The United States Becomes an Occupying Power—In the United States

One by one, the dominos fall. Besieged Los Angeles now has not only a police presence, but also the National Guard, which may or may not have been deployed legally, and active-duty Marines, whose use against American citizens would have previously been unthinkable. As resistance increased to Donald Trump’s initiative to rid the nation of those here illegally by subjecting them to as monstrous treatment as possible and Stephen Miller’s furious order to arrest everyone in sight, at least if they speak Spanish, Trump has seized every opportunity to move the nation ever closer to de facto martial law.

For which he could not be happier. Trump is following the step-by-step guide from the Autocrat’s Handbook; manufacture a crisis, ratchet it up with inhumane, detestable behavior, then suppress it with injustice, questionable legality, and violence, thereby achieving maximum intimidation while stifling dissent. That the focus is a largely helpless minority is all the better, as it will facilitate the legal suppression of those propelled by conscience to protest the mistreatment of innocents. Vladimir Putin is a master at this game, but despots having been playing it for centuries.

The first requirement is to validate repression by citing threats to public order, which are most often manufactured. As they are now. In this case, the justification for mass deportations is Trump’s vow to remove felons, drug dealers, and gang members from American streets. Why then is virtually every raid at workplaces? Is it the position of the Trump administration that bloodthirsty gang members, craven drug dealers, and violent felons cover their nefarious activities by washing dishes in restaurants, mowing lawns, or sweeping floors at Walmart? Then, of course, there are the most dangerous immigrants of all—the ones who masquerade as elementary or middle school students. How clever for ICE to see through their disguises and drag them out of schools. Federal agents have yet to bust into churches during services, but that seems only a matter of time.

That Trump and his conservative coat-tailers have both distorted and vastly exaggerated this supposed threat from those vulnerable to being deported is no secret. According to every survey, immigrants in the country illegally are far less likely to commit crimes, more likely to pay taxes and to try in any way possible to prove themselves loyal Americans, including by enlisting in the armed forces. In this, they are eerily similar to Japanese Americans in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor and then in its aftermath.

There was no doubt, none, that the Japanese American population was more fiercely loyal to this nation than most other ethnic groups and all they wanted was the opportunity to prove that loyalty. President Roosevelt was made aware of their patriotism by close aides he had sent to the West Coast to evaluate the situation. He knew without question that the wild tales of Japanese treachery drummed up by the likes of newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and V. S. McClatchy were ridiculous. But when the war began, Roosevelt became unwilling to confront the racists or offend white allies on the West Coast, so he signed Executive Order 9066 and sent more than 100,000 totally innocent men, women, and children, more than two-thirds of them American citizens, to what the government itself called “concentration camps.”

Then, as now, the principal objective of each president was to pander to supporters and avoid risking the backing of key political allies by dismissing their fears and prejudices as the hogwash they were. But Trump has a goal Roosevelt did not—to establish rule by executive fiat, to command and be obeyed without question. To date, the venal cowards who support him in Congress and in red states have contented themselves with standing by and, with a shrug of their shoulders, letting him do it.

Because deporting migrants is merely a contrivance, the vehicle for moving toward a police state where Trump can do what he pleases with anyone who may disagree with even the most egregious violations of democratic norms, protestors face a difficult choice. His eyes on the ultimate prize, Trump salivates at every opportunity to escalate what was a paramilitary but is now a full-blown military response.

Non-violent protesters are tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets and otherwise treated as the rioters Trump, his enablers, and right-wing media falsely claim they are. These accusers point to the tiny number who are burning driverless taxis—for reasons that are obscure—and claim that they are mainstream protesters, rather than the fringe. Public figures are not immune. California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed before being released when security personnel “realized who he was.” Other elected officials, including a Wisconsin judge, have been arrested and charged as felons.

The dilemma for those in opposition is how to respond without playing into Trump’s hands. So far, the only tactic that has been employed are the very street demonstrations that Trump knows strengthens his hand. His agents can be as abusive as possible toward non-violent protesters, all, again, in the name of public order. And if they become so thuggish that protestors fight back, even in self-defense, Trump gets to ramp up his “rioter” rhetoric. It is fortunate that no one has yet been shot or seriously injured, but that seems imminent.

The only way mass demonstrations can work is if the number of those turning out is so large and their behavior so nonviolent as make any escalation by the authorities impractical. Even Trump has yet to seem willing to order troops to mow down demonstrators, as Chinese leaders did at Tienanmen Square.

But there is risk even if hundreds of thousands turn out. There were mass demonstrations against Putin as well, but Putin was sufficiently brutal to put them down with extreme violence and he was backed up by the sham that is Russia’s legal system. The question for Americans is how far Trump is willing to go and, whether, if he is over edge, will his own party call him out on it and will the courts back him up.

The record during these past five months is not good. But in the absence of effective, large-scale protests, it could get much, much worse.