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FTR#1377 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The program begins with reading of two articles discussing the arrival of fascism in America. The articles are limited in scope, however, Mr. Emory feels a degree of satisfaction to see the overdue recognition of the true nature of the unfolding apocalypse.
From Henry Giroux: “We live in perilous times. The mobilizing passions of fascism are no longer a distant echo of history—they are here, surging through the United States like an electric current. We are in a period of social, ideological, and racial cleansing. . . . Americans are not witnessing a slow drift toward authoritarianism. They are living through the violent, coordinated seizure of democratic life by fascist forces emboldened by indifference, cruelty, and the architecture of unaccountable power. . . .”
Following that reading, Mr. Emory presents an informative interview by Amy Goodman of a Guardian journalist who details the fascist forces shaping both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
The influence of Elon Musk’s grandfather on the development of technocratic fascism is a topic that will be explored in future programs.
1.“The Fire This Time” by Henry Giroux; counterpunch.org; 4/4/2025.
We live in perilous times. The mobilizing passions of fascism are no longer a distant echo of history—they are here, surging through the United States like an electric current. We are in a period of social, ideological, and racial cleansing.
First, the notion of government as a democratizing public good and institution of social responsibility—that once held power to account, protected the vulnerable, and nurtured the ideals of justice and collective responsibility—is being methodically destroyed. The common good, once seen as the essence of democratic life, has become the enemy of the neoliberal fascist state. It is not merely being neglected—it is being assaulted, stripped bare, and left to rot in the shadows of privatization, greed, and brutality—the main features of gangster capitalism. Public institutions are hollowed out, courts are under siege, regulatory bodies are politicized and disempowered, and the mechanisms of governance now serve only the most ruthless forms of concentrated financial and political power.
Second, we are witnessing a form of ideological cleansing—a scorched-earth assault on critical consciousness. Education, both public and higher, is under siege, stripped of its democratic mission to cultivate informed judgment, critical thinking, and the capacity to make corrupt power visible. What once served as a space for reflection, dissent, and civic engagement is being transformed into a battlefield of ideological control, where questioning authority is replaced by obedience, and pedagogy is reduced to training, conformity, and propaganda. Education is explicitly no longer on the side of empowerment for the many. It has become an ideological tool of massive repression, indoctrination, surveillance, and an adjunct of the billionaire elite and the walking dead with blood in their mouths.
Books that illuminate injustice, affirm histories of resistance, and introduce critical ideas are being banned. Entire fields of knowledge—gender studies, critical race theory, decolonial thought—are outlawed. Professors are fired, blacklisted, or harassed for daring to speak the truth, especially those who denounce the genocidal violence being waged by Israel, which has now taken the lives of over 50,000 Palestinians, many of them children. Journalists are doxxed, detained, or demonized.
Cultural institutions are defunded or coerced into silence. The arts are no longer sacred; they are now suspect. Social media platforms and news outlets are intimidated, policed, and purged. Elite law firms are targeted, intimidated, silenced or forced into complicity by the Trump administration. Scott Cummings rightly argues President Donald Trump’s recent speech to the Department of Justice was meant as a declaration of war against lawyers. Some prestigious law firms and attorneys—once alleged guardians of justice—now grovel before authoritarianism in acts of staggering complicity. The public sphere is shrinking under the weight of repression.
Third—and perhaps most alarming—is the escalating campaign of racial cleansing—a war against the most vulnerable, on bodies, on the flesh, and on visceral forms of agency. This is not hyperbole. Immigrants are caged in squalid detention centers, separated from their families, deported without due process to detention centers in Louisiana or to Guantanamo, or simply disappeared. Muslims are vilified, surveilled, and targeted with impunity. Black and brown communities are over-policed and under-protected, sacrificed to the machinery of carceral violence. State terrorism is normalized. The state is actively criminalizing existence itself for all those who do not fit the white Christian nationalist fantasy of purity, obedience, and subjugation.
This is a war not only against people, but against memory, imagination, and the very capacity to think, make connections, and to dream a different future. The unimaginable has become policy. The unthinkable now passes for normal.
Consider just a glimpse of the horror now unfolding:
Venezuelan migrants are being disappeared into a notorious maximum-security torture dungeon in El Salvador run by Nayib Bukele, a ruthless dictator, punished not for crimes, but for the ink on their skin. A legendary British punk band, the UK Subs, denied entry for voicing dissent against Trump’s authoritarian policies. A French scientist barred at the border for criticizing Trump, who with sneering smile, tears up the Constitution with performative contempt. Trump violates court orders with impunity. Student visas are revoked in the dead of night. Their dorm rooms raided, their wrists bound in handcuffs, they are forced into unmarked cars by agents of a system that is both cruel and clandestine. Young people—Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Ranjani Srinivasan, Yunseo Chung—are disappeared, imprisoned in Louisiana, and await deportation under a regime of malignant legalities. cloaked in legalese. These are not arrests—they are abductions. Not justice—but the slow machinery of fear made flesh. Dissent is now branded as terrorism, and those who challenge Trump’s authoritarian grip vanish into the void—arrested, erased, rendered disposable.
Trump’s totalitarian machine is waging a relentless war on colleges and universities. As Chris Hedges observes, the administration has threatened to strip federal funding from more than 60 elite higher education institutions under the guise of protecting Jewish students—while already pulling $500 million from Columbia University, an action that has nothing to do with combating antisemitism. The charge is a smokescreen, a cynical pretext to silence protest and crush dissent—especially in support of Palestinian freedom. As Rashid Khalidi observes, “It was never about eliminating antisemitism. It was always about silencing Palestine. That is what the gagging of protesting students, and now the gagging of faculty, was always meant to lead to.”
Elite universities once proud of their intellectual autonomy are being transformed into fortified zones of surveillance and submission. Columbia among the most glaring, where the campus now resembles a police precinct more than a place of progressive ideas and democratic values. Only now, as the darkness thickens, are a handful of journalists and liberal commentators awakening to the authoritarian siege on higher education—a siege some of us have been naming for decades.
Americans are not witnessing a slow drift toward authoritarianism. They are living through the violent, coordinated seizure of democratic life by fascist forces emboldened by indifference, cruelty, and the architecture of unaccountable power.
Under such circumstances, it is crucial for people to pay attention to the political crisis that is unfolding. This means being attentive, learning from history, analyzing the mobilizing passions of fascism as a system—one directly related to the forces of gangster capitalism and the force of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism. Language matters, and those willing to fight against the fascist tide must rethink the meaning of education, resistance, bearing witness, and solidarity. And action is imperative: build alliances, flood the streets, defend critical education, amplify resistance, and refuse to be silent.
In the face of this rising tide, resistance must no longer be fragmented, polite, or confined to isolated corners of dissent. As Sherilyn Ifill notes, “it is not enough to fight. You have to meet the moment.” Cultural critics, educators, artists, journalists, social workers, and others must wield their craft like weapons—telling prohibited stories, defying censorship, reigniting the radical imagination. Educators must refuse complicity, defending classrooms as sanctuaries of truth and critical inquiry, even when the risks are great. Students must organize, disrupt, and reclaim their campuses—not as consumers of credentialing, but as insurgents of liberation.
Academics, including faculty and administrators, must form a common front to stop the insidious assault on higher education. Journalists must break the silence, not by chasing access or neutrality, but by naming injustice with moral clarity. Organizers, activists, and everyday people must converge—across race, class, gender, and nation—into a broad front of democratic refusal. This is a moment not just for outrage, but for audacity—for reclaiming hope as a political act, and courage as a shared ethic. Fascism feeds on fear and isolation. As Robin D. G. Kelley brilliantly argues, it must be met with solidarity, imagination, and relentless struggle, based on a revived class politics. In a culture of immediacy, cruelty, and staggering inequality, power must be named for its actions, and the language of critique and hope must give way to mass collective action. History is not watching—it is demanding. The only question is whether anti-fascist forces will rise to meet it.
This darkness is not without precedent, nor is it without models of resistance. During the rise of fascism in Europe, teachers and intellectuals in Nazi-occupied France joined the underground, distributing banned literature and teaching forbidden truths in secret classrooms. In apartheid South Africa, students in Soweto sparked a nationwide uprising, defying bullets with the cry that liberation begins with education. In the American South, Black freedom fighters risked their lives to build freedom schools, challenge police terror, and reimagine democracy in the face of white supremacy. The Zapatistas in Chiapas created autonomous zones rooted in dignity, justice, and Indigenous knowledge. Palestinian writers, youth, freedom fighters, and teachers continue to create under siege powerful examples of resistance, insisting through every poem, every painting, every lesson, that their people will not be erased, their memories will survive, and settler-colonialism will not only be relentlessly resisted but will be defeated. There is no other choice.
Today, movements like Black Lives Matter, Abolitionist Futures, Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise Movement, March for Our Lives and Indigenous Rights Movements are keeping alive the traditions of collective struggle. Courageous campus coalitions, in spite of the shameful crackdowns by the government and in some cases universities themselves, are resisting militarized policing and corporate capture of higher education. Migrant justice organizations are building sanctuary networks to protect those the state seeks to expel. These are not just moments of protest—they are blueprints for democratic rebirth. The task now is to connect these diverse movements in a mass movement with the power to wage strikes, engage in direct action, teach-ins, and use any viable non-violent form of resistance to overcome the fascist nightmare spreading across the globe.
The stakes could not be higher. This is a time to reimagine justice, to reclaim the promise of a radical democracy yet to be realized. Fascism feeds on despair, cynicism, and silence—but history teaches otherwise. Again and again, it is when ordinary people refuse to be silent, when they teach, create, march, strike, and speak with fierce clarity, that the foundations of tyranny begin to crack. Fascism has returned from the shadows of history to once more dismantle justice, equality, and freedom. But its resurgence must not be mistaken for fate. It is not the final script of a defeated democratic future—it is a warning. And with that warning comes a call to breathe life into a vision of democracy rooted in solidarity and imagination, to turn resistance into a hammer that shatters the machinery of cruelty, the policies of disposability, and the totalitarian and oligarchic opportunists who feed on fear. As we stand before the terrifying rise of authoritarianism, it becomes undeniable: the fire we face is not some distant, abstract peril, but a fierce and immediate struggle — the fire this time is the fascist capture of America. This is the moment to make education central to politics, to shape history with intention, to summon a collective courage rooted in the demands of freedom, equality, and justice—to act together with a militant hope that does not yield. Fascism will not prevail—unless we let it. In times like these, resistance is not a choice; it is the condition of survival.
2.“Stop Asking ‘Can It Happen Here?’ ” by Tim Kipp; Common Dreams.
Not since those sweltering days in Philadelphia in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention has the United States confronted so fundamental a restructuring of the federal government. What’s happening! Today, the mainstream press declares “it can’t happen here” because we are not an authoritarian society, which is a reference to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, about a dictatorial take over of the United States. No we are not heading into a coup d’etat, they say, nor are we heading into an oligarchy.
A Contest of Time
With all of its manifest imperfections and unremitting political and economic crises, many self inflicted, this government has survived for nearly 240 years. Of course, through it all the elites thrived while those not fortunate enough to be white and wealthy were obliged to endure. The influential federalist Fisher Ames, in defense of the Constitution, likened our new republic to traveling on a “raft where we never sink but our feet are always in the water.”
Are We Due to Capsize?
This time in our history is different. Today the forces of wealth and power are wielding unprecedented weapons that threaten the fundamentals of the republic. It’s not just policies that are under assault.
Unique concentrations of economic and political authority, dysfunctional legislative and judicial branches, a collapsed political party system, race and class scapegoating and toadying by influential sectors of the mass media combine to provide opportunities for demagogues to sell snake oil to an economically vulnerable and politically disillusioned public. This could be, in the words of the American sage Mel Brooks, a “springtime for Hitler” moment.
What Lurks Within?
Just as Trump’s rise to power is a symptom of undemocratic features of the political economy, an oligarchy and coup d’etat can emerge from a regime that incessantly consolidates power by and for the wealthy. It’s not the greed it’s the need. Power concentration is baked into the scheme. The internal logic dictates that elite political power consolidates and expands in order to preserve and amplify economic power.
Capitalism, according to noted economist Sam Bowles, is a never-ending race that requires aggressive undemocratic strategies to persevere. Well, democracy gets in the way of all of this; it organically interferes with the forces of wealth and power. Thus elite self-aggrandizement is compulsory for survival. Predictably this ceaseless jockeying for advantage in the race comes at the expense of the general welfare of the people or as the African proverb has it “when the elephants dance the mice gets trampled.”
Wizards Behind the Curtain
It is widely understood that Trump is not known for his intellectual curiosity or acuity. During his first term he seldom read his briefing books preferring to lean on his confidantes for any particulars. Presidents, in part are judged by who the advisors are. So who are some of Trump’s “brain trust”?
In the early 1970’s, Roy Cohn, the legal henchman for Senator Joseph McCarthy, became a trusted mentor to Trump. Cohn bragged that, “My scare value is high. My arena is controversy. My tough front is my biggest asset.” He admonished Trump to never admit a mistake. Sound familiar? Another key influencer was—and remains—Steve Bannon, publisher of Breitbart News, a reactionary platform for Republican extremism. Bannon is credited with saying the goal is the “destruction of the administrative state.” Then there’s Stephen Miller, the ever-dyspeptic long-time insider who stated, “I would be happy if not a single refugee’s foot ever again touched American soil.”
In the words of historian Doris Kearns Goodman, in another context, these people are not a “team of rivals” like those that Lincoln assembled. Trump’s team of advisors and cabinet secretaries are the mandatory paragons of sycophancy.
The Coup’s Afoot
The Trump-Republican agenda is in part based on Project 2025, which is a wish list of extremist proposals of an influential ultra conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. As will be shown the ultimate goal is to challenge and repeal foundational theories, structures and methods of how this country operates.
Their methods are straight out of an authoritarian’s playbook. The process consists of serial deceit, edict and executive orders all in arrogant violation of congressional and constitutional mandates and methods. This is a “shock and awe” that sabotages the rule of law. Trump’s second term is a barrage of dismantling of departments and agencies and the firing of hundreds of thousands with no regard for due process or social and human consequences. This is a coup d’etat.
Constitutional Foundations Crumble
This Trump –Musk and Republican Party coup is not a palace revolt that merely changes the faces in power. This is not about tinkering or modifying policy. This is not about upholding long cherished principles and values or a return to the “good old days.” This is about systemic change, about power and how it is structured and wielded and for who’s benefit.
What follows is an exposition of the coup’s structural attacks on governance. The actual specifics of the daily policy plundering will not be emphasized. Rather what will be explored are the why and how of this destruction of the basic architecture and operation of constitutional government. While historically this governing design and process has never been perfect it has always held the virtue of an ideal, of being a worthy democratic goal.
Reneging on the Contract
The insurrectionists intend to break the “Social Contract.” Philosopher John Locke’s foundational principle embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of an implicit agreement between the citizens and their government whereby the people abide by the authority in exchange for a freedom and the security of a stable society. People of good will understand that with freedom comes responsibility. This coup represents a comprehensive attack on the very purpose and methods of governing. Trump and Republicans are willfully undermining citizen’s trust in their government by demolishing the Contract.
How Popular is Sovereignty?
Trump, Inc. is sabotaging the principle of Popular Sovereignty whereby government’s power derives from the consent of the people. There is no need for consent in an authoritarian regime. Do citizens now want more voter suppression with fewer people voting, do they want the wealthy to have more control over campaign financing and who gets to run for office? Do citizens want an electoral system that they can’t trust? Not long ago Trump in his juvenile and artless way mused that when he becomes president the country would be so great that there would be no need for further elections.
Checking the Power of Democracy
An effective coup will subvert basic notions of how power should operate. The constitutional principles of the Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances are designed to prevent one branch from dominating the others and to insure the sharing of powers and accountability.
Republicans and Trump are consciously undermining that balance by promoting dubious theories, such as the “unitary executive” that bestows unrestrained power to the executive. Trump is impounding funds that were congressionally authorized. He is ignoring congressional oversight, thereby making a mockery of committee hearings and denying the senate it’s Advice and Consent authority. “Being president means I can do anything, I have Article 2,” thus spake Trump, the learned constitutional scholar during his first term.
In the early 1970s mainstream historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in his book, The Imperial Presidency, warned of the escalation and dangers of an omnipotent president. One of his subjects of course was Richard Nixon who by comparison to Trump looks like a Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood oval office.
A Supremely Political Court
Revamping and controlling the judicial system is vital to the effectiveness of a coup. The U.S. Supreme Court wields extraordinary powers through a legalism concocted in 1803 that bestowed through “judicial review” the irrevocable authority to determine what laws are constitutional. This enables an unelected branch the ability to overturn a decision of elected representatives.
That power, now in the hands of the Trump-Roberts court, is a form of despotism. If insurgents can shape the ideological tenor of the court then politics will replace judicial fairness rendering the court a confederate in the unraveling of democracy.
Working with the Federalist Society over recent decades, the right-wing movement has spent millions to colonize the Supreme Court with a super majority of conservative and reactionary jurists. This hostile takeover of our highest court has turned a once esteemed branch into an ideological bunker where the robber barons take on cases to further limit the “excesses” of democracy.
The Robert’s Court has, among other things, destroyed voting rights protections, eliminated campaign finance regulations, undermined first amendment rights, eroded immigrant and women’s rights and unabashedly championed corporate interests. And perhaps most egregiously has put the president above the law by anointing him with unprecedented immunity. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senate’s most effective judicial watchdog, describes the Robert’s Court as having “advanced a far right agenda” that is “deeply out of touch with the will of Americans.” This court has virtually overturned the rule of law and enabled extremism to reign supreme. . . .
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show with Part 2 of my recent interview with the reporter Chris McGreal, who was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian during the last years of apartheid through 2002. He’s been closely following the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Some of McGreal’s pieces include “What does Elon Musk believe?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa.” I began by asking Chris McGreal to discuss Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.
CHRIS McGREAL: We see Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. He immigrates to South Africa in 1950. And that’s really when apartheid has just started to kick in. The 1950s are when the most — the first laws — South Africa had had discriminatory laws before, but you see the specific apartheid laws, which are much more aggressive, and in many ways reminiscent of the Nazi Nuremberg laws against Jews in the 1930s. They have very similar echoes in stripping Black people from the right to work in certain places, their movements, controlling them, confining them to areas. You already had a situation which has now, you know, come to the fore because of recent events with Trump, but —
AMY GOODMAN: You mean with Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute?
CHRIS McGREAL: Yes, but also with the sanctions over land, is that the 1913 Land Act had already deprived most Black people of land in South Africa anyway. At that point, the 7%, or 10%, as it was, of the population that was white owned more than 85% of the land under the Land Act of 1913. So, the apartheid laws kick in in the 1950s.
Musk was born — Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, and at that point the prime minister was a guy called John Vorster. And John Vorster’s background is very telling, really, because Vorster, in the 1930s, had been a member of a neo-Nazi militia called the OB, which was openly sympathetic and linked to the Nazis in Germany. It was responsible for all kinds of attacks, but including burning Jews out of their businesses in Johannesburg.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about what years?
CHRIS McGREAL: In the 1930s, so the late 1930s. And then South Africa goes to war as an ally of Britain against Hitler. The OB and the groups that support them, like Vorster, people like Vorster, they actively oppose that. They actually are in touch with — OB is in touch with German military intelligence, and they plan to assassinate the prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, and overthrow the government and have it support Hitler. That plan fails, because the Germans are unable to provide the necessary weapons and back out.
But in 1942, John Vorster, later prime minister, stands up and gives a speech, and he talks about the system that they — their kind of ideological belief system, which was Christian nationalism. And he says Christian nationalism in South Africa is the same as Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. It’s all anti-democratic. It’s all the same thing. By 1971, when Elon Musk is born, that man is the prime minister of South Africa. And Christian nationalism is the basis of not only the political philosophy, but the entire education system that Elon Musk is brought up into.
AMY GOODMAN: So, take us from Elon Musk’s grandfather moving to South Africa in the ’50s to his father, how they gained their wealth.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Musk — Elon Musk’s grandfather moves there in 1950s. He’s not particularly prosperous. He arrives without a lot of money. But it’s Elon Musk’s father, Errol, who makes the real money, principally through investments in emerald mines in Zambia. And, you know, mining conditions in southern Africa in that period were really pretty dire in the 1960s and ’70s, very high death rate, very poor conditions. But the owners got very rich.
And Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life. If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call. You lived in sprawling housing. And what you see with Errol Musk is that when we get a glimpse into just how much money he had, when he and Elon’s mother get divorced, she says at the time that, well, he owns a yacht, he owns a jet, he owns several houses. So there was considerable wealth there.
AMY GOODMAN: Was the grandfather of Elon Musk on the record in his support for Vorster?
CHRIS McGREAL: Well, he was certainly on the record in his support for apartheid, very vividly so, yes. And he said that that’s why he had moved to South Africa from Canada in 1940, was in support of it. Now, the grandfather himself is killed a few years later in a plane crash, but it’s not known what Elon Musk’s grandmother’s personal views of Vorster particularly were, but they were both avid supporters of the apartheid system, and the grandmother lived for a number of years afterwards.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’ve been talking about Elon Musk’s maternal grandparents and how they moved to South Africa, but talk about their roots in Canada.
CHRIS McGREAL: Originally, the grandparents have no connection to South Africa. They’re born and grew up in Canada. And in the 1930s, the grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, he’s head of the Canadian branch of a U.S. movement called Technocracy Incorporated. And Technocracy Incorporated is essentially a movement to overthrow democratic governments in the United States and have technocrats, but big businessmen, in many ways, come in and run the country. That’s partly a reaction to FDR’s election and New Deal and massive reforms that he’s introduced in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: So, from Canada, they would help to launch a coup against FDR?
CHRIS McGREAL: No. Canada had its own branch of this movement to overthrow the government in Canada. He, Haldeman, heads that branch. And through the 1930s, it takes on increasingly fascist overtones. They start wearing gray uniforms modeled on the Nazi brown and black shirts. And so, when Canada declares war on Germany in 1939 alongside Britain, the movement is banned, because it’s clearly sympathetic to Hitler. Then Haldeman is arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: Elon Musk’s grandfather.
CHRIS McGREAL: Elon Musk’s grandfather is arrested. They find documents sympathetic to the Nazis and other subversive documents inside his house. And he is sent to prison for a few months, then remains on essentially a subversion watch list for the rest of the war here. So, he’s basically regarded as a Nazi sympathizer, a fellow traveler.
AMY GOODMAN: And about a decade later, he moves to South Africa. Why?
CHRIS McGREAL: So, after the war, he founds another political movement, which has deep antisemitic roots and actually promotes the forgery, The Protocols of the —
AMY GOODMAN: Elders of Zion?
CHRIS McGREAL: Elders of Zion, that’s it. But, obviously, after the war and the Holocaust, there’s no real appetite for that in Canada. It’s a failing political movement. And so, his eye casts down to South Africa. By 1950, the apartheid government has been in power for two years. And Haldeman looks at it and thinks, “That’s just my kind of place,” which clearly that was what he would want to create in Canada and had been trying to create in the 1930s. And so, that’s the point at which he and his wife Maye, they move to South Africa and become very fervent supporters of apartheid.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to blend in some breaking news, in addition to cutting off all aid to South Africa, news of the region. And that is, Sam Nujoma, the freedom fighter turned president, who led Namibia to independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, has died at the age of 95, often referred to as Namibia’s founding father, known for his motto, “A united people, striving to achieve a common good for all members of the society, will always emerge victorious.” What used to be called South West Africa became the independent Namibia. Talk about Sam Nujoma and how that fits into this picture of South Africa through apartheid.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Sam Nujoma was the head of the South West Africa People’s Organization, which was the liberation movement of Namibia.
AMY GOODMAN: SWAPO.
CHRIS McGREAL: SWAPO, indeed. Really, SWAPO takes off and has — is able to have effect after Angola becomes independent with the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship. The Portuguese colonizers leave Angola, and Angola provides a base then for SWAPO to really fight to liberate South West Africa. That becomes known as the Border War, euphemistically. The South Africans call it the Border War. They actually invade Angola in an attempt to overthrow the Marxist-leaning government of Angola, but also to keep SWAPO at bay. But the war goes on, and eventually South Africa loses that war.
At that period, though, one of the things you see is that Peter Thiel, another member of the “PayPal mafia,” very close friend of Musk, he had been at school in Johannesburg, but his father gets a job on a uranium mine near Swakopmund in what is then South West Africa. And so, Peter Thiel moves there as a child and goes to school there.
And the thing to know about South West Africa, the reason it was separate from South Africa is that it had been a German colony until the end of the First World War. Then it becomes — falls under South Africa’s mandate, partly because at that point South Africa was a British colony. When South Africa becomes a republic in the ’60s, it hangs onto South West Africa, and it becomes a South African colony. But the population, big part of the population was of German ancestry. And you could — I remember going to Windhoek in the early ’90s, and the main thoroughfare through Windhoek was called Hermann Goering Strasse, named not after the Luftwaffe chief, but after his father, who had been a governor of German South West Africa. In Swakopmund, it was even more extreme. It was notorious for many, many years, really into the ’80s and ’90s, as a hotbed of open support, continued support for the Nazis and for Hitler. The New York Times has a story from the mid-’70s of a reporter pulling up at a gas station to get his car filled with gas, and the attendant openly giving a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler” to him. You could go to curio shops in Swakopmund, and they would sell Nazi-themed mugs and flags and things, and they openly celebrated Hitler’s birthday every May. Thiel went to a German school there. So, that’s the atmosphere he grows up in.
His father is an official on a uranium mine there. And the interesting thing about the uranium mine, amongst many other things, is that it supplied part of the uranium to develop the South African atomic bombs in the 1970s, which were developed in league with Israel. Now, part of the deal with Israel was that — is that South Africa would deliver yellow cake uranium to Israel. We don’t know where the yellow cake came from. It may have come from that Swakopmund-area mine, or it may have come from somewhere else in South Africa. But South Africa was shipping yellow cake to Israel at the same time, because it, too, was developing nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what Peter Thiel has said about all this — you know, I remember, as we cover conventions for decades now, Peter Thiel standing up at the first Republican convention that nominated President Trump and supporting him — and who he is.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Peter Thiel has said of his time in Swakopmund, and particularly the school, which he describes as particularly a brutal education, that it turned him against government and into a libertarian. And I think that’s an interesting element in all of this, is that one of the things that isn’t necessarily appreciated outside of South Africa is that there’s two kinds of whites there. There’s the Afrikaners, who we’ve been talking about, but there’s a big English-speaking white population. And one of the aspects of the English-speaking population was they, on paper, said they opposed apartheid, but they gained all of its benefits. And most of them, certainly not all — there were some really heroic individuals — but most of them did very little to actually end apartheid.
But one of the products of that is you have people like Musk and Thiel, who have done very well and whose parents did very well out of the apartheid system, who deny responsibility for it. They blame it on the Afrikaners. They blame it on a government, extreme government, extreme right-wing government. But then they have to explain how it is that their own parents were so able to do so well out of apartheid, and then they put that down to individual talent, that they’re naturally gifted, and that leads them down this whole libertarian path, anti-government path, because, essentially, they have to explain how they, too, were benefits of apartheid, without taking responsibility.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about their relationship, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
CHRIS McGREAL: Well, they’re co-founders of PayPal together. They both, essentially, share the same kind of worldview, from what I can make out. They’re, you know, libertarians. They’re very opposed to any kind of DEI. You’ve seen a deep, deep hostility to DEI. I think Thiel buys into the same message about anti-white, the war on white people in South Africa, that South African white groups like AfriForum have been pushing in the United States. So I think, you know, philosophically, they’re very similar, and obviously they have a very close relationship.
AMY GOODMAN: And then talk about David Sacks, and talk more specifically about what you’re referring to as the “PayPal mafia.” I don’t think most people in this country understand all of these connections and this unusual situation where these, what, some of the wealthiest men in the world work together, founded PayPal and now surround the president of the United States.
CHRIS McGREAL: Yes. So, David Sacks was born in Cape Town in the ’70s. And he moves — his parents take him to Tennessee when he’s 5 years old. So he didn’t grow up in the same milieu as Musk and Thiel, but he did grow up in the white South African diaspora, for sure. He clearly shares the same views. You know, as you say, they’re part of the PayPal mafia. They all get rich from the creation of this company. They’re all at the top running it. And now Sacks has emerged as Trump’s AI and crypto czar, again, part of the same project. So, you can see this —
AMY GOODMAN: And he was a chief fundraiser for President Trump —
CHRIS McGREAL: A big one.
AMY GOODMAN: — as you said, born in Cape Town.
CHRIS McGREAL: Yes, a big. So, they’ve all emerged with, essentially, from what I can make out, the same philosophy. And, of course, that’s only been reinforced by their success. They’re convinced, obviously, of their own genius and worth, and that government, whether it’s South African government or, in this case, it seems to be, the U.S. government, is an obstacle to success.
AMY GOODMAN: And though we talked about it in Part 1, finally, Roelof Botha, making this little quartet, white men of a certain age together, and his history, also a part of the PayPal mafia?
CHRIS McGREAL: Yes, he’s part of it, and he’s been — he has not emerged as an open supporter of Trump. I’m not entirely sure what his personal views are on this. But he does have a very interesting background.
His grandfather was Pik Botha, who was the last foreign minister of apartheid South Africa. And Pik Botha’s job, essentially, was to go around the world, particularly the West, and assure them that apartheid was being amended, was being dismantled, when in fact it was in many ways — although what was known as petty apartheid, which was the routine discriminations, the segregation, was being dismantled, in fact, the political system was actually only reinforcing it, solidifying it. The government of the time cooked up a system of three parliaments that would represent different parts of the population, but — and give people who weren’t — some people who weren’t white a vote, but none of those people were Black. There was no Black parliament, partly because they were being pushed into the independent homelands. The idea was that they were no longer South African anyway.
So, Pik Botha went around trying to apologize and excuse for this system. And he was successful with, you know, conservatives. He saw a lot of Reagan and people. They loved him here, and the same with Thatcher in Britain. They saw them as the acceptable face of apartheid. And he was so deluded by the end. He was convinced. I remember meeting him during the era of the transition to democracy from apartheid. He was so convinced that he was indispensable to the system that Mandela would have to appoint him foreign minister, which he duly did not.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you say the background of all these men’s families was fleeing Mandela’s South Africa?
CHRIS McGREAL: Well, they didn’t — some of them left before. I mean, it’s worth noting that Elon Musk left in 1988 at the age of 18, just as he would have become eligible to be drafted into the South African army, as all white males were at that point, which might have led him to fight the Border War that I was talking about in Angola against SWAPO, or it might have led him into the townships, which at that point were in complete ferment. And, you know, you had a huge amount of civil unrest in South Africa at that point. The country had largely become ungovernable. It was under a state of emergency, and the white troops were trying to keep some form of order in the Black townships, like Soweto. He left before he had to do any of that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, very interestingly, for people who aren’t aware, Elon Musk had a company called X.com. It was an online bank. It merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The merged company was renamed PayPal in 2001. And you have all of these guys who you’ve just laid out — well, I think Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital — but now key players. And that brings us to Trump’s order on Friday to cut off all aid to South Africa and offer refugee status in the United States to the white South Africans who are, quote, “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” But, interestingly, many in the right-wing white lobby say they want to stay and focus on ending Black majority rule. This is Flip Buys, the chairperson of what’s called the Solidarity union.
FLIP BUYS: We might disagree with the ANC, but we love the country. As in any community, there are individuals who wish to immigrate, but the repatriation of Afrikaners as refugees is not a solution for us. We want to build a future in South Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: So, he is speaking in front of a sign that says “AfriForum.” Put this in context. And what about Afrikaners saying, “No, this is our land. We don’t want to come to the United States”?
CHRIS McGREAL: Well, AfriForum is backpedaling furiously now, because there’s been a huge backlash in South Africa from people who blame it for this situation. In fact, some people have accused it of treason. But if you look at what AfriForum was saying just a decade ago, and certainly in 2018, when people like Kallie Kriel, who was head of the AfriForum, and others were coming to the United States, they were claiming there was a white genocide. They were claiming there was a war on white people in South Africa. And they were essentially trying to characterize the post-apartheid era of one of oppression of Afrikaners, that they were the true victims of it.
And this is — they’re not alone in this. There had been a phenomenon, ever since the end of apartheid, of Afrikaners painting themselves as victim. There was a song emerged in the 1990s called “De la Rey,” and it’s very popular with Afrikaners. It’s sung in bars and rugby matches. And de la Rey was a famous general who fought to the bitter end against the British in the Boer War, the Second Boer War in the early 20th century, which the Afrikaners then lost. And this song essentially is an attempt to take Afrikaners back to a time when they were the victims, when it was their women and children dying in the British concentration camp, when they were the people who were oppressed. And it conjures up this Boer general, who — he may be losing the war, but he’s going to fight to the last, a bitter ender.
And this is how they’ve been characterizing themselves, some of them. And AfriForum is part of that kind of attempt to rewrite history and make out that they’re this minority that has long been persecuted, not just by the post-apartheid era, but by the British, and they have a long history, and apartheid was just a means of survival — all they were trying to do was to keep themselves and their culture alive.
It has had one other effect, which they hadn’t expected and has alarmed them, is that in all the orders that have been given out canceling aid and agreements, one of them affects agricultural products being imported to the United States, which have generally been duty-free as a means of helping Africa. One result is that their own products are no longer being imported duty-free into the United States. So, these white South African farmers, who have been complaining of oppression, will now actually be being hit with tariffs or regular duties, and so it’s going to cost them financially, which is one of the reasons they’re so upset by it and pretending that it was nothing to do with them.
AMY GOODMAN: Guardian reporter Chris McGreal. He was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian during the last years of apartheid through 2002.
We did this interview in early February. Over the past two months, Trump has suspended aid to South Africa, expelled the South African ambassador and offered refugee status to white South Africans, claiming South Africa’s discriminating against the white minority. Trump has also just nominated Leo Brent Bozell to be U.S. ambassador in South Africa. Bozell’s son was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for his role in the January 6th insurrection, before he was pardoned by President Trump. One note on Elon Musk’s family: Maye Musk is Elon’s mother, not his grandmother.
Uncle Sam and Il Duce
Well that didn’t take long. Less than three months into the second Trump administration and we’re already in uncharted waters. An administration in open defiance of the courts on multiple fronts. The big showdown between the ostensibly co-equal branches of the US government is underway. No, not a showdown between the executive branch and the legislative branch. The Republican controlled congress has already enthusiastically given up its authority on a range of issues including tariffs. No, this is the big showdown between the executive and judicial branches. The kind of showdown that many of Trump’s closest allies have
long advocated, including his vice president, with the goal of establishing the Unitary Executive, an executive branch that is de facto the supreme branch of the US government.
And as we’re going to see, it’s a showdown that the Trump administration has already effectively won, at least in the sense that the administration is now in open defiance of multiple court orders and appears intent on remaining that way. Including a direct Supreme Court order. Yes, the Trump administration is already openly defying the Supreme Court. But not just the Supreme Court.
But as we’re also going to see, it’s not just that the Trump administration operating a strategy of open defiance in an apparent push to assert the executive branch’s supremacy. The particular cases where the Trump administration is defying the courts are all centered around Trump’s mass deportation policies, a policy area where the Trump administration has been pondering some extremely constitutionally questionable policies. Policies that, as experts warn, could easily be turned against virtually anyone, including citizens, once unleashed. Policies that are normally intended for use exclusively during times of war or insurrection, like the Alien Enemies act or the Insurrection Act, both of which have already been invoked by the Trump administration as part of an apparent ‘war’ on immigration.
Yes, the Insurrection Act — which would allow for the deployment of military forces for domestic law enforcement — has already been invoked by President Trump, on January 20, his first day in office for this second term, under the pretense of combating the ‘invasion’ of undocumented immigrants at the US Southern Border. And while the invocation of the Insurrection Act hasn’t yet resulted in the deployment of the military, that could change very soon following a report to be delivered to Trump on April 20 on the status of the situation at the US southern border. The report is to be authored by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, two individuals who are certain to provide Trump with exactly the kind of ‘update’ he desires. In other words, the domestic deployment of the US military could be coming. Soon. And, again, as experts warn, there’s going to be nothing stopping President Trump was redirecting those military forces towards anyone else he deems to be a ‘threat’, including those who choose to protest these policies.
And then there’s Trump’s March 15 invocation of the Alien Enemies act, targeting members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang that Trump asserts is ‘invading’ the US. It was that invocation that served as the pretext for a number of deportations that have already resulted in court cases. And court rulings. And now in open defiance of those court rulings. As a result, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court in the DC just ruled that there is “probable cause” to find the administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his order to immediately pause any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
Now, as we’re going to see, the Supreme Court ended up throwing a curve ball at Judge Boasberg with a subsequently ruling that concluded that the deported Venezuleans did not have the proper legal standing to bring their case before Judge Boasberg’s DC courts and instead would have to be brought to in courts from where they were deported (e.g. Texas). But despite that Supreme Court intervention, Judge Boasberg has concluded that the Trump administration still acted in open defiance of his explicit order before that Supreme Court ruling. That’s where things stand in just one of the cases of open defiance of the courts.
And then there’s the Supreme Court’s other ruling. A unanimous ruling ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, someone who was deported to El Salvador despite legal rulings barring his deportation to that country. As is now clear, the Trump administration is just going to ignore that Supreme Court ruling too. This is where we are.
But these acts of open defiance are just part of the authoritarian witches brew currently simmering in the executive branch. Because as we’ve seen, the Trump administration has been given a lot of ideas about additional powers and schemes it can deploy. For example, recall how back in February we got reports of a proposal being floating by Erik Prince for the creation of a private army that would be deputized with immigration enforcement powers. Including powers to round up immigrants and send them to privately run “processing camps” where detainees would be run through an expedited legal process of determining whether or not they are eligible for deportation. As Prince argued, the only way Trump could possibly deport 12 million immigrants within the first two years of his term would be for a massive private expansion of immigration enforcement authority. Steve Bannon has already endorsed the plan. It came with a proposed price tag of around $25 billion.
Well, Erik Prince is back with the a new privatized immigration enforcement proposal. A proposal specifically designed to deal with the legal hurdles associated with the deportation of immigrants to El Salvadoran ‘super-jails’: turn parts of the jails in ‘US territory’, so they won’t be considered to be deported off of American soil. In addition, Prince recommended the invocation of the Alien Enemies act to help get around other legal obstacles. Now, as we can see, just because Trump invoked the Alien Enemies act doesn’t mean he can act outside the bounds of judicial review. And yet, as we are now learning with this open defiance of the courts, Trump really can operate outside the bounds of judicial review. What are the courts going to do? In other words, the invocation of the Alien Enemies act wasn’t actually need after all to get around these legal hurdles. Ignoring the courts was apparently an option the whole time.
So would the US be administering the El Salvadoran jails declared ‘US soil’? Nope. The ‘US soil’ would be leased back to El Salvador which would run the prison. But what about concerns about the treatment of these prisoners at the hands of El Salvadoran policies? Well, there’s a plan for that too: the proposal urges the Homeland Security secretary Noem to “suspend the ICE detention standards” to avoid questions about detention standards established by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Prisons. Problem solved.
Overall, the proposal is far smaller than the $25 billion scheme to deport 12 million immigrants in two years. The plan is for Prince’s new firm, 2USV, to facilitate the handling and logistics of gathering “100,000 of the worst criminal offenders” from US prisons, holding them at a 10,000-person detention camp and flying them to El Salvador. The plan also included giving 2USV access to the government’s immigration files from law enforcement agencies to determine detainees’ immigration status.
It’s unclear how much Prince’s scheme would cost since there was no budget in the proposal viewed by journalists. But it sounds like negotiations have already begun with both the Trump administration and the government of El Salvador. This is a plan with momentum.
And, again, as experts keep warning, once such a scheme is deployed against immigrants there’s going to be very little stopping the Trump administration was expanding these operations to citizens and his political enemies. Especially if these El Salvadoran jails are considered ‘US soil’, allowing the administration to argue that no ‘extraordinary renditions’ have taken place. We really are in uncharted waters. Or at least uncharted from the perspective of a government operating from a system of checks and balances. The fascists in the Trump administration are presumably very comfortable operating in these post-constitutional waters:
“Ignoring court orders is a completely different ballgame, and a very rare one, as many legal scholars note with increasing alarm. That’s why people who say Trump should do that, like Vice President JD Vance, have to go back to an 1832 case to find a precedent.”
The US has been dealing with growing executive branch power grabs for decades. But openly defying Supreme Court orders really is uncharted territory. The kind of uncharted territory that adds a chilling context to the contempt proceedings just launched against Trump administration by Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg. This is a much broader mode of contempt:
“Criminal or civil contempt proceedings against the federal government for disobeying a court order are complex and rare, and significant penalties even rarer. Any officials convicted of criminal contempt could be fined or jailed up to six months under a statute and federal court rule cited Wednesday by Boasberg.”
It’s getting serious. That much is clearly. What kind of ‘serious’ is more of an open question. Are we seriously looking at the possibility of Trump administration officials being fined or jailed for contempt of court? Or are we seriously looking at a deepening of this emerging constitutional crisis? After all, even if judge Boasberg rules that an official should be punished it’s very unclear the Trump administration will allow that to happen. Also note the dark irony of how this case also involves a Supreme Court ruling that ultimately removed this case out of Boasberg’s jurisdiction. A Supreme Court ruling that, we now know, the Trump administration would have presumably just ignored had it not been in the administration’s favor:
And on top of the additional contempt of the Supreme Court’s own ruling, there’s also the open contempt of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s ruling ordering officials to facilitate Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s return. That’s two US District judges AND the Supreme Court all being openly defied. And the Trump administration is clearly just getting warmed up:
Adding to the constitutional crisis is the fact that these deportations were justified by the administration after the March 15 invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, something only previously used during wartime:
And those ongoing acts of constitutional defiance by the Trump administration against the judicial branch brings us to the looming recommendations to be made to President Trump regarding one of the first declarations of his second term: the January 20th invocation of the Insurrection Act based on a declared ‘invasion’ by undocumented immigrants. On April 20, a report compiled on the status of the immigration situation at the US Southern Border will be delivered to President Trump. That report, to be authored by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, will provide Trump with the information he will use to determine whether or not “additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.” In other words, if that report declares there’s an ongoing ‘invasion’, get ready for the deployment of the military — like state national guards — on US soil for domestic law enforcement operations. And then also get ready for those military forces to be deployed against protesters. Because as experts warn, once Trump is given permission to unleash the military domestically, it will be up to him to determine when the ‘threat’ has ended and there will be little preventing him from expanding that ‘threat’ to anyone who opposes him:
“On that date, the president will receive a report from the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security “about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.” That act gives the president broad authority to use the military on American soil. As the Brennan Center explains, “The statute…is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.””
What will Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem conclude in their April 20 report to President Trump on the need to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807? Gee, what will this pair of sycophants conclude? It’s not exactly a mystery. What is more of an open question at this point is how long will it be before the powers invoked by the Insurrection Act end up being turned against Trump’s domestic opponents. Or “the enemy from within”, as Trump as put it last year. We know he’s looking for an opportunity. Will the invocation of the Insurrection Act to deport immigrants be the opening he’s been looking for?
And as experts warn, public protests against the invocation of the Insurrection Action against immigrants is itself likely to be used as a pretext for turning the military against those protesters. The troops will only be recalled after ALL the protests have ended and ALL the targeted immigrants and “radical left lunatics” have been rounded up. It’s the logical conclusion of Trump’s years of threats. It would almost be shocking if that isn’t the plan:
Also note how the Insurrection Act language includes the power to call forth militias. Might we see the deputization of the Proud Boys and other MAGA militias? The same ones that were heavily pardoned for their actions on January 6th? It’s hard to rule out at this point:
And that Insurrection Act constitutional peril brings us to one more horrible idea now under serious consideration. Because Erik Prince has a new proposal for the Trump administration: declare parts of the El Salvadoran jails “US soil” and then pay Prince’s company to round up, process, and deport immigrants to that ‘US jail’. So will US officials be operating the jail under this plan? Nope, it will still be El Salvadoran authorities running it, which is why the proposal also includes the recommendation that Kristi Noem “suspend the ICE detention standards” to avoid questions about detention standards established by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Prisons. Oh, and Prince also recommends the invocation of the Alien Enemies act to help get around legal hurdles. Hurdles that, as we now know, are already merely optional for an administration that is already operating outside of the boundaries of constitutional law:
“The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — as American territory.”
What a convenient offer: with all of the clamor over the shipping of immigrants to prisons in El Salvador and growing worries that US citizens will be next, we have Erik Prince pitching a plant to turns some of these prisons into US territory. Problem solved, right?
And as we can see, the proposal isn’t to have US authorities operating a prison in El Salvador. No, the plan is to have the land leased back to El Salvador to run the prison. And what about questions about the detention standards being adhered to by the El Salvadoran authorities? Well, there’s a plan for that too: the Homeland Security secretary is urged to “suspend the ICE detention standards” to avoid questions about detention standards. Beyond that, the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act by President Trump is suggested as another means of getting around these legal obstacle. An invocation that Trump did last month:
And while the article suggests its unclear how seriously the White House is considering Prince’s proposal, it looks pretty clear that the administration is VERY interested based on all of the actions and discussions thus far. We are literally told by Trump administration officials that the proposal is likely to be a top subject in the bilateral meetings with El Salvador at the White House next week. These plans are going to happen. Legal or not:
Finally, as the article reminds us, this is merely the latest power-grabbing proposal to the Trump administration by Prince’s new 2USV company in recent months. It was just back in February when 2USV was floating the plan for the creation of a private army that would be deputized with immigration enforcement powers. A private army that would round up immigrants and send them to privately run “processing camps”. Operating some sort of immigrant jail in El Salvador is almost like an extension of that initial proposal. Which is why we shouldn’t necessarily view these as separate proposals. There’s nothing preventing the creation of both private armies and ‘US jails’ in El Salvador:
How long before one of these judges finding the Trump administration in contempt ends up in a ‘US’ El Salvadoran jail? It’s an almost farcically grim question and yet that’s the path we’re on.
And while we don’t have a proposed budget, for this new plan, keep in mind that it’s going to be a lot easier to implement the $25 billion plan to create a private immigration army after Prince’s new 2USV company has already been deputized for this El Salvadoran rendition operation. And, in turn, a lot easier for this private domestic army to serve as Trump’s domestic ‘peacekeeping’ force after that. You know, in case the US military gets cold feet about going full fascist. Because, again, we might be in uncharted waters from the perspective of a functioning system of checks and balances. But this is very familiar territory for the fascists feverishly planning their next move.