What Trump and Hegseth Really Fear
Shows of Public Solidarity with the Vulnerable Must Be Extinguished by the State
Lucid is about big-picture thinking, and I have repeatedly anticipated major news organizations in the subjects I cover and the frames and language used in my essays. My June 5 post on DOGE’s entrenchment in the United States government anticipated a June 7 New York Times article, but also contained reflections on DOGE as a lawless vanguard drawn from my decades of thinking about Fascism.
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By now you have heard that President Trump has taken the exceptional step of deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles, on the grounds that any act of protest or violence directed at officials constitutes “a form of rebellion.”
As legal scholar Steve Vladeck writes, the federalization of 2000 California National Guard members to support Department of Homeland Security operations — including the ICE raids that have led people all over the country to turn out in support of those targeted—does not mean the Insurrection Act has been invoked. Those 2000 troops can only provide “force protection” and logistical support for ICE personnel. Anything more would be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
However, there is no question that Trump is accelerating the creation of a police state in America. To justify the escalation, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is parroting propaganda that is straight out of the authoritarian playbook in its creation of a fake emergency.
Hegseth’s X post from yesterday bears analysis. Note his internalization of Trump’s messaging style, where slogans are capitalized (Criminal Illegal Aliens) so that the public is conditioned to see all undocumented immigrants as criminals. Note, too, the classic authoritarian attempt to deliver a one-two psychological punch by evoking an enemy within (“Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil”) and an enemy without (“Foreign Terrorist Organizations”) which together are a “NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.”
And —the punchline—both of these enemies, and the “dangerous invasion,” are aided by a third party: the protesters who become “a violent mob” for peacefully (in almost all cases) contesting ICE. Thus it is “COMMON SENSE” to threaten the American public that “active duty Marines” will be mobilized against them next.
As I show in Strongmen, conjuring a “dangerous invasion” to justify states of exception and crackdowns that involve state security forces is one of the oldest authoritarian tricks. In Chile, the military dictatorship justified the mass repression that followed the 1973 coup by claiming they were defending the state against “foreign agitators” and “extremists” who had come over the border illegally.
This line (and lie) became a staple of the regime’s domestic propaganda and was repeated by Foreign Affairs Minister Ismael Huerta when he spoke to the UN General Assembly a month after the coup. No matter that the vast majority of those targeted were Chileans: the specter of foreign criminals flooding into the country proved useful to Augusto Pinochet, as it does now to Trump and his collaborators.
The real problem, for the Trump regime in the making, is that Americans are turning out in large numbers to defend the vulnerable by exercising their right to free assembly and protest.
Authoritarianism depends on breaking the horizontal bonds of solidarity and empathy that lead people to risk their safety to protest injustices against others. The massive and exaggerated deployment of state security personnel and the display of arms and uniforms is designed to frighten people into hiding. There is nothing stronger than solidarity shown publicly, which is why the state responds with outsized threat and violent acts.
Weak authoritarians fear empathy, a sense of justice and morality, love for others, and collective action. All they have is force and lies. They may feel immensely empowered right now, but those protesting them are on the right side of history. A reckoning will come for the aggressors as more Americans open their eyes to the criminal nature of this administration.
Trump has already gone after the media, judges, law-firms, universities, etc., - so this scenario was just a matter of time! I think that it’s quite possible that Trump has deliberately inserted some of his January 6th “hostages” inside some of these protests to deliberately stir-up trouble, - just to create a reason to release his goon-squad military to squash these protests! There have been MANY protests, rallies, and marches all over the country, that have been impactful and peaceful, - so this NOT an unexpected move from this autocrat’s playbook! We must continue to protest and march, - but go in groups and be careful!
Hopefully that reckoning will come with arrests and jail sentences for those involved. A sentence of 10 yrs would be perfect to repay all of us, for what this regime of hate has foisted on us these last 10 yrs of American life.