Jonathan P. Baird

Robust freedom of speech has been one of the greatest things about America. Mouthing off has been largely protected, whatever your political point of view. However, the scope of our First Amendment freedom is currently under threat like never before because of the actions of President-elect Trump and his MAGA movement.

The threat is about creating an atmosphere of intimidation so that people are afraid to exercise their freedoms. Fear can lead to inhibition and MAGA acts like a sledgehammer, trying to silence those in opposition to Trump policies. There are legal, political, and economic dimensions to the intimidation.

While it is not the most significant encroachment in the legal domain, I found Trump’s lawsuit against the Iowa pollster, Ann Selzer, telling. Trump is suing a well-known, much-respected pollster for the Des Moines Register for an election prediction that did not pan out. In a poll prediction, Selzer incorrectly believed Vice-President Harris would do better than she ultimately did. Trump is arguing Selzer’s poll was “election interference”.

Suing a pollster for a wrong prediction has a chilling effect. Pollsters are in the business of prediction. That is what they do. Lawsuits like this have the effect of making a pollster never publish a prediction that would disfavor Trump. The price becomes too high and the effect is corrupting.

The Selzer lawsuit must be seen in the context of Trump’s broader effort to propagandize that journalists are “the enemy of the people” who deliver “fake news”. And it is not just virulent rhetoric deployed constantly at his rallies where he singles out and directs anger, distrust and hate at journalists.

Trump has filed a lawsuit against CBS for the way it edited Bill Whitaker’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. He has also filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC for George Stephanopoulos’s reporting on his E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse conviction.

ABC settled the defamation case paying Trump $15 million and $1 million in attorneys fees plus tendering an apology even though they had strong legal arguments in defense of Stephanopoulos. Many legal observers saw it as ABC bending the knee and obeying in advance. ABC is not alone. Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have all tried to suck up, make nice and regain favor. Bezos and Zuckerberg each gave Trump’s inaugural $1 million gifts.

Trump has called for punishing TV networks, including revoking their licenses to broadcast for coverage he deemed unfavorable. He also has called for prosecuting journalists. Trump doesn’t think criticism of his actions and policies should be protected speech. He wants to place the FCC under presidential authority. The President-elect is still suing Bob Woodward over audiotapes Woodward conducted with Trump for a 2020 book. Northwestern Law Professor Heidi Kitrosser described Trump’s modus operandi:

“He is going to punish people who dissent from his approach to things, people who criticize him and also, perhaps more importantly, investigative journalists and their sources who are not offering opinions but are exposing facts that he finds embarrassing and inconvenient.”

Free speech is reduced to freedom to agree with Dear Leader. Instead of tolerance for a wide range of views, what is allowed speech, narrows. This is how authoritarianism operates. It shrinks the allowable discourse and makes people afraid of the consequences for voicing anti-Trump perspectives.

Trump files lawsuits more with the goal of harassment and grinding people down than the goal of winning. For media outlets without deep pockets, the cost of litigation alone can be devastating. Such lawsuits make publishers question whether critical reporting about public figures is worth it. The practice even has a name – SLAPP, short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. The effect is self-censorship.

Trump’s lawsuits work to make him less accountable and when he wins like with ABC he is emboldened. What he is doing is a form of bullying to get media to knuckle under and stop reporting critically.

Trump has been vocal about wanting to revise libel law. Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, when someone makes a statement about a public figure regarding a matter of public concern, they can’t be sued for defamation unless they knew they made a false statement or they acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth. The current standard offers protection for journalists and Trump wants the precedent overruled so that it would be easier to sue news organizations and publishers.

Just the thought of Sullivan being overturned would send a shock wave through all of journalism. Fear of offending would dominate newsrooms and is greatly inhibiting. Money, especially in our current media environment, is always an issue.

Backing the legal and economic pressure is the sheer political thuggery of the MAGA movement. When things don’t go their way, we get January 6. Many examples come to mind especially the harassment of people like Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss, Mitt Romney Judge Merchan, Liz Cheney, retired General Mark Milley, Rusty Bowers and all the election workers who wouldn’t go along with the Big Lie. All these people and many more have been subject to threats of violence.

There are no shortage of MAGA fanatics who will mindlessly and viciously jump whenever Trump tweets. They just need to be sicced on a target and many respond. Countless people have been harassed in a frightening way. Mitt Romney, who has had to spend a fortune on his own personal security against MAGA threats, revealed that many elected Republican senators were afraid to vote in favor of impeachment after January 6 because they were worried about physical violence from Trump supporters.

Authoritarianism and crony capitalism are incompatible with a vigorous First Amendment. Billionaires prefer dark money and no light shed on financial crimes. Students of history know that the First Amendment as we know it is relatively new, post-1960’s. For much of American history, it was much reduced and we must worry that we are heading back to such a period. Maintaining and protecting the First Amendment is a big part of what the struggle ahead must be about.

Early in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote these famous words: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Whatever one thinks of Marx, it is undeniable that class analysis provides a powerful searchlight on how to understand our world. Political figures bring an agenda, goals, financing and ideology to their campaign efforts. Analytically, it is valuable to consider what social class preferences their ideas embody and advance,

The old adage “follow the money” has utility in looking at who is behind politicians. Especially since the Citizens United decision unleashed an avalanche of money, the financial factor has become far more determinative. The money required to run as a viable presidential candidate is now astronomical. With that in mind, what class interests did the major party candidates reflect and what can that tell us about likely trajectories, especially of the President-elect.

As has been widely noted, Donald Trump has surrounded himself with a coterie of billionaires. Axios has reported that he has 14 billionaires staffing his administration. Besides Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, his efficiency czars, we have, to name a few, Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, Linda McMahon, his Education Secretary, Scott Bessent, his Treasury Secretary and Doug Burgum, his Interior Secretary.

In 2021, Forbes reported Joe Biden’s cabinet had a net worth of about $188 million. The Guardian puts the net worth of Trump’s administration leaders at more than $300 billion. These billionaires who poured many millions into Trump coffers donated with plenty of strings attached. They will want payback either through tax cuts or relaxed regulations. They want greed without limitation. We are talking Robber Baron 2.0.

Considering the outsized role of billionaires and the great probability that Trump policies will reflect the interests of the billionaire class, it is remarkable how he sold himself as an alpha male fighting elites. Trump is repelled by his own MAGA supporters and would never give them the time of day. Count on it that he considers his own supporters as easy marks. It is like the contempt he has expressed for veterans as suckers and losers.

No president in my lifetime has been as devoid of compassion but he is accomplished at image creation. Trump did win the votes of many working class people of all races and nationalities who were angry and wanted to lash out at the system. Trump successfully directed their rage at immigrants and trans people.

It was instructive to watch Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, saying the U.S. must “live within our mean” and that his proposed federal budget cuts will cause “temporary hardship”. I don’t believe the word “hardship” would exist in the Musk lexicon. Musk isn’t having any trouble living “within his mean”. How many countless billions are enough for these ultra-avaricious money grubbers?

Trump has emerged as an agent of the super-wealthy class of American oligarchs. He will feather his own nest while he will also be doing billionaire bidding. Money is his passion.Expect him to de-fang the IRS and allow the billionaires more opportunity to stash money off shore beyond reach.

One thing that surprises me is that the old-money American ruling class would feel comfortable letting someone who is a loose cannon like Trump mind the store. Our ruling class has had a much less flashy, hide-the-money style, complemented by a noblesse oblige tradition. Trump is the antithesis of that. I would think others with great wealth and power would worry about having a convicted felon in charge. It is not their preferred image of America.

Just on climate alone, I would imagine the old ruling class would find Trump very problematic. Children of the ruling class also need a habitable planet. Trump’s climate change denialism is dopey and short-sighted and I suspect it would concern scions of great wealth. Musk may choose to live on Mars but that is not an option for the rest of us.

As for the Democrats, they failed to appeal to the masses of working people who have been hurting economically and who have urgently felt the rising cost of inflation. Compared to 2020, they failed to turn out their base. A big part of the problem was the Democratic message that the economy was fine when voters were very dissatisfied and wanted change.

Whether out of loyalty to Biden or just wrong ideas, Vice-President Harris made clear nothing would change under her administration. Instead of being a change agent, she defined herself as someone who would be a continuation of Biden policies. Running as a status quo candidate when people are desiring change is a recipe for failure. Campaigning with Liz Cheney, she unsuccessfully tried to appeal to the moderate Republican voter, a seeming declining species.

Harris’s campaign embodied the internal class contradictions within the Democratic Party. The party includes corporate liberal billionaires, the professional-managerial class, labor unions, and many working class people. Harris emerged as a moderate, distancing herself from the party’s progressive wing. Gone was any mention of a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a higher minimum wage and ending student loan debt. Out of fear of alienating constituencies, Harris shamefully avoided the issue of Gaza.

Her stance was a class amalgam, trying to bridge billionaire and worker interests, which led to a blurred politics. Harris talked in vague generalities about an opportunity economy. She refused to identify corporate villains and she did not direct anger at the ruling class for our outrageous economic inequality. She hoped it would be enough to talk about abortion rights and saving democracy.

In trying to appeal to the more conservative professional-managerial class in the suburbs, she failed to give her working class base reasons to vote for her. She proved to be out-of-touch with how much people were hurting. A survey by CNBC found 63% of workers cannot pay for a $500 emergency expense. Harris did not talk about evictions, homelessness, credit card debt or ending poverty.

In this last election, neither candidate spoke to the real economic needs of our working class. Two million less people voted in 2024 than voted in 2020 even though our population increased by 4.5 million. To win, Democrats need to give working class people reasons to vote for them. They need to speak far more clearly to universal pocketbook issues and they must stop being afraid to call out the billionaire class who are the architects of a society designed to funnel money to the 1%.

This last election cycle the plurality of voters went for someone who said he would blow things up. Many uninspired Democrats stayed home. Now we will all pay the price.

With all the stories about Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, I think the main story has been lost. Biden still has time to use his pardon power to good purpose. He has used the pardon power less generously than all recent presidents.

I would submit his sparing use of the pardon power, granted by the Constitution, reflects a mistakenly optimistic view of our justice system because it ignores so many injustices. President Biden has been hyper-cautious in the typically chicken Democratic Party fashion. Say what you will about Republicans, they are not afraid to pardon the biggest scoundrels whether they are super-rich fraudsters, racist cops, or slimy political operatives. Feckless Democrats want to to take a poll first to see what voters think.

Instead of being known for something he repeatedly promised he would not do (and that is the definition of personal self-interest), Biden could go out with a bang by pardoning America’s longest-serving political prisoner, American Indian Movement activist, Leonard Peltier.

Words against injustice are cheap. Clemency for Peltier would be meaningful. Peltier, now 80, has been in jail for 48 years. He is currently incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary in Coleman, Florida.

Pardoning Peltier and granting parole or compassionate release would be an important step in the healing direction Biden has indicated he wants to pursue. In late October, Biden issued what he called a “long overdue” formal apology for the abuse and trauma inflicted by the federal government’s Indian boarding school system.

Peltier himself was a victim of this policy. When he was nine years old, he was forcibly taken to an Indian boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota. He was made to remain there for three years. A pardon for Peltier would be something positive for which Biden would be forever known. It was talked about by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama but, in the end, none of them acted.

The request for pardon is more urgent in light of Peltier’s age and health. He is nearly blind and he struggles to walk. He has diabetes and he suffered an aortic aneurysm. He was hospitalized in July and October because his diabetes has caused him to develop open wounds and tissue death on his toes and feet. If Biden doesn’t grant a pardon, it is likely Peltier will die in prison. There is no chance Trump would grant him a pardon.

Not granting a pardon would be a missed opportunity to begin a process of rectification in our historic mis-treatment of Native Americans. America has never owned up to its genocidal track record. Nick Tilsen, president of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group, explained this well:

“The way they have treated Leonard is the way they have treated indigenous people historically throughout this country. That is why indigenous people and oppressed people everywhere see a little bit of ourselves in Leonard Peltier.”

Two FBI agents and one Native American man died in the 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The FBI has long been opposed to Peltier’s release but they don’t talk about either their gross misconduct or the federal prosecutorial improprieties. Like happened to Martin Luther King Jr., Peltier and the American Indian Movement were targeted by COINTELPRO, the FBI’s effort to destroy 1970’s progressive movements.

The U.S. Attorney, James Reynolds, who prosecuted the case, has admitted the government was not able to prove Peltier committed any offense on the Pine Ridge reservation. All that was established was that Peltier was at the scene of the crime along with 40 other Native Americans.

The government dropped murder charges against Peltier because they had withheld exculpatory evidence. A ballistics test showed the murder weapon was not Peltier’s gun. The government ended up charging Peltier with “aiding and abetting” whoever killed the two agents but it was not proved whom he aided and abetted. His other co-defendants were acquitted.

In a later proceeding in 2003, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals had this to say about the Peltier case:

“Much of the government’s behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed.”

When commentators start talking about how Biden should pardon political opponents of Donald Trump who have committed no crime but who might be prosecuted in the future for bogus charges, I have to say I have a bad reaction. How can a hypothetical possible future charge be considered for parole rather than someone who has done over 48 years jail time?

When Peltier turned 80, he offered this birthday statement which I will quote, in part:

“When I was a child, I looked to my Elders to learn how to live within Mother Earth’s rhythms. I yearn to sit by the fire with my loved ones and have our children look to me to learn the mysteries of Mother Earth. I want to laugh, share the pipe, and gaze into the eyes of a woman who does not carry handcuffs.

I have become an Elder. I suppose, in many ways, I am still the nine-year-old who founded The Resistance among my peers at Wahpeton Boarding School, the young man willing to sacrifice everything to protect my people, and the young man who worked hard and played hard when the chance arose. At the same time, I feel every second of these past eighty years wreaking havoc on my body….

Remember, my people. Remember who you are. Mother Earth herself flows through our veins. We endure. The greed, corruption and disdain of the colonizers will bring them to their ruin. They seek to ravish Mother Earth while chasing the almighty dollar. We have survived their apocalypse. We are not simply enduring. We are destined to thrive…

They have never managed to cage my spirit. They never will. Do not allow anyone to cage yours.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse!

Doksha,

Leonard Peltier

From the first moment you enter the federal government, you learn about the obligation to protect federal documents. All federal employees must complete record management training which includes mandatory annual refreshers. You learn that you cannot take classified or sensitive records during employment or when you leave federal service. The responsibility is drilled in.

So the dismissal of the Florida documents case against President-elect Trump sends a message. There are two standards of conduct: one for Trump and one for all other federal employees. Every federal employee knows their goose would be cooked for any records violation.

Small fry government employees will get crucified for mistakenly emailing personally identifiable information (PII) to a home computer but the President-elect can make an absolute mockery of the rules and he skates.

Even without a trial, we know Trump’s behavior was egregious. The boxes and boxes of records he pilfered and sequestered in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom and gilded ballroom became visible to the nation and they raise so many questions. What was that about? What documents did he take and why did he take them? Were there nuclear secrets? Spy secrets? Considering Trump’s greed it is hard not to think he had some plan to cash in. The documents were not souvenirs.

The indictment said hundreds of classified documents were taken from the White House, including sensitive documents about our nuclear capabilities. He repeatedly enlisted aides and lawyers to help him hide records investigators sought. The indictment details a July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster property where Trump bragged about having held onto a classified document prepared by the military about a potential attack on another country. Trump aides lied to the FBI about the movement of boxes at Mar-a-Lago.

I guess we will never know the true story as the Department of Justice is dismissing the case in light of Trump’s re-election. The case against two co-defendants still could proceed but, of course, Trump could pardon them. The system failed us. No one else has gotten away with anything like this. All we may get is a final report as is required by the Special Counsel regulations.

Of all the cases against Trump, and there were multiple strong ones, the documents case stood out for its brazen contempt for rules and law. Before the case was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, I assumed it would be the easiest case to prove of the multiple cases in which Trump was a defendant. Whatever his lame excuses, he absconded with documents he had no right to possess. There is no exception in the federal law. The evidence was overwhelming.

But things did not work out that way. Trump drew a judge who was in the bag for him. How did it happen that he drew Cannon? Aren’t judges supposed to be randomly and rotationally assigned to avoid preordained outcomes and the appearance of impropriety?

Judge Cannon had already been assigned to sit on the earlier case where Trump sued about the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. In that case she made bizarre rulings that were reversed by the 11th Circuit. Trump had tried unsuccessfully to get Cannon as a judge in an earlier case where he had sued Hillary Clinton.

The journalist/lawyer James Zirin provided the best explanation I have seen for why Cannon got picked again to sit on a Trump case. He wrote that prosecutor Jack Smith could have filed the documents case in Washington DC but he probably worried about a change of venue motion causing delay and he figured he had decent odds to obtain an impartial judge in Florida. There are 26 federal court judges in the Southern District of Florida.

What Smith may not have known is that the Southern District is administratively divided into five divisions. Cannon was the only judge sitting in Fort Pierce which was treated as part of the Palm Beach Division. The pool of judges eligible to try the documents case was not 26 but 4. One of the four was a senior judge so the eligible pool was 3 and Trump lucked out.

Judge Cannon was the answer to Trump’s prayers. She was a known quantity as a Federalist Society member and as an extreme loyalist. She had demonstrated that in the earlier Mar-a-Lago search case. In the last days of his first administration, Trump had picked her to be a federal judge and got it through the Senate.

She now appears to be paying him back. She dismissed the documents case by ruling that the Attorney General lacked authority to appoint a Special Counsel. In making the ruling, she disregarded years of precedent and a landmark Supreme Court decision, United States v Nixon.

It was a wild ruling. She relied on the thinnest of reeds – a Clarence Thomas concurrence in the presidential immunity case just decided. That was a solo concurrence. In that case, Trump had not even raised the legality of the Special Counsel, it was not briefed and it was irrelevant to the decision. If there had been a case going forward (there is not), it is highly unlikely Cannon’s opinion would have survived scrutiny.

But still we are left with the reality that Jack Smith is dismissing the documents case because of the U.S. Department of Justice’s longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. It is a policy choice not based on any law or binding precedent. The argument is that such a prosecution would impede the president’s ability to govern. As with the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, hobbling the President’s ability to act in office is the big concern.

Contrary to most legal observers, I think the Department of Justice (DOJ) policy against prosecuting a sitting president is ill-advised. Our Founders did not want a monarch. Americans fought the Revolutionary War against King George III to prevent being subjected to rule by a tyrant. Now we have a situation where we have an authoritarian president who has placed himself above the law.

Where are our much-vaunted checks and balances? Who will rein in a rogue president? Where is the accountability if the President behaves criminally? It would appear the President-elect has a blank check to break any law and the Supreme Court says that is fine.

Where the DOJ went wrong in their memo about not indicting a sitting president is their under-estimation of the human capacity for malevolence. The drafters of that policy no doubt assumed, whether the candidate was Republican or Democratic, that the President would abide by our constitutional system. They failed to consider the possibility Americans could elect a fascist who had little use for laws or constitutions. They remained moderate institutionalists unable to anticipate authoritarianism.

As I believe Judge Chutkan wrote, presidents are not kings. They should not be above the law. No one should be. Stealing federal documents is certainly not the biggest of Trump’s crimes but I would suggest that tolerating this violation sets a dangerous precedent. We can expect many more such violations in the years ahead.

I expect that for the next one hundred years historians of all stripes will be analyzing and debating our last presidential election. It was pivotal and it marks a turning point where a plurality of voters decided to move the nation backwards.

While there are many lens through which to view the last election, I wanted to look at the election through the lens of sexual politics. One question that has jumped out: how could so many Americans ignore the reality that the Republican candidate had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women?

A jury held against Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case both for committing sexual assault and defamation. In a second New York case, he was convicted of 34 felonies, paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an extra-marital affair. Then after winning the presidency for a second time, he nominated others for high office who also faced allegations of sexual impropriety. Having sexual abuse allegations against you appears to be a Trump job qualification. Why didn’t voters care about any of that?

Let me offer an answer: sexism. Sexism is not just an ideology of male supremacy. Historically, it is an institutional practice embedded in laws, business, government and religion. Neither men nor many women want to face the fact of sexist violence against women. It is deeply rooted in sex roles and male supremacy where, until recently, men did not have to answer for piggish or criminal conduct.

The term “domestic violence” (which is an inadequate description for the phenomena) is a relatively recent naming. Before that it was wife-beating. Much violence against women was tolerated and viewed as a private affair, not subject to law. In 1970, marital rape was legal in all fifty states. It was not until 1993 that all states withdrew the spousal exception to rape laws.

The women’s liberation movement had a profound consciousness-raising impact as did #MeToo but in the last few years, #MeToo has receded.

Trump’s behavior reflects the prevailing misogyny that has minimized the importance of violence against women. As he said on the Access Hollywood tape:

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful…I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

He has long thought he has the prerogative and can take unwanted and uninvited sexual initiatives and mostly he has gotten away with it.

If you view the allegations of many of the women who have complained about Trump’s sexual harassment, there is a sameness about the charges. They are catalogued in an article by Mariel Padilla in the 19th. Forcibly reaching under skirts, groping breasts and butts, pushing women up against the wall while grasping for erogenous zones, trying to force his tongue down throats and kissing on the lips without consent were the most common forms of assault.

Of course Trump has said all his accusers are “horrible horrible liars” but the Access Hollywood tape is an unrefuted expose. Trump has also said very revealing things. As the owner of beauty pageants he had a practice of unexpectedly walking into contestants’ dressing rooms when they were changing. He would be the only man in the room while women were standing there with no clothes. In a 2005 interview on the Howard Stern show he said, “I sort of get away with things like that”.

Voters may have had other priorities but they gave a pass. They did not see the women victimized as equivalent to their mothers, wives, daughters or sisters. If their family member was a victim, maybe they would have felt differently. Even women, particularly white women voters, let Trump off the hook for his sexual offenses. Psychiatry professor Judith L. Herman has observed:

“Most women do not in fact recognize the degree of male hostility towards them, preferring to view the relations of the sexes as more benign than they are in fact. Similarly women like to believe that they have greater freedom and higher status than they do in reality.”

Domestic violence remains a major public health problem. In the United States, women experience 4.8 million incidents of physical or sexual assault annually. However, the true prevalence of domestic violence is unknown because many victims are afraid to disclose their personal experience of violence. Many abusers get over in perpetrating because of the challenges in holding them accountable and because of fear on the part of the victim in speaking up.

Beyond the ingrained societal sexism which enabled Trump, there is a deeper factor. The Christian right treated this serial sexual harasser and multiply alleged adulterer like he is a deity. They are also promoting a male supremacist world view with the man as the head of the household. The job of the woman is to be a submissive wife, passive and obedient. These women do not leave their abusers, no matter how violent. They learn to swallow their anger.

A part of the reason for why Trump’s history of sexual abuse was overlooked and forgiven is that the religious sector of his base can justify it. Men who are abusers escape accountability. Even worse, the abuse actually gets a nod of religious approval like it is somehow blessed. There is an allowance for men to abuse. Trump is an example of that.

After the election, the phrase “your body, my choice” appeared online and surged across the internet. The slogan was coined by a little Nazi Incel. It was meant to mock the phrase from the women’s movement “my body, my choice”. It has been followed by posts calling for repeal of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. We are talking a cave man mentality.

For women, Making America Great Again is recreating a 1950’s Stepford Wife movie. Turning the clock back serves neither women nor men. The fact that voters overlooked sexism is not a positive statement about America. It is saying women don’t matter. Predatory behavior like Trump’s should not be excused or rewarded. It will only encourage more of the same.

As people sort through election results, one thread that has commonly emerged is the idea that Trump won because he was the “change” candidate. He was the disrupter, who was anti-establishment. This supposedly enabled him to corner the market on voters who wanted to blow up the status quo.

There are a number of variants on that theme. Trump was allegedly authentic because he told it like it was. He was unlike other politicians, more plainspoken. He intended to drain the swamp and purge the Deep State. Trump’s minion, Steve Bannon, said he would deconstruct the administrative state. He appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and is friendly with Dana White and UFC fighters.

Trump’s misogyny and his archaic notion of masculinity are held up as a form of rebellion. The ridiculous memes of blubbery Trump as a highly muscled Rambo figure appeared all over social media. Trump’s history of repeated sexual assault is passed over and is not seen as disqualifying. Instead, his machismo is held up as a virtue. He nominates others accused of sexual impropriety to high office. This is about change as anti-feminism and about silencing women.

Being a soulless entrepreneur who makes millions and is surrounded by beautiful women is what now passes for rebellion. It is a sad perversion of the honorable role of anti-establishment rebel and there is nothing that is in the slightest rebellious about it. It is more like an archetype of the capitalist robber baron. To be more specific, Trump fits the archetype of the huckster and con man who preys on the weak.

Whatever the efforts to repackage Trump and his MAGA movement as “rebellious”, they are, in fact, a movement of, by, and for the billionaire class which spared no expense to see him elected. These billionaires were buying the politician who would feather their nests and not interfere with their private pursuit of endless billions, mansions, mega-yachts, island hideaways and even space odysseys. Trump was the “greed is good” candidate.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, gave Trump’s campaign over $130 million. Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon family, donated as least $115 million to the campaign. A laundry list of other billionaires including Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Bill Ackman, Diane Hendricks, John Paulson, Scott Bessent, Woody Johnson and Marc Andreessen went all in. The circle of billionaires supporting Trump is similar to the oligarchs around Putin.

The fact that Trump won many working class voters means nothing about the trajectory of his administration. His advisors told Axios that on day one he is going to push “a business-friendly agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and expanded energy production” and “will fill his top ranks with billionaires, former CEOs’, tech leaders and loyalists”. The veneer that the GOP was for workers will be quickly stripped away.

As someone who lived through the 1960’s, I know something about what it means to be anti-establishment. It is not about posturing a fake image of cool. The American ruling class has created a society of vast economic inequality where grossly disproportionate wealth goes to the top 1%. Today the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92%. We don’t guarantee health care. We fail to recognize the urgency of the climate crisis. The economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote:

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of motives, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”

Being anti-establishment is about fighting the distorted priorities of unfettered capitalism. 60% of us live paycheck to paycheck. One survey found 63% of workers were unable to pay a $500 emergency expense. On the other hand, things have never been better for billionaires. They have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes.

I would suggest my own definition of being anti-establishment and it is not about having tattoos. It is caring about the pain and suffering of the millions of working class Americans who have been screwed by the system. The labor leader Eugene V. Debs put it best:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

Being anti-establishment is not about getting rich, unjustified hatred against immigrants, indifference to others, being sexist, racist or homophobic or being opposed to science. Change comes in different varieties and the shaking up the status quo Trump offers is an illusion.

As distraught Democrats consider the reasons for Trump’s gains and their electoral losses, I would counsel against despair. Democrats can certainly come back. It is important that there is wide debate about the reasons for the Democrats’ poor performance but some things are clear and they have been best articulated by Sen. Bernie Sanders. To quote him:

“There was no appreciation – no appreciation – of the struggling and suffering of millions and millions of working-class people. And unless you recognize that reality, and have a vision of how you get out of that, I think you’re not going to be going very far as a political party.”

In the last election, the Democrats failed to recognize peoples’ anger or their suffering. Saying the economy was good when it was hurting so many was inexcusable.

We can do so much better. Democrats have the great example of FDR. While certainly not a flawless figure, his example of uniting a broad majority still provides a model for how Democrats can rebound. It is only a matter of time before Trump and his administration are more widely despised. Many people seem to like authoritarians but they will soon be dissatisfied with outcomes. That is entirely predictable.

I admit to a fascination with the holes in American history. That is, the time periods outside our blockbuster events like the Revolution, the Civil War and the 20th century world wars. There are periods where historical memory has failed and our collective past is lost.

One such period is the time after the betrayal of Reconstruction in the 1890’s. What is remembered, if at all, might be the name of a President or a Supreme Court decision. President-elect Trump cited President William McKinley who served from 1897 to 1901 to promote his tariff ideas. Lawyers remember Plessy v Ferguson, the separate but equal decision. The narrative thread about the 1890’s is non-existent. It is a black hole.

I was reading an article by Sherillyn Ifill, the civil rights activist, who quoted a historian who had called the period after the end of Reconstruction “the nadir”. She mentions lynching, convict leasing and sharecropping as aspects of that era. It was a period of racial fascism in the South and it was a time when white supremacy ruled the country as a whole. Protest against racism, certainly as reflected in the two major political parties, was at a low ebb.

However, contrary to the shreds of history we have inherited, there was more opposition to the prevailing order than Is now remembered. When I was down South in September, I learned about the 1895 anti-racist struggle in South Carolina. The story has been sidelined but it is important to remember because it contradicts the misleading impression that people didn’t fight back.

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction in 1868, South Carolina passed a new progressive state constitution that gave rights to all. For over 30 years, blacks ran for and were elected to high political office in South Carolina. Under the 1868 constitution, South Carolina removed discrimination and allowed voting rights for black men. An effort to extend suffrage for women was defeated.

The Reconstruction government in South Carolina created a public school system. Nothing like that existed before. It was the first law passed in the South to desegregate public schools. For the first time, black and white students attended public school together.

It would be hard to overstate the racist reaction engendered by the desegregation effort. Following the example of Mississippi, South Carolina’s Governor, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, organized a constitutional convention designed to strip black citizens of the right to vote even though the Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S.Constitution had been passed to prevent exactly efforts like this.

Tillman had a long history stirring up racial hatred. He was part of a mob that massacred blacks in 1876 at Hamburg, South Carolina and he bragged about murdering black South Carolinians during Reconstruction. Later as a U.S. Senator, he defended lynching on the floor of the Senate. He ran on a goal of eliminating black political power.

In the 1890’s, civil rights, particularly voting rights, had deteriorated so much that on August 29, 1892, this notice appeared in the Charleston News and Courier:

“A separate list of all Negro voters must be kept and returned with the poll list. Every Negro applying to vote must produce a written statement by ten white men who will swear that they know of their own knowledge that such voters voted for [Governor Wade] Hampton in 1876 and have voted the Democratic ticket continuously ever since. This statement must be placed in the ballot box by the managers.”

On July 10, 1895, several months before Tillman’s convention was to take place, 60 black leaders convened in Columbia. Six black delegates were elected to attend the constitutional convention. These included Robert Smalls, a Civil War hero and later a Congressman and William J. Whipper, a lawyer. Both had played a role in drafting the progressive 1868 state constitution. Smalls had been the architect of the amendment creating public schools in South Carolina.

Both Smalls and Whipper had distinguished records. Smalls smuggled his family out of slavery when he commandeered a Confederate transport ship in Charleston Harbor in 1862. He piloted the ship to a Union-controlled area. He became famous for that and his example helped to persuade President Lincoln to accept black soldiers into the Union army. Smalls went on to a political career serving in the Louisiana State House and Senate and then Congress.

Whipper was an abolitionist, a state legislator, a circuit court judge and an outstanding trial lawyer. He was one of the first black lawyers practicing before a legal tribunal in South Carolina. In the 1868 South Carolina constitutional convention Whipper made a motion, ultimately unsuccessful, to extend the right to vote to women.

In the face of racist insults and ridicule, the six black leaders eloquently made the case for universal suffrage. They contended with white delegates voicing racist slurs and with a vicious press campaign accusing blacks of incompetence, criminality and corruption.
A number of the most powerful speeches are quoted in a book by Damon L. Fordham, The 1895 Segregation Fight in South Carolina. Fordham cites Whipper’s speech in response to Tillman’s allegations of black corruption:

“The car of Negro progress is coming, and instead of allowing it to come on, you wish to stop it. You may just as well make up your minds that the Negro will rise. He will not be crushed. The Negro will rise, sooner or later, crush us as you may.”

The final vote on the Convention was 116-7 in favor of Tillman’s constitution. The black delegates refused to sign the completed constitution. Smalls said he would rather “walk home” to Beaufort before signing such a document. Not only were black voting rights curtailed but under the new constitution schools and public facilities were segregated again.

Tillman’s constitution didn’t explicitly say blacks couldn’t vote to avoid a Fifteenth Amendment violation but it included a requirement of owning $300 in property and a literacy requirement targeted at blacks. The requirements effectively precluded black voting. Fordham writes that the literacy test allowed registrars to allow illiterate white voters while denying most literate black voters. Tillman and his allies stacked the deck.

The bravery of the black leaders in the context of that nadir exposed the barbarism of South Carolina’s power structure. They resisted nobly and inspired those who learned about their speeches and actions. We are now in a new nadir. We can learn about the imperative of courage and resistance from those who faced a far more difficult situation than what we face today.

Outside New Orleans, there is a historical site, the Whitney Plantation, dedicated to showing the history of slavery. It is an indoor and outdoor museum. For many years, the place operated as a sugar, indigo and rice plantation. There are a series of exhibits on the property showing slave trade maritime routes, a memorial honoring the over 350 enslaved people who worked the plantation between 1752-1865 and markers describing local historical events.

One striking exhibit on the walk path outside was a garden full of sculpted heads on poles commemorating leaders of the 1811 German Coast Uprising. Although it is little known, the German Coast Uprising in an area near New Orleans was the largest slave revolt in the history of the United States. The story is well told in American Uprising, a book by Daniel Rasmussen.

The uprising began on January 8, 1811 on the plantation of Colonel Manuel Andry, who was a commander of the local militia. Over a period of months prior to the uprising, enslaved people secretly organized cells at a number of plantations over a 40 mile range. They planned an audacious scheme to capture New Orleans, free all the people enslaved there and emancipate themselves. They knew failure meant death.

On the evening of January 8, 25 insurgents broke into the Andry mansion, killed Andry’s son and they took muskets and ammunition from the armory. From that plantation it was a 41 mile march to New Orleans. On the march, the insurgents burned several plantation houses, killed two planters and picked up many recruits. The number of enslaved who joined the rebellion swelled to between 200 and 500.

A number of “maroons” (enslaved people who had escaped slavery and lived in the woods) joined the march along the way. The white planters, finding out about the revolt and being massively outnumbered, deserted their plantations and fled with their families to New Orleans.

The leader of the revolt was Charles Deslondes, a Creole mulatto, who had been a plantation overseer. That position allowed him more freedom to move and surreptitiously organize. It was a position of trust from the planters but Deslondes had his own agenda. He, along with a small group of co-conspirators, meticulously planned the uprising.

Contrary to any mythology about contented slaves and benevolent masters, the chattel slavery system in Louisiana was known for brutal conditions. A sugar plantation was run like a military camp and Deslondes had operated like a general. He inflicted punishments like whipping for any infraction of the behavioral code.

Death and inhuman torture were endemic to slavery. 40% of those captured in Africa died before boarding slave ships. 10% died in the Middle Passage or shortly after arrival. Only 30% of slaves captured in Africa survived past the third or fourth year of laboring as slaves. The plantation work was grueling and the hours were long. Once harvest began, slaves worked 16 hours or more a day, 7 days a week.

One significant problem in the German Coast Uprising was the enslaveds’ inability to obtain enough weapons and ammunition. Only one half of the slave army were armed with bullets and fusils. Many had to rely on sabers, machetes, axes, and cane knives.

On January 10 and 11, the planters’ militia counter-attacked. They had a great military advantage with their weaponry. They drove the insurgents into the woods. Many enslaved people were killed in battle and others fled into the swamps.

Charles Deslondes was among the slaves driven into the woods. The slaveholders used bloodhounds to track the rebels and Deslondes was caught. The militia men chopped off Deslondes’ hands, broke his thighs and shot him. They then roasted his remains on a pile of straw.

The reprisals against the insurgents were savage and unrelenting. The militia cut off heads of the slave corpses and put them on display. By the end of January, around 100 dismembered bodies appeared on pikes in the center of New Orleans. The garden at Whitney Plantation is intended to remember this atrocity.

A special tribunal presided over by prominent planters ordered summary executions. The insurgents were referred to as “brigands”. Beheadings were the prime method for injecting fear and terror in the oppressed and for putting down slave revolts. Rasmussen writes:

“The public destruction of the rebels was, in slaveholders’ minds, a necessary precondition for the safety of the plantation regime and the prevention of a ferocious revolt along the lines of Haiti.”

There can be little doubt the Haitian revolution, the first successful slave insurrection led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and fought between 1791-1804, had a profound effect on enslaved people living in the American South. The story got around and it offered inspiration that slavery could be overcome and defeated. Haiti declared its independence in 1804 after defeating three European armies, including Napoleon’s powerful military. Haiti was the first nation to permanently ban slavery.

The slaveholders did not respond to the uprising with any reconsideration of slavery. They doubled down. The Louisiana legislature compensated the slaveholders $300 (a very significant sum in those days) for each and every slave killed in the insurrection. Money was also appropriated by the state to pay the slaveholders’ damages for the mansions burnt by the enslaved.

You have to ask: why has this story been disappeared? It was the largest slave revolt in American history. I see it as a cover-up, part of the effort to minimize slavery’s history and pretend racism was not central to America’s story. The German Coast Uprising shows both the evil of slavery and the ferocious opposition it engendered. Conditions were so intolerable that the enslaved opted for violent revolution rather than the living death of slavery.

The slaveholders saw their slaves as no better than cattle. Heads on pikes was their response.

Teaching American history honestly means ending unforgivable silences around events like the German Coast Uprising. It is not a divisive concept to tell this story. It Is not about making white people feel uncomfortable. Intellectual integrity demands we know about it.

On US Highway 80, in the middle of a 54 mile stretch between Selma and Montgomery, there is a small unmarked memorial on the hillside near the road. It is a rectangular, fenced-in space dedicated to the memory of civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo. The location is near the spot Liuzzo died.

I have now seen it twice and there is an aura of loneliness about this very deserted stop. No Alabama highway signs announce the destination. Driving by, it can be easily missed.

Viola Liuzzo was the only white woman killed down South during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Her story has largely been forgotten but she was a true hero who demonstrated courage and dedication to social justice. Both times I have viewed the marker, I left feeling the gravity of her actions. She stepped up bravely in a most dangerous situation. It is wrong that she has not been recognized and honored by Alabama and the nation.

Like millions of others, Liuzzo watched the events of Bloody Sunday unfold on TV. It was March 7, 1965. The nation was transfixed watching 600 civil rights marchers led by 25 year old John Lewis get brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers.

For months, efforts in Selma to register black voters had been stalled. Just 156 of Selma’s 15,000 blacks of voting age were on the voting rolls. Tensions had increased dramatically after Alabama state troopers murdered Jimmy Lee Jackson in the nearby town of Marion in February.

After the police violence prevented the Bloody Sunday march, Dr. King asked people who believe in justice to come to Selma. 25,000 people responded, including Liuzzo, who was inspired to make the trek. She had cried watching Bloody Sunday. She tried to get others to accompany her without success. She drove alone from her home in Detroit to Selma.

Liuzzo’s husband, Jim Liuzzo, was not happy his wife was going to Alabama but he could not dissuade her. The Liuzzos had five children. They both knew it was dangerous. Viola knew the South well. As a younger person she had lived in Jim Crow Georgia and in Tennessee but she was determined to go.

After that first attempted march on Bloody Sunday, activists obtained a court order that permitted a new protest and march. It occurred March 21-25, 1965. During her time in Selma, Liuzzo marched the first day. Then she worked at a hospitality desk welcoming and registering volunteers. Later she worked at a first aid station. She allowed her car to be used to ferry marchers to locations they needed to go.

After the march, she was planning to go home the next day. She spent her last day driving people back and forth between Selma and Montgomery. She and a 19 year old black man, Leroy Moton, were on their last run back to Montgomery when they were followed by a car full of Klansmen.

It is possible the Klansmen noticed her Michigan plates and it is also possible they saw a black man and a white woman in the car together. Southern whites of that era hated outside agitators (especially from the North) and race-mixing. Whether what happened was spontaneous or planned remains a subject of controversy.

To this day, the details of the attack are disputed but the prevailing story was that after a high speed chase, Liuzzo, who was the driver, was shot and murdered by one of the Klan members who shot from a car racing alongside. Liuzzo’s car went off the road, crashing into a fence. Moton survived but Liuzzo died instantly from the gunshots to her head.

The case was quickly solved because among the four Klansmen in the car was an undercover FBI informant, Gary Tommy Rowe. Rowe reported to the FBI about the events of the evening. He had a reputation for violence both because he boasted about it and also because he had previously beaten Freedom Riders. The other Klansmen in the car fingered Rowe as the trigger man. Many questions arose about Rowe’s conduct and why he had not acted to save Liuzzo.

The FBI and its Director, J. Edgar Hoover, played a despicable role in these events. Hoover opposed the civil rights movement as a threat to civil order. In an effort to deflect attention from the FBI’s negligence, Hoover conducted a smear campaign against Liuzzo. I believe it was this smear campaign, similar to what they conducted against Dr. King, that erased Liuzzo from our history.

The smear campaign was vicious. Hoover leaked rumors to the press that Liuzzo was a drug addict, that she was having an affair with Leroy Moton, that she was emotionally unstable and that she had abandoned her children. Hoover scapegoated Liuzzo to hide the FBI’s disgraceful role, especially the fact a key FBI informant was in the car with the Klansmen.

The Liuzzo family suffered greatly. Local Detroit racists burnt a cross on their lawn, fired bullets into their home.and dumped garbage on their lawn. The Liuzzo children were called “n—er lovers” and actually had rocks thrown at them on their way to school. Hate mail and obscene phone calls were relentless. It got so bad Jim Liuzzo had to hire an armed security guard to protect his home. The emotional stress on the family was enormous.

After a hung jury in the first state court murder trial, the Klansmen charged in Liuzzo’s murder were acquitted by an all-white male jury. The racism in those proceedings was off-the-charts. In open court, Matt Murphy, lead defense counsel for the Klansmen, called Liuzzo “ a white n—er who turned her car over to a black n—er for the purpose of hauling n——ers and communists back and forth”. That vignette captures the flavor of the trial.

The Klansmen in the car, with the exception of Rowe were later convicted in federal court on the charge of conspiracy to violate Liuzzo’s civil rights. They received 10 year sentences. Rowe was also subsequently indicted for murder but that case failed. The court said Rowe had immunity from prosecution because of a deal he made for testifying against the other Klansmen.

In 1983, 18 years after her murder, in a civil case in federal court, the Liuzzo family sued the FBI for its responsibility in Viola’s death. The Court rejected the Liuzzos’ suit, unbelievably saying that the plaintiffs failed to show the FBI had been negligent in directing their agent. To add insult to injury, the Court ordered the Liuzzos to pay the government’s court costs of $80,000. After the TV show 20/20 aired a segment, the Justice Department dropped the court cost claim.

The Liuzzo marker on US Highway 80 has been repeatedly desecrated and defaced. In 1997, vandals painted a large Confederate flag across the face of the stone. This seems symbolic of the ugly effort to slander and discredit Viola Liuzzo. She deserves so much better. She died at age 39. She stands in the best tradition of Americans who selflessly fought white supremacy, racism, and segregation.

Her death added much impetus to President Johnson’s effort to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Maybe someday America will have a different take on who its real heroes are.

Almost nine years ago, I started writing about Donald Trump and fascism. Then I raised the question whether Trump and his MAGA movement were fascist. My Jewish, anti-fascist antenna were buzzing.

At that time, many political observers dismissed the idea. They typically pointed out the differences between classical German and Italian fascism and what was going on in the United States. They didn’t engage the possibility that fascism might take new forms in different historical periods.

In 2024, the verdict is in. Trump and his MAGA movement can be accurately classified as fascist. Of course, the American variant of fascism is not a duplicate of past models but the word still fits. Because the word remains a political football used by both sides, I will make the case for why the label is appropriate for Trump.

Fascism requires an us and a them. In Germany it was the Nazi Aryans and the Jews. In America, Trump is demonizing immigrants (who are largely people of color) and he is setting them against white Christians. Back in 2015, it started with him talking about Mexico sending rapists. He later objected to immigrants from “shithole countries”. Now he falsely claims Haitians are eating pets. He refers to immigrants as “vermin”.

Trump has strung together a horrifying pack of lies designed to dehumanize and create a hated other. He makes unsupported wild assertions about foreign insane asylums and prisons being emptied with those inhabitants coming to America. He says immigrants commit horrendous crimes because “it’s in their genes” and “they are poisoning the blood of our country”. This is straight-up Hitler-talk out of Mein Kampf.

Trump has been talking about “the enemy within”, invoking the idea that the military should be used against protesting Americans. He says America is “an occupied country” awaiting its liberation from migrant criminals who are “the most violent people on earth”. The talk has no relationship to what is actually going on in America. Trump’s hellscape does not exist. As Ashley Parker wrote in the Washington Post:

“In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped.”

Fascists sell fear of the other and as the election gets closer, the rhetoric has ramped up. Aaron Rupar writes:

“Trump’s closing message is a full-blown hate campaign against black and brown people. Historians will look back in astonishment that this terrifying reality wasn’t the subject of wall to wall coverage and commentary in weeks leading up to the election. He’s not hiding anything.”

During the Republican National Convention we all saw the signs “Mass Deportation Now”. Trump and his advisors plan a vast 21st century version of concentration camps designed for mass detention prior to mass expulsions. They plan to begin in January 2025.

Such drastic action requires a more compliant press that will not get in the way. Contrary to the First Amendment, Trump has called for the broadcast licenses of CBS and ABC to be revoked because he believes they have been unfair to him. He has said MSNBC should be investigated for “treason”. He has called for revising libel laws so it would be easier to sue reporters and media outlets for critical coverage.

Part of the road to authoritarianism is the emasculation of a free press. Government action against journalists is highly chilling. Trump wants a cowed media afraid to criticize him because of possible consequences. A weak press devoted to propaganda praising the Great Leader is the fascist norm.

Timothy Snyder has said fascism is about a cult of the will. MAGA is a cult of personality and reason takes a back seat to emotion. Fascists have no use for the rule of law or constitutions. Violence and lies are central to the fascist project.

Trump is an embodiment of the Big Lie. He pushes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and he clings to the utterly discredited mythology he won. All who care about democracy must be vigilant about the Trump team’s efforts after the 2024 election and before the new president is inaugurated. They were bumbling in the aftermath of the 2020 election. They have had four years to plan for this upcoming moment.

Fascists want power at all costs. If Trump is successful, do not be surprised to see him fire the entire senior staff of the DOJ, FBI, and top military staff in all branches. Loyalty to Trump will be the overriding job qualification. If Trump loses, expect many state-level election challenges and expect him to float the narrative of widespread non-citizen voting. He has raised the spectre of hordes of illegals crossing the border to somehow mysteriously vote. This fits in neatly with the far right’s Great Replacement Theory.

It should not be surprising that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley , has called Trump “a total fascist”. He saw enough.

The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says that since 2015 Trump has been taking Americans and his followers on a journey conditioning them step by step instilling hatred in a group, then escalating. Trump has gotten way too much of a pass on his absurd verbiage. I worry that as a society we have become dulled and anesthetized to the danger.

An earlier generation of Americans had a noble history of opposing fascism in World War 2. Now it is our turn.