This is an interesting way of looking at the recent events, from Garrett Graff, who’s an author and journalist I’d never heard of before:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.
With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.
The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.
Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.
The reason that our institutions (press, opposition party, etc.) are having such a hard time reacting to what’s been happening is:
- Those institutions are scared. The Democrats feel that they were just dealt a huge defeat (they weren’t but many of them seem to have lost the fight) and the mainstream press is on its last legs, with outlets closing or hardly being staffed.
- Musk is moving much faster than those institutions have seen in the past — they are used to slow degradation of norms, which they accept since pushing back hard is almost inconceivable to them.
- Musk has an almost complete disregard for law, unlike even the last Trump administration.
- Those institutions have had the “it can’t happen here” mentality reinforced to an almost unimaginable degree.
Well, it is happening there.
suzanne
Garrett Graff, IIRC, did a major deep dive about Robert Mueller during the previous Reign of Terror. I remember being impressed. Not really familiar with him apart from that.
Professor Bigfoot
First, get control of the security services– the DOJ and the FBI; and of course, DoD.
The rest will bend the knee.
Musk and company have read history and understand just exactly how NSDAP did it a hundred years ago.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot: It remains to be seen how quickly they end up the way the NSDAP ended up. Or if it’s going to take another world war to ensure it.
HinTN
Sadly, this fits our Dem leadership to a tee.
jehrler
Josh Marshall has a suggestion for an approach for the dems to take even when they are, in a political sense, without much power:
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-few-thoughts-on-messages-and-moral
Professor Bigfoot
@Miss Bianca: Oh, I agree… but to be completely honest, they’ve been playing Nazi for a while now:
Nazi rhetoric: “Vermin! Poisoning the Blood of Our Country!”
Nazi policies: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW”
Nazi threats of poliltical violence: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
It is not coincidence that Musk gave a Nazi salute and congratulated AfD in Germany.
They are fucking Nazis, and they are rapidly working to make it dangerous not to be one.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot: It has not escaped me. Watching Americans be all like, “eh, no biggie” with Musk and Co’s outright expressions of Nazism has been one of the most depressing things about this whole shitshow.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: And now, Nazi methods of Gleichschaltung (“coordination”). Musk’s affinity for the Nazis obviously extended to studying their methods.
oldgold
Patel needs to be called back to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday morning.
Below is Patel’s testimony under oath on Thursday.
Steve LaBonne
@Miss Bianca: I used to be surrounded by Republicans at work. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. I’m sure they’re in their glory right now. We’ll see what happens when they get the stupid prizes due from playing stupid games.
Lobo
I agree, it looks like a soft coup. See Cheryl Rofer. So many want to close their eyes to this with it being if they don’t see it then it’s not happening. Sigh!
Professor Bigfoot
@Steve LaBonne: They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well.
When we said “we may never have another free and fair election” they dismissed us; but here we are nonetheless.”
Hunter Gathers
The press is also distracted by the current Big Shiney Object – The DC plane crash.
It is the lead story everywhere, with Musk’s coup buried beneath pictures of a crying Nancy Kerrigan.
oldgold
And at said hearing, they might want to ask about the $825,000 Trump paid to Patel last Tuesday.
cnn.com/2025/01/31/investing/trump-media-share-gifts-patel-mcmahon/index.html
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
different-church-lady
Gee, if only something incredibly well-studied and documented 90 years ago had occurred to prepare people for this…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I asked my normie wife this morning if this made it onto Totebagger Radio’s Saturday morning news. During the hour she was listening, it was not.
She also reads the CNN app (which, btw, is actually a good reporting outlet, totally unlike their cable news component) and it didn’t float to the top of any news feed from that either.
As MM said, this is “junta” territory we’re in and where’s the reporting?
Steve LaBonne
@jehrler: He is right on both counts- a stronger message is needed but whining about votes for nominees who were certain to be confirmed anyway is a waste of time and energy.
Sister Golden Bear
Reposting from the dying thread downstairs….
And the trans erasure continues, as the Social Security Administration stops any changes to sex identification markers in an “emergency” change that was issued on Friday and went into effect “immediately.”
I’ll note that besides the inherent cruelty in itself, SSA sex markers are cross-referenced by a variety of other federal and state agencies issuing IDs. E.g. when I transitioned, I had to wait a couple days for the SSA change to my sex marker to get synched with the CA DMV before getting my drivers’ license changed, so that it didn’t get flagged as a mismatch.
Meanwhile, the head of the EEOC announces that banning trans women from women’s bathrooms in private businesses is one of their top priorities*. Again, aside from cruelty being the point, this is an attempt to create a urinary leash that will prevent trans people from being out in public. It also sets the stage for trans women to be arrested for using bathrooms — with them then being sent to mens jails/prisons as sex offenders.
*Once again, they seem to ignore that trans men also exist.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: Thing is, they don’t have to read history; it’s just instinctive for that type. The folks who need to read history are the ones standing around watching it happen.
Steve in the ATL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): that’s the right wing fantasy, but personal weapons won’t be effective against a modern army
Kay
I had a long telephone chat with my youngest sibling last night. She’s a fancy lawyer in NYC – she lives in Brooklyn. She’s reading the EOs and doing her own legal analysis. She’s a really smart person and she’s giving it a lot of thought especially on the equal rights/civil rights areas – I can’t go into all that here, its too long and I’m not sure I got all of it myself but we are on the right track here on who they are targeting – it is Black people, women, and trans people.
One thing she said REALLY chilled me, though. She was pleased that Menendez was convicted – she’s a Democrat but she sensibly wants criminals prosecuted. But she said it seems arbitrary – like certain people get prosecuted and others who also commit crimes just…don’t. Like there’s no real standards. She said that’s what its like in fascist countries – law enforcement doesn’t even pretend to apply laws equally, its just disfavored group member goes to prison, favored group member does not. It terrifies people because they dont know if they’re on the right side of the line.
different-church-lady
@Miss Bianca: I am looking forward to our South Korean liberators.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Wilhot’s Law, turbocharged.
Steve LaBonne
@Hunter Gathers: They were relieved to have that distraction. They’re terrified to publish more than the unavoidable minimum about Musk’s coup.
Lavocat
Scarily sobering.
Makes you realize how easy it is to propagandize a domestic audience.
As Orwell, made clear time and time and time again: words matter.
different-church-lady
@oldgold: “Corruption? Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I think it used to be a crime or something…”
Harrison Wesley
We’re looking to get a twofer, both a repressive (fascist or feudal) government and a devastated economy. Not a very bright future.
different-church-lady
@Lobo: “Coup with consent”
Lavocat
@Kay: The weaponization of the rule of law. Pure fascism.
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: I think their instincts is what we saw the first time.
I believe this time they’ve “studied history” enough that they’re not going to make the same mistakes this time.
Almost exactly like the NSDAP did it way back when, eh wot?
Kay
I love how that strong piece is mm. So, so tired of people being cowards and minimizing what’s happening to comfort themselves.
A South African Nazi is running the federal government. However the fuck we got here, thats where we are.
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: A Russian future.
Lobo
I think a post could be how the environment now is like a second post reconstruction, except even a lot whites are seeing what it is like. This is the everyday life of marginalized and vulnerable communities. We don’t wish it on anyone, but maybe if we live through this we all will get a bit more understanding.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steve in the ATL:
That ignores the example of Vietnam
Kay
@Lavocat:
She and I had late night texting sessions when Trump.refused to accept the results in 2020. We believed then and believe now that’s when the far Right realized they could take the country – they saw how really weak we are in our defenses. It was like an emperor has no clothes moment for them – they saw there was no real teeth in any US legal/law enforcement defense. They can just roll over the whole apparatus.
Steve LaBonne
@Lobo: Drugs didn’t become a problem as opposed to merely a criminal matter until lots of white people started ODing. By the same token fascism has been A-OK throughout American history as long as only non-white people were on the receiving end, and I guess we’ll find out what happens when a lot of white people get to join the party. Maybe nothing, as the author of Dying of Whiteness would probably tell us.
Baud
@Lobo:
Agree.
Kay
Just a reminder that Republicans in Congress could end this in a day. If a majority or even substantial.minority of US Senators and House members came out and said a South African billionaire cannot run the United States that would stop this madness. Every single one if them is complicit. Every single one of them is doing this to federal employees and the US public. Their cowardice and lack of patriotism is allowing this to continue.
Professor Bigfoot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Indeed, but part of that was the hesitance on the part of most of the American military to just lay waste to people suspected of the wrong sympathies.
But if the troops involved don’t give a damn…
Also, you’re more likely to have to deal with FOP cops than US Army regulars; and of course there are the would-be Klansmen who envision re-playing the Sack of Black Wall Street– individual infantry weapons can be effective enough, and if you’re up against regulars you’re already completely fucked.
Harrison Wesley
I still occasionally fantasize about running off to the Old Country, but I think the USA is going to spread its economic mess around the world so there wouldn’t be much point.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree.
Professor Bigfoot
@Steve LaBonne: Don’t be surprised at attempts of ethnic cleansing.
Conservatives have been hoarding guns since the first Obama administration if not before; and a lot of ’em are just itching to use them.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: Arresting brown people (including citizens) while pretending there aren’t thousands of undocumented Irish working in Boston is already kind of the start of that. But yeah, it’s going to get a LOT worse.
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: Last time we were the safe place. This time there isn’t one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steve LaBonne:
Canada? The EU?
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: I could get an Irish passport (residency for my wife would be a problem though). And then, given the massive housing crisis in Ireland, live in a cardboard box.
Aziz, light!
Last year I thought we might be seeing the last gasp of white supremacy as a dominant force in American life.
Turns out it wasn’t a last gasp; it was a deep, hearty breath.
Kay
@Baud:
I was on Reddit this am reading my favorite fragrance group’s comments and a man barged in and wrote “step aside,ladies, full can of AXE coming thru”
funny! I think we should let him in.
I know you’re on Reddit…
Baud
@Aziz, light!:
Cornered animal politics.
Baud
@Kay:
IMHO Reddit > Blue sky right now when it comes to fighting back.
Maybe because subreddits are separate from each other rather than everyone being mished together on a timeline.
MomSense
@Kay:
ICE was at my son’s college last week. The admin sent out an email to all the students and student leaders about their rights and what to do if they knocked on their door or entered their dorms.
Starfish (she/her)
@Kay: They are all Gollum and having the one ring is more important to them than anything.
Kay
@MomSense:
Thats good. My sister went back and read what Trump’s EEOC director has written prior to this job. They were ready to put in Project 2025. She says the EO’s are sloppily drafted junk but the Trump appointees are true believers who have wanted to gut employment laws for women and Black people their whole careers. She thinks we shouldn’t underestimate them. They’re far, far Right but all GOP legal alliances are far, far Right now. They’re mainstream in terms of the Federalist Society.
Spanky
I heard that democracy dies in darkness, but no one mentioned silence.
kindness
With all due respect, the leaders/owners of our institutional MSM want Trump/Musk to take over. At some point, we have to take the torches and pitchforks to those owners/leaders. Oh, just imagine the press were that to occur.
mrmoshpotato
“The peasants are revolting!” screamed the shitting-their-pants scared, fascist piles of shit.
Matt
Sure this sounds bad, but let’s all be thankful that the Harris campaign didn’t do anything to make billionaires uncomfortable. Really dodged a bullet with that one! /s
Thirty fucking years of “you leftists are talking nonsense, we just need to give the right-wing more of what they want and they’ll become more moderate” and this is where we are.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I may steal that summary for my next email to my Republican senators. (I call too, but their mailboxes were full last time I tried.) It’s true. They are cowards who are letting an unelected, foreign-born billionaire run the country AND steal their own power as lawmakers. The useless fuckers.
Phylllis
I still work a few days a month at the school district that I retired from & they were talking to me earlier in the week about coming back especially if the person hired for my job leaves. I wanted to tell them this is an interesting intellectual exercise, but I have a feeling the federal education funds are likely to either be redirected to private vouchers or eliminated a lot sooner than the ten-year plan in Project 2025. They are In a perfect position to do it with fiscal year 2026 (Title, Career & Technology, and IDEA funds are forward funded), due to operating under a continuing resolution. A budget could be passed completely reconfiguring the use of those monies for the 25-26 school year in the blink of an eye. No need for a federal programs director if there are no funds to direct.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt:
Excuse me? Clearly we saw different Harris campaigns. How dare you shit on her when she was put in such an impossible position and stepped up
Miss Bianca
@Matt: Oh, blow it out your bunghole.
pajaro
@Professor Bigfoot:
no, he doesn’t control the courts, and they will not bend the knee. This is so not over.
pajaro
@mrmoshpotato:
well, NBC and NYT just got booted from their spots in the Pentagon. Maybe they will feel differently, who knows?
BellyCat
By intent, this ambiguity prompts people to demonstrate slavish devotion to the authoritarian so they, themselves, are not targeted.
MomSense
@Kay:
My son is a music major. His friends are all artists, musicians and writers. There are targeted people in their group. They have made plans. They will take care of each other. I’m really proud of them and furious that this is the world we have made for these beautiful humans.
MomSense
@Kay:
They are not just complicit. Some of them are also compromised. Most of them are sociopaths.
Chris Johnson
@Professor Bigfoot: But they’re too arrogant to do it that way, and back in the day they did not try to rally the SAME populace they were fixing to destroy.
They do not NEED ignorant MAGA hicks. Those people all think they’re gonna be the SS. They’re not. There’s gonna be those little robot dogs with machine guns on their heads, guys brought in from India etc. to do the thinking and designing just like Ramaswamy said. We’re looking at the first populist dictatorship that thinks it can shit on ITS OWN people because it is so far up its own ass.
There are absolutely not as many SS guard jobs in the new regime as these magas think there will be.
Musk thinks he can kick off a mass disaster and die-off and hole up somewhere with robots and loyalists and come out once everyone’s dead.
I think he is mistaken.
pajaro
@jehrler:
Marshall is right about what the Dems should say, but figuring out who the messenger should be is really tough. It’s not just that we don’t have anyone with Churchill’s oratory skills; we don’t have a single person to make the case. Even if we would all agree that it would be Schumer or Jeffries, if they If decided to have a press conference and make the kind of speech that Marshall proposes, who would cover it? Once it was over, who would defend them against the charge that whatever they did was pathetically inadequate for the moment? They’ve cut a commercial that went up today, they are unified in stopping the most dangerous of the nominees, and there is nothing they are doing that isn’t condemned as inadequate, if not pitiful, if not objectively pro-Trump.
It would be great to have the two of them and most of the Democratic Governors make a statement, but it’s just hard to figure out how a single message could be crafted and then projected to the country, and how and when the meeting would occur without people condemning them for leaving their states, and, at the end, for being inadequate to the moment.
It doesn’t mean not to try, or to urge them to come out with this kind of a message. We should. But we also need to deal with the reality that whatever they do will seem inadequate and become slower to condemn them for every word out of their mouths we disapprove of.
Finally, I think that people who want the Dems to go scorched earth against the Republicans are fine writing off the possibility of getting any help from Congressional Republicans on any issue for the next two years. But I don’t think Congressional Democrats, even ones like AOC, are willing to give up on getting help in certain areas, and so the message can’t be we will fight them to the death everywhere.
Baud
@pajaro:
I agree with you.
pajaro
@Baud:
thanks
Betty
I don’t understand why members of Congress can’t file a lawsuit to prevent this illegal interference in the people’s business.
Geminid
@pajaro: Hakeem Jeffries has good oratorical skills. He doesn’t show them so often, but if you watch his nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in January, 2019 you’ll see what I mean. Last I looked was easy yo find on YouTube. It ran a little under 3 minutes, so watch the longest version you can.
Jeffries typical does shorter-form communication. He’s very good at that too, and thinks well on his feet so he can pull off a press conference well. Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, the other top members of the leadership team, are also good communicators.
I don’t see Jeffries as the leader of the Party because I don’t think we have one leader and I don’t think we neccesarily have to have one. But as Dave Anderson points out, a lot of legislative action will be in the House this Congress.
The House will also be be a big focus next year because the midterms will be critical in the fight against Trump and Trumpism. Of course, I’m assuming here there will be midterms but I believe there will be.
Geminid
@Betty: Congressional Democrats can file lawsuits and I believe they intend to. Last week there was reporting in Axios and other sites to that effect.
That of course was before yesterday’s actions by Trump and his henchmen. We’ll see what they come up with this coming week.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
We knew we were going to be targeted.
Been knew
rikyrah
@Kay:
Once again
The Founding Fathers did not account for an entire political party refusing to follow their oath to the Constitution.
They saw the Orange Menace coming , over 200 + years ago
rikyrah
@Steve LaBonne:
I live in a Blue city with a large Undocumented Eastern European population.
Nothing about them from ICE 😒😒
rikyrah
@Kay:
It was obvious that they want to erase the 20th Century.
That has been clear
None of this is a surprise.
Cathie from Canada
Very sad. “I’m weary to my bones” already.