Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Convicted felon Donald Trump is eviscerating the US Constitution in a particularly insidious way. Previously, I have written about Trump’s efforts to hijack the Free Speech Movement, and invert it, thrusting us all down the Republican rabbit hole. This perversion of free speech takes a most precious, progressive concept, enshrined in the US Constitution, and twists it into something that it’s not, misapplying it to bolster the very government censorship against which it was aimed. Let’s face it; the gloves are off now; and Trump has brought every element of classic Fascism into US Government, faster and more furiously than his acolytes or enemies expected.
Now comes an especially perverse attempt to hijack the Free Speech Movement: Vice-President JD Vance accused Germany of suppressing Free Speech for their exclusion of the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party from the German government. An American vice-president went to Germany to advocate for the Nazi Party! AfD is the remaining vanguard of Hitler’s supremely destructive brand of Fascism. Germany banished any parties evoking Nazi goals or symbolism, as their self-imposed penance for the crimes against humanity during World War II, and many in Germany think the courts should ban the AfD. Worse, Vance employed this shock theatre to divert attention away from the main topic of the conference, the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sold out Ukraine, giving cover to Putin’s imperialist violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty
Vance’s dishonoring of the thousands of American soldiers who died fighting the National Socialists, coincides with Trump taking a rusty axe to any and all institutions of American government that don’t further his personal goals or investment strategy. The list of Donald Trump’s enemies is long, and includes career civil servants, elected officials and Court officers who prosecuted his two impeachments. Trump’s enemies list includes any American citizen who didn’t vote for him, and anyone who defends the Constitutional separation of powers. Many Americans have never had basic civic lessons on the US Government. The Republican attack on public education has also fueled this dynamic.
Public school teachers are at risk for defending their right to freely design curriculum plans and choose reading materials. The same is true for public school administrators defending their systems against hostile voucher programs intended to undermine public education, such as in Tennessee. Other Trump enemies are police officers standing up to the far right, public health officials doing their job to keep people healthy and medicines safe, and regulatory employees who are vigilant about protecting the quality of American air, water, soil and food.
But Trump’s greatest enemy of all is the mainstream “free press” American media. All are perceived as obstacles to Trump’s agenda, and thus “enemies.” Nicholas Kristoff writes, “In a particularly blatant breach of free press principles, the White House has also barred A.P. reporters from certain events for failing to adopt Trump’s terminology of the ‘Gulf of America.’ What next? Denial of access to reporters who decline to refer to aid workers as “fraudsters’?” The demand for vocabulary conformity is downright Orwellian.
“Trumpism,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2025
Elon Musk has used Twitter (TwitteX) to promote Fascism since before he bought it, and reinstated Trump’s privileges. Since then it’s become an explosion of far-far right chronic anger and misinformation. It’s astonishing that it still has legitimate use by government and mainstream media. But social media has replaced mainstream media (Trump’s “enemy of the people” just as in 1984), as the go-to source of information for most people. This explains a lot about how Trump got elected both times.
Musk was elected to NOTHING and is accountable to no one; but Trump handed him the keys to the federal government, despite his numerous conflicts of interest. Musk and other billionaire appointees have been given access to sensitive government data, and are positioned to hijack the US Treasury. This has been made possible by the 2010 SCOTUS decision Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission. It paved the way for Musk to BUY the US Government on behalf of Donald Trump for his cool $288M campaign donation; as if he said, “OK, I’ll buy it for you, but you have to let me run it.”
One of the greatest inversions is Trump’s appointment of Ed Martin, who was part of the J6 mob, for US attorney in Washington, D.C.. He is in line to run the office that investigated him, and is posed to invert the Justice Department against the attorneys, judges and government officials who prosecuted him and other J6 rioters! Meanwhile Trump’s choice to helm the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brandon Carr, has turned his sights away from investigating Fox News for its entertainment front packaged as “news;” and opened baseless, warrantless investigations into NPR, PBS and the three US broadcast networks.
Republicans say the only Constitutional crisis is that the Constitution prevents Trump from doing what he wants to do, i.e. shred the Constitution and install a permanent Christian Nationalist Fascist Theocracy. By grand design, Congress and the Courts are supposed to be the two checks on a president’s power. But Republicans in Congress have forfeited their prescribed power and authority out of fealty and fear of Trump. Much of the US Justice system had its integrity compromised by Senator Mitch McConnell’s persistent, partisan blocking of nominations by Democratic administrations, and his fast-tracking of Trump’s picks, in violation of Senate rules and customs. This leaves US democracy on thin ice, with hope invested in what remains of the US justice system.
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