In his election victory speech early Wednesday morning, Nov. 6, standing before a wall of red-white-and-blue banners, Donald Trump cast his win as divine will: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said. “Now we’re going to fulfill that mission.” Never has the old saw “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” seemed more prescient.
His plans for mass deportations, severe cuts to social programs, and expanded military aggression are already in motion. Key Trump allies are openly threatening their political opponents with violence, while corporate backers like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy tout policies of “pain” — targeting essential social services for cuts and sanctioning servicing layoffs. And if social media outlets post warnings, Trump’s billionaire friends are in the process of buying up the most popular outlets and either closing them down or converting them into conservative mouthpieces.
Project 2025, the conservative policy and personnel program, is the road map “to finish the job” Trump started in his first term. The intent is to destroy the governing structures and norms of liberal democracy through mass purges of civil servants and others who are not Trump loyalists — and create something else. And that something else is autocracy, which is “fascism” using a softer term.
Trump is pursuing a well-worn playbook, one that has been fashioned by dictators he has admired, dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and China’s Xi Jinping. He’s already saying he is going to replace America’s independent civil service with Trump loyalists. The next thing autocrats do is go after the courts, the press, the social media outlets and the universities. Many of our fellow citizens have grown up with a false confidence that the United States is immune from this kind of democratic corrosion. Americans will have to wake up and recognize the threats Trump’s autocracy mean to our democracy.
We will have to watch out for Trump’s use of national “emergencies” to produce a power grab. Emboldened by his courts, whose membership he has named and over which he has increasingly demonstrated control, he will “create” new states of emergency. You know the type, “The world is falling apart. I have got to do A, B, and C.” And his courts will say, “Yeah, of course you have the right to do it. You’ve defined an emergency. Go ahead, do what you need to do.”
There’s a real danger of Americans losing the rule of law. The defense of democratic rights and the social interests of all Americans cannot be entrusted to those who are responsible for Trump’s victory. The Democratic Party, so far, has demonstrated no plan to resist Trump’s goals. But Americans must or else America will slip under the cloud of autocracy and fall victim to fascism.
Jeanné Schulte Matthews, Oak Park