The onslaught of a racist, destructive and lethal government is now in full train (pt.1)
~ Louis Further ~
A lot has happened since Trump was inaugurated last month, so much that we will have to present this month’s update in two parts. Indeed, the very speed at which the MAGA cult has caused so much damage—rather than waiting to test the waters once bedded in—is alarming; and relatively unusual for dictatorships.
On several occasions, staff employed in federal agencies have been summarily removed—such as at the US Department of Agriculture and Coast Guard. Emblematic gestures are also rife: Trump appointed a fascist insurrectionist, one Ed Martin, who raised funds for the ‘Stop the Steal’ cult then participated in the riot, to serve as the interim government prosecutor for Washington, D.C. This, while sacking the person responsible for government ethics. An as yet unsubstantiated report holds that the NASA has been ordered to remove all mentions of women and minorities from its website.
For all their performative value, such acts are dangerous. Perhaps the most outrageous developments came the sacking of staff working in air traffic control and for the National Transportation Safety Board just as the US experienced two air disasters. Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan was sacked—presumably because of the part which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) played in handling Trump’s illegal retention of top secret documents in bathrooms at his country club in Florida. United States lawmakers are also increasingly being denied access from government offices as they try to investigate the crimes being committed by Trump.
Security for Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has been withdrawn because of his role in advocating measures to save tens of thousands of lives during the Covid pandemic. On the very evening of the inauguration a supremacist march by one of the newly-invigorated fascist militia groups took place. ‘Stop the steal’ cultist and January 6 organiser, Andy Biggs, is now a candidate for governor of Arizona. After Congressperson Andy Ogles (Tennessee) advanced a proposal that would enable Trump to remain president after the legal two-term limit, federal charges against Ogles appeared to be dropped.
Recent reports suggest that Trump has ordered the removal/deletion by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of a database relating to the crimes and criminals responsible for the attempted Putsch on January 6 2021. Those responsible for the attempt to overturn the 2020 election on January 6 2021 were immediately all pardoned or had their sentences commuted; they are now free to murder and commit political violence, as long as it is in furtherance of the MAGA cult. Several have already re-offended. The DOJ is to drop charges against anti-abortion activists who illegally threatened health clinics. In the state of New York there appear to be official attempts to set up ‘citizen militias’ along the lines of Brownshirts in Nazi Germany.
The Courts
Central to the coup, of course, is unelected troll and hatchet person Elon Musk. He illegally gained access to the data and financial systems and databases of several US agencies—including ones scrutinising his businesses—and he is working his way through them for his own profit and gain. Amongst those illegally employed to ‘manage’ these highly sensitive systems were school leavers and avowed racists such as one Marko Elez, who bruited his pride at being “…racist before it was cool… You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”. When he offered to resign, Musk rushed to re-instate him. Another 19-year-old ’employee’, Edward Coristine, ran an image-sharing site linking to paedophile sites and the KKK.
Most of the Executive Orders which Trump has issued (sackings, threats to sack, ‘buy-out promises‘ and so on) are illegal and unconstitutional. Legal specialists began referring to a ‘Domesday scenario’ in which Trump ignores or flatly refuses to acknowledge and comply with, say, Federal judges’ injunctions halting the data breaches carried out by Musk. Indeed, the administration last week hinted that it is minded to ignore such rulings.
This is now actually happening: a judge from Rhode Island has had to be asked to issue a ‘Motion to enforce’ just such an order to stop Trump’s administration from illegally accessing funds, which only Congress is legally entitled to control. Appeals processes will certainly take matters to the US Supreme Court, which has been heavily stacked in Trump’s favour and now has the additional weight of the so-called ‘tenth justice‘, the senior litigator(s) at the Department of Justice, which is all too likely—but not certain—to rule in MAGA’s favour. But even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, it’s hard to imagine a MAGA-saturated Department of Justice and the marshals in its employ taking action against the US president—especially with armed militias on the loose.
Well before trump took office, surrounded by a who’s who of far right and fascist leaders, and some of the most powerful technology and communication chiefs, the cult made clear it would replace career professionals in many government agencies with their own loyalists and flaunt the Courts in the process. Remember the interview which Vice President JD Vance gave in 2021? He said, “…fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people… When the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it’.”. In other words: call the judiciary’s bluff.
So Trump knows that he can get away with whatever he wants. Although some of the sillier things he is proposing—the effective (invasion and?) annexation of Gaza, Canada and Greenland—should be considered as balloons flown to gauge reaction, Trump’s baby side is by itself ominous.
Inhumane to the core
A good indication of how far the MAGA/Trump disease has spread came in the days after the inauguration when MAGA cultists took to the press and social media to excoriate the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, for criticising “…our great president…” and suggest that she should be deported; she is a US citizen. The highly influential Sean Hannity had harsher words. Budde’s sin? Urging Trump to turn to the Christian values which he claims to follow and show mercy to (members of) the communities which he plans to oppress, some of whom are in fear for their lives: “… the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes, and are good neighbours, they are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwaras and temples…”, Budde said.
It is in the dogma, novelty and very perversion of, say, the ongoing massive cuts in the funding of medical research, withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and Paris climate agreement and such backward moves on such issues as the overuse of plastic that Trump/MAGA’s appeal lies. Not in reason or the common good. Inhumane, racist, sadistic, punitive and retributive actions are at the core of the administrations new policies, with the common attributes of malice, revenge, anti-intellectualism, “ready-shoot-aim” incompetence, lawlessness and lethality.
Analyses of the political right in past Notes from the US columns have drawn attention to the continuum of views: from ‘old style’ Republicans (who might find performances like this too ‘unpresidential’) to armed fascist militias. It’s impossible to apportion the quantities in each because MAGA cultists command and control virtually all of them.
Fascism originates in selfishness, fear and ignorance. Without much sophisticated insight into the dangers of such forces, a large majority of the electorate believe that they stand to gain from a disease like MAGA.
Trump and his MAGA cult leaders know this—even if unconsciously. That’s why incidents like Elon Musk’s recent Nazi salute find uncaring acceptance. Hence, too, the general indifference on the right to almost all, of Trump’s illegal executive orders—like that to end birthright citizenship, which is part of the US constitution. When pressed, most cultists answer that the supremacist end justifies the extra-judicial means.
One alarming possibility is so far receiving little coverage in the media: the MAGA cult does not seem troubled that this may all become so unpopular as to have a negative effect at the polls in 2026. It is almost as if they now think that elections are things of the past.
To be continued…
