Jonathan P. Baird

Eleven years ago, when Donald Trump was first running for President, I wrote in the Concord Monitor about the question of whether he and his MAGA movement were fascist. At that time, I recognized that the word could just be considered a form of name-calling or insult. It has been loosely tossed around.

Recognizing the sloppy use of the word, I do think fascism is the right framework for understanding Trump and MAGA. As the writer John Ganz has said, fascism is a hypothesis. Fascism takes different forms in different nations but it is the best fit to describe what has happened in recent years in America.

Using the term doesn’t negate our hybrid situation where aspects of authoritarianism co-exist with aspects of democracy. Fascism has not been consolidated and it can still be opposed as evidenced by the massive No Kings demonstrations.

The word fascism has a European lineage but contrary to what Americans might think, it has an American variant. The scholar of fascism, Jason Stanley, has elaborated on America’s fascist origins. Unlike the European version of fascism with a tyrant-leader like Hitler or Mussolini, Stanley traces our leaderless fascism back to 19th century Jim Crow. For roughly 100 years in the American South, black Americans lived in a system where they were systematically abused and turned into second class citizens. Stanley cites W.E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison as individuals who saw America as embodying a form of fascism.

What is critical in demarcating a fascist society is the creation of a division between an “us” and a “them”. The system of white supremacy (like the later Nazi system in Germany) effectuated such a distinction. After Reconstruction, Black people in the South were widely deprived of their right to vote. Slavery was replaced by a new system of absolute control enforced by lynching and mass violence. Law, particularly state laws in the South, reinforced white supremacy.

I thought of the “us” and “them” distinction with the birthright citizenship case, Trump v Barbara, currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump through his Executive Order takes the position that babies born on American soil after February 19, 2025 would be denied citizenship at birth if neither parent is a U.S. citizen or has permanent immigration status.

It is hard to imagine anything that could do more to create a permanent underclass. Those babies would become stateless individuals outside constitutional protection. They would join other black and brown people relegated to an inferior status in America. A central MAGA mission has been turning back the clock on race to a time before the civil rights era.

Fascism thrives on racial distinctions. It is a devolution from liberal democracy where equality before the law, even if not practiced, was touted. The Nazis studied Jim Crow laws and admired the system Americans had set up in the South. Nazi authors saw clear parallels between the American “Negro problem” and their own “Jewish problem”. The Nazis lionized white supremacy and they seized upon American race-based immigration and citizenship laws. America was seen as the leader in race law-making. This background is thoroughly explored in James Whitman’s book, Hitler’s American Model.

Trump’s recent comments about Somalis were brutally racist, calling people “garbage” and claiming they “contribute nothing”. They follow his comments about “shithole countries”. He has repeatedly suggested the United States should seek more immigrants from Norway, Scandinavia or whites from South Africa. No one has more clearly articulated a white supremacist vision.

Another part of fascism is the creation of a mythic past (Make America Great Again). Things that MAGA doesn’t like are unconsidered unpatriotic, like Black history. I see the effort to ban critical race theory and to censor museums as part of the fascist re-write of our history. Honesty about racism is a no-no.

Anyone concerned about free speech should be opposing efforts to ban the teaching of critical race theory. MAGA is trying to reverse history and say, without evidence, that white men are victims of discrimination. Critical race theory is about understanding our legacy of institutional racism. MAGA and the Far Right are trying to dictate what we can remember. As Kimberly Crenshaw has said, “Critical thinking is kryptonite to fascism”.

Still, I would not see fascism as primarily a cultural struggle for power. And it is not simply ultranationalism or worship of a charismatic leader. What we are seeing in America is the Executive Branch taking power away from the other branches of government. There is an attempt by Trump to hoard excessive power. At the same time we are seeing the tech broligarchy accumulate unlimited privileges and wealth while rights are taken away from working people.

Fascism wants to replace democracy and pluralism with a monistic, total, authoritarian government organization that enables a massive crime spree by the super-rich. Trump is always talking about law and order but police action is only meant to be enforced against poor people. Law and order talk is a cover for his extensive efforts to loot government resources for his own benefit.

Project 2025 has been our Mein Kampf equivalent. If we are able to salvage democracy it will take years to recover from this entirely retrograde agenda. The damage done already has been enormous.

Historically, fascist dictators have wielded state power to create an economy that benefits the economically top 1% while crushing labor and the racial “other’. It is an elite-driven campaign to seize power. As is evident though, the people of the Unites States are engaged in a massive campaign to prevent the consolidation of fascist power.

I think the No Kings movement has been fabulous and I have no criticisms of it but I would make one suggestion. The problem we face is not so much a king as a fascist system. Even if Trump resigned tomorrow, we would face the same system. Maintaining and making real democracy requires systemic transformation. not simply removal of a king.

I think it is fair to say that a broad majority of the American people do not want the war the United States and Israel are fighting against Iran. This is the latest example of America’s out-of-control militarism. After 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, America had reached the point of exhaustion with any war. Going back to Vietnam, wars have lacked justification even before we got to the current situation with Iran.

By day six, the cost of the Iran war to the United States exceeded $12.7 billion and that cost is growing by half a billion dollars everyday. That is equivalent to the cost of one year paying for medical care for 693,000 veterans, Medicaid for 3.6 million children or 9% of all U.S. elementary school teachers. There is a reason Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once said, “War is a racket”. The only beneficiaries are the military-industrial complex that profits from spilled blood.

No one knows why this war is being fought. It seems almost whimsical and impulsive on Trump’s part. There is no thought-out plan or strategy although it must be seen as part of the U.S pursuit of global military hegemony. After Venezuela, Trump believed the Iranians would fold quickly, leading to regime change.This is similar to the miscalculation that occurred with the Iraq war. Trump saying “we won the war” on day one was equivalent to George W. Bush saying “mission accomplished” on the aircraft carrier.

It can also be persuasively argued that Trump wanted a distraction from the Epstein files and war is a big distraction. There is nothing in Donald Trump’s character that would indicate that he would not launch a criminal war to advance his own personal interests.

The United States has a long record of hostility to Iran going back to its role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Bad feelings were exacerbated when Iran seized American hostages at the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979. Since then, relations have been bitterly fraught.

It is quite a different scenario with the Israelis. This is a war that Bibi Netanyahu has wanted to fight for 40 years. He has long tried to find an American president who would go along with this wish and he found that person in Donald Trump. At the same time, Netanyahu has been enabled by Jewish fascists and racists in his extremist government.

The Israeli state has been committing brutal crimes on multiple fronts. The indefensible Gaza genocide and the killings of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank have both been horrifying. Israel has not prosecuted its citizens for killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since the start of this decade. The Iran war itself violates the U.N. charter. It certainly did not have to be fought.

As an American Jew, I oppose the extremely bellicose actions of the Israeli state just as I oppose the actions of our own government in Iran. The war is senseless. Money wasted in this war could have been spent on human needs like health care, housing or education. It is not in the American national interest to spend a fortune trying to topple the Iranian state when there are so many unaddressed needs at home.

Ironically, I think Israel’s brutality is doing much to fuel antisemitism worldwide. Many on the MAGA right are pushing the Nazi narrative that world Jewry is promoting this war. They broadly assign responsibility to Jews rather than the Israeli state. American Jews and other Jews outside Israel have no control over the actions of a foreign state.

I suspect most American Jews are completely opposed to the Iran war. Somewhere between 63%-71% of American Jews voted against Trump in 2024 and that is an indicator of his unpopularity, especially in the non-Orthodox Jewish community. Unfortunately out-of-touch major Jewish organizations like AIPAC and ADL as well as big Republican donors have blindly followed Trump’s fascist regime.

Some synagogues I have seen do have signs about standing with Israel. I believe they are making a mistake. Israel under Netanyahu is an authoritarian state run by Jewish supremacists who oppose any two state solution. The future of democracy in Israel (just as in the U.S.) depends on the political defeat of an authoritarian leader. It is misguided to support any state committing human rights crimes. Based on their actions over the last few years, the major Jewish organizations would support Israel regardless of any crimes that state commits.

It is amazing to me that major Jewish organizations overlook the despicable actions of ICE in rounding up brown-skinned people and putting them in concentration camps without due process. You hear nothing from these organizations about that as they suck up to the regime. As of January 2026, the ICE secret police were holding 73,000 people. As Jews, we should know better. We have seen this movie before.

For anyone paying attention, the growth of antisemitism on the Republican right is alarming. The chats of young Republicans exposed by Politico show the direction of a significant chunk of the party. Earlier in March, the Miami Herald also exposed hundreds of racist, homophobic, sexist and antisemitic messages written by college Republicans in Florida. Pictures show college Republicans making Nazi salutes.

The podcast world that includes Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes all indulge a “blame the Jews” perspective. When liberal democracies fail as been happening in America, those on the far right have a well-established history of scapegoating Jews. This is nothing new.

The Iran war is a joint project of the U.S. and Israel. Both states bear responsibility and they should be criticized for failing to show any restraint. An estimated 3300 people have been killed in Iran along with 13 Americans. Millions of Iranians and Lebanese have been displaced.

Blaming Jews rather than the American and Israeli leaders could not be more wrong.

Back on May 6, 1995, my son Josh had his bar mitzvah. It happened at Temple Beth Jacob in Concord NH. Temple Beth Jacob is a reform Jewish congregation. In the service, I made a speech to Josh. I had lost the speech but my friend Sue told me she had a copy. So I wanted to share it.

Josh: first of all, I want to tell you how proud I am of you and your Bar Mitzvah efforts. You have worked hard to learn Hebrew, the prayers, chanting and everything that made today possible. I want to acknowledge and praise your hard work.The effort that went into today reflects not days or weeks of effort but many months. And a lot of driving.

I also want to let you know that I am proud of the person you have become. Your warmth, sense of humor, sense of justice, self-possession, musical sense and outspokenness are wonderful qualities. You have sensitivity to the feelings of others. You are a good person. – that means the most to me. You also have a good batting eye.

I also would like to thanks Rabbi Soltz. His seriousness and perseverance helped promote the self-discipline required for today.

I want to say a couple things to you today. Most importantly, always be proud of being Jewish. The Jewish tradition is a noble and beautiful tradition. I hope you do not consider your Bar Mitzvah as an end of your Jewish education. Judaism has wisdom about how to live and what to live for. I think that sense of the religion has been lost to us and that’s bad. There is a great poet named Muriel Rukeyser who wrote about Judaism. In a poem entitled Letter to the Front, she wrote:

To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist: and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.

The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

I lost interest in Judaism in my teens because, at the time, it did not speak to me. For 20 years or so, I remained away from it, not because it was too different from American society, but because it was too similar. I now realize that what I rejected was only negative aspects associated with one type of suburban Judaism. Judaism is not a quaint relic, vulgar materialism, spiritual emptiness, sexism or political conservatism. It is up to Jews like you to absorb the tradition and create a more dynamic Judaism.

There is no one authority in Judaism that provides easy answers to questions. You have to decide how to be Jewish because it is really true that every Jew is now a Jew by choice.

There’s an old Jewish story about the dilemma of what constitutes the Jewish tradition. The story goes like this:

Once there was a synagogue that had been without a rabbi for some 20 years. The synagogue was on the verge of being torn apart by arguments about how to do some of the central prayer rituals. Finally, out of desperation, they sent a delegation to the old rabbi who had retired some 20 years before, to inquire what the tradition really was supposed to be. Each side presented their case, denouncing the other side for distorting the true tradition. After they had concluded, the rabbi asked if it was true that each side was sure their way was right. ”Yes” both sides responded, “And both sides seem to think that the other side is deeply mistaken and is about to ruin everything should their views prevail?” asked the rabbi. “Yes” both sides responded. “The other side is going to distort the truth and ruin the community. So what is the tradition?” The rabbi had no problem. “The state of affairs you describe in our synagogue – That is the tradition.”

In that spirit, your doubts about the existence of God are very Jewish. I would encourage you to voice your feelings and have doubts. Judaism is compatible with intellectual integrity.

I also wanted to recognize that your Bar Mitzvah reflects the fact that you are growing up and have turned 13. It’s not easy to grow up and do the right thing day in and day out. I honestly think life is harder now than when I grew up. There are many bad models for how to be a man and boys need men to keep them heading in positive directions.

I want you to know that I will be here for you. I want you to feel like you can ask me questions whether it’s about school, friends or sex. I will try and answer them. Possibly, I am out of it but it wasn’t too long ago when I used to think I was hip. What advice can I give you that is of lasting value. Let me quote from another poet, a favorite of mine, Walt Whitman:

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and
sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms
to everyone that asks, stand up for the
stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor
to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning
God, have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing known or
unknown or to any man or number of men, go
freely with powerful uneducated persons and
with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season
of every year of your life, re-examine all you
have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem and
have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face
and between the lashes of your eyes and in
every motion and joint of your body…”

I look forward to watching you grow into the fine man I know you will become. I love you and am very proud of you.

When our military blew up the girls’ elementary school in Iran, the reaction was telling. The President and his War Secretary denied responsibility. Shortly after, the New York Times reported that these murders were a result of an American tomahawk missile. That disclosure made no difference to the powers-that-be. They have moved on with no look back and no compulsion to return to an unwelcome subject.

It was not different than the boat strikes’ murders and the reaction to that. No legal case was presented to justify those many murders. The Trump regime wanted some people dead. Case closed. The expectation is that the public will not care and the story will disappear. As with the school girls’ murders, there is no accountability.

The pattern has been well-established. An awful government-generated crime is committed. Whatever the outcry and public reaction, nothing happens to the perpetrators. This is not just true with Republican administrations. It happens with Democrats too.

There are no shortage of examples. Just during my lifetime, I would cite the targeted assassination of Fred Hampton, the Phoenix program in South Vietnam, U.S. support for the death squads in Latin America during the 1970’s-1980’s, torture in Iraq at Abu Ghraib and other black sites, the drone killing of Anwar al-Alwaki and his 16 year old son, the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Certainly that list could be greatly expanded but there are commonalities. Lack of accountability is connected to class. Very wealthy people who commit crimes are often not charged or punished. The same cannot be said for working or poor people. The U.S. Supreme Court has shown much more forgiveness towards white collar criminals than blue collar defendants.

This form of injustice has accelerated under the Trump regime where it has reached its apogee. I am reminded of a quote from Eugene V. Debs:

“There is something wrong in this country; the judicial nets are so adjusted as to catch the minnows and let the whales slip through.”

Trump has made it his mission to free every white collar criminal he can, no matter how egregious the crimes committed. His abuse of the pardon power is legendary. Michael Milken, Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner, Changpeng Zhao, Steve Bannon, Trevor Milton, Todd and Julie Chrisley, David Gentile and Joseph Schwartz and the ex-Honduran president Juan Orlando Hemandez all received pardons.

He also pardoned his political allies like the more than 1500 January 6 rioters who trashed the Capitol and viciously attacked the police.

The outstanding example of lack of accountability is the failure to prosecute the circle of people around Jeffrey Epstein. The high flyers who inhabited the Epstein universe have for years escaped any prosecution or even questioning. Because of their status and position, police looked the other way. They were too big to prosecute.

It is undisputed that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends for many years. To date, Trump has successfully covered up that extensive connection. No one knows exactly what secrets they shared. The Attorney General has covered for her boss. Withholding millions of files and protecting the identity of wealthy predators rather than the identity of victims has been her agenda.

The public deserves an explanation for the special treatment of Epstein collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Even though she is a convicted child sex offender, the prison authorities moved her to a country club prison inconsistent with her sentence. This happened after her two day meeting with Trump’s former lawyer and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Logic would suggest that the more favorable prison conditions Maxwell received were in exchange for promised testimony absolving Trump of any Epstein-related crimes.

When I mentioned the bi-partisan failure of accountability I would particularly cite President Obama’s refusal to investigate or prosecute the torture that the George W. Bush administration inflicted on those deemed “enemy combatants” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama himself acknowledged that the U.S. “tortured some folks”. The torture included waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation and that torture violated international law. The prohibition against torture is absolute. In justification, Obama argued we should look forward – not back.

I would say that ignoring past crimes hasn’t worked as a way to insure a more hopeful future. The failure of accountability in America has deep roots. It goes back to our societal failure to acknowledge our two great national sins – slavery and the genocide against Native Americans. All subsequent failures follow and were made possible by the larger failure.

In contrast to Germany where there has been a genuine societal soul-searching about the Holocaust, America avoids introspection. We have not had Truth and Reconciliations Commissions. Our monuments about slavery like Bryan Stevenson’s Legacy Museum and National Lynching Memorial are private affairs. The U.S. government has no memorials about its treatment of Native Americans. Our tendency is to bury dark chapters. If America was a psychiatric patient, these words from Carl Jung would apply:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

If we continue the pattern of unaccountability it is hard to see how we will ever overcome the legacy which has led us to Trump’s fascist regime. Unless we get to the roots of what has led us to this debacle and offer a political alternative that speaks to the human needs of Americans, we will be likely to see a worse version of fascism in 2032 or 2036.

As someone who lived through the Vietnam War era, I always thought that war was exceptionally wrong-headed and pointless. Since Vietnam there has been a succession of American wars including the intervention in Panama, the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. I did not think there could be a stupider war than the Iraq War as that war was fought on entirely false pretenses but the Iran War is a new low. No war has had less rationale, justification or clear objective. They don’t know how to end the war either.

The Trump regime has failed to present any coherent narrative for why the Iran War is necessary. There are a laundry list of possible explanations but no one knows why this war must be fought. The war has demonstrated a disregard for civilian lives and has caused tremendous civilian casualties in Iran. Unlike George W. Bush, who at least tried to sell the Iraq War, the Trump regime doesn’t bother. This is after Trump ran for the presidency as opposing forever wars in the Middle East.

Murdering at least 170 innocent children at the Iranian girls’ elementary school is a war crime. It may have been a double tap attack. The New York Times has reported that the Tomahawk missile attack on the school was the result of a targeting mistake. Our god of war, Pete Hegseth, blesses maximum lethality. I don’t see it as different from the earlier lawless boat strikes except in Iran our military killed children. No sanitizing of this war can ever erase the sickening shame of these senseless murders.

The Trump regime is not normal. The crimes have piled up. Besides the Iran war, the January 6 insurrection, holding and deporting immigrants without due process, building gulags, killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti, wrecking our scientific/medical system, extorting universities and Big Law, using government office for personal financial gain, cash for clemency pardons and covering up the Epstein files are a start. The corruption is unprecedented. No president has cashed in on the presidency like the present occupant of the office.

In spite of that record of venality, criminality and imperialism, fight back by American elites has largely been weak and cowardly. Elites’ main goal has been protection of their money, power and status. They don’t want to rock the boat.

Right from the start of Trump 2.0, the billionaires threw in with the regime. This was a marked difference from the first Trump term when he was less embraced. Elon Musk led the way with his $277 million campaign contribution to back Trump and Republican candidates but Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg were on board too. They have been “pay to play”. And that is the stance of much of Big Business. They don’t want to lose government contracts, endanger money flow or get on Trump’s bad side. Corporate resisters are rare birds. You don’t hear criticism from the business community. They like the tax cuts.

Congress has played dead. Giving up any sense of independence, Senate leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson act like they are part of the Executive Branch. Republican leaders must be antsy about the coming deluge their Party will face in November but they are not scared or nervous enough to break from Dear Leader.

To me, the real disappointment is Democratic Party leadership, particularly Sen Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. They don’t know how to fight. They don’t call out the fascism. Loyal to their corporate funders, they want business as usual. Where is the anti-war message they should be screaming?

There are some Democrats like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen Chris Van Hollen and Zohran Mamdani who have stood up but so many in the Party remain silent.

The legal world has hardly distinguished itself. I would acknowledge the federal court judges who have bravely remained faithful to the rule of law but the Supreme Court is an embarrassment. John Roberts’ immunity decision will live in infamy. That was a blessing to fascism, American-style. Lawyers could be so much more forceful against the regime. Much of Big Law collaborated out of fear of losing business. When I read the NH Bar News, I look for recognition of the threat to democracy but, to date, I haven’t seen much. They too pretend normalcy.

Corporate media consolidates and threatens to eliminate dissenting voices. Stephen Colbert will be off CBS on May 21, his last show on that network. It looks like CNN will follow the example of CBS as that network looks doomed to become more Trump-friendly. The Paramount deal is an anti-trust travesty but the Trump regime doesn’t protect a competitive, diverse marketplace. They want to strangle free speech and silence voices critical of fascism and authoritarianism.

Similarly, universities like Columbia, Northwestern and Cornell caved and made deals to pay the government millions in exchange for stopping harassing investigations into DEI, admissions decisions and curriculum. There has never been a greater threat to academic freedom in the U.S. than the Trump regime. The leadership of universities made a calculation that the cost of opposition and fighting back was too great.

What has been shocking is the willingness of our elites to bend the knee to a fundamentally anti-democratic regime. They choose to accommodate in the interests of money, financial viability and continued privilege. With the creation of gulags by ICE and Border Patrol, I see no resistance or even criticism from our ruling class. They go along. In Nazi Germany, a significant segment of Big Business and conservatives thought they could control Hitler. There is no effort among elites in America to control Trump. As I write, there is speculation he may put boots on the ground in Iran, an absolutely frightening prospect.

March 28 is the next No Kings demonstrations. Organizers have said:

“The Trump Administration is trying to shred the Constitution. The No Kings movement is an unequivocal statement that we, the people, will not let that happen.”

However we can, in whatever ways we are able, American people must put a stop to this war and try and stop its funding. We also must fight the regime’s other depredations. Getting out in the street in massive numbers everywhere makes a powerful statement. This regime must be relentlessly criticized, voted out and overwhelmingly repudiated. We don’t want to see how much further down the fascist road they are willing to go.

Around twenty years ago, I had my first direct political interaction with the New Hampshire Libertarians. At the time, I was the State House lobbyist for New Hampshire Legal Assistance. Along with other consumer protection advocates, we were working on a bill which would impose a 36% APR loan cap on payday lenders. As lobbyists would do, we looked for support for the bill on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side.

To those unfamiliar with payday lending, it is a debt trap, essentially the modern form of usury. In 2003 our Legislature had approved the practice. Payday lenders offered short term loans at exorbitant interest rates.

In a typical loan, the consumer writes a personal check drawn on his or her bank account for the amount borrowed plus a fee. The fee, stated as a percentage of the check or of the loan, translates into triple-digit annual interest fees. The lender agrees not to deposit the check until the consumer’s next payday. If the consumer cannot pay in full on the next payday, the lender will rewrite a new loan with more fees attached. The Legislature then allowed lenders to roll over a loan eleven times if the consumer continues to be unable to pay the balance owed.

In 2008, the Legislature passed legislation to cap interest rates on payday and car title loans at 36% annually. New Hampshire libertarians opposed the legislation and opposed any cap. They supported usury because they considered government regulation “slow cancer”.

At the time, I was shocked that Libertarians would get behind a practice that was loan-sharking. They had no problem with someone getting ripped off. Upon further investigation, I found that position was consistent with their views opposing any interference with laissez faire capitalism. They also opposed Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps and public education.

While they pose as anti-government, the Libertarians are the best friends of the billionaire class. They are selective about opposing oppressors. If the oppressor is a public entity, they re all over it. If the oppressor is a private entity, they get a pass.

The Libertarians have been heavily funded by the the Kochs, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Yass and Paul Singer. There is nothing remotely idealistic about the Libertarians. I am reminded of a quote from John Kenneth Galbraith:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

That perfectly describes both the Libertarians and the Free State Project. They like to present as anarchists but they are conservatives devoted to their money. In running as Republicans they have been effective in hiding their true colors. Many voters don’t know they are voting for Libertarians. What percentage of House Republicans are in sync with the Libertarians? It is not a small grouping. The House Majority Leader is a Free Stater.

Among other things, the Free Staters have wanted to defund the state library, cut state aid to the State University system, eliminate the Council on the Arts and the Child Advocate office. They have promoted cutting the Department of Health and Human Services and programs that serve the poor.

They also have been trying to destroy public education. They have promoted a shadow system of education through the Education Freedom Accounts Program. The House Republican majority filed a bill that would have required public reporting of aggregate test scores of participants in the Education Freedom Accounts program. The program has siphoned off millions of dollars and it operates without accountability. The Legislature is also considering a bill that would do away with all regulation of home schooling. You have to wonder about the quality of that “learning”.

Sometimes you can tell about a political grouping by what it doesn’t say. Libertarians have nothing to say about the threat of fascism in Trump’s America, tech billionaire media consolidation, income inequality, racism, sexism and climate change. Hiding as Republicans, they ride the Trump train at a time when collaboration with that regime could not be more un-American.

More appalling is the recent statement of the NH Libertarian Party that political violence aimed at former Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky and his proposal to introduce an income tax was “legitimate”. The Party actually wrote:

“..Volinsky is threatening the forced conscription of millions of hours of labor. Under libertarian ethical theory, it is perfectly permissible to kill him.”

In the fall of 2024, the Libertarian Party made posts endorsing the assassination of Vice President Kamala Harris who was then the Democratic presidential nominee.

As a democratic socialist, I am entirely at odds with the Libertarians but they have a right to their opinions. Their threat against Andru Volinsky is horrifying and they have the chutzpah to talk about it in the context of ethical theory. It makes a mockery of the word “libertarian”. Does libertarian mean we only accept our point of view? Maybe the Party needs a new name.

During the Trump years, I often have heard the phrase “the cruelty is the point”. I thought of that phrase when I heard the story of Nurul Shah Alam, a Rohingya refugee who lived in Buffalo, New York. Shah Alam was found dead on the street on February 24, five days after he was left at a donut shop by Border Patrol agents.

Shah Alam was 56, nearly blind and non-English speaking. His family is Arakan Rohingya refugees. They had fled genocide in Burma (Myanmar) and came to the U.S. on Christmas Eve 2024 in search of safety and opportunity. Shah Alam was legally in the United States.

The genocide against the Muslim Rohingya people is not well-known but it was a systematic process of killings, sexual violence and destruction of villages. In 2022, the U.S. government determined that the Myanmar military had committed genocide against the Rohingyas. Shah Alam had previously worked in construction in Malaysia where he lived for ten years after fleeing his home country. He had a wife and two sons, He could not read, write or use electronic devices.

Refugee status is not easy to achieve. Applicants must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. They must be unable or unwilling to return to their home country due to this fear. They must pass strict security screenings. It was not easy for Shah Alam (or any refugee) to obtain refugee status.

Problems for Shah Alam in the United States started in February 2025. With his health challenges, he needed a walking stick to get around. He went to a nearby shop that sold curtain rods where he made a purchase. He used the rod for balance and to help him navigate the neighborhood. He had no vision in one eye and partial blurry vision in his other eye.

Apparently he got lost and was disoriented after he went for a walk February a year ago. He sat down on a porch just as the owner of the home was letting her dog out. According to Shah Alam’s legal aid lawyer, the dog freaked out and so did Shah Alam. He came from a place where people did not keep dogs. The owner called police and she told them there was an unidentified black man in her driveway.

When the police arrived, they ordered Shah Alam to drop his curtain rods but he did not understand them. When he didn’t comply, the two officers tasered him. They then tackled him and punched him in the head repeatedly. It would appear the whole incident was a misunderstanding with police officers.

The authorities indicted Shah Alam on felony assault, burglary and criminal mischief charges. The charges were absurd over-charging but they reflect a situation that is not unusual for disabled people of color who interact with the police. There was no effort by the police to understand Shah Alam.

Instead of getting bailed out, he spent a year in custody. Considering what he did, that alone was a disproportionate travesty. His lawyer said it took him that long to negotiate a plea deal where he was certain Shah Alam wouldn’t be deported by ICE when he was released. Shah Alam pled guilty to misdemeanor charges, trespassing and possession of a weapon (the curtain rod walking stick).

The Erie County District Attorney said his office reduced charges after considering Shah Alam’s medical condition, time served and the “significant collateral consequences that would result from a felony conviction – including mandatory deportation”.

The circumstances around what happened next are contested. At the time of his release from Buffalo police custody, a Border Patrol agent drove him to an ICE facility but ICE didn’t want him. They found out he was in the country legally and he couldn’t be deported. Border Patrol had no protocol for what to do with a disabled man who didn’t speak English and who was confused and lost. Border Patrol said that on February 19 Shah Alam accepted a “courtesy ride” to a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. They said it was “a warm safe location”.

Border Patrol’s story quickly fell apart. There was a video that showed except for the drive through, Tim Horton’s had closed before Border Patrol dropped Shah Alam off on the evening of the 19th. No one in authority called Shah Alam’s family or his lawyer to explain that he had been released. There was no coordinated pickup. Surveillance footage showed him wearing orange booties issued by the jail. He was wearing a hoodie with no overcoat, not appropriate attire for the dead of winter in Buffalo.

On February 24, Shah Alam’s body was discovered on a Buffalo street six miles from the Tim Horton’s where he had been left.

Shah Alam could not use a phone, didn’t know phone numbers, couldn’t communicate in English, could barely see and was mobility-impaired. There was no attempt to reckon with his disability, his language, or his mental state. Whether it was incompetence, indifference, malice, racism or xenophobia on the part of ICE and Border Patrol, a most vulnerable man is needlessly dead.

There has been a pattern of ICE and Border Patrol releasing those they have detained in a deliberately uncaring manner. They have often released people late at night and in unfamiliar locations far from their homes after they have flown people to distant detention locations. People are released with the clothes they were wearing when picked up but ICE does not return their phones, their cash or their personal ID. They don’t provide coats in frigid weather.

In Minneapolis, locals have created an organization, Haven Watch, to help those who were detained and then released at all times of day, often in freezing weather. Haven Watch estimates 60-70% of those detained and released are U.S. citizens. The organization monitors federal detention facilities. They provide coats, transport, burner phones and help in getting people who were detained back to their loved ones. ICE and Border Patrol have not allowed phone calls for those being released. Pick up drivers might be an hour or two away.

Shah Alam’s death was entirely preventable. To call it a government failure is not enough. A duty of care was breached. This is a case study in inhumanity. Members of Congress and New York’s Attorney General Letitia James have called for state and federal investigations into what happened.

We are in the early stages of a vast expansion and construction of concentration camps in America. The camps are just beginning to be built. ICE is planning to spend $38 billion to convert industrial warehouses into large-scale detention centers. They acquired that gigantic sum of money from Trump’s big unbeautiful bill passed last year.

ICE plans to buy and convert sixteen buildings across the U.S. into regional processing centers which would hold 1000 to 1500 people at a time. Another eight mega-size detention centers would hold 7,000 to 10,000 people and would serve as “the primary location” for deportations. ICE already operates ten existing “turnkey” sites. They are attempting to create 92,000 beds across all facilities.

ICE’s plan is that detainees would spend an average of 3 to 7 days at the processing sites before being transported to the larger prisons where the expectation is that they would be held about 60 days before being deported. Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, has said he wanted to see a deportation process “like Amazon Prime but with human beings”.

America has barely begun to realize what is in the works. Before the 2024 election, Donald Trump told Time Magazine he would target 15 to 20 million people for removal from the U.S.. Even if he was exaggerating, there can be little doubt he is aiming for the largest incarceration and deportation scheme in American history.

With three years left in his presidency, the scheme is in high gear. As the leading historian of concentration camps, Andrea Pitzer, has pointed out, in the last year our federal government put more people in detention than the Nazis did in the first seven years of their rule in Germany. Dachau also started as a converted factory. That is the model our federal government is adopting.

The Trump/Stephen Miller scheme is an enormous ethnic cleansing operation. They maintain a demented focus on removing people of color from the U.S., particularly Latinos. It is their response to the so-called “great replacement”. They want to alter the demographics of the U.S. by reducing the number of people of color so they can maintain white supremacy.

There is a history with large-scale concentration camps of this nature. We can look at the Nazi or Soviet models or our own experience with Guantanamo which started as a mass immigration detention facility holding Haitian asylum seekers in the early 1990’s. These camps exist largely outside the realm of law, oversight and accountability. The government does everything it can to hide these facilities and what goes on inside.

As Pitzer has said, each warehouse is a Guantanamo. Horrifying conditions are the norm. Overcrowding, no access to medical care, lousy and inadequate amounts of food, beatings, sexual abuse and people lying in their own feces are common. They are trauma factories.

I don’t think the American public is seeing clearly what the purpose of these concentration camps is. It is not about borders or immigration. The objective is to lock down public life in the U.S. and silence any dissent. Our rulers want to expand and entrench their political power.. This is part of a totalitarian project to limit and destroy our First Amendment rights.

When you look at who has been kidnapped, attacked or killed by ICE, it includes U.S. citizens, people who are here legally and many people who have lived in the U.S. without incident for decades. The project has nothing to do with deporting “the worst of the worst”. It is an effort to create massive levels of fear in the general population and to create constitution-free zones where there is no due process. In cities occupied by ICE, many people are afraid to leave their own homes.

This project is of a piece with efforts to take Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert off the air, to arrest reporters, to defund Public Broadcasting and to ignore court orders. As of early 2026, ICE has ignored or violated thousands of court orders. This last week Reuters reported that hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4400 times since last October that the Trump regime is detaining immigrants unlawfully.

It took the Nazis almost 10 years of demonizing the Jews before they turned their factory warehouses into extermination camps. No one knows where the Trump/Miller project will lead but we must not be naive about its evil. Like the Nazis, they dehumanize their opponents. They are aiming for one-party rule where no other party has a chance to win an election.

Pitzer says that the correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards. There is a failure in our political leadership and in our institutions in not calling out what is going on. All of us who care about saving our democracy need to oppose the construction and creation of a network of concentration camps across America. It is our American gulag archipelago.

In New Hampshire, we were going to have our own gulag coming to Merrimack in the live free or die state. People demonstrating against it stopped it. What happened in Merrimack could be replicated in every location a gulag is being created.

Dachau was the name of a town. We should all be asking: do you want your town (where ICE is creating a detention facility) to be a Dachau? We should follow the example of the people of Minneapolis who demonstrated the model for how to defeat fascism.

During the Nazi era, the German people often lamely said they did not know about the concentration camps. We do not have that excuse.

Among the strange stories happening now is the story of the FBI seizing ballots in Fulton County Georgia from the 2020 presidential race. Why would the FBI be seizing these ballots now? That race is long over and the results were audited three times. It was a clean election but Donald Trump has said, “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did”.

That was the election where Trump told the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “to find me 11,780 votes”. Fulton County prosecutors indicted Trump along with 18 co-defendants for racketeering and fraud. His ascension to the presidency in 2024 allowed him to escape justice but for Trump the Georgia loss became a mad obsession. Contrary to all evidence, he has continued to believe that he was cheated. He has expressed regret that he didn’t federalize the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020.

While this could be looked at as lunacy because the 2020 presidential term is over and what difference does it all make, I think that is the wrong way to view the seizure of the over 700 boxes of certified votes. The real question is what it means for the 2026 mid-term election and the 2028 election.

With Republicans spectacularly losing races even in red states. Trump is making a concerted multi-pronged effort to insure Republicans will not lose. He has called on Republicans to “take over the voting in at least 15 places” in advance of the next election. He has said elections should be “nationalized”. He has also said the U.S. shouldn’t hold a mid-term election this year because Republicans risk losing their majorities in the House and Senate.

Lost is the constitutional understanding that the President has no power over elections. States control elections. It is right there in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1, the elections clause.

It is hard to evaluate the appropriate level of paranoia to have about Trump election interference but some facts are certain. Trump is very afraid of losing the House and Senate in 2026 because of his unpopularity. That is an outcome he wants to avoid at all costs because of the certainty of public investigation into his crimes and the likelihood of a renewed impeachment effort. He wants to keep people from voting so he can maintain unrestrained power. He also wants to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of any election where he or Republican candidates lose.

Key to the Trump effort is voter suppression. Voter suppression can take many forms. It is about creating roadblocks so that voters who might be likely to vote against him or Republicans are not able to vote. I thought it was telling when Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would remove ICE and Border Patrol from Minnesota if the state would agree to hand over its voter rolls. That has little to do with immigration.

Voter rolls include identifying information like driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers. It is private information that is maintained by top election officials in each state. The Trump regime has been trying to gain access to state voter data.

The federal government has sued more than 20 states and Washington DC for not complying with the data request. There has been no legitimate reason given to acquire this information. They are an encroachment on state’s power to run elections as outlined in the Constitution. However 11 red states have passed along full statewide voter registration lists to the feds.

I think the Trump regime wants the data so they can purge voters from the rolls if they think these voters will vote for Democrats. The purged voters would be mostly African American and women who have changed their names. Just last week Trump was baselessly railing about voter corruption in Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta, cities with large African American concentrations that always vote against him. He equates corruption with people who vote Democratic.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the SAVE Act (short for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) which passed the House by a 218-213 margin. The name is maximally Orwellian. The SAVE act would require people to present a valid U.S, passport or birth certificate when registering to vote. The proposal has drawn concern for women who changed their name after marriage. Name discrepancies could lead to significant voter disqualification.

The SAVE Act would likely prevent millions from voting. An estimated 21 million Americans do not have documents proving their citizenship readily available and 2.6 million lack any form of government-issued photo ID. Many of the disenfranchised would be African American, Latino. Native American, students and low income people. The SAVE Act has been called Jim Crow 2.0. The future of the SAVE Act remains uncertain in the Senate.

Trump has threatened to impose a ban on mail-in voting. He routinely alleges voter fraud with absolutely minimal basis. It is hard not to wonder if he will use ICE or the military (via the Insurrection Act) to intimidate people from voting. Steve Bannon has talked about ICE surrounding the polls.

No one knows for sure whether Trump will try and cancel elections. I am not saying it is impossible but it is a mistake to make that assumption. They are throwing up voting barriers, minor and major, and I haven’t even mentioned their gerrymandering. They will have post-election schemes too.

We must not give the regime powers it doesn’t have. They must be defeated at the polls and by mass popular rejection. Just as happened in Minneapolis, democracy can beat them back and people of all political stripes must vote like their lives depend on it. Those concentration camps they are building are not just for immigrants.