in office. But his actions make it seem that he wants to extend an authoritarian rule for the rest of his time in office.

Through executive actions, possible illegal actions, ignoring court decisions, and the bullying of Congress, Trump has vastly expanded the power of the U.S. presidency. He is creating a much more authoritarian presidency. This is not good for the long-term survival of our democratic system, because those actions are setting precedents that could (probably would) be followed by future presidents.

Our democracy is not yet completely gone, but it has been seriously damaged. It no longer exists in the same form it did before Trump took office for his second term. 

Can our democracy be saved? Can we reestablish a balance between the three branches of our federal government and take back some of the power Trump has claimed for himself? I honestly don't know. It's going to be hard to reclaim any power back from a president determined to be a dictator.

The first step would be to elect a Congress in 2026 that will fight for the powers they are supposed to have (according to the Constitution). That would have to be a Democratic Congress, since the Republicans have shown they either cannot or will not rein in Trump's worst actions.

Here, from Axios.com, are some of the ways Trump has expanded the power of the presidency and set precedents for future presidencies:

1. Executive power: Trump has declared nine national emergencies in his first eight months in office, stretching the definition of "emergency" in creative and aggressive ways.

New precedent: Future presidents can use loosely defined "emergencies" as a routine tool to bypass Congress and unlock extraordinary powers governing trade, immigration, mineral extraction and foreign disputes.

2. Free-press crackdown: Trump has waged the most aggressive government campaign against mainstream media in modern U.S. history — stripping funding from public outlets, pushing the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses over negative coverage, and personally suing CBS/Paramount, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times while in office.

New precedent: Future presidents can use lawsuits, regulatory threats, and funding pressure to bring independent media to heel.

3. Seizing congressional purse strings: Trump has tried to freeze or redirect billions in congressionally appropriated funds, from public health to foreign aid to university research.

New precedent: Future presidents can treat Congress's "power of the purse" as optional, withholding or redirecting funds to pressure states, institutions or foreign governments.

4. Tariffs: Trump has effectively seized the authority over tariffs that the Constitution gives to Congress, wielding tariffs to reshape global trade and punish countries for political or economic disputes.

New precedent: Future presidents can bypass Congress to unilaterally set tariff policy, erasing one of the legislature's core constitutional powers.

5. Overriding the Constitution: Trump issued an executive order seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship — a right guaranteed in the 14th Amendment — for the children of unauthorized immigrants.

New precedent: Future presidents can attempt to nullify core constitutional rights through executive orders rather than constitutional amendments or legislation.

6. Purging watchdogs and civil servants: Trump has fired inspectors general en masse, dismantled independent agencies, and ordered loyalty-driven purges across the federal workforce.

New precedent: Future presidents can eliminate internal checks and turn civil servants into political operatives who serve the president rather than the public.

7. Eroding DOJ independence: Trump has declared himself the country's "chief law enforcement officer" — a title typically reserved for the attorney general — claiming the right to personally dictate prosecutions and order investigations of his political opponents.

New precedent: Future presidents can claim direct authority to launch or block investigations, erasing the long-standing norms separating the White House from the Justice Department.

8. Eroding Fed independence: Trump tried to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook as part of an extraordinary campaign to pressure the central bank to cut interest rates.

New precedent: Future presidents can treat the Fed as an arm of the White House, undermining the principle of central bank independence that has anchored U.S. economic stability for decades.

9. Wartime powers in peacetime: Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members without hearings, ordered maritime strikes on alleged drug traffickers without congressional authorization, and deployed the National Guard to D.C. and Los Angeles without the consent of local authorities.

New precedent: Future presidents can stretch wartime authorities to bypass Congress and due process for military operations on both domestic and foreign territory.

10. Pay-me capitalism: The Trump administration has secured a "golden share" in U.S. Steel, taken a cut of chipmakers' foreign sales and a stake in Intel, and scored companies on their loyalty to Trump's agenda.

New precedent: Future presidents can use the power of the state to extract equity, revenue and political concessions from private companies as the price of doing business.

11. Targeting Big Law: Trump punished firms that represented political adversaries by stripping contracts and security clearances, extracting multimillion-dollar pro bono deals.

New precedent: Future presidents can weaponize government power to intimidate lawyers, deterring them from representing clients who challenge the administration.

12. Punishing universities: Trump withheld billions in federal funding from schools such as Harvard and Columbia — citing their handling of pro-Palestinian protests, campus antisemitism, and DEI policies — and used the leverage to force changes in curricula and leadership.

New precedent: Future presidents can use federal dollars to police academic speech and independence, reshaping universities to align with partisan agendas.

13. Rewriting health and vaccine policy: Trump fired career health officials, slashed funding for public health research, and gave political allies broad control over FDA and CDC decisions.

New precedent: Future presidents can subordinate public health to partisan agendas, treating life-or-death scientific guidance as another lever of political control.

14. Profiteering: The Trump family is believed to already have made billions of dollars during his second term, including through massive foreign crypto deals, real estate ventures and brazen access plays.

New precedent: Future presidents can treat the White House as a platform for personal enrichment, including in nascent industries for which the U.S. government is writing the rules.

15. Jan. 6 pardons: Trump issued blanket clemency to more than 1,500 people charged in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including violent offenders and far-right extremists.

New precedent: Future presidents can use the pardon power to shield their political movements from the rule of law, granting impunity for crimes against the state.