{"id":303982,"date":"2025-09-29T12:01:52","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=303982"},"modified":"2025-09-29T09:44:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:44:44","slug":"trumps-war-on-the-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/trumps-war-on-the-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s War on the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Ethnic Cleansing by Decree \u2014 by Mr. Fish\u00a0 (clowncrack.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Trump\u2019s newest presidential memoranda criminalizes critics of empire, capitalism, Christian nationalism, abuses by the state and those who fight racism and gender discrimination.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

29 Sep 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0Fascists, historically, are surprisingly candid about the world they intend to create. Those they target, despite this transparency, are surprisingly obtuse about what is coming.<\/p>\n

The most ominous warning to date from our homegrown fascists is the latest Presidential memo<\/a>, \u201cCountering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.\u201d It accuses any critic of law enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the American empire, capitalism, the Christian right, the persecution of immigrants and those that decry discrimination based on race and gender, as well as those who question white, male patriarchy, described as \u201ctraditional American views on family, religion, and morality,\u201d of fomenting \u201cviolent revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a declaration of war on the so-called \u201cradical left,\u201d those the Trump administration blames for \u201cheinous assassinations and other acts of political violence\u201d from the murder of the right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk to \u201cthe 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.\u201d The memo goes on to list the two assassination attempts against Trump.<\/p>\n

The memo, typical of the self-serving narratives favored by Trump, ignores the murder by a Christian nationalist of Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted murder of state senator John Hoffman and his wife.<\/p>\n

These \u201canti-fascists,\u201d the White House memo warns ominously, \u201chave created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo\u2019s definition of state enemies is by design amorphous, grounded in the fiction of phantom organizations bent on murder and sedition. The accusations are absurd. They are not based on evidence or verifiable fact. But, as in all totalitarian regimes, truth is whatever those in power declare it to be. This \u201ctruth\u201d justifies the crusade.<\/p>\n

The memo brazenly inverts the rule of law. It turns the law into an instrument of injustice. It uses the decorum of federal agencies, the courts and trials to legalize state crimes. It is grounded in magical thinking, bizarre conspiracy theories and a paranoia that sees the most tepid acts of dissent or criticism as treason.<\/p>\n

Those who defy the state will, I expect, be decapitated one by one. The forlorn hope that the state will tolerate those who obey will silence many who have already been condemned.<\/p>\n

\u201cUniversal innocence,\u201d Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, \u201calso gave rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they won\u2019t take<\/em> you? Maybe it will all blow over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority sit quietly and dare to hope,\u201d he writes. \u201cSince you aren\u2019t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It\u2019s a mistake!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDoes hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?\u201d Solzhenitsyn asks. \u201cIf the condemned man in every cell had ganged up on the executioners as they came in and choked them, wouldn\u2019t this have ended the executions sooner than appeals to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee? When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut wasn\u2019t everything foredoomed anyway, from the moment of arrest?\u201d he asks. \u201cYet all the arrested crawled along the path of hope on their knees, as if their legs had been amputated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Totalitarian regimes promulgate broad security decrees, from Stalin\u2019s Article 70 to the Nazis\u2019 Malicious Practices Act<\/a>, to give themselves the sweeping powers to indiscriminately target anyone.<\/p>\n

The memo lays out in chilling detail what I assumed in my column<\/a>, \u201cWe Are All antifa Now,\u201d was behind the Trump administration\u2019s designation of antifa as a terrorist group. The designation allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists.<\/p>\n

The memo says that state and federal agencies, adopting \u201ca new law enforcement strategy,\u201d will \u201cinvestigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.\u201d These \u201corganized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources\u201d will, the memo promises, be disbanded and uprooted.<\/p>\n

This is to be a preemptive war. It will be waged against those individuals \u2013 James Comey, John Bolton, George Soros and Reid Hoffman \u2013 and institutions, including the Democratic Party \u2013 which Stephen Miller has labeled<\/a> a \u201cterrorist organization\u201d \u2013 universities and the media, which threaten Trump\u2019s absolute grip on power.<\/p>\n

This is not simply a war on the left, which is a marginal and ineffective force in American society, but a war on the remnants of our liberal institutions and those that support them. Once these establishment institutions and their representatives are neutered those of us on the left will be next.<\/p>\n

The memo instructs Federal law enforcement agencies to detain, \u201cquestion and interrogate\u201d individuals suspected or accused of \u201cpolitical violence or lawlessness.\u201d It demands the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) strip organizations of their tax-exempt status if they are seen by the state as \u201cdirectly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism\u201d and report them to \u201cthe Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

I spent two years with the architects of our emergent fascism when I wrote my book, \u201cAmerican Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.<\/a>\u201d They do not hide their vision for America. They plan to make the legal system subservient to dogma. They hate the \u201csecular humanist\u201d society based on science and reason. They dream of making the Ten Commandments the basis of the legal system. They plan to teach Creationism or \u201cIntelligent Design\u201d in public schools and make education overtly \u201cChristian.\u201d They brand the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals, and those dismissed as \u201cnominal Christians\u201d \u2014 meaning Christians who do not embrace the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible \u2014 as deviants. These deviants are worthy only of being silenced, imprisoned or killed. They condemn government assistance programs, especially for the poor. The climate crisis is a hoax. They call for the federal government to be reduced to protecting property rights, \u201chomeland\u201d security and waging war. They want church organizations to run social-welfare agencies and schools. They demand the expansion of the death penalty to include \u201cmoral crimes,\u201d including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. They call for a return to white, male patriarchy by mythologizing the past. They demand women be denied contraception, access to abortion and equality under the law. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media, to them, are \u201cChristian.\u201d America is sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the \u201cChristian\u201d authorities, at home and abroad, are agents of Satan.<\/p>\n

These Christian fascists are incapable of dealing in the world of ideas, nuance and complexity. Stunted by emotional numbness and an inchoate rage, they are unable to communicate in any language other than threats and coercion. Diplomacy, scholarship, culture and journalism are an anathema. One\u2019s duty is to obey.<\/p>\n

These are the ideological underpinnings of this memo and the society those who authored it plan to create.<\/p>\n

Power in the age of Trump is based on blind personal loyalty. Rights are privileges that can be instantly revoked. Lies replace truth. Opinions replace facts. History is erased and rewritten. The cult of leadership replaces politics.<\/p>\n

Paranoia grips the ruling elite, composed of narcissists, buffoons and gangsters, who feed off conspiracy theories. They see mortal enemies everywhere and live in a hermetically sealed non-reality-based universe. They are creating a pseudo-democracy populated with pseudo-legislators, pseudo-courts, pseudo-journalists, pseudo-intellectuals, pseudo-Christians and pseudo-citizens.<\/p>\n

Fascists mean what they say. The rhetoric condemning the rest of us is not hyperbolic. They cannot be reasoned with. We cannot open channels of dialogue and communication. Our anemic and calcified democracy, including our bankrupt liberal institutions, cannot defeat them. Fascists are the swamp creatures that rise up out of all failed democracies.<\/p>\n

Our enemies intend to implement this dystopia. The question is not if, but when. How long before the iron bars slam shut and America as we know it disappears? How long before the state rounds us up and hauls us away?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say. But it won\u2019t be long.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for <\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Sep 2025\u00a0–\u00a0Trump\u2019s newest memoranda criminalizes critics of empire, capitalism, Christian nationalism, those who fight racism and gender discrimination. Fascists, historically, are candid about the world they intend to create. Those they target, despite this transparency, are surprisingly obtuse about what is coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":269548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[542,245,249,70],"class_list":["post-303982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-fascism","tag-fascist","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303985,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303982\/revisions\/303985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}