The Socialist Equality Party demands that Trump be indicted and tried for an attempted fascistic coup. Such a trial must expose the whole conspiracy, not just the role of Trump. Who else was involved in the Republican Party, the Supreme Court, the military, the police, the intelligence agencies and the state governments? Ben-Ghiat: There are lots of others. In terms of his policies and his aggression, Greg Abbott stands out, of course. I’ll never forget that he posed smiling with his target practice sheet and joked about shooting journalists during the Trump years. But Ron DeSantis stands out because, one, he has made clear his aspirations to national leadership, and two, he’s smooth. Just as [Viktor] Orbán is a more palatable Putin — you don’t hear about poisoning [enemies], you don’t hear about people falling out of windows — DeSantis doesn’t have all that baggage Trump has. He’s younger and he’s smoother. He’s more measured in what he says. He’s trained as a lawyer. Trump is a much more outrageous personality and that’s the source of Trump’s charisma, but DeSantis is extremely popular. And so he has his own form of relating to audiences that people like. A “scholar of violent conflict” for more than four decades, Homer-Dixon said Canada must take heed of the “unfolding crisis”. In many ways, the dictatorship in Guatemala has never ended. The Cold War years, when the military and right-wing economic elites held power through complicity with the CIA, evolved into a military and political narco-kleptocracy. The cause of democracy and justice had some successes in the ensuing years, but under the last exceedingly corrupt government, fiercely supported by the Trump Administration, those forces were routed, driven from the country, crushed. So it goes, as Billy Pilgrim would say.

Donald Trump Goes Full Dictator, Vows to Stay in Office Donald Trump Goes Full Dictator, Vows to Stay in Office

When I think about fascism, I think about it as applied to different things. There’s a fascist regime. We do not have a fascist regime. Then there’s the question of, “Is Trumpism a fascist social and political movement?” I think you could call legitimately call Trumpism a fascist social and political movement — which is not to say that Trump is a fascist. Trumpism involves a cult of the leader, and Trump embodies that. I certainly think he’s using fascist political tactics. I think there’s no question about that. He is calling for national restoration in the face of humiliations brought on by immigrants, liberals, liberal minorities, and leftists. He’s certainly playing the fascist playbook. A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of Covid-19, reconciliation and the accelerating effects of climate change. It’s hard for a society to rid itself of the effects of an evil dictatorship, I’ve seen so many try and fail. Some of these effects can be institutional—in Chile, for example, the Pinochet dictatorship survives through a constitution absurdly contorted in such a way as to guarantee to right-wing parties an outsized share of power in any government, and through the extant, despised, repressive Pinochet-era militarized police colloquially known as “Los Pacos.” A decade of non-stop protests by students and other young people, especially, seems now finally to have led to the chance to write a new Chilean constitution. Maybe that will sweep away the other remaining vestiges of Pinochetism that survive, whether institutional or embedded in human spirits. But how are we supposed to forgive evil? How do you compromise with racism? It’s not possible to reach a half-way point of common agreement on racism. The hearing itself was held under extraordinary conditions. The committee, headed by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson and Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, suddenly announced it on Monday after previously saying it would not call a further hearing until mid-July. It kept the subject matter of the hearing secret and concealed the identity of the witness, Hutchinson, until Tuesday morning. Homer-Dixon’s message was blunt: “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a rightwing dictatorship.”

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The group known as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have relentlessly searched for the missing offspring of their own disappeared children. Of the approximately 500 children believed to have been taken in that way, the Grandmothers have managed to identify and recover 130, restoring to them their original identities, at least. Argentina is one of the countries that has been most successful in bringing the criminals of the former dictatorship to justice. But it took longer to hold members of the former military junta and their accomplices accountable for their “systemic plan” to steal babies. The coup plan outlined by Hutchinson was modeled on the Beer Hall Putsch organized by Adolf Hitler on November 9, 1923, in which he planned to march on the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. The difference, however, was that Trump’s plot was on a far larger scale and under the direction not of an upstart and little-known fascist politician, but the president of the United States. That said, just as ethnically based violence or ethnic cleansing shares some characteristics with genocide/the Holocaust, so too does Trump bear similarities to other strongmen, a category in which fascists like Hitler and Mussolini belong, as do Orbán, Erdogan, Putin, and their ilk. That Trump maintains his support by engaging in explicitly divisive appeals designed to pit groups against each other — particularly but not exclusively ethnic groups — also, of course, bears some similarity to what fascists did. Will a new America be transformed in Trump's image? Will the Oval Office become the seat of a dictator? And so now we need to come together, Joe Biden and so many others are saying. Come together Americans, it’s the new consensus. Forgive and come together with people who disagree with us about what should be done about the economy, NATO, the Covid pandemic, and so on, even come together with those who don’t believe in climate change! But, of course, that’s feasible, a functioning democratic government includes the possibility that even parties holding extremely divergent opinions on the most crucial issues can somehow find a way to move forward. I can “forgive” someone for holding a view I disagree with, that I even detest, on any of those issues, and would expect the same in return. Our side just has to argue and persuade better, I suppose that’s what I tell myself in these circumstances.

Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian

It’s totally unacceptable that more than 300 military officers and reservists are held in limbo,” Biden said. “It’s an insult.” So even now the dictatorship survived in that nearly ghostly manner, in the person of that man, whoever he was, who’d come to stare from the balcony at Sister Felisa, delivering a silent message, intimidating her into retracting her testimony. Trump's mode of governing has been to stoke division, confusion and chaos. An America in crisis is exactly what Trump desires since it then becomes easier for him to exert control and power, to profit from corruption, and to wreak vengeance on his foes.Trump’s role models include leaders like Erdogan and Putin who are not exactly fascists, but something more: authoritarians, or strongman rulers who also use virility as a tool of domination. Kruse: Is Ron DeSantis the non-Donald Trump politician doing this in the most stark, arguably most effective way, or are there others that you are paying attention to? Kruse: Is it fair then to see the U.S. as an “anocracy,” neither completely democratic nor completely autocratic? The aftereffects of an evil dictatorship are hard to get rid of, to scrub clean. It usually involves a steadfast struggle, and justice is really the only remedy. A post-dictatorship never manages to bring everybody who might deserve it to trial, I’ve learned, but it’s crucial that at least some of the official evildoers, hopefully the most prominent, be held to account. That means everything.

Testimony exposes Trump’s plan to declare himself dictator

Ben-Ghiat: It’s in transition. However, I do believe it’s extremely important to never fall into fatalism. I believe it’s my job to warn people what could happen, but it’s very important — that’s why I keep bringing up the 2020 election and also the 2018 midterms — that these are recent events, and there is this energy of protest and love for democracy and freedom, real freedom, not the Republicans’ idea of freedom, that we can’t lose, because once you decide that it’s all rigged and there’s nothing you can do, then you do lose democracy. I also favor authoritarian over fascist as a description for Trump because the former captures how autocratic power works today. In the 21st century, fascist takeovers have been replaced by rulers who come to power through elections and then, over time, extinguish freedom. Jason Brownlee, professor of government, the University of Texas at Austin You were never told what happened to the three children?” Judge Roqueta asked, her voice exasperatedly rising. “You never wanted to know what happened to them?” The judge demanded, “Do you understand that you are testifying in a federal court? Has someone pressured you? Are you under a threat? Do you want us to clear the courtroom so that you can speak?” The nun, grinning nervously, said no. Here we have a disgraced former president who attempted a coup d’état after losing the last election, and is also facing major legal jeopardy at the federal level and from multiple states. Quite possibly, the only way to avoid going to prison for the rest of his life is to become president again—and the only way to satisfy his craving for limitless money and power, and to inflict ruthless vengeance against his enemies, is to turn the presidency into a dictatorship.Four months ago, I warned that Trump was descending into naked authoritarianism. Low-information commentators seek to reassure rather than dig deeply, telling readers to look on the bright side. That the US is an exceptional country.