In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump has ripped apart the US constitution, purged “disloyal” officials from the government machine and is remaking the federal state in his image. This is effectively a coup by another name, backed by powerful tech corporations who have thrown in their lot with the president.
The US state machine is rapidly being transformed into a menacing apparatus that Trump and his acolytes direct for their own sordid purposes. L’etat, c’est moi is attributed to Louis XIV of France. Now it is Trump, a 21st century would-be absolute monarch, who declares: the state is me.
While Trump’s regime is still taking shape, it cannot be certain where it will come to rest. The fact is that a convicted felon, sociopath, transphobe, racist and crook is now running the country, threatening Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico and planning to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population of Gaza. He has launched an economic war with China, perhaps as a precursor to a shooting war over Taiwan.
Make no mistake, this is a watershed moment. A constitutionally-constructed political system dating back to the late 18th century – the first of its kind in world history – is being overwhelmed by far-right forces, including the world’s richest man who revels in giving Nazi-style salutes to Trump supporters.
You could not say that this is a fully-fledged fascist regime. But that certainly is the trajectory, evidenced by plans to forcibly deport millions of people and the shutting down of all federal programmes aimed at ensuring a government workforce that is representative of American society as a whole.
As Washington Post correspondent Naftali Bendavid wrote: “Trump is pushing one big idea: that America is a once-great, uniquely virtuous nation whose past has been betrayed by weak leaders and vicious adversaries.”
Trump claims that a “radical and corrupt establishment” has pursued “many betrayals”. This is straight out of the Nazi playbook. Bendavid added: “Trump has long deployed historically loaded phrases, such as his embrace of the term ‘America First’ — the slogan of a movement, often considered anti-Semitic and fascist-leaning, which opposed U.S. intervention against the Germans in World War II.”
Elon Musk has bypassed Congressional confirmation or oversight and acting as a private citizen has been given access to the data of tens of millions of Americans and access to government financial systems. The world’s richest man is acting for Trump who is plotting to take control of federal spending from Congress, which has enjoyed this power courtesy of the constitution itself.
As for the rule of law, Trump knows that he has the Supreme Court in his pocket. His attitude is that the law is what you interpret it to be. So, he believes, for example, that the birthright law which grants automatic citizenship to all children born in the US is unconstitutional and strikes it down. This is par for the course of the regime’s rejection of objective facts and reality in favour of “common sense” and conspiracy-based speculation.
As the United States descends from a liberal, representative capitalist democracy into an autocracy, Trump as head of the ‘family’ – the Godfather – is deploying his hitmen and women to remake the US state and make it work in the interests of himself and his business supporters.
Musk, whose ‘Department for Government Efficiency’ operates with a free hand, ruthlessly bypassing established procedures and workplace protections, has purged departments of ‘disloyal’ staff, sacked tens of thousands, is set on closing USAID and is apparently planning to shutter the Department of Education. Union leaders have denounced the moves as preparing the way for systemic corruption.
“Civil service protections keep the government honest, fair, transparent, accountable, and allow civil service employees to report fraud, waste, abuse, illegal activities and unethical activities. Once that is gone and they can no longer defend themselves or report illegal activity, you have full corruption of the executive branch,” said Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents around 110,000 federal workers in various agencies.
“The mood right now is one of fear and anxiety,” he added. “The fear that the executive branch is going to be taken over by very corrupt people and ask them to do very corrupt things. The general thought of these people are: they’re morons, they’re here for political reasons. They’re completely underqualified, don’t understand the government, and they certainly don’t care about the law and regulations – they are looking to evade all those.”
As part of this process, independent government department inspectors – who also owe their status to the constitution – were summarily dismissed from their posts.
The enforcement side of the state – the FBI, Justice Department and even the Central Intelligence Agency – is at the centre of the plan to make them responsible for carrying out the administration’s agenda under Trump’s direction. Attorneys involved on January 6 cases against the Trump-backed storming of Congress, have been fired from Justice, not before the president pardoned everyone convicted by the courts. Meanwhile, top FBI agents have been dismissed and there’s even talk of firing all CIA personnel and then rehiring the ones that will implement Trump’s agenda of creating an American empire from Gaza to Panama.
In a letter informing the attorneys of their termination, acting attorney general James McHenry wrote that their involvement on January 6 and other cases was the impetus for their firing. “Given your significant role in prosecuting the president,” McHenry wrote, “I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully.” One columnist remarked that once that kind of statement could get you fired. Not anymore
The Trump phenomenon is no distinctly American aberration but part of a wider, global break down of traditional political systems. So, it must be seen as a warning to every one of us, wherever we live. A combination of capitalist economic malaise and the disenchantment of large sections of the population with the status quo is driving right and far-right populism. He is a cardboard demagogue able to be a non-entity onto which people can project their frustrations and anger.
Dissatisfaction with the state and traditional parties for failing to protect living standards, jobs, public services, healthcare and take action to tackle accelerating climate change, has brought populists into government across Europe and now the United States. Their agenda is to create authoritarian rule and suppress dissent.
This is truly an end-of-history moment. A political system developed as a compromise between the classes no longer delivers and is being discarded. Capitalism can function without democracy, as history demonstrated in its early history and under fascist regimes in Europe and South America.
Opposition will not come from within traditional political formations. In the US, the Democratic Party failed to reach out to the working class and has basically sat on its hands while Trump’s people have defied the constitution.
The danger is everywhere, including the United Kingdom. The Starmer government continues to sidle up to Trump, declining to condemn even his threat to take over Gaza and drive out the Palestinians. Labour’s ministers are sweeping planning regulations aside in their desperate rush for economic growth. A third runway at Heathrow announced by Rachel Reeves is a typical example. Now cabinet office minister Pat McFadden has promised the sack for leading civil servants who fail to make departmental cuts. Trump will be pleased!
Meanwhile, activists who oppose Starmer’s policies are expelled or, in the case of former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and two other MPs, remain suspended for voting to end the two-child benefit cap. Starmer’s failure to create or even aspire to creating better conditions for workers has driven a right-wing backlash in the shape of Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which now heads some opinion polls.
The challenge is redoubling our efforts to create conditions for a more advanced assembly-based democracy that will replace the disintegrating capitalist state. That would enable us to establish and develop a political and economic alternative system that puts people into ownership and control. We have been warned. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times are not simply a changin’. They have already changed.
The Republican Party is not the party of Bush and Reagan. It has been transformed, like a Sci-Fi’s drama where key members of the ruling elite have been replaced by aliens with ill intent. Since the Tea Party movement [from 2007] it has progressively become a degenerate Farage type party or a one similar to those that have emerged in Italy or Germany. Ronald Reagan was the facilitator of globalisation, the friend of corporate capitalism. George Bush was his CIA director. There is a fascinating clip of Reagan denouncing Tariffs as damaging to the [capitalist] economy. Trump is nothing like that. So what do these new movements represent? The degeneration of capitalism in the post-globalisation, post-crash period and the ruling class’s difficulties in keeping power over ordinary people whose lives are getting worse and worse.
Yes it is a coup. Like Hitler, Trump is wasting no time in trying to transform the state into a force for carrying out his agenda—with threats and intimidation, backed up with action against any resistance. An ambush. How to stop him? The shock will hopefully find the people of the US finding a new voice and a new perspective for establishing their power. Or Trump and his billionaire friends will dig in and consolidate.