MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

Trump has been emboldened to more brazenly move the US government toward fascism since the impeachment. This has included his near-annexing of the Department of Justice, with Bill Barr (who believes in “unitary executive authority” serving as his servile consigliere) and his intimidation of a judge and a juror in the Roger Stone case, which served as warnings to other judges and jurors that they are potential targets of Trump’s wrath. In short, only Trump determines what defines justice, and in general that means justice is inverted into corruption.

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It has also included his vetting of State Department officials, as exemplified in the Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch removal. “Take her out,” Trump ordered Lev Parnas mafia style, as he also told Ukrainian President Zelensky in their July 25th 2019 phone call, “she was going to go through some things.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike “Benghazi Brigade Inquisitor” Pompeo ensures, like Barr, that only Trump loyalists serve in high positions, including overseas posts.

Of course, most recently Trump has decimated the intelligence infrastructure serving the White House, just firing Joseph Maguire as the acting director of national intelligence because his staff briefed the House Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2020 election, which Trump considered inconvenient information. In turn, Trump replaced Maguire with a forever-Trumpster, Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who has no previous intelligence experience, but can be relied upon to contain intelligence, such as the ongoing Russian electoral support for Trump, from leaving the White House. In addition, Trump sent National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien out to deny Putin was again helping Trump’s election campaign, while claiming he had only “heard” that Russia was aiding Bernie Sanders.

Such incredulous manipulation of the truth that impacts US national security and Trump’s efforts to steal the election are part of an onslaught to mold the White House, Department of Justice, State Department and other sectors of the government (including the Pentagon and military) to reflect Trump’s more than 15,000 lies, according to the Washington Post, and his “alternative reality” narrative.

More importantly, Trump’s goal is to solidify his authoritarian power by reinforcing false narratives by only hiring forever-Trumpsters for positions that they are unsuited for except for one characteristic: loyalty to the strong man.

On Sunday, Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported that:

The Trump White House and its allies, over the past 18 months, assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them — according to more than a dozen sources familiar with the effort who spoke to Axios…. While Trump's distrust has only intensified since his impeachment and acquittal, he has long been on the hunt for "bad people" inside the White House and U.S. government, and fresh "pro-Trump" options. Outside advisers have been happy to oblige…. Since Trump's Senate acquittal, aides say the president has crossed a psychological line regarding what he calls the "Deep State." He feels his government — from Justice to State to Defense to Homeland Security — is filled with "snakes." He wants them fired and replaced ASAP.

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is assisting Trump with his purges by assembling lists of individuals suspected of being more loyal to the US than to Trump. Thomas belongs to a right-wing group called Groundswell, which meets weekly to ferret out “traitors.”

They then pass on their lists to Trump and to his 29-year-old personnel director, Johnny McEntee, who according to a separate Axios article recently

called in White House liaisons from cabinet agencies for an introductory meeting Thursday, in which he asked them to identify political appointees across the U.S. government who are believed to be anti-Trump, three sources familiar with the meeting tell Axios. McEntee, a 29-year-old former body man to Trump who was fired in 2018 by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly but recently rehired — and promoted to head the presidential personnel office — foreshadowed sweeping personnel changes across government. But McEntee suggested the most dramatic changes may have to wait until after the November election.

Possible replacements include Fox News personalities, Deven Nunes and right-wing conspiratorialists. According to a February 25 Politico article, a 23-year-old college senior who worked on Trump’s campaign will be one of McEntee’s top assistants, serving as an example that Trump is committed to filling important positions with unqualified political lackeys.

Trump’s goal in the launch of his purges is to consolidate dictatorial power and full control over his misinformation campaigns, lies and false narratives by embedding zealot loyalists in key government positions who will back him up and support his consolidation of power.

No, Trump is not sending out the Cheka (forerunner of the KGB) to seize “dissidents” in the middle of the night and send them to the Gulag or make them disappear, not yet anyway (although his racist border policies are resulting in people being deported to face rape, kidnappings, deaths and causing serious health problems in his “detention” centers, including deaths.) However, he is following in the footsteps of Stalin on several fronts.

According to a 2018 History News Network article, there are six “disturbing parallels between Trump and Stalin. The article notes that “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people.’ This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven.” This is a demagogic technique that Trump regularly employs. He strips “opponents” of their personhood and makes them, in the end, “disposable.” After all, they are just “vermin” and “scum,” which is what Hitler called the Jews. “I would never kill them [Trump has said of Democrats and anyone who is not pro-Trump], but I do hate them. . . . Some of them are such lying, disgusting people.”

Both Trump and Stalin built their power base around a cult of personality.

The History News Network article also notes:

“To begin with, there are the two giant egos,… Both men think of those who would challenge their inflated views of themselves as enemies…. Both men are extremely suspicious and power-hungry… Both men have relied on fear to increase and solidify support… Both men are colossal liars… Both men, after becoming the dominant political leader in their countries began the process of solidifying their control over their party and the government bureaucracy.”

Walter G. Moss , a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University and author of the article, warns that it is not impossible that Trump’s rule could evolve into a despotic tyranny:

As unlikely as that appears at present, such a ceding of political might is not unprecedented. A good example is Hitler’s coming to power in 1933. Despite its weak democratic traditions, Hitler became chancellor by constitutional means in January 1933. It was only after the Enabling Act of March 1933, by which the German legislature granted him legislative power and allowed him to suspend the constitution, that Germany ceased the democratic experiment of the Weimar Republic. [Trump] is not the monster Stalin was, but the evil he has already unleashed and his potential for causing greater future evil should not be underestimated.

Trump’s goal of creeping fascism, which is a corporate-state version of Soviet rule, is to demoralize, confuse, dismay and numb his “enemies” into giving up resistance to his power grab and rampant corruption.

The purges underway instill fear, uncertainty and powerlessness in those who would serve the United States honorably, because under the Trump purges the notion of honor is an undesirable character trait.

To him, and his GOP supporters — particularly in the Senate and his nearly 200 hack Federalist Society appointees to the Federal Courts — democracy is an inconvenience. Furthermore, a two-party system, given America’s changing Democrats, will leave white Christians as a minority in the government unless Trump seizes totalitarian control now and solidifies it in the 2020 election.

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