The Ugly Beast of American Authoritarianism

Last Sunday, Stephen Miller, the chief wingman of the new neo-imperialist Donald Trump, wrote an extraordinary article about X. For his brazen rewriting of history, it is worth reading in its entirety:

None of this is true: the colonial projects of the 18th and 19th centuries were never intended to make the natives rich and prosperous‚ any more than slavery was intended to improve the condition of slaves – a ridiculous and offensive position that supporters of the Lost Cause still maintain. Colonialism was – and still is – about using raw power to accumulate more power, more resources, more markets, more military bases, and cheap, expendable labor. Miller’s “reverse colonization,” or—to use language not borrowed from Nazis like Anders Breivik—a more liberal, raceless immigration system, never gave preferential treatment to new residents or naturalized citizens, but it still attracted labor, talent, investment, and dreamers from around the world.

Allowing more immigration was not – and is – not a matter of “self-punishment”; it is about maintaining the economic dynamism of countries. Immigrants – whether refugees, asylum seekers or other visa holders – are starting businesses, providing needed medical and home care skills, hiring daycare staff, and choosing crops that local populations have long decided they don’t want to pick. Remove immigration and eliminate immigrants, and you will end up with a smaller, meaner, narrower, poorer culture.

Of course, the fact that Miller’s white supremacist philosophy is based on lies and historically untenable claims should surprise no one. It is a political regime which, like all authoritarian regimes, feeds on disinformation and a Stalinist rewriting of history adapted to the needs of the moment. Witness efforts by the White House this week on the fifth anniversary of the Trump-inspired insurrection to transform the deadly MAGA mob into peace-loving protesters attacked by Capitol Police at the behest of Nancy Pelosi. There is a Goebbels-like quality to their awareness that if you simply repeat the big lie loudly enough and frequently enough, it will gain traction. They have adopted the Orwellian notion that if you use the levers of state power to maximize your propaganda, an incredibly large number of people will eventually accept that two plus two equals five.

For Lucan Way, a prominent professor of democracy at the University of Toronto who has written about America’s slide toward “competitive authoritarianism,” the Republican Party’s collaboration with Trump’s Jan. 6 rewrite is the clearest indication that the party as a whole has abandoned its commitment to democracy. “The Republican Party’s open embrace of authoritarianism is,” he said, “the most important fact of the American political system.”

Way believes that the United States has been functionally authoritarian since March, when Trump 2.0 began his assault on law firms that represented Democrats and advocacy organizations, as well as universities that the administration believed were too “woke” in their approach to academics. “In a democracy, we can oppose the government, and our careers don’t suffer. In an authoritarian regime, you have to worry about contracts, the possibility of a Justice Department investigation. That’s clearly the case in the United States.”

This week, the bigotry and authoritarianism of Miller, the staunch defender of Trump’s masturbatory aggrandizement fantasies, was on full display. In addition to adhering to Breivik’s filthy anti-immigration credo, he also espoused Hitler’s philosophy of international relations. “We live in a world, in the real world, that is ruled by force, that is ruled by force, that is ruled by power,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, in which he asserted that the United States would seize Greenland and its vast mineral resources, refusing to rule out the use of military force to achieve that goal. “These have been the iron laws of the world since the dawn of time. »

In other words, we are big and have a military with an almost unlimited capacity to inflict harm, so – whether you are allies like Denmark or long-time enemies like Venezuela – bend to our will or expect to get kicked.