Jonathan P. Baird

It is not everyday that you see a President issuing an Executive Order directing the full weight of the federal government against an imaginary organization. Such is the case with Trump’s September order targeting anti-fascism. In the Executive Order, he designated Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization”. This was followed by National Security Presidential Memorandum – 7 that continued in the same vein.

The most peculiar thing about this initiative is the fact that there is no Antifa organization. The government cannot tell us who the leader of Antifa is and where that leader is based.

Antifa, which is short for anti-fascism, is an umbrella term for a range of people on the political left who oppose Nazism, white supremacy and sexism. They are a loose, decentralized collection of individuals who gained some notoriety in Portland Oregon five years ago during the George Floyd protests. Since that time, they have been dormant and out of the spotlight.

In the absence of any public display and in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Trump resurrected Antifa to be a “major terrorist organization”. At a presidential roundtable discussion on October 8, Trump referred to Antifa as “paid anarchists”. Again, specifics are never provided about who these people are and who is paying them. I was reminded of the many signs at the No Kings demonstration that said “Hey Trump, nobody paid us to be here! We all hate you for free!”.

Trump has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization. Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, has said that Antifa has extensive foreign ties.

At the presidential roundtable, far right influencer of Pizzagate fame, Jack Posobiec said Antifa goes back 100 years to the Weimar Republic before the Nazis ruled Germany. He compared the anti-fascists who opposed Hitler coming to power to the people opposing Trump today. If we step back for a moment and think about that comparison, Posobiec would appear to have no problem placing Trump into the position of Hitler. Both opposed anti-fascists. Forgotten is the reality that America fought fascism, not anti-fascism, in World War 2.

The Trump regime is intent upon creating an entire mythology and history of a non-existent organization.

The question inevitably arises: why is Trump scapegoating an imaginary organization? I think the answer is that such a designation would allow the Trump regime wide latitude to prosecute anyone liberal or left who opposes his policies. Stephen Miller has stated, “The Democratic Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization”. Miller says there is a large and growing movement of left-wing terrorism in this country that is well-organized and well-funded.

Nothing could be more ridiculous. As someone very familiar with the American left over the last 50 years, I can authoritatively state the left is overwhelmingly non-violent and rejects terrorism. The Trump regime is manufacturing an Antifa crisis to achieve other ends. Like other dictatorships, they want to repress all opposition to their authoritarian rule. This is of a piece with their putting troops in the streets when there is no rebellion or insurrection. They are the architects of the problems they allege they are solving.

Antifa is like a ghost. You can fill it with a grab bag of people you deem anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-white or anti-family. The vagueness of pinning down who Antifa is allows for a fishing expedition. Antifa could potentially include anyone who could be painted as left wing or a dissenter.

Criminal liability aside which is no small thing, the threat here is to free exercise of First Amendment rights. Like happened during Red Scares in the past, fear of getting into trouble could become the great inhibitor of free speech. The regime is targeting speech, not action.

It is easy to imagine how this may play out both in social media and in university settings. We already have the shakedowns of major universities. To avoid the possibility of liability, the subject of anti-fascism and anything progressive would become taboo. Stool pigeons would reinforce conformity by threatening to name names.The effect would be chilling, a replay of McCarthyism.

The example of Professor Mark Bray illustrates how these issues have played out in the academic world. Bray teaches in the History Department at Rutgers University. He is an expert on Spain. In 2017, Bray wrote the book, Antifa: the Anti-Fascist Handbook. The book didn’t get much attention then. However, this fall, years after the book appeared and after Trump pushed to categorize Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, Bray started receiving death threats. Somone published information about his family and his home address on X.

Even though he was a very popular professor, Turning Points USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization, circulated a petition labelling him “Dr Antifa” and calling for him to be fired. FOX reported the story also using the pejorative Dr Antifa in referring to Bray. The death threats escalated. Fearing for their safety, Bray and his family fled to Spain. Anyone who voices unpopular ideas could become the next Bray. What is considered acceptable speech could be dramatically narrowed by a new enforced norm.

Antifa is being used as a vehicle by the Trump regime to criminalize all dissent. All freedom loving people of whatever stripe, whether libertarian or on the left, must oppose advancing authoritarianism and the threat to free speech represented by the Antifa Executive Order.

Over the last month or two, the Trump regime has been blowing up boats mostly off the coast of Venezuela. As of this writing on October 26, the U.S. military has killed 43 people in ten separate attacks. It is a kill first, ask questions later approach. The president of Colombia has said we killed a fisherman. The Trump regime has provided no evidence to support its claim that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Extrajudicial murder is now U.S. policy. No need for evidence, trial or any judicial process. If Trump wants you dead, that’s enough. These murders are crimes and people who have been murdered are not recognized as human beings with any rights. They have been dehumanized by an erratic individual who last week was self-promoting for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Venezuela episode demonstrates unprecedented recklessness and it is unclear if Trump intends a much wider scale attack on that country. The U.S. Navy has amassed an armada offshore. Congress has not been debating our foreign policy even though it is that branch of government that has the sole constitutional authority to declare war. Congress has been reduced to a nullity.

Without knowing more about the history of Latin America, it would be easy to see this episode as bizarre and exceptional. I would argue it is entirely consistent with America’s imperialist history in Latin America. Since the 19th century, America has used its enormous military, economic and political power to exercise control over Latin America. The best overview I have seen is Eduardo Galeano’s book, Open Veins of Latin America. Galeano writes:

“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European – or later Unites States – capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources. Production methods and class structure have been successively determined from outside for each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of capitalism.”

I would go back to the Monroe Doctrine in the early 19th century as a defining framework that declared European powers cannot colonize or interfere in the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine laid the groundwork for U.S. hegemony in the region.

Next came the Mexican-American War from 1846-1848 in which the U.S. vastly expanded its territory, taking enormous swaths of land from Mexico.

Our imperialism took off though in the late 19th century. In 1898, the U.S. intervened in Cuba’s fight for independence and the Spanish-American War led to our control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. The Platt Amendment in 1901 gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to establish naval bases. Around the same time, we also secured control over the Panama Canal.

In 1904. President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine with his Roosevelt Corollary that claimed the U.S. had the right to intervene in Latin American affairs to maintain stability. This led to numerous U.S. interventions in Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The era is well-described by Major General Smedley Butler in his book, War is a Racket:

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of the country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup in Guatemala that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Later in 1973, the U.S. assisted the fascist military of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in overthrowing another democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende.

There were numerous other U.S. interventions I have not mentioned like the Dominican Republic in 1965 and U.S. support against revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Our government supported brutal military dictatorships like existed in Argentina during the dirty war. Behind the scenes, the U.S. provided substantial support to Operation Condor, a terror campaign/international death squad conducted by Latin military dictatorships in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Trump’s Venezuela initiatives blowing up boats and threatening military action must not be seen as an isolated foray. It fits inside the long history of interventions. There have been many American regime change efforts in Latin American history. What is going on now is an increasingly unilateral Big Stick diplomacy characterized by macho posturing. It is a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine.

Latin America still holds vast reserves of critical minerals, oil and gas reserves and a third of the planet’s arable land. The desire for economic imperialist control remains constant.

The cast of characters in charge of our foreign policy is anything but reassuring. I think it is extremely worrisome that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command responsible for Latin America, resigned abruptly. It is a tragic state of affairs when the direction of a great power correlates to the whims of a dictator and the stooges who surround him. Military adventurism by the so-called peace president would appear to be in the cards.

The only good thing I would say about Columbus Day is that as a federal worker it provided me a three day weekend. To the extent I had thought about it, I have considered the holiday a big mistake. If there is going to be a commemoration, the replacement, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is vastly preferable. Although we as a nation have continually dishonored and mistreated Native Americans, they are our true founders.

Still, the presidential proclamation issued by the White House on October 9 came as a surprise. In the proclamation, Trump laid it on thick. Christopher Columbus became “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”. Trump went on to say Columbus “was guided by a noble mission to discover a new trade route to Asia, bring glory to Spain and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to distant lands”.

This idealized image and glorification has no basis in the historical record. Columbus never set foot in America. In 1492, he first landed in the Bahamas and then two months later on the island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Sailing off to points unknown was risky. I would concede that.

What Columbus wanted the most was gold which was becoming the new standard of wealth. After extensive finagling, he had persuaded the King and Queen of Spain to finance his expedition with three ships. The deal Columbus worked was that he could take 10% of the profit if he brought back gold and spices. He would also become governor of the new-found land and he would obtain a new title, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Columbus returned to Spain with indigenous slaves and gold. By exaggerating the gold potential, he again persuaded the Spanish Crown to finance a return journey to the Caribbean in 1493, this time with 17 ships. In the second trip, Columbus did not find gold but he went from island to island collecting slaves. He rounded up 1500 Arawak Indians. Of that 1500, he picked 500 of the fittest to take back to Spain for sale. Of that 500, 200 died on the trip back to Spain. The motive behind these voyages was pure greed. They were about as noble as Trump building a golf course in Qatar.

Columbus made two more expeditions first to Venezuela in 1498 and then to the coast of Central America in 1502. The other source of information we have is Bartolome de Las Casas, who transcribed Columbus’s journal and who wrote a multivolume History of the Indies. Las Casas wrote:

“Endless testimonies…prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy: small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then..The admiral, it is true was blind as to those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.”

The presidential proclamation talks of gallantry but is devoid of any specificity. The great explorer reflected an imperialist mentality attuned to the Doctrine of Discovery. Under the Doctrine of Discovery, Christian explorers believed they had a divine right and calling to lay claim to territories uninhabited by Christians.

Dehumanization of Native Americans is implicit in the presidential proclamation. It indulges white Christian nationalist fantasy predisposed to seeing Columbus as an adventurous hero entering a vacant wilderness. Those who were displaced, enslaved or killed do not register in this mythology.

It may be that the Columbus myth appealed to early Americans because they were making voyages across the ocean parallel to what Columbus did. Possibly settlers to America saw themselves in him. Still you have to ask: how can you be the person who discovered America when you never landed there? Also an estimated 50 to 60 million Native American people already lived there.

White supremacy is foundational to the Columbus myth. The justification for our settler colonialism was that the “savages” had to be conquered. Somehow the fact that Columbus ushered in a genocide against Native Americans gets overlooked. It is estimated that tens of million indigenous people died in the Americas within the first 100 years of European colonization.

One oddity of the presidential proclamation is the touting of Columbus for spreading the gospel of Jesus. It is entirely contrary to the First Amendment admonition that government should play no role in establishing any religion. Considering how much Columbus trafficked in slavery, seeing him as spreading any religion is ludicrous.

Trump and other partisans of the holiday have tried to play the honoring Italian-American card. They have played to traditionalist Italian-Americans who are clinging to the old myth but there are far better ways to honor Italian-Americans. It would be better to have a holiday honoring Joe Dimaggio than Christopher Columbus.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has written about the origin of the Columbus Day holiday. FDR proclaimed Columbus Day a federal holiday in 1934. She wrote that he was trying to solidify a new Democratic coalition that included Italian-Americans. The Ku Klux Klan had been very strong in 1920’s America and had been attacking Blacks, Jews, and Catholics. Ironically, the origin of the federal holiday was an effort to move beyond racism.

Like other Trump initiatives, the presidential proclamation is an effort to turn back the clock to a time before the Civil Rights movement so that we unlearn lessons we have learned over the last 75 years. If there is ever going to be acknowledgement of our sins and any effort toward rectification, honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day, not Columbus Day, is one small step forward.

So many political norms have been broken so quickly by the Trump regime that it is hard to keep up. Chaos is the new normal and it is all in an effort to create a one party-rule police state that could overwhelm any opposition. I wanted to list the features of this transformation that are most troubling. Individually and separately they may seem like scattered pieces of a puzzle but collectively they present a devastating totalist vision.

• Disappearance without due process. In a little reported story, hundreds of the detainees who were incarcerated at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida have disappeared. The Miami Herald has reported that two-thirds of the 1800 immigrants who were held there in July have gone missing from ICE’s online data base. Their families and attorneys have been unable to locate them. It is unclear if they have been deported or transferred to another facility. All legal process has been bypassed to fast track deportation. Extrajudicial black sites are replacing lawful process.

• Extrajudicial murders. The Trump regime has no legal authority to order the execution of civilians in international waters outside a military conflict. The war on drugs doesn’t justify killing an alleged enemy. Blowing up boats off the Venezuela coast was an act of premeditated murder as an estimated 20 people died. No proof was offered to show that these boats had any contraband on board. It is not enough to simply label people “narcoterrorists” and perform executions. Even if those murdered were drug runners, criminal penalty should be incarceration. Due process has been short-circuited so that the Trump regime can post videos and sadistically boast of the murders.

• Prosecuting political enemies. In the past there was always a wall between the President and the Department of Justice. Trump has treated the DOJ as his personal law firm firing attorneys who were unwilling to do his bidding. The prosecution of Jim Comey and Letitia James are malicious and there will, no doubt, be many more on the Trump vendetta list. The perversion of what Trump has done to the DOJ could not be more apparent as evidenced by his errant private message to Pam Bondi. Trump has turned the DOJ into a corrupt tool for personal vengeance. Pam Bondi makes John Mitchell look good.

• Troops in the streets. The Trump regime has deployed National Guard troops to cities that don’t want or need them. He has wildly misrepresented the facts by describing peaceful cities like Portland and Chicago as war-ravaged hellholes. Speculation is rife that he will invoke the Insurrection Act even though no rebellion is going on.The Trump regime uses the language of war in calling anyone who opposes it a terrorist or an insurrectionist. It is hard not to wonder if he will use troops as a means to intimidate Democratic voters in the 2026 election. Experience shows that he is unlikely to accept any election result where he loses.

• Threat to the First Amendment. Millions of Americans hold anti-fascist political views. As a nation we proudly fought fascists who committed enormous crimes in World War 2. The Trump regime has declared war on Antifa, an imaginary enemy. Antifa reflects a loose ideology and it is not an organization. It is likely the campaign against Antifa will be directed at all who dissent from Trump’s policies. In the Trump mind, opposition to Trump equates to terrorism even if it is just the Democratic Party. The effect is to block free speech and all dissent, kind of the ultimate cancel culture. Mark Bray, a history professor at Rutgers and the author of a book about Antifa has received death threats and felt so threatened he and his family just fled to Spain.

• Shredding the Fourth Amendment. On October 1 at 1am in the morning, ICE conducted a military style raid on a low rent apartment complex in Chicago using a Blackhawk helicopter and armored vehicles. They dragged everyone in the complex out of their beds, zip-tying all, including children. Supposedly this was a raid to capture the undocumented. ICE trashed the place making it uninhabitable. What happened to our Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures? There were no warrants and there was no specificity to the search. Everyone arrested did have a brown skin. This raid was exactly what our Founders warned against and with ICE’s massive funding, there are likely to be more. Nothing could be more un-American than masked, unidentified ICE agents running amok and sequestering people in secret prisons with zero transparency.

• Corruption extraordinaire. The degree of corruption in the Trump regime is unprecedented. Foreign governments pay bribes to Trump through crypto. The Trump family has cashed in to the tune of billions. The DOJ refuses to investigate bribes like the Tom Homan situation because he is a political ally. Supposedly there is a tape of Homan accepting $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag. The DOJ has so far buried the Jeffrey Epstein file because it incriminates his former best friend, Trump. 1000 FBI agents were given the task of redacting Trump’s name from the files. The journalist Michael Wolff has reported that Epstein showed him pictures of Trump with topless young girls sitting on his lap and Pam Bondi refused to answer questions about that from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. This DOJ specializes in disappearing and hiding evidence.

• The requirement of sycophancy. I recently watched the most recent meeting of the Trump cabinet. It gave new meaning to the phrase “worst of the worst”. To be a part of this cabinet you have to have sold your soul. Cabinet members slavishly lavished praise on their boss like he was the leader of North Korea. The meetings are dominance-submission affairs where loyalty is demonstrated by slathering accolades upon Dear Leader. Personal humiliation is a job requirement.

In putting the pieces of this puzzle together, the big picture is not hard to see. Call it dictatorship, police state, strongman rule, authoritarianism or fascism – all fit. What is going on is a government replacement from democracy with three co-equal branches of government. Now the question is what the American people will do about it.

American history is such a vast panorama that how it is seen is a Rorschach test. Emphasis could be placed on presidents, wars, westward expansion and the evolution of civil liberties or it could be placed on the history of slavery and the genocide against Native Americans. It is all about what we choose to highlight.

How we view our own American ruling class is subject to the same type of scrutiny. As someone who tends to see the darker shades, I find it hard to escape noticing an obvious trend. Our American ruling class has shed any notion of noblesse oblige that characterized the 19th century American elite.

Noblesse oblige is a notion that those with great wealth and power have a responsibility to model behavior that is honorable and generous. Part of the privilege is a duty to those less fortunate. While the American ruling class in the 19th century were often seen as robber barons, many of the most powerful capitalists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon took the noblesse oblige duty seriously. They used surplus resources they possessed for public good. The idea they had was that to whom much is given, much is expected.

This perspective was ingrained in the old-money Protestant establishment. Many 19th century ruling class leaders engaged in large-scale philanthropy endowing universities, libraries, hospitals and museums that improved the quality of life for many Americans.

Andrew Carnegie funded 2509 libraries as well as Carnegie Mellon University. John D. Rockefeller funded the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and gave thousands of acres of land to the National Park Service, including Acadia National Park with its carriage roads and granite bridges. Andrew Mellon funded the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and was a major benefactor of the University of Pittsburgh.

These men cultivated an ethic of some public service and self-restraint. They preferred hiding the degree of their wealth and they were not showy about their money like someone who was nouveau riche and trying to impress.

At the same time, their legacy was complex, odious and at best, ambiguous. They earned their reputations as robber barons by violently repressing workers who were organizing unions. Carnegie and his manager Henry Frick locked out union members and violently crushed the Homestead Strike at his steel plant in 1892. Rockefeller and his son did even worse things in the Ludlow Massacre in 1913-14. They arranged for the National Guard to act as their private army to attack a miners’ tent colony, killing 24 people.

In that era, many saw the robber barons’ philanthropy as a form of public relations to justify extreme wealth and that view has merit, but nevertheless, their giving was tangible. It made some real world differences in education, libraries, art, medicine and national parks.

Now our ruling class would appear to be single-mindedly focused on maximizing their own personal wealth. They are much less steeped in any tradition of civic duty or responsibility. Instead of maintaining a safety net for those less fortunate, they are resentful of the safety net and do nothing as they watch its weakening and dissolution. None of these billionaires speak out against Trump excesses because they are afraid to get on his bad side. The billionaire class is defined by the pursuit of endless wealth and vaporous fame.

Donald Trump is an appropriate standard bearer for our billionaire class. He may never have read a book. No one could ever accuse him of cultivating any ethic of public service or self-restraint. Conspicuous consumption, gilded in gold, is the Trump trademark. No president has ever monetized the office like he has.

The billionaires around him like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are hardly different. As Musk has said:

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy – I want to grab all that money.”

Musk is the first person to have a net worth of $500 billion, an unfathomable sum. Then, of course there is Jeff Bezos whose net worth is a mere $242 billion. Bezos’s wedding in Venice cost between $46-$56 million, placing it among the most expensive weddings in history. Any notion of noblesse oblige is dead to these billionaires. They don’t give back.

The fact that America has the greatest income inequality in the developed world is a result of a crony capitalist system where the ultra-rich shamelessly grab and hog as much wealth as possible. Musk is more focused on going to Mars than any plan that might help humans on earth. As a Jewish person, his nazi salutes did not escape my notice. His mentality would appear to be stuck in the apartheid era.

Which brings me to the matters of racism and sexism. Under the Trump regime there has been a concerted effort to turn back the clock. The anti-DEI campaign has been a thinly veiled effort to rehabilitate racism and sexism. Have any billionaires spoken up about this noxious campaign? Not one. Too many people have sacrificed and suffered to make the progress we have. The billionaire class acts like royalists from the distant past who see the job of people of color and women as to serve them.

Just like the 19th century ruling class, our ruling class indulges a eugenicist world view that posits they are biologically and socially superior to everyone else. For them, poverty is a character flaw, not due to class position and unfortunate circumstances. Assuming their superiority is a lame rationalization to justify the status quo.

You might think a ruling class would have a long-term survival perspective with a sophisticated orientation grounded in learning and history but our ruling class does not. Like the oligarchs who surround Vladimir Putin, our oligarchs’ major concern is feathering their own nests. Whether it is opposing constitutional violations, pandering to xenophobia, respecting science or opposing climate change denial, you don’t hear a peep from them.

Call it nihilism or self-interest, our oligarchs throw in and collaborate with the Trump regime. Our ruling class provides a living example of cowardice and moral debasement. They make Carnegie and Rockefeller look kind.

I saw that there will be new No Kings demonstrations across the country on Saturday, October 18. Concord will again be a site, this time for No Kings 2. The anti-Trump Concord rallies held this year in April, June, and on Labor Day in September have surpassed all my expectations. I have lived in New Hampshire for over 40 years and these were some of the best-attended demonstrations I have witnessed.

What was great about the demonstrations besides the turnout was the positive energy unleashed and the creativity of the many signs. The signs were personal, funny, politically savvy and artistic. The demonstrations were very encouraging because they showed how many New Hampshire people are utterly opposed to any slide into fascism. People in large numbers don’t want to lose our democracy.

I have to say that in observing the demonstrations I have a sense of deja vu. The movement against the Trump regime is reminiscent of the movement against the Richard Nixon presidency. In both situations, the nation faced an out-of-control President attempting to hoard power and use the power of the State to repress opponents. Like now, the leadership of the Democratic Party was weak and feckless. Progressive Democrats and independent radicals had little influence in Congress. We took it to the streets. Between 1968-1973, there were innumerable demonstrations against the Nixon regime and the Vietnam War.

Just as happened with Nixon, I would argue that a mass movement could hasten the end of the Trump regime. The movement against Nixon was central to creating the circumstances for his resignation from the presidency.

The street demonstrations in the 1960’s began before the Nixon presidency. Both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement showed the power of non-violent protest. The great civil rights March on Washington in 1963 was followed by the first anti-Vietnam War March on Washington in April 1965. Then there was the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, the Washington Moratorium of 1969 (the largest demonstration in U.S. history at that time), the demonstrations around the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970 and the May Day protests in May 1971.

The demonstrations had started small and they built dramatically. By the time of the Nixon presidency, the Movement had gained tremendous force. Organizing can build identity and self-confidence in the movement. In my college in Connecticut, we shut down the campus in the aftermath of Kent State and spent weeks organizing. Similar things happened on many campuses.

There were always people who questioned the value of protest. That sentiment has a familiar ring. Since the Vietnam era, the view that demonstrations don’t accomplish anything has been common. That viewpoint typically dismisses protests as, at best, feel-good exercises that don’t change anything. They run the risk of degenerating into violence with the possibility of alienating broader swaths of the public.

Sometimes those opposed to protest will highlight the importance of electoral politics as the means to defeat Trump and MAGA. And there is little doubt the 2026 and 2028 elections are very important as a way to push back.

The Trump behemoth has proven to be formidable. They control all three branches of government. They have been flooding the zone trying to create the impression of strength and invincibility. They have moved quickly and they aim to make opposition feel hopeless and overwhelmed.

While the effect of protest has been hotly debated, there is more evidence available now that shows how crucial the Movement was in weakening Nixon and the same dynamic can play out with Trump. Although he publicly dismissed protesters, Nixon felt threatened by the scope of dissent and protest. Even today, people don’t realize the power the Movement had then.

Nixon’s plan to end the Vietnam War was actually a plan for massive escalation. He floated the idea of using nuclear weapons to pressure concessions from the North Vietnamese. He also discussed mining North Vietnamese harbors. He had a “madman theory” designed to show the North Vietnamese, the NLF and the Russians that he was unpredictable and capable of massive destruction if they did not agree to his peace terms. Bluff was a big part of Nixon’s game plan.

The fact that the American people in massive numbers wanted withdrawal from the war was a critical deterrent to Nixon’s plan of escalation. It led to Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization, replacing and removing U.S. soldiers from the battlefield. It acted as a stop to the use of any nuclear weapon. Nixon and Henry Kissinger worried about domestic political blowback. It also led to an end to the military draft in 1973.

Nixon was constantly scheming and calculating but there can be little doubt that the size of his opposition inhibited him. Both Daniel Ellsberg and Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have written that the Movement restrained decision makers from worse excesses. It is also possible that Nixon’s preoccupation with protesters (like Ellsberg) fed his paranoia and led him to authorize crimes that resulted in his downfall.

To its credit, the bulk of the Nixon opposition stayed unified as evidenced by the repeated massive anti-war demonstrations. There were dopey infantile extremists like the Weathermen but they were a tiny fringe.The example of masses of people organizing together speaks directly to our time. The American people are in the process of building an enormous opposition to MAGA fascism to preserve democracy. Resistance will build more resistance as we broaden our coalition.

The Trump regime can be brought down just as happened to Nixon’s regime. Trump and MAGA have massively over-reached and they are awakening a sleeping giant. The Jimmy Kimmel return is a perfect example of how to fight back. Fascism is not inevitable and no one knows what will happen next. Our protests need to keep building and expanding.

Last fall, when I was traveling in South Carolina, my friend Robin, who is a civil rights attorney, told me about Robert Smalls and showed me a plaque in his honor in Charleston. I have to admit I had barely heard of him. In all my years of education and in my own independent reading, his name was never mentioned.

Smalls grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was born a slave in 1839. His situation was unusual. His owners, the McKee family, made him what was called a ‘quasi-slave’. He was raised as if he was a rich white boy even though he could be beaten or sold off at any time. The McKee family treated Robert almost like a son.

As a young man, Robert asked to buy his freedom but the McKees did not respond well. They tried to break Robert’s spirit by exposing him to slavery’s dark side but that backfired. Robert’s mother and Henry McKee, the son of the patriarch, decided on a different plan to address Robert’s rebellious tendencies. McKee rented him out for work in Charleston, a plan that profited McKee who kept nine-tenths of the money earned.

That led to Robert working a variety of jobs as a laborer. One job was as a dockworker and then a sailor for the Confederate Navy. The Civil War was already underway. Robert was hired for the lowest position on a ship as a deckhand but he was a quick study and soon rose to become one of the top ranked black sailors on his ship, the C.S.S. Planter. He got trained as a helmsman.

In that role, he became an expert on the ins and outs of Charleston harbor. The Captain of the Planter taught Robert everything he needed to know about running a boat. Robert also knew the location of all the mines placed in the harbor that were meant to blow up Union ships as he was one of those responsible for placing the mines.

Charleston had played a critical role as the most active North American port in the slave trade. Nearly half the captives forced from Africa to the mainland United States arrived through Charleston. By 1860, an estimated 4 million people were being held in bondage.

During those years around the start of the Civil War, Smalls got married and he went to his wife’s owner to see if he could purchase her freedom. The price was $800, which was an almost impossible sum for someone in Smalls’ position. The financial impossibility of buying his wife’s freedom (along with the possibility that his wife could conceivably be sold along with his two small children) led Smalls to think more seriously about escape.

Smalls hatched a plan. Over a period of months he waited for the right time. He needed the Captain and the other white members of the crew to be off the ship (which was not supposed to happen). The opportunity arose on May 13, 1862. Smalls and a small crew of black sailors slipped their cotton steamer off the dock in the middle of the night. They picked up family members at a rendez-vous spot and then they carefully navigated through Charleston harbor.

Smalls even got the Captain’s broad-rimmed hat to wear which would be recognized by those defending the harbor. He counted on the dark to aid his ruse. If the Confederates realized it was a ship commandeered by slaves, all on board would have very likely been tortured and executed. It was no easy feat to get through the heavily fortified harbor. Smalls had to ring a secret bell code and navigate through five check points. The Union Navy had blockaded Confederate ports including Charleston and Smalls hoped to reach the Union ships that were outside the harbor.

When the Union officers saw the Planter, they almost fired on it. If hit, the ship would have been a powder keg since it was heavily armed. There was 200 rounds of ammunition, four cannons, a 32 pound pivot gun, a 24-pound howitzer and 4 other guns on board. However, Smalls displayed a white flag and that saved the day. The Confederates realized what was happening too late. They fired on the Planter but the ship was out of range. Smalls’ escape meant an unexpected weapons bonanza for the Union. It was the largest seizure of weapons in the entire war.

The news of the escape to freedom went viral nationally. Smalls became an instant hero. The U.S. Congress passed a private bill authorizing the Navy to appraise the value of the Planter and they awarded Smalls and his crew a monetary award. Smalls received $1500, a significant sum in those days. It was enough to allow him to purchase his former owner’s house after the war. The Confederacy was so freaked out by Smalls’ audacity, they put a $4000 bounty on his head.

President Lincoln was extremely impressed by Smalls’ actions. He invited him to meet at the White House. Smalls had been lobbying Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, to begin enlisting Black soldiers. Lincoln subsequently made that hugely consequential decision which dramatically advanced the Union’s cause. It is likely that Smalls’ exemplary action persuaded Lincoln to make that decision.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the introduction of Black troops to the Union side. The effect was tide-changing. Nearly 200,000 Black men, many previously enslaved, served in the Union Army and Navy. The new troop addition gave the Union a crucial manpower advantage while depleting the Confederate labor force. It also transformed the entire goal of the civil war. The war became not just about preserving the Union. It became a war of liberation from slavery. The introduction of Black troops was a devastating psychological blow to the already battered Confederacy.

Smalls fought on the Union side in 17 military actions and became the first African American Captain in the United States Navy. He personally shattered any notion of Black inferiority and inspired millions. He had immense popularity after the war and he served in the South Carolina assembly and then served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a founding member of the South Carolina Republican Party. In 1895 he fought tooth and nail against Jim Crow in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention that stripped Black people of their voting rights again.

In Smalls’ lifetime, Black people had already been excluded from democracy for 200 years. He said:

“My race needs no special defense for the past history of them and this country. It proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Smalls’ story has never reached a large mass audience even though his actions sent a huge shock wave across the country during the Civil War. He may be the least well-known individual whose actions had the most consequential effect on the entire Civil War.