Jonathan P. Baird

Lately I have been reading Naomi Klein’s brilliant new book, Doppelgänger. It offers some acute analysis about the increasing role of conspiracy theories in our lives, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Without question, more people have been falling down all kinds of rabbit holes.

Conspiracy theories around Jews are nothing new but I have found it impossible to ignore recent words from two prominent individuals, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Probably like many Jewish people I try to ignore the poison. One long-standing tendency in the Jewish world is thinking that it will be worse to call more attention to hateful comments. I am of a different mind. I worry more about allowing antisemitic trash to go unchallenged.

So often conspiracy theories end up with Jewish villains. Invariably, Jews get pegged as the cause of the world’s evils. Compared to the years when I was growing up, I have been genuinely surprised by the rejuvenation of antisemitic ideas and the number of antisemites now coming out of the woodwork.

Musk, the richest capitalist in the world, has been on an antisemitic tear, tweeting and accusing Jews of controlling mass media and financial markets. Not surprisingly, he has posted a series of tweets attacking the Jewish billionaire philanthropist, George Soros, who he compared to Jewish X-men supervillain, Magneto. Musk has claimed Soros wanted to “erode the very fabric of civilization” and that he “hates humanity”. Why Musk has chosen to focus on Soros is a good question.

Soros has been a favorite target of neo-nazis and white supremacists who see him as behind the great replacement. He is the modern-day equivalent of the Rothschilds, extraordinarily rich Jews who can be scapegoated. Musk is indulging a hateful stereotype about ultra-wealthy Jews who can allegedly control events and buy inordinate political power. His comments follow the example of Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban.

Musk went on to attack the Anti-Defamation League or ADL which, by any measure, has been an important voice opposing antisemitism and racism since it was founded in 1913. On September 4, without any proof, he blamed the ADL for a 60% loss in advertising revenue. ADL has opposed Musk’s decision to allow hate speech and white supremacist accounts on the website. They and eight other groups, the Stop Hate for Profit coalition, had called for an advertising boycott of Twitter/X.

Musk has repeatedly threatened a defamation case against the ADL, saying that they had cut X’s value in half. He has said ADL was trying to kill the platform by “falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic”.

Laying the blame on Jews for your own failure is hardly novel. He is playing on antisemitic mythology that powerful Jewish organizations are manipulating behind the scenes in unseen ways. To quote the writer, Mike Rothschild:

“I love the implication that the erratic management, mass layoffs, incoherent moderation, destruction of verification, decimated engineering staff, serial unbanning of racists and crumbling infrastructure had nothing to do with Twitter losing half its value. Nope, just Jews.”

Musk could not leave the ADL alone, advancing the notion that the ADL has fostered antisemitism by calling it out so aggressively. He, the free speech absolutist, posted the idea of a poll on whether to suspend ADL from X. He tweeted ADL has been “hijacked by the woke mind virus”.

White nationalists and other far-right extremists joined in online with a hashtag campaign #BanTheADL. This might have gone unnoticed but Musk “liked” a tweet by Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist and self-described “raging antisemite” who was a leader of the campaign. Musk then engaged with Wood online. This opened the antisemitic floodgates. Many viciously antisemitic posts followed.

Twitter has been a cesspool of racism and antisemitism long before Musk took over and renamed it X. Under his leadership, the hate has moved to a whole new level. Research shows that since Musk took over in October 2022, the volume of English language antisemitic tweets has more than doubled.

In defending the ADL against Musk’s attacks, I would not give that organization a pass. Probably like many progressives, I am far more comfortable with its civil rights advocacy than its lobbying for Israel. The present Netanyahu government is the worst government in Israel’s history as it is based on an alliance with the most racist, sexist and backwards elements in Israeli society. A good part of Israel would agree with me as evidenced by the massive demonstrations that have been ongoing in Israel.

As for Donald Trump, he used the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, to blast “liberal Jews” who he said “had voted to destroy America and Israel”. So apparently there are good Jews who vote for him and bad Jews who don’t. Trump had said Jewish people who vote for Democrats are either “ignorant or disloyal”.

Jews must conform to this arbiter, someone who dines with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and “Death con 3 to the Jewish people” Kanye West. You never hear Trump criticize them.

For someone who says he is so pro-Israel, Trump has a peculiar habit of threatening American Jews. What does it mean when Trump says American Jews “have to get their act together before it is too late”. While Jews have generally voted more for Democrats since World War 2, there is a diversity of political opinion in the Jewish community. Why is Trump denying Jews the right to be diverse like every other community?

Trump is always conflating American Jews with Israelis, complaining that American Jews are ingrates, not appreciating all he has done. That conflation is antisemitic as it raises the spectre of dual loyalty. American Jews are not Israelis.

I would submit that Trump deliberately pushes the antisemitic rhetoric because he believes it is popular with his base. He and Musk are opening the door for the haters. They are like the 21st century equivalent of Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh who were the antisemitic leaders of early 20th century America. They need to be called out and opposed.

There are periods in American history that don’t get much attention. One such period is the 1840’s-1850’s. Although it is not remembered now, there was an ongoing battle before the Civil War about the matter of fugitive slaves,

Enslaved black people risked their lives to flee their masters in the South. Slave catchers pursued the slaves-on-the-run across all state lines. Back then, fugitive slave laws were not on the side of the slaves.

The framers of the Constitution included a fugitive slave clause in the document in Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3. However, the framers tactfully and hypocritically left the word “slave” out of the Constitution. They wanted to avoid unsightly appearances. Also the South might not have joined the United States without the provision.

From the southern perspective, law-abiding citizens were obligated to return runaway slaves who were living in whatever state. Enforcement of the Clause was erratic and was left to the states. The federal government was too weak to intervene. Congress did pass a law in 1793, signed by President George Washington, designed to reinforce the rendition of fugitive slaves but it proved to be ineffective.

Some northern states passed “personal liberty” laws that created barriers to enforcement. They were not going along with any fugitive slave law. The historian Andrew Delbanco in his book The War Before the War has written that most runaways never made it out of the South. He explained that “chronic offenders were sometimes mutilated – tendons cut, faces branded – as warnings not to try again and to others not to try at all”.

In 1850, Congress weighed in with a compromise that sold out fugitive slaves. The United States was massively expanding west and questions arose about whether the westward expanse would include slavery. The North and South were deeply divided about slavery, fugitive slaves and whether slavery should be allowed to expand.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a gift to white supremacy and made a mockery of judicial process. It denied habeas corpus, the right to challenge the legality of detention. Defendants were not allowed to testify in their own defense and jury trials were not allowed. The enslaved were not allowed to present exonerating evidence including evidence of beatings or rape.

If it was shown that defendants belonged to a slave owner according to the state fled, they were ordered back to slavery. Free black people were also terrified of the Act as they feared removal on the false pretext that they had belonged to a slave owner. The book and movie, Twelve Years a Slave, tells such a story where even free black people could be wrongfully shanghaied into servitude.

Stories about audacious slave escapes captivated 19th century America before the Civil War. There were anti-slavery speaking tours through the northern states by ex-slaves who had fled the South or border states. They acted as consciousness-raising events for the abolitionist movement and tremendously propelled the anti-slavery cause.

In her wonderful book Master Slave Husband Wife, the writer Ilyon Woo tells some of these escape-to-freedom stories that deserve to be far better-known. Her story about two Georgia slaves, William and Ellen Craft, who escaped slavery in 1848 is a centerpiece of her book but the book presents a much broader panorama of lesser-known leaders in the anti-slavery struggle.

Many of the names are unknown but they were famous long ago. Why some stories survive and others disappear is a good question and a mystery.

The Crafts’ escape from slavery was highly inventive, carefully planned and brilliantly executed. Most slave escapes were from border states like Maryland, Virginia or Kentucky. Among the unusual things about the Crafts is that they had a 1000 mile journey north to Philadelphia from Georgia. They had to take trains and a steamboat. Their escape held the long distance record.

Being light-skinned, Ellen disguised herself as a high-class wealthy white man with a disability. Her husband William pretended to be her slave. As slaves, Ellen and William needed written passes just to move anywhere. Because they planned the escape around Christmas they were both able to get their owners to go along with a pass. This allowed them a short window to get away before their owners realized their absence. They faced some scary and unexpected contingencies on the trip.

Once they made it north to Pennsylvania, the Crafts connected with William Wells Brown, a leading light of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He also had escaped slavery and was noted to be a superb story teller. They joined forces and spoke publicly together. Abolitionist newspapers like William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator carried word about the Crafts’ escape.

The Crafts and Brown spoke in Boston at Fanueil Hall and electrified the audience. They proved to be a powerful draw. They toured the north but by no means were they out of danger. Slave catchers were on their trail. They had close calls and decided they had to leave America. First sailing to Canada, they eventually made their way to England, Again they connected with William Wells Brown who also had moved to England and they continued their public speaking.

Along with Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown stood out for his brilliance. He published his life story which repeatedly sold out publication. He spoke passionately to audiences of thousands.

The Crafts were ultimately able to meet goals they had set. Besides freedom, they achieved literacy and they were able to have a family of their own something they had been afraid to do in America. Ellen was able to see her mother again after the Civil War. The Crafts wrote a book in 1860 Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom. The book never sold that well probably because it was overshadowed by the Civil War.

Woo also tells the story of Henry “Box” Brown, He was called “Box” because he made his way to freedom after being mailed north in a box. He spent 27 hours in that box which was three feet long, two feet wide and two and a half feet high. He also made it to Philadelphia. “Box” Brown joined William Wells Brown, the Crafts and Douglass speaking out against slavery.

We are now 175 years since the Crafts’ escape. Too many Americans want to ban any truthful telling of Black history. The narrative of American history should include these heroes who inspired hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Many commentators have remarked upon the multitude of lawyers intertwined inside the political and business dealings of Donald Trump. When Jack Smith indicted Trump in Washington D.C., at least five of his six co-conspirators were lawyers. These include John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, Ken Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani. There are many others in the Trump orbit waiting in the wings who have also serviced the former president. It is an ever-expanding circle.

These lawyers were so enamored of Trump that they were willing to break the law on his behalf. They produced false documents, made unsubstantiated public claims, and had no hesitation in filing meritless litigation. If Trump could be kept in power, anything was justified.

The range of horrible behavior went from the truly unhinged to the creatively bonkers.

On the deranged scale I would place Sidney Powell at the extreme end with her talk of Hugo Chavez fixing voting machines. John Eastman is the less deranged opposite end of the spectrum with his theories about how others besides the voters can decide elections although his ideas are just as undemocratic.

Jeffrey Clark, the assistant former Attorney General and Trump’s rumored pick to become AG if Trump wins in 2024, was ready to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military against American citizens who opposed Trump’s coup. Rudy Giuliani had no problem repeatedly defaming two innocent Black election workers who were on Trump’s radar.

Many Trump lawyers signed bogus complaints legitimizing false electors. You have to ask: why would so many lawyers conspire to strip millions of their right to have their votes counted? What has happened to a profession that will countenance this blatant misconduct?

It speaks to a sickness in the legal profession. Where are the lawyers and judges speaking up about the danger of fascism and authoritarianism represented by the MAGA movement? Maybe I have missed it but I have heard little from the American Bar Association or any judges. They are apparently making believe Trump’s coup attempt was normal and was business as usual.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern describe “an obsession with pretending that evil deeds are not evil when done in the service of a paying customer”. They argue that “the right flank of the legal profession has adamantly refused to police itself and the legal profession as a whole has hardly raced to hold its most destructive and dangerous members to account”.

Where is the public condemnation from right wing lawyers like the Federalist Society for the insurrection and the attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power? There is some but precious little. If Trump’s coup had been successful and democracy had been overthrown, these folks would have been lining up for jobs with the new Trump Administration. Amorality in the service of career advancement would have been the order of the day.

Law must be a check on authoritarian power. History shows the danger when lawyers and judges fail to respond to emerging fascism. In the 1930’s, German lawyers and judges might have opposed Hitler’s authority and the consolidation of fascism. They failed to do so. Even worse they collaborated and interpreted the law in a way that facilitated the Nazis’ ability to carry out their agenda.

There was a massive failure of professional ethics. In April 1933 when the German state ministry of justice suspended all Jewish judges, public prosecutors, district attorneys and law professors, there was no protest. The legal profession accommodated the Nazis.

Lawyers and judges were key collaborators with the fascist regime and provided a patina of legitimacy. The Nazis craved the appearance of legality. Admittedly opposition carried big risks but even from early on, the German legal profession made peace with the Nazis.

Fascism worships power above all and fascists want to use the machinery of democracy to subvert it. They believe in the power of the leader rather than the rule of law.

Ingo Muller, the author of Hitler’s Justice, says Hitler “detested lawyers as pen-pushers who filled whole volumes with tangled commands and prohibitions and always had their noses buried in ridiculous tomes”. He had no use for constitutions or statutes or anything that interfered with his complete freedom of action.

I would submit that the roots of corrosion in America’s legal profession run deep. It begins in law school. The extreme cost of school pushes many onto a corporate or big law firm trajectory. Law school is so unaffordable that it is hard to survive the debt without landing some kind of high-paying job. Student loan payments are too much. Jobs like Legal Aid or Public Defender are very hard to swing without a significant other to foot bills.

Powerful law firms are often closely aligned with serving the rich. They are the high-paying clients. Law ends up serving the needs of the 1% which is warping. The needs of the 1% are vastly different than the broader needs of society. Lawyers end up doing nothing about climate change, economic inequality, racism or sexism. They mostly are about making rich people richer.

Of course there are many lawyers who are on more independent tracks and who do wonderful things representing their clients. There are solo practitioners, public interest, pro bono, and many small firms who zealously represent their clients.. The profession is diverse but the power of corporate America dominates the marketplace.

Money dictates why so many cannot retain lawyers. Overwhelmingly, people cannot afford that expense. What does it say about a profession that is out of reach for most people? I would note that over the last decade, to its discredit, the legal profession has become less welcoming to people of color.

Over the last 40 years, we have seen the emergence of the Federalist Society and law firms funded lavishly by right wing billionaires. They have created many opportunities for law students and lawyers who are in tune with the right wing agenda. Those willing to play ball can reap extravagant rewards.

Ideological loyalty has become a credential, not a liability. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are all exemplars of the Federalist Society pipeline. The Federalist Society serves as a gravy train for those aligned with that ideological project. Judge positions, clerkships and job opportunities all follow for those who will serve their 1% masters. The idea of equal justice under law has been shelved and gets lip service only.

Cardozo Law Professor Deborah Pearlstein writes that the Office of Professional Responsibility, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, makes far fewer ethics investigations than it did in the 1990’s. By all appearances, ethical violations have been downgraded in the profession. Certainly the behavior of the Supreme Court reflects the decline of professional ethics as the Court enforces no standards. Professor Pearlstein argues:

“The Trump case shows lawyers not only failing to make sure their government clients operate within the bounds of our democratic system but stretching to help those clients craft ways to subvert it.”

Very few Trump lawyers have faced any consequences for their misconduct. Linn Wood has had his law license “retired”. Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman are facing possible disbarment. Jenna Ellis received a public censure in Colorado for making misrepresentations on national TV and on Twitter. So far many other Trump lawyers have escaped any discipline. They have apparently concluded that making arguments that subvert democracy carries minimal risk.

The record of the profession policing itself is terrible. The problem with lawyers is not just greed or classism. It is their willingness to do the wrong thing, thinking there will be no consequences and that is too often the case.

September 11 marks the 50th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Chile’s democratically-elected government led by Salvador Allende. It is the lesser known 9/11 but one that also had huge consequences. The coup, unleashed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean military, resulted in a bloodbath of murders, torture and disappearances.

Disappearances of those perceived as political opponents became the signature action of the military dictatorship. For many many years, family members could not find out if their missing relatives were alive or dead. Terror defined the Pinochet regime.

Chile’s present government just announced a national search for over 1000 people who went missing during the Pinochet years. In 1978, after some remains were discovered, Pinochet ordered the military to exhume hundreds of victims buried secretly around the country so they could be disposed of permanently. He ordered corpses to be incinerated or to be dumped in the ocean or volcanoes. Pinochet tried to remove all scraps of evidence.

In complete contrast, Allende’s election to the Chilean presidency in 1970 was a hopeful watershed moment. For new leftists of my generation, the Chilean revolution left an indelible mark.

Before that, the conventional wisdom had been that no socialist could be democratically elected president of a country. Cold War propaganda still held a powerful hold and right wing parties hammered that theme. Allende and his Popular Unity government overturned the mythology that it was impossible to build socialism through peaceful democratic means.

Allende had been a perennial candidate, running for the presidency four times. Before he won he used to joke that his epitaph would be “Here lies the next President of Chile”.

He became the first democratically elected socialist leader in Latin America. Since he was a young person, Allende had dedicated his life to serving those living in what he called “subhuman conditions”. He was a physician, focused on public health. Earlier in his life he played a key role in creating Chile’s social security and national health systems.

Because of the negative stereotypes about socialism it is important to acknowledge that under his presidency there were no human rights abuses. There was absolute freedom of assembly and the press.

Before 1970, Chile reflected the massive economic inequality that characterized so much of Latin America. A small number of the super wealthy owned everything. Two predatory U.S. corporations owned the huge copper mines. The majority of Chileans desperately wanted agricultural reform and favored nationalizing the mines.

Allende’s election in 1970 led to a significant redistribution of income and services to the poorest members of society. According to the writer Ariel Dorfman, Allende’s priorities included:

“..a half-liter of milk daily for every child; cabins erected by the ocean so workers could vacation with their families (most had never seen the Pacific before); the acknowledgment of indigenous identities and languages; the publication of millions of inexpensive books that were sold at newspaper kiosks; and major advances in health, affordable public housing, education and child care.”

The U.S. government feared Allende’s example of popular socialists winning a democratic election. To this day, the American role in the overthrow of the Allende government is poorly understood but because of the declassification of government documents much more is now known. President Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger were unalterably opposed to Allende.

When they were unable to secure electoral success for the candidates they lavishly funded, they opted to support a military coup. Kissinger famously said:

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

After Allende won the presidency in 1970, the U.S. operation was about discrediting Allende’s government through black propaganda. The CIA hoped to destabilize the Chilean government and they used an economic blockade to make the economy scream. They also tried to enlist leaders of the Chilean military to support a coup.

There had been a long tradition of the military being neutral and after Allende’s 1970 election, the army was not interested in overthrowing the government. The CIA sent machine guns and agents and helped to finance the assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider, the head of the army. Schneider was maintaining neutrality and the CIA saw people like that as obstacles who needed to be removed.

In spite of all the CIA efforts, Allende became more popular and his coalition received 45% of the vote in 1973 which was a 10% increase in his share of the vote since 1970. At that point, the Chilean military led by Pinochet turned against democracy. The military coup of September 11, 1973 led to a reign of terror that lasted 17 years. There were thousands of extrajudicial disappearances and executions. Pinochet’s military abolished all civil liberties, Congress and political parties.

Nixon and Kissinger had their fingerprints all over support for Pinochet. Even after Pinochet became a human rights pariah, Kissinger with his insidious realpolitik, backed the monster. He told the ambassador to Chile “Stop it with the human rights lectures”.

Those who are especially interested in the events around Chile’s coup might want to check out the great Costa-Gavras movie “Missing” made in 1982 starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.

Pinochet went on to create what the historian Peter Kornbluh called a “Southern Cone Murder Inc”. He and other Latin American military dictators organized an international death squad operation called Operation Condor targeting enemies in Europe and around the world. The diplomat Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt were two famous victims assassinated by car bomb in Washington D.C. in 1976.

The Chilean people ultimately voted Pinochet out of power in a plebiscite election on October 5, 1988. Pinochet was later arrested in 1998 and was held in Britain for 16 months for crimes against humanity. The British government ultimately released him on what it termed “humanitarian grounds”.

Back in the early 1970’s many Chileans believed democracy could never be destroyed. I think many Americans would now like to believe this as well about our democracy. The experience around the 2020 election and Trump’s insurrection show there is a continuing danger to our democracy. To quote Ariel Dorfman:

“The main lesson that the Chilean cataclysm bequeaths the U.S. is to never forget that the rights we take for granted are fragile and revocable, protected only by the unceasing, vigilant vigorous struggle of millions upon millions of ordinary citizens.”

If anything, American experience shows both the fragility and revocability of our rights that Dorfman describes.

We are well over a year out from the 2024 presidential contest in November 2024 and most political commentators are assuming the race will be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That is the conventional wisdom, but in this instance, the conventional wisdom may well be wrong.

Even though it will greatly disappoint many of his followers, under the Fourteenth Amendment, Donald Trump is likely disqualified from running for President in 2024. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment excludes from future office and position of power in the U.S. government any person who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution but then engaged in and gave aid and comfort to an insurrection against it.

This provision of the Constitution, known as the Disqualification Clause, can only be overcome by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress.

The Disqualification Clause has been overlooked even though it is still perfectly good law. It came about in the aftermath of the Civil War. The framers of the Reconstruction Amendments, including the Fourteenth, determined that public officials who try to overturn the government by force should be barred from leading it.

Sen. John Henderson of Missouri, a framer of Section 3, explained that the Disqualification Clause bars “from office the leaders of the past rebellion as well as the leaders of any insurrection or rebellion hereafter to come”. That fits Trump to a tee. The provision was not limited to past rebellions.

There are a number of constitutional limitations on who can serve as President. These include: being at least 35 years old, being a natural-born U.S. citizen, and being a U.S. resident for at least 14 years. Also presidents cannot be elected more than twice.

Two prominent conservative legal scholars, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, have persuasively made the case for Trump’s legal disqualification in their much-discussed upcoming law review article. They argue Section 3 “remains of direct and dramatic relevance today”.

They also argue Section 3 is “self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress”. By that they mean that no criminal charge or conviction is necessary for a person to be adjudged disqualified.

Of course, big questions abound around enforcement of the disqualification and undeniably legal challenges will ensue. The case will almost certainly end at the U.S. Supreme Court but it is clear that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment can be enforced against Trump through civil proceedings in state court. State officials can determine what names can appear on the ballot for presidential elections. They can conclude a candidate is constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.

In 2022 exactly this process occurred when a New Mexico County Commissioner and Cowboys for Trump founder, Couy Griffin, was removed from office for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress. The standard of proof required in a civil disqualification case is “preponderance of the evidence” which means more likely than not.

The evidence in Trump’s case is overwhelming. After taking the oath of office in 2017, Trump played a central role in causing an insurrection that nearly overthrew an election and almost shattered our democracy. The attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was not a spontaneous event.

As the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics on Washington (CREW) have written January 6 “was the culmination of a multi-part scheme by the former president and his allies to use lies, intimidation, coercion and ultimately violence to keep Trump in office and invalidate the votes of the more than 80 million Americans who cast ballots for Joseph R. Biden in the 2020 presidential election”.

Those who say that Trump didn’t engage in an insurrection against the Constitution have an extremely uphill argument. Trump spread false claims of a stolen election before and after he exhausted legal challenges. He promoted fake elector schemes and led efforts to coerce government officials, including his own Vice-President, to help overturn a lawful election.

He summoned a violent mob for a “wild” protest. On January 6, he incited the mob “to fight like hell” and he watched the attack on the Capitol for three hours and refused to call off the mob. For the first time in U.S. history, a mob, at the direction of the former president, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power.

In a December 2022 post on Truth Social, Trump called for termination of the Constitution in order to restore himself to power. As CREW has written “he is the living embodiment of the threat that the Fourteenth Amendment’s framers sought to protect American democracy against when they banned constitutional oath-breakers from office”.

In making this argument, I don’t minimize barring someone from the ballot. Most of the arguments I have seen opposing the relevance of the Disqualification Clause focus on the momentous decision to exclude Trump from the ballot. Millions of Americans still want to vote for him.

The legal scholar Noah Feldman says state election officials who blocked Trump would face “an enormous amount of trepidation” making such “an epochal decision absent judicial guidance”. There is also worry about the precedent of striking contenders from the ballot as leading to future electoral trouble.

To avoid electoral problems since a case around these questions will end at the Supreme Court, the Court should fast track it once cases are filed in states. I do believe such cases will be filed. While the Supreme Court has repeatedly discredited itself, I would not predict how it would resolve the Section 3 questions but it could be done in a way that would not lead to election confusion.

As a political matter, refusing to hold Trump accountable will only embolden future authoritarians. It is dangerous not to invoke Section 3. The Constitution remains the supreme law of the land and the language of Section 3 is straightforward and clear.

Who thinks that if Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024 he will not make the exact same claims about a rigged and stolen election that he made in 2020? Given his legal desperation, you can bet on it. Also it is highly predictable if he is on the ballot and loses that Trump and his allies will again resort to extra-legal measures and violence. Learning from their failure on January 6, expect something worse from the Trump team.

Section 3 is the peoples’ constitutional protection against demagogues. History shows its necessity. Its invocation is critical to the continuation of our democracy.

In his book, How The Word Is Passed, the writer Clint Smith says that the history of the United States is the history of slavery. It was central to our American story. Of course, in my own educational experience, that was not the case.

Smith talks about gaps in how the slavery story has been told. I went to a very good school growing up in the Philadelphia area and from the curriculum, what we learned about slavery was minimal to nothing. The story wasn’t told.

I believe that bypass has been and remains the norm. With maybe the exception of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, the voices of the enslaved are not heard. The transatlantic slave trade itself gets scant coverage. For generations, America has been unwilling to tell the story. Illiteracy about slavery is a common educational result. Students graduate with a very poor understanding of how slavery shaped America.

I couldn’t help but think about this when I saw the stories about Florida’s latest curriculum featuring a cartoon Christopher Columbus saying “being taken a slave is better than being killed”. Columbus tells the kids “slavery is no big deal”.

The Florida Department of Education has suggested some slaves benefited from skills they learned while enslaved. This is the type of statement you might expect from partisans of neo-Confederate Lost Cause ideology.

Florida actually has a pernicious and shameful racial history on a par with Alabama and Mississippi. It is no wonder the state would like to bury just how bad it was since it is so contrary to any sunshine state image designed to woo tourists.

Most of the articles I have seen about Florida’s new curriculum don’t get into Florida’s actual history. That submerged story is well told in Marvin Dunn’s book A History of Florida Through Black Eyes. It is like an underground history you never see told.

Going back to the 1500’s, Spanish colonists began trafficking Africans to Florida. Slaves helped establish outposts and built fortifications. French trafficking of Africans followed later. The colonists resorted to using Africans when they found Native Americans more challenging to control. Possibly Africans were more disoriented in America being separated from their homes, families and culture.

Slave labor was critical to the development of economic and agricultural infrastructure in Florida and throughout the South. Florida was a wilderness. It became an American territory in 1821 and an American state in 1845. The U.S. government built a number of forts to protect the white settlers. The land grab by white Americans created an opportunity to profit by seizing large parcels of land.

The white settlers brought ideas of racial superiority with them. Blacks had no status or protection from abuse by whites. Dunn wrote:

“Crimes against blacks were dismissed out of hand. Blacks could not serve on juries or testify in court against a white person. Often the press, police, judges, grand juries and elected officials were secretly, and sometimes openly, supportive of, if not involved in, the use of violence as a means of controlling blacks.”

Cotton plantations, especially around Tallahassee, sprang up in northern Florida. The white plantation owners worried about free blacks. They also worried about their ability to control the slave population. The example of the Haitian revolution and abolitionism spurred fear that association with free blacks might encourage their slaves to run away. Dunn says the loss of slaves meant a loss of wealth since the cost of slaves far exceeded the cost of land. Dunn elaborated:

“The incessant demand by slaveowners that the American government use military force to capture and return escaped slaves and to remove the Seminoles from Florida was the driving force that shaped the history of the peninsula for decades after the departure of the Spanish.”

New Orleans slave traders brought many slaves into Florida. St. Augustine was a slave trading hub. Many whites adhered to a might-makes-right mentality and the powers-that-be prevented and outlawed education for slaves. Mortality rates for slaves were much higher than that of the white population.

On January 10, 1861, Florida seceded from the Union. It was the third state to do so. When the Civil War picked up steam, the Union forces recruited blacks into the Union army, an act that didn’t sit well with many white Southerners. Black troops played an important role in battles that took place in Florida.

However, even after the Civil War was won, anti-black violence remained rampant. Hopes that were raised for black economic advancement during Reconstruction were dashed. Instead of land ownership to the former slaves, the white elites regained power and crushed black hopes for economic power. Dunn wrote “the economic fates of blacks for generations in the South was set in stone by this betrayal”. The dream of 40 acres and a mule never materialized.

Florida also made a concerted effort to repress Black voting, leading the way in implementing a poll tax in 1889. That theme of voter suppression remains consistent to this day.

What followed was an extremely dark period in Florida history. Among states, Florida was in the top tier for lynching. It had the highest number of lynchings per capita of all the former Confederate states in the period from 1880-1930, more than twice the rate of Georgia, Mississippi or Louisiana. Racist Florida governors like Sidney Catts explicitly opposed NAACP efforts to bring lynchers to justice.

Florida also featured what is today known as ethnic cleansing: mobs of rampaging white men terrorizing black communities and forcing people to flee for their lives. The Klan was active all over the state especially in the 1920’s. Lynchings and ethnic cleansing were about creating an atmosphere of terror to keep black people down, in their place.

Florida’s efforts to minimize the effects of slavery reflect a white supremacist perspective. It is the story Florida’s leaders still want to tell in their PragerU videos.

Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it”. So it has been in American history with those who came out on top telling the story. Instead of Florida’s whitewash, healing requires public acknowledgement of the real history.

While I am not an election predictor, I did notice the recent New York Times/Siena College poll taken before Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment that indicated that he and President Biden are in a tight race for the presidency. Even if you are, like me, highly skeptical about early polls, the poll reinforced the seriousness of Trump’s candidacy. He appears to be, far and away, the leading Republican contender. Given that, it is important to step back and think about what a Trump second term might look like.

I see it as the consolidation of an American style of fascism and very likely the end of our democracy. My view does not come from liberal or left sources. It comes from listening to what Trump’s team is saying they plan to do if they again achieve power.

Trump plans a sweeping expansion of executive power which would concentrate far greater power in his own hands. He intends to bring powerful government agencies like the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under presidential control.

The Trump team has said that they will scour the federal government, including intelligence agencies, the State Department and the Defense Department to remove all officials they consider “disloyal” to Trump.To quote Russell Voight, Trump’s former head of OMB, “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them”.

This does not reflect the historic relationship between DOJ and the White House. Historically the DOJ has been independent of White House control. A Trump-controlled DOJ would be used to punish those considered MAGA enemies. It is predictable Trump would direct the IRS into action against those on his enemies’ list.

The Trump team wants to strip employment protection from tens of thousands of federal civil service employees. He would do this by reimposing his Schedule F executive order. Anyone deemed an obstacle to the Trump team will be removed and would be replaced by Trump sycophants. No doubt there would be legal challenges but this is how he would go after what he calls the “deep state”.

Conservatives going back to Reagan and Dick Cheney have touted a theory known as the unitary executive where the president is seen as essentially an elected king. To quote Trump from 2019, “I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as President”. Trump wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds. That is, he wants to be able to refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs he doesn’t like.

Dissent would likely become an endangered species as the risk of speaking out would be too great. The Trump view that the press and media are the enemy hasn’t changed. The FCC might be used to silence critics and to end investigative journalism.

Trump is a climate change denier and his first term was a giant step backward on climate but a second term would likely be far worse. The world is running out of time to take action but the conservative brain trust around Trump wants to reverse all federal government efforts to counter climate change.

The conservatives have devised a plan called Project 2025 that would block expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy, would cut funding for EPA’s environmental justice offices and would forbid states from adopting standards like California’s car pollution rules.

Project 2025 is not just anti-science – it is an absolutely sinister effort at the behest of fossil fuel companies to gut environmental regulation at a time when the dangers of global warming have never been more apparent.

For women, I think a Trump second term would be an opportunity to live out The Handmaid’s Tale. Expect an effort for a national ban on abortion with no exception for rape or incest. Imagine the FDA looking to end access to birth control as well as abortion medication. Trump would embolden Christian nationalist lawyers and judges to revive the mummified Comstock Act.

Minorities would face a landscape of intensified voter suppression and gerrymandering. The historian Carol Anderson has pointed out that underlying Trump’s Big Lie was the big lie of voter fraud.

Trump continuously railed about voter fraud in cities with large African-American and minority populations like Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. He and Giuliani mercilessly and falsely slandered election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Guiliani has now admitted he lied about Freeman and Moss but Trump can be expected to continue slanders of this nature. He linked black election workers with drug dealers and called Freeman and Moss “hustlers”. Vicious racism is his game and it will continue.

In a twisted reversal, alleged discrimination against white men and Christians would be highlighted. Using the excuse of critical race theory, “patriotic” education which hides the truth about racism would be promoted. As happened in Trump’s first term, hate crimes would spike against people of color and Jews.

The wild card would be where the pent-up hate and rage of MAGA would lead. Would it be directed against trans people, LGBTQ people generally, immigrants, Muslims, Jews or leftists? Would bolstered white supremacists and antisemites take their hate to the next level? Would Proud Boys, Patriot Front, militias and neo-nazis decide it was time to start the civil war?

Trump would likely pardon all January 6 insurrectionists who were convicted of federal crimes who were still incarcerated. He says he will prosecute “the Biden crime family”.

We might see Trump and his sadist allies like Stephen Miller restore family separation and put children in cages again. They talk about outlawing birthright citizenship, a right embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment. Also there is talk about moving to kick undocumented children out of public school, contrary to the Supreme Court precedent in Plyler v Doe.

As many have remarked, Trump is running to stay out of prison as victory offers his best protection but I think the deeper plan is to destroy democracy so he can make himself president for life. That way there is no chance he ever goes to jail. If he wins re-election, he will move to pardon himself as well as his co-conspirators and other MAGA allies who were convicted of crimes. It is highly doubtful there would ever be any more free or fair elections.

The real American carnage is what Trump would unleash in a second term. I would call it fascism. Others might call it “illiberal democracy” like in Victor Orban’s Hungary. It would be the rejection of democracy and the rule of law in favor of rule by a strongman.

Trump is not fighting for anyone else besides himself but the amazing thing is the level of buy-in by so many whom he would never give the time of day. It really is the ultimate con.

More than any single case, the biggest story about the Supreme Court has been the exposure of its blatant corruption and the failure of Chief Justice John Roberts to respond in any meaningful way. The ProPublica stories about both Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are damning.

Justices paling around with billionaires, taking lavish gifts and vacations and not reporting them and then deciding cases in favor of the 1% is not a great look. It is no different than politicians getting big bucks from their corporate donors and then crafting policy that delivers and serves the interests of the super-rich. Both are the victory of dark money.

Roberts’ failure to act stands in stark contrast to the behavior of earlier Chief Justice Earl Warren. Over fifty years ago, when Justice Abe Fortas acted in a way much less ethically compromised than Justice Thomas now, Warren engineered Fortas’s removal from the Court even though losing Fortas was a deadly blow to the then-liberal majority. 1969 was actually the last time the Court had a liberal majority.

With supreme arrogance, Roberts has looked the other way and pretended no one will notice the stench. Even the minimal step of a binding ethics code is too much. Justice Alito has made it clear that he thinks the Court is utterly beyond accountability.

Keeping the 6-3 conservative supermajority intact transcends ethics. This Court is just at the beginning of the conservative counter-revolution. After Dobbs and the taking away of women’s reproductive freedom, who knows where their trajectory will lead. Will they take away the right to contraception? gay marriage ? Will they expand gun rights? eliminate separation of church and state? further weaken unions? increase discrimination against LGBTQ people? Stay tuned.

The corruption mess aside, the Court issued some other major decisions this last term that demand response. You could take your pick which case is most disturbing but I would pick the student loan case, Biden v Nebraska. At the same time some billionaires pay to get rules and laws rigged in their favor, the Court decided in a way that took away debt relief from 43 million people.

No one can accuse this Court of being the peoples’ Court. It is the billionaires’ play thing. Tracking how private groups use anonymous donations to advance their interests at the Supreme Court could be a full-time detective job.

President Biden’s student loan relief plan would have forgiven up to $20,000 in debt to millions of student loan borrowers.The plan cancelled $430 billion in debt and it would have totally erased debt for 20 million borrowers. The median burden on all outstanding debt would have been dramatically lessened, especially helping those from low and middle-income families. Any way you cut it, the plan was significant.

The Biden plan was premised on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (or Heroes) Act of 2003. The law gave the Secretary of Education broad and sweeping power to modify or waive any provision of the student loan law in the context of a national emergency (which COVID most certainly was).

The Trump Administration had previously paused student loans, including the accrual of interest, during the COVID emergency. No one kicked when Trump invoked the Heroes Act but the Court now says Congress exceeded its authority when Biden followed up.

Writing on behalf of the Court’s conservative majority, Roberts offered a tortured reading of the statute to explain why “modify” and “waive” don’t have their plain meaning. It is hard not to see this as anything but black-robed partisan Republicans denying a Democratic president a political victory.

The case is an overreach with the Court majority acting like it is Congress, a policy-making body. To quote from the dissent by Justice Elena Kagan:

“From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint. At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent.”

One of the strangest aspects of the case was that none of the states that sued the Biden Administration had any personal stake in the Secretary of Education’s loan forgiveness program. It is elementary constitutional law but to have standing, you must have been injured. Without that, there is “no case or controversy”.

The Supreme Court got around the standing problem in the most tenuous way imaginable. It found MOHELA, a separate loan servicing public corporation based in Missouri provided standing even though MOHELA did not bring any case. Nor did it file an amicus. It was not clear MOHELA suffered any injury or wanted anything to do with the case but the Court wanted to get to the merits.

This was very much like the 303 Creative LLC v Elenis case where no gay person asked the plaintiff to design a gay wedding website and the Court ruled on a hypothetical. It used to be that the Court required a case with an injury but no more. If the Court doesn’t like a policy, it flexes its muscles and makes a case up.

At oral argument, Justice Alito expressed his view that student debt relief was not fair. Like a spiteful old person, Alito showed his out-of-touchness. Since 1980, the total cost of both four-year public and four-year private college has nearly tripled even after accounting for inflation. Many students have had no choice but to borrow more if they want to get a degree.

The debt burden is like an extra mortgage and very different than when someone like Alito was in college and debt was much more affordable. It is entirely appropriate for the government to be coming up with plans like what the Court rejected. The Biden Administration must counter with an effective Plan B for student loan relief.

For far too long, liberals and progressives have ignored the conservative court juggernaut and the consequences are now too obvious. Court reform must move way up on any liberal/left to-do list.

The conservative majority overreach is not likely to stop any time soon.

Instead of supporting a ceasefire and peace talks, the Biden Administration continues to pursue an extremely hawkish approach to the war in Ukraine. This is exemplified in one particularly disturbing decision which President Biden acknowledged was a “very difficult” call. That is, the decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions.

Cluster munitions are bombs, rockets and artillery shells that contain submunitions, that when deployed, can leave behind unexploded ordnance. The unexploded ordnance can be buried in land, hidden from view or lay in plain sight.

Children are the most common victims. The submunitions can be mistaken for toys. As an attractive nuisance, they resemble a bell with a loop of ribbon at the end.

Very little pressure or movement can explode a submunition instantly. A mistaken move can lead to a triggering which can literally shred a human being. Like a flying landmine, they blow off arms and legs and inflict fatal wounds. Cluster munitions can remain lethal to civilians for generations. After a war, when civilians return to a previous war zone, the bomblets are still there, lurking in subterranean fashion.

Cluster munitions are some of the nastiest, most savage weapons of modern warfare. The U.S. has already shipped these bombs to Ukraine and they are currently in use. Russia also has been widely using cluster munitions in Ukraine since its full scale invasion in February 2022. Even before the new U.S, shipment, Human Rights Watch documented the use of cluster munitions by Ukraine between March-September 2022.

There is a 2008 U.N. Convention on Cluster Munitions which bans the use, sale or stockpiling of these weapons. The Convention has 111 state parties – countries that have agreed to be legally bound by its provisions. Twelve more states have signed but have not completed ratification. Among other states, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and 20 other NATO member states have all signed on. The United States, Russia and Ukraine are all holdouts. None have signed the Convention.

A big part of the reason these weapons have been banned is because more than half of those killed or injured by them are civilians. Their track record is a history of indiscriminate devastation. While new military technology is often touted by its partisans for its alleged accuracy, these bombs are the opposite. They are like a deadly mechanized spray over an area the size of a football field.

Then there is the matter that many submunitions fail to explode on initial impact, leaving dangerous duds that can kill or maim for years to come unless the multiple bomblets are cleared and destroyed.

While the U.S. government has said the cluster munitions it is giving Ukraine fail less than 3% of the time, past use of the particular munitions the U.S. is providing suggest far greater failure rates. A 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service found that real-world cleanup operations “have frequently reported failure rates of 10% to 30%”.

Dud rates can be affected by the surfaces where submunitions land as they need hard surfaces. It is entirely possible that you could have a higher dud rate if the submunitions are dropped in mud.

In a different context, the U.N. estimated that 40% of Israeli cluster bombs failed to explode on impact when Israel was fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. Large scale use resulted in a region infested with tens of thousands of unexploded submunitions.

Cluster munitions have now contaminated 24 countries including Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. NPR recently reported on the horrendous effects of cluster bombs on Laos. While an estimated 50,000 Laotian civilians were killed by cluster bombs during the Indochina War, about 20,000 civilians have been killed by cluster munitions since the war ended. It is estimated the Laotian dud rate was 30%.

Fifty years later, Laos has not reached the end of this nightmare. An estimated 80 million unexploded bombs remain. Between 1964-1973, the Americans flew 580,000 bombing runs over Laos and according to the Defense Department dumped 2,093,100 tons of ordnance on Laos. It is the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. NPR reporter Lewis Simons says that to this day 1% of the dormant cluster bombs in Laos have been cleared even though the U.S. had pledged clearance.

The United States certainly could sign the Cluster Munitions Convention. The reasons given for use of the cluster munitions are lame. The primary reason given by the government is the temporary shortage of conventional artillery shells. We have a large back supply of cluster bombs. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor also has used the argument that Russia is using them which is a strange argument when claiming the moral high ground.

Do we really need to be sharing a disgusting weapon of war that has been condemned by a majority of the world’s nations as morally reprehensible?

Cluster munitions are not any kind of military game changer. Russia has dug in and shifted to a long-term defensive strategy. It is time to recognize that the war between Russia and Ukraine is not winnable. It is stalemated. It may go back and forth with one side making incremental gains or sustaining losses but we can be certain of one thing: it will generate enormous human casualties for both sides.

As someone who sees Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a continuing war crime, nothing has changed my mind about that but I have been bothered by the too-optimistic perspective of too much war reporting. War gets sanitized and the story is told with the true horror removed. The victory that never comes is right around the corner. This pattern is all too familiar for those who lived through the Vietnam war.

Instead of pushing for a new Cold War against Russia, there is a need to de-escalate both to reduce the threat of a larger European land war and to reduce the risk of nuclear war. At least during the original Cold War, there was recognition and concern about nuclear weapons and there was a nuclear freeze movement. By all appearances, the United States has lost that concern.

Cluster munitions should have been removed and banned from the battlefield long before now. Their evil became apparent during the Indochina war in the 1960s-1970s. The failure to ban cluster munitions is part of a broader failure of arms control. The only winner is the military-industrial complex which profits off every weapon system no matter how debased.

Although this association has rarely been made, the similarities between the 1920’s Ku Klux Klan and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are marked. Both movements have preached the centrality of being anti-immigrant. Both have been rooted in white supremacy. Both had and have a dark side of associated hate crimes. Both have wrapped themselves in the flag and pretended to be the most patriotic and pro-American.

I submit that to understand MAGA, the Klan must be considered as a formative background influence. MAGA didn’t spring full blown from the mind of Donald Trump. Many Americans like to hide the deep-seated racism which is part of our history and that is the case with the Klan. In the early 20th century it was far more influential than is now recognized.

When most people think about the Klan, I believe they think about the night riders, cross burnings and terrorism after the Civil War directed against black people. For that Klan, vigilantism was their calling card.

The 1920’s Klan was dramatically different. It was another kind of beast altogether. While it remained absolutely committed to white supremacy, it was not a secret organization. It published recruiting ads in newspapers and it strove to be mainstream. Like MAGA, its members included professionals, business people, farmers and wage workers. Also like MAGA, it advocated a brand of Christian nationalism. As bizarre as it may seem, in the 1920’s, joining the Klan then was connected to middle class respectability.

I had assumed that the Klan’s heyday was after the Civil War but that is wrong. In the 1920’s, the Klan made its biggest splash. This is described very well in two books, A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan and The Second Coming of the KKK by historian Linda Gordon.

By the mid-1920’s the Klan had an estimated four to six million members across the U.S.. It experienced enormous growth in membership in the North, the Midwest and the West. In some states, like Indiana and Oregon, the Klan was a powerful political presence, effectively controlling state governments. It elected hundreds of its members to state offices and judicial positions. The Klan owned cops, prosecutors, ministers, mayors and newspaper editors.

Nationally, the Klan claimed 15 senators and 75 Congressmen under its control. Indiana was its strongest base with Klan chapters in 90 out of 92 counties in the state. This story has been erased from conventional historical memory. It is part of the American tendency to whitewash history to maintain the heroic narrative.

A stereotype that the Klan was a bunch of ignorant rural hicks was far from the truth. The historian Kenneth Jackson has written that the 1920’s version of the Klan was strong in cities. 50 percent of active Klan members in the 1920’s were urbanites. The Klan had thousands of members in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Philadelphia.

The 1920’s Klan was heavily influenced by exponents of “scientific” racism and eugenics. Intellectuals like Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race, worried about non-Nordic immigrants like Italians and Jews. Linda Gordon says the Klan’s favorite term for the Whites they approved of was “Nordic”.

Probably the Klan’s biggest victory was around passage of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 named in part for Washington Klan Congressman Albert Johnson. That Act assigned quotas for immigrants in proportion to the ethnicity of those already in the U.S. in 1890. The design mirrored the Klan agenda for keeping out those they considered undesirables like Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe. The Act also excluded all Asians.

The Klan had a huge effect on public conversation about immigration much as MAGA has had over the last eight years. That Klan also talked about building a wall. The Johnson-Reed Act directly harmed European Jews who desperately needed to escape Nazi persecution both before and during the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews perished, in part, because of the odious quotas which effectively shut down Jewish immigration to the U.S..

I could not help but recall former President Trump’s comments in January 2018 when he said “we should have more people from Norway”. He also complained about “having all these people from shithole countries come here” and he cited Haiti, El Salvador and Africa. The New York Times reported that in a December 2017 meeting in the Oval Office Trump complained Haitians “all have AIDS” and Nigerians would never “go back to their huts”.

This could have been a Klansman speaking. The racism could not be more straight up. Just like the Klan, Trump has acted like he is protecting the “purity” of American citizenship. Now he wants to overturn birthright citizenship, something enshrined in the 14th amendment.

The Klan self-destructed in the late 1920’s because of corruption, internal feuds and its charismatic leaders like David Stephenson being convicted of rape and murder. Since the 1920’s to our time, America has never seriously and self-critically reflected on the racism and the xenophobia promoted by the Klan and other hate groups. We pretend to a dishonest colorblindness that avoids engaging history.

Xenophobia can be defined as fear, skepticism or hatred of foreigners. There is a long-term pattern of hating on new groups of foreigners who came to the U.S..The historian. Erika Lee says, “History shows that xenophobia has been a constant and defining feature of American life”. The pattern pre-dates the Klan.

When the Klan lost prominence at the end of the 1920’s, its ideas remained potent among millions of Americans. Unchallenged racism does not automatically disappear. On the contrary, it is often passed along as a family legacy.

Both the 1920’s Klan and MAGA have thrived on hate and fear. For the Klan it was immigrants, people of color, Jews, and Catholics. MAGA has a shifting hate list but it currently includes immigrants, trans people, and Black Lives Matter. Immigrants have remained a constant target of resentment.

Complicating the whole picture is the reality immigration driven by climate change will be an unrelenting part of the future. It is predictable that demagogues like Trump will gin up fear about brown hordes at the Southern border. Fascists internationally see playing the immigration card as their path to power. The strategy has been effective in Italy, Holland, Sweden and Hungary.

Probably the biggest challenge for all who support democracy is figuring a way to respond to this challenge. The Klan/MAGA approach of scapegoating immigrants for political gain is toxic. Xenophobia, not immigration, is the greatest threat.