'MAGA' Will Be A Synonym For Fascists For Generations To Come

The term “Nazi” has devolved into a derogatory catch-all term for anyone that anyone else opposes, losing the powerful meaning it is meant to have through dilution. It is so over-used as to have become the subject of Godwin’s law, which states “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” It will, years from now, be replaced by comparisons between MAGAs and Trump.

Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Levitt stated, for the record, that Trump has floated the idea several times of deporting American citizens, and is simply looking for a legal way to do so. If there were one to be found, I am sure they would have used it by now. It is becoming increasingly clear, though, that they have little intention of continuing the pretence of legality.

This week’s visit to the White House by the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele, has absolutely laid to rest any doubt about Trump’s intentions with regard to democracy, the rule of law, and his desire to rendition American residents and citizens to El Salvador.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadorian immigrant who had been specifically banned by American courts from being deported, but they did so anyway, is still there. President Bukele flatly refused to even consider returning him to the US, describing him as a terrorist, though he has faced no charges and has no record. The Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s return, which the President is ignoring, pointing to a line in the same ruling that also says the court cannot impede on the President’s jurisdiction over foreign policy.

State Terror

Trump told Bukele on Monday, publicly, that the El Salvadorians will need to build at least five more facilities to receive “home-growns;” that is, American citizens.

The stage is set for the use of foreign detention centres specifically designed to be beyond the legal reach of the American court system. Detention without due process beyond the rule of law, beyond the reach of the courts, has a term. They are known as “concentration camps.”

In making it clear that Bukele has no intention of ever returning prisoners in those camps, this inevitably means that they are de facto death camps. There is no other evident way to leave if even a Supreme Court order cannot extract a prisoner placed by the United States government. The United States, incidentally, is paying El Salvador $6 million per year to host these prisoners in squalid conditions.

Image from inside the El Salvadorian prison now being used by the US, shared by the presidential office of the government of El Salvador in 2021.

Now if you’re expecting the other two branches of government — Congress and the judiciary — to salvage what’s left of American democracy, the news isn’t a whole lot better.

Congress has the power to shut down everything Trump is doing by impeaching him and his acolytes and removing them from office. They won’t, because Republicans in Congress nearly universally would rather save their titles than their country, and Trump’s market manipulation is making for a fairly profitable gravy train.

The judiciary won’t, either, for two reasons. One, before Trump returned to power, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court issued a ruling in one of his cases stemming from last time around stating that anything a president does in his capacity as president is legal by virtue of his office, referred to in American public discourse as the “official acts” exemption. And in the Garcia case, the Supreme Court enshrined limitless jurisdiction for the President as soon as you are outside of the territory of the United States, declaring “As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs.”

In short, as long as the Trump administration’s forces take people outside of the territory of the country, there are no laws that apply. Extrajudicial executions? Do them in international waters. Rendition to foreign concentration camps? Make sure they’re on the plane before the courts can intervene.

If judges do have the courage to rule against the administration, though, they can expect unrequested pizza delivers to their homes and those of their children, an unmistakable method of intimidation for which no law exists, which says, clearly, “we know where you live.”

This level of lawless totalitarianism is outside of the experience of the United States and most of its citizens. With the poor state of American education, particularly where it comes to teaching history only as a study of American supremacy and its self-perceived repeated role in saving the world, there is little recognition of what is taking place.

For those of us in neighbouring countries who spent decades believing we were allies, the existential danger stretches over our borders. The risk of having a Trump shill like Pierre Poilievre running for Prime Minister of our country cannot be overstated; Anschluss happened before.

Students of a more comprehensive understanding of recent history recognise exactly where this is going. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law in this on-line conversation, the United States is very far along the road to following Hitler’s model of Nazi rule.

But with that term having lost effectiveness through overuse and misuse, we need only recognise that the country is run by Trump and his MAGAs. It is — or will soon be — a name and a term of equivalent meaning.