They say that as one gets older, doctors and police officers seem to keep getting younger. What they don’t tell you is that so do politicians – and sometimes it’s shocking to realise what they don’t remember. Despite the way that people have been responding to recent events in the US – and despite the involvement of computers and other such technologies – there is nothing particularly innovative about them. One does not need to look all the way back to the rise of Hitler to find parallels – there are plenty from the last few decades.
The average age of professional politicians in the US is 65. One would hope, then, that some of them would remember the world events of their youth: the seizure of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile, the National Reorganisation Process in Argentina, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s military takeover in Pakistan, and the repeated political crises in South Korea which led to the domination of the organs of state by members of the Hanahoe group. All these events have factors in common with current events in the US. They illustrate the risks the country faces, the psychological factors at play, and what is and is not likely to be effective in terms of resistance.
The US is no exception
American exceptionalism tends to be associated with the right, and it is perhaps this that has made it so difficult for its liberals, as they style themselves, to recognise the magical thinking at play in their insistence that it couldn’t happen there. Of course it could. It’s always more challenging to seize power in a country with a strong economy because its people are more likely to be well-educated and have efficient means of communication, but the US has been subject to sustained campaigns to undermine its education system, from the white Evangelical home-schooling movement of the 1980s to the more recent crusade against teaching on ‘woke’ issues. Donald Trump’s expressed intention to abolish the Department of Education is about solidifying power and reducing the risk of competent opposition developing. It should be understood hand in hand with recent attempts to control social media: Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the wrangling over TikTok, and Mark Zuckerberg’s sociopolitical restructuring of Facebook.
Anyone who doubted that such a power grab might be possible in the US has only to consider the recent success of calculated disaster capitalism, and its subsequent impact on politics, in another G7 nation. I am referring, of course, to Brexit, an obvious piece of self-sabotage made possible through a powerful marketing campaign and a weak fourth estate. UK media is largely owned by wealthy people who have suffered little from the country’s misfortune – sometimes quite the opposite – and that’s even before one factors in the interests of foreign actors such as Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of interference in UK politics, and the aforementioned Musk, who has expressed an interest in putting big money behind the popular right, potentially making it very difficult for the country to find its feet again.
Musk’s recent decision to seize control of US federal employee data systems and lock civil servants out of the system is a classic example of the kind of behaviour we can see in the aforementioned power grabs. It is for this reason that I unapologetically use the word ‘coup’, because this has nothing to do with provisions made under the country’s democratic systems or constitution. The South African-born billionaire has not been elected, and concerns have been raised about the legality of his actions. The system holds extremely personal details on millions of people, and furthermore, without access to it, civil servants may be unable to do their jobs, effectively paralysing fundamental processes essential to the functioning of the state.
Politics, power, government and state
It is important here to understand the difference between government, generally constituted from politicians to create legislation, and state, the organisations which regulate territories and the people within them. Every government makes use of the apparatus of the state but most refrain from any radical alteration to it – indeed, where that is desired by significant number of people, it is generally considered appropriate to hold a referendum, as with Brexit and Scottish independence. This caution exists because mistakes at this level can have catastrophic consequences, and because most politicians lack the expertise to manage essential underlying processes anywhere near as well as the specialists who work with them day to day.
Politicians and their allies taking control of information systems may seem like a small issue compared with, say, ending birthright citizenship, leaving the World Health Organization or making it harder for schools to take action over sexual assault claims, but when dealing with a regime like this, it’s vital to distinguish the serious power plays from the noise. It’s no accident that opponents of the new regime are currently talking about feeling overwhelmed, with some already experiencing despair. That’s exactly what this type of movement aims to achieve. It sows confusion and panic so that people can’t keep track of where the real danger lies, and so that they burn out. As each of those previous cases has shown, the best way individuals can resist is by focusing on specific areas where they have some expertise and refusing to let themselves get distracted by other issues, no matter how emotive.
The other thing that is vital at this stage is to recognise that this is not politics as usual. Attacks on state infrastructure are not about taking a different tack with existing processes. They are only ever about destroying or repurposing parts of the state itself. That distracting flurry of executive orders has been rushed through in such a way that it could be countermanded just as easily by a presidential successor. This is not the action of a regime which expects (or intends) to cede power in as little as four years. The resolution to let Trump serve a third term may seem like a joke to some, but it’s not so long ago that many of the policies now being pushed into action seemed like a joke. It’s not long ago that Trump claimed he hadn’t read project 2025 and many people took him at his word. Each of the aforementioned regimes was, in its time, also seen as a joke – but we don’t need to let these parasites upon the political process enjoy the last laugh.
At present, the regime of which Trump and Musk are a part is still solidifying its grip on power. Mixed messaging such as that around DEI and the Tuskegee Airmen has made it clear that not all involved are on the same page. Assorted institutions’ refusal to cooperate with ICE raids, and the way that security guards have supported this, has established lines of resistance. Despite the illusion created by sensational headlines, it cannot take on everything at once, and nor can it win every battle. Once such a regime gets established, however, it is much harder to resist or to remove it. With that in mind, it is vital to stand up now and make it clear where the edge is. We have seen this before, we know how it plays out and, whether we are in the US or elsewhere, we can do our bit to limit the damage.
More in world.
