In The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum wrote about how faltering revolutions tend to choose violence, arguing that this is what Trump’s illegal invasion of Los Angeles is all about. It’s not a distraction but a significant escalation that follows a pattern set by despots like Chairman Mao, among others. An excerpt from Applebaum’s piece:
I doubt very much that Donald Trump knows a lot about the methods of Bolsheviks or Maoists, although I am certain that some of his entourage does. But he is now leading an assault on what some around him call the administrative state, which the rest of us call the U.S. government. This assault is revolutionary in nature. Trump’s henchmen have a set of radical, sometimes competing goals, all of which require fundamental changes in the nature of the American state. The concentration of power in the hands of the president. The replacement of the federal civil service with loyalists. The transfer of resources from the poor to the rich, especially rich insiders with connections to Trump. The removal, to the extent possible, of brown-skinned people from America, and the return to an older American racial hierarchy.
Trump and his allies also have revolutionary methods. Elon Musk sent DOGE engineers, some the same age as Mao’s Red Guards, into one government department after the next to capture computers, take data, and fire staff. Trump has launched targeted attacks on institutions that symbolize the power and prestige of the old regime: Harvard, the television networks, the National Institutes of Health. ICE has sent agents in military gear to conduct mass arrests of people who may or may not be undocumented immigrants, but whose arrests will frighten and silence whole communities. Trump’s family and friends have rapidly destroyed a matrix of ethical checks and balances in order to enrich the president and themselves.
But their revolutionary project is now running into reality. More than 200 times, courts have questioned the legality of Trump’s decisions, including the arbitrary tariffs and the deportations of people without due process. Judges have ordered the administration to rehire people who were illegally fired. DOGE is slowly being revealed as a failure, maybe even a hoax: Not only has it not saved much money, but the damage done by Musk’s engineers might prove even more expensive to fix, once the costs of lawsuits, broken contracts, and the loss of government capacity are calculated. The president’s signature legislation, his budget bill, has met resistance from senior Republicans and Wall Street CEOs who fear that it will destroy the U.S. government’s credibility, and even resistance from Musk himself.
Now Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.
Applebaum says that even if cooler heads prevent a large-scale violent confrontation in Los Angeles, the fact that Trump is needlessly and illegally sending U.S. troops into an American city is just an opening salvo. He’ll keep resorting to violence.
Applebaum cites the dehumanizing language Trump used in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday, where he called protesters “animals” and “foreign invaders.” He is paving the path to escalation.
The logic of revolution often traps revolutionaries: They start out thinking that the task will be swift and easy. The people will support them. Their cause is just. But as their project falters, their vision narrows. At each obstacle, after each catastrophe, the turn to violence becomes that much swifter, the harsh decisions that much easier. If not stopped, by Congress or the courts, the Trump revolution will follow that logic too.
The people have a role also. Republicans in Congress are either enthusiastic participants in Trump’s authoritarian project or too chickenshit to oppose it, and it sure appears that the former outnumber the latter. The judiciary is under threat as well.
I think the No Kings protests this weekend will tell us a lot about whether Americans are up to the task of saving their own democracy. In my opinion, it’s very much an open question. Maddow is optimistic:
Maddow: I also feel like there’s not very much about that that I don’t understand. Like, it’s the same everywhere. This is blond Berlusconi, you know what I mean? This is inarticulate Viktor Orbán, right? These guys are all the same. The authoritarian playbook is the same everywhere
I hope she’s right.
Open thread.
