Excerpt:
Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force—a military coup, that sort of thing. Second, a bit more stealthily, and legally—through legislation, executive decrees, and court decisions that hand more power to the leader.
Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.
That’s exactly what’s happening with Social Security. The Washington Post reported this week that the SSA is breaking down: Its website “crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” A Wall Street multimillionaire who probably doesn’t need his Social Security check and who has pledged that he will “100 percent work with DOGE” has already cut around 12 percent of the staff and doesn’t look like he’s stopping there.
In other words: Start by lying about the agency, with absurd and false claims about 140-year-olds cashing checks. Then wreck the agency so that its service becomes crap. Let public anger at it build. And in time, they can just dismantle it and privatize the greatest social insurance system ever devised by this government and put people’s financial fate in the hands of rich cronies. If that’s not chaos fascism, I don’t know what is.
Trump probably doesn’t have some secret plan. As we know, he doesn’t think far enough ahead. Elon Musk, however, probably does. It’s no accident he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” That statement either (1) reflected his ignorance of how both Social Security and Ponzi schemes work or (2) was made in full knowledge of how both work—that is, he knew it was nonsense, but he said it anyway because his goal is to destroy Social Security.
This applies to just about everything Trump and Musk are doing.
It applies even to Signalgate. Trump has contempt for rules and procedures, and so he appoints unqualified stooges like Pete Hegseth to run the world’s largest military, who share that contempt—who think being tough means showing the world that they can do anything they want with no consequences. Again—ignore the law, trash the rules, establish that procedure is whatever you say it is. Chaos fascism.
And it will almost certainly go unpunished. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that the Justice Department wasn’t the least bit interested in looking into it. Some GOP lawmakers are making noises about the need for an investigation of some kind. But really—are the GOP’s leaders in Congress, Senator John Thune and Representative Mike Johnson, really likely to green-light an investigation? Seems pretty unlikely to me, unless it’s done with the secret, express goal of exonerating all involved.
Some senators say the Pentagon inspector general should conduct a probe. OK, we might get that. But remember that Trump has already fired 17 inspectors general, so who’d really care if he fired one more? Break the rules, and then ensure that there’s no accountability. Chaos fascism.
Article continues in depth
I like the term chaos facism to describe it, but the author is looking too deeply into things. Trump thinking the way the author believes would imply that Trump does things like think or plan.
Trump is only taking the advice Steve Bannon gave him, which is some pretty damn good advice if you’re looking to do an authoritarian takeover. Ignore laws. Do whatever you want and let the justice system try to keep up with you. Move so fast that the justice system, the media, and the people can’t keep up with it all so by the time they’re done even processing one thing, five more have made it completely under the radar. And on the chance that something does blow up in your face? Do something random, disruptive, and distracting that others have to deal with. Threaten to take over Tuvalu. Who cares why. Let everyone else be focused on figuring out what the hell you’re talking about and force them to spend time and resources dealing with that diplomatic disaster while you go back to whatever other things you actually care about. Did one of your cronies do something embarrasingly stupid? Just announce a 380% tax on coffee grounds or something. Not that you care about coffee. It’s just something to dangle out there in case the rubes start getting a little too uppity and need a distraction.
And that’s pretty much what Trump is doing. He does things so fast that the media and justice system can’t keep up with it all. Why do you think he’s pushing to eliminate nationwide injunctions? Because if one of his policies impacts a million people, he wants the justice system to have to deal with a million separate cases, not just one. And there’s only so much news that can be crammed on the front page of a website. Reporters can only push out so many Youtube clips.
And it works well.
How many colleges have bent the knee to Trump? If you’re just saying Columbia, you’re wrong. Harvard and Yale have done the same thing. It just flew under the radar. And by the time you’re reading this, other colleges may have done the same.
How many law firms have bent the knee to Trump? Not just the two reported in the media, but how many others have flown under the radar?
How many times has Trump directly ignored or defied a court order without consequence?
How many people have been illegally deported from the US without due process?
And if you answer those questions, are you 100% confident in your answer? Or do you think your answer may be too low?
That’s chaos facism. Make it so nobody even knows what the fuck is going on from one minute to the next, let alone be able to do something about it.