[ In the next year, anything could happen. Donald Trump, could go
down, he could be convicted of one or more felonies. He could lose the
GOP nomination. Or, a return would change Make America Great Again
(MAGA!) to Make America Fascist Again (MAFA!)]
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MAKE AMERICA FASCIST AGAIN (MAFA!) – THE FUTURE IF DONALD TRUMP
RETURNS TO THE OVAL OFFICE  
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Clarence Lusane
December 5, 2023
TomDispatch [[link removed]]


*
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_ In the next year, anything could happen. Donald Trump, could go
down, he could be convicted of one or more felonies. He could lose the
GOP nomination. Or, a return would change Make America Great Again
(MAGA!) to Make America Fascist Again (MAFA!) _

Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the
Prescott Valley Event Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona on October 4,
2016, Photo by Gage Skidmore / flickr

 

On February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066
[[link removed]].
It initiated a Department of Defense program that resulted in the
rounding up and incarceration of about 122,000 individuals of Japanese
descent. They were to be placed in federal “relocation centers”
that would popularly become known as “internment camps.” As it
happened, they were neither. They were prisons set up to house and so
violate the civil and human rights of a despised and racially
different group defined as “the enemy.”

Although that executive order did not, in fact, mention a specific
ethnic or racial group, it was clearly understood that the prisons
were not being established for citizens or residents of German or
Italian descent, the other two nations then at war with the United
States. While not a single person
[[link removed]] of
Japanese ancestry was found to have spied on this country or to have
committed acts of sabotage against it, pro-Mussolini and pro-Hitler
demonstrations, rallies, and propaganda had been commonplace. Before
the war, fascist groups
[[link removed]] had
been allowed to organize and spread propaganda from coast to coast.
Some even had influence over and alliances with members of Congress,
mainstream journalists, and well-known scholars.

Such a travesty of justice was not just being pushed by Roosevelt, one
of the most liberal presidents in American history, but by notables
like California judge Earl Warren (later to become a liberal Supreme
Court justice) and renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow.

Although lawsuits challenging the prison camps were filed, the Supreme
Court allowed them to continue to operate. More than half of those
incarcerated were U.S. citizens. None had been charged with any
crimes. Often under the banner (made popular again in our time) of
“America First,” far-right, racist policies had been put in place
and millions suffered from them.

The openly discussed basis for unity in those years was, at least in
part, opposition to non-Aryans and non-Protestants, whether they were
Japanese, Jewish, or African American.

In 1981, 36 years after World War II ended with the atomic bombing of
two Japanese cities, a Presidential Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians issued a report
[[link removed]] making clear that the
imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent in such striking numbers
“was not justified by military necessity, and the decisions which
followed from it… were not driven by analysis of military
conditions. The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions
were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political
leadership.”

 TRUMP THREATENS

It’s important to keep this history in mind since Donald Trump and
his MAGA associates are planning to emulate it on a grand scale in a
second (and what they hope will be a never-ending) administration.
Promises of new “camps,” should The Donald be elected a second
time in 2024, are already pouring out of Trumpworld. These would be
“huge camps” for migrants near the border with Mexico, as
the _New York Times_ reported recently
[[link removed]],
“to detain people while their cases are processed and they await
deportation flights.” To ensure that Congress has no direct role in
funding them, they will be built and operated with money taken
directly from the military budget.

Just to be clear, Trump isn’t against all immigrants. Anything but.
After all, he married two, one from the Czech Republic
[[link removed]] and
the other from Slovenia
[[link removed]],
countries that most Americans would have to google to find on a map of
Europe. Instead, the targets of the pending Trumpian anti-immigrant
tsunami will, of course, be individuals and families from the Global
South. The racism embedded in such a future effort isn’t beside the
point, it _is _the point.
 

[[link removed]]

BUY THE BOOK
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Trump’s former adviser and fellow xenophobe, Stephen Miller, stated
that such a new administration would build “camps” — think:
prisons — that could house up to a million undocumented immigrants
while preparing them for mass deportations. As he told the _New York
Times_, “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the
slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast
arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration
crackdown. The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s
happening.”

And rest assured about one thing: the next Trump administration
won’t just go after undocumented immigrants trying to enter the
country. It will build an unprecedented gulag system to round up and
deport millions of people of color, one that would be unimaginable if
those undocumented immigrants came from Canada or Denmark. The Trump
gang has stated
[[link removed]] that
they will end TPS (temporary protected status), reinstate the former
president’s Muslim ban, reimpose and expand health restrictions on
asylum seekers, revoke visas for foreign students who participated in
protests against recent Israeli actions, shut down the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and deport immigrants who had
been allowed into the United States for humanitarian reasons. 

Mind you, Trump proposed or tried to institute much of this while
still in office, only to be thwarted by his administration’s
ineptitude, Democratic resistance, grassroots organizing, and the
courts. If, in the wake of the 2024 election, the GOP were to gain
control over both chambers of Congress as well as the White House —
a formula that would ensure the appointment of ever more
Trump-friendly federal judges — success (as he defines it) will be a
given for many of these efforts.  

When Trump tells
[[link removed]] his
followers that “Our cruel and vindictive political class is not just
coming after me — they are coming after YOU,” he means that he
hates the very same people they do and will provide the retribution
for all the harm supposedly done to them by immigrants (of color),
Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native peoples, feminists, and other
enemies.

THE FASCIST AIMS OF AMERICA FIRST

While Trump is the likely GOP nominee in 2024, the election is still a
year away and any number of unforeseen developments could lead to
someone else being nominated. At this moment, the other potential
Republican candidates are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former U.N.
Ambassador Nikki Haley, business executive Vivek Ramaswamy, and former
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie excepted, there isn’t a
sliver of policy difference between any of them and Trump. And
notably, Christie supported
[[link removed]] Trump
for nearly all of his administration. In addition, each of them would
need the former president’s far-right MAGA base to win the
nomination.

Trump’s people have cloaked themselves in an “America First”
aura without in any way owning that as a meme. In fact, it harks back
both to the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the
American fascist movement of the 1930s. By the mid-1920s, the KKK had
ballooned to between three and eight million members and, as scholar
Sarah Churchwell notes in her remarkable book
[[link removed]]_ Behold,
America: A History of America First and the American Dream_, it had
already adopted “America First” as a motto. 

While both Democratic President Woodrow Wilson and Republican
Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge had used the term
earlier to promote American isolationism, nativism, and
“exceptionalism,” it was the KKK that truly embraced its white
supremacist core ethos. As one example, 1,400 Klansmen chanted
“America First” as they marched in a Memorial Day parade in
Queens, New York, in 1927. And consider it more than ironic that, as
Churchwell documents, their presence evolved into a riot that led to
the arrests of five Klansmen, one bystander (by mistake), and under
circumstances that remain less than clear, Fred Trump, the father of
the future 45th president of the United States. 

In 1940, the America First Committee (AFC
[[link removed]])
was founded. At its height, it would have more than 800,000 members.
Initially, it was seen as isolationist — that is, against American
entry into the war already being waged in Europe — and even
anti-imperialist. As a result, its ranks initially included liberals,
progressives, and socialists, as well as conservatives, libertarians,
and avowed fascists. The latter, however, would eventually come to
dominate, especially after the nation’s leading anti-Semite and
pro-Hitler celebrity, pilot Charles Lindbergh
[[link removed]],
became its most popular spokesperson. The fascist-loving AFC then
joined other U.S.-based far-right groups in celebrating German Nazism
and Italian Fascism, while making America First their rallying cry.

Of course, the historically challenged Donald Trump undoubtedly
doesn’t know much, if anything, about this history. But give him
full credit. From the beginning, with the instincts of both a fascist
and a white nationalist, he intuitively grasped the mobilizing value
of seemingly patriotic but xenophobic slogans. Count on one thing,
though: some of his allies know all about the noxious roots of
“America First” and still embrace it. Such jingoistic patriotism
has, in fact, become a thinly veiled cover for a revised and expansive
contemporary version of white nationalism.

The proliferation of America First groups run by former Trump staffers
and supporters is daunting. The dizzying array of them includes
America First Legal, America First Action, America First Policies,
America First Policy Institute, America First P.A.C.T. (Protecting
America’s Constitution and Traditions), America First
Foundation/America First Political Action Conference, and America
First 2.0, the latter a contribution from Republican presidential
aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy.

America First Legal [[link removed]] is run by Stephen Miller
and promotes itself as an alternative to the American Civil Liberties
Union, but its deepest focus is on defending whiteness and amplifying
Miller’s white nationalist proclivities. During the 2022 midterm
election cycle, it typically produced radio and television ads like
this fact-free
[[link removed]] one:

“When did racism against white people become OK? Joe Biden put white
people last in line for Covid relief funds. Kamala Harris said
disaster aid should go to non-white citizens first. Liberal
politicians block access to medicine based on skin color. Progressive
corporations, airlines, universities all openly discriminate against
white Americans. Racism is always wrong. The left’s anti-white
bigotry must stop. We are all entitled to equal treatment under the
law.”

Decrying (fake) racism against whites fits well with Trump’s
hysterical, desperate accusations
[[link removed]] that
Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, New York
Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin
Bragg are all “racists” out to prosecute him because he’s white,
not because he broke the law in their jurisdictions. (So far, none of
Trump’s Black supporters have echoed that call — perhaps a bridge
too far even for them — but Miller and others on the far right
certainly have.)

Linda McMahon, former head of the Small Business Administration under
Trump, is now the president of the America First Policy Institute
[[link removed]], which claims that its guiding
principles are “liberty, free enterprise, national greatness,
American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the
American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families, and
communities in all we do.” That well-funded group takes on policy
and culture war issues. You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn
that it recently held a gala at — yes! — Mar-a-Lago.

The America First P.A.C.T. [[link removed]], led
by former Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, focuses on
running state candidates on a far-right MAGA agenda and prioritizes
raising funds for GOP candidates. Blasted across its website is the
phrase “A weak republican is more dangerous than a democrat.” Ward
is under investigation
[[link removed]] in
Arizona for her alleged involvement in a 2022 fake-elector plot
there. 

Perhaps this country’s best-known white nationalist (and former
Trump dinner guest) Nick Fuentes is the founder and president of
the America First Foundation [[link removed]].
It sponsors the annual America First Political Action Conference, an
unabashed gathering of white supremacists and other far-right and
extremist elements. Fuentes founded AFPAC because he thought the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was too moderate.
However, the political distance between the more traditional CPAC and
AFPAC has narrowed. Noted Islamophobe Michelle Malkin
[[link removed]],
for example, spoke at both in 2019, as did conservative
journalist Jon Miller
[[link removed]] in
2020. Neither Malkin, who is Asian, nor Miller, who is African
American, called out Fuentes and other bigots at the conferences on
their racism.

The 2022 AFPAC conference
[[link removed]] featured
a who’s who of contemporary American extremists, including disgraced
former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, defeated Arizona election-denier
Kari Lake, longtime founder and publisher of the white
supremacist _American Renaissance_ Jared Taylor, Florida-based
Islamophobe and anti-immigrant warrior Laura Loomer, extremist
activist Milo Yiannopoulos, and former
too-toxic-for-even-the-House-Republicans Representative Steve King.
Current Republican congress members who have spoken at AFPAC include
(you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn) Representatives
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. 

VIOLENCE AS POLITICS

Like fascists and racists of old, Donald Trump and the America First
crowd are demonizing and dehumanizing their opponents. In October
1923, Klan leader and Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans gave a fiery
anti-immigrant speech
[[link removed]] in
Texas railing against the “polluting streams of pollution from
abroad” that immigrants were bringing to the United States. This
October, exactly 100 years later, Trump gave an interview
[[link removed]] to
the far-right _National Pulse_ in which he declared that immigrants
are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

In his 2024 campaign, he’s not only planning to go after immigrants,
but a broader group of liberal and progressive citizens and even
Republicans who stand in the way of his fevered lust for heading a
genuinely authoritarian government. If he returns to the Oval Office,
he’s already declared
[[link removed]] that
he’ll “root out” what he’s called “communists, Marxists,
fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the
confines of our country.”

“Vermin” (a classic Hitlerian
[[link removed]] word
choice) and those who would “poison” the nation must be wiped out,
annihilated. Responding to criticism of such language, Trump campaign
spokesperson Steven Cheung called
[[link removed]] the
very notion “ridiculous,” even as he reinforced the point by
insisting that the former president’s critics suffered from “Trump
Derangement Syndrome” and “their entire existence will be crushed
when President Trump returns to the White House.”

None of what Trump and his allies plan to do is likely to be passively
accepted. In fact, they’re already anticipating a massive popular
revolt and preparing for it. As the _Wall Street Journal_ noted
[[link removed]],
in 2020 Trump first contemplated invoking the Insurrection Act, which
allows a president to employ the military to enforce federal laws
under special circumstances, to break up protests related to the
murder of George Floyd and other African Americans by the police and
racists. He was talked down. Its use was then suggested
[[link removed]] by
Trump ally Roger Stone and evidently considered by the president as a
way to “put down” any “leftwing protests” related to the 2020
election. Again, the idea went nowhere.

The third time, however, could be the deadly charm. The _Washington
Post_ has reported
[[link removed]] that
Trump is now considering invoking the Insurrection Act on his first
day back in office. One thing is certain: should he somehow, despite
four criminal indictments and multiple trials, return to the White
House on January 20, 2025, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

_Copyright 2023 Clarence Lusane. Cross-posted with permission. May
not be reprinted without permission from TomDispatch
[[link removed]]._

_[CLARENCE LUSANE, a TomDispatch regular
[[link removed]], is a political
science professor and director of the International Affairs program
and majors at Howard University, and Independent Expert to the
European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance. His latest book
is Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight
for Racial Justice and Democracy
[[link removed]] (City
Lights).]_

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
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Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
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final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
[[link removed]], and
Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]],
as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]], John
Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
[[link removed]], and
Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
[[link removed]]._

* Donald Trump
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* Right-wing agenda
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