Journalism of the Oppressed
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
With the audacity of a conquering hero, Trump recently boasted about the unlimited power that he would possess once he is back in the White House. Speaking to the rightwing radio oracle, Hugh Hewitt, he declared that he would at the start of his second term, fire the special prosecutor Jack Smith, who has indicted him for his crimes of January 6 and stealing national security secrets. This was not the only instance in which Trump was caught reveling in dreams of an unfettered dominion awaiting his return to the hallowed halls of the White House, as he proclaimed the boundless power that would soon be his, a power shimmering with the allure of absolute command. Trump is about to claim his throne as the architect of unchecked presidential power, a dictator’s daydream woven into the fabric of reality. For the first time in US history, a presidential candidate is poised to become the country’s first full- throated fascist president. The world is shuddering at this prospect.
Since the tumultuous year of 2016, a cadre of leftist critics—many ensconced in the ivory towers of academia—have risen like sentinels, their voices raised in alarm over Trump’s flirtations with fascism and his unsettling admiration for Adolf Hitler. These scholars, who championed the role of the 'public intellectual,' warned of a gathering storm, yet their cries were often dismissed by the mainstream press, met with scorn rather than the grave consideration they deserved.
But their warnings were mostly downplayed by mainstream journalists. In their eyes, Trump was more a showman than a despot, wielding bravado instead of a riding crop. The fear of fascism, they asserted, was tempered by the reality of his antics—flamboyant declarations and exaggerated claims, yet devoid of the iron-fisted resolve that characterizes genuine autocracy. In this narrative, Trump stood not as the harbinger of fascism, but as a blustering figure playing a role on a grand stage, his power an illusion painted in bold strokes rather than the stark reality of oppression.
While the mainstream media has started to awaken, their response still lacks the fervor warranted by the swirling uncertainties of our age.
It has taken eight long years for their urgent missives to finally pierce the veil of mainstream discourse, emerging on the pages of prominent publications without the derision that once accompanied them. Yet even as the press begins to engage with these dire concerns, there lingers a hesitance, a reluctance to fully grasp the urgency demanded by the moment as the far-right surges like a poisonous tide, empowered not by its own virtue but by the flaccid and tepid resistance of neoliberals and social democrats.
The revelations of Trump and Musk’s regular communications with Vladimir Putin cast an ominous shadow, underscoring the gravity of the times. And while the mainstream media has started to awaken, their response still lacks the fervor warranted by the swirling uncertainties of our age. The specter of fascism looms, and the echoes of those early warnings resonate louder than ever, urging vigilance in a world teetering on the brink.
Sidney Blumenthal is one of the most perspicacious journalists who has risen to the occasion, and sounded the alarm:
…. Trump’s presidency was a rehearsal for fascism. Quite apart from his record of kleptocracy, allegedly pervasive corruption and obstructions of justice, pardons of criminal associates and dangling of pardons to insure their silence, contempt for the law, maniacal obsession with Hitler, who “did some good things”, scorn for military service (“suckers” and “losers”), worship of foreign tyrants, congenital lying, paranoid conspiracy mongering, disdain for climate science, willful neglect of public health, ignoring warnings and spreading falsehoods in the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, the organization and incitement of the January 6 insurrection, and indifference to the near-assassination of his vice-president by a mob he had unleashed (“So what?”), Trump systematically abused the Department of Justice to investigate, harass and prosecute his “enemies within”. Trump’s current rage is hardly a new threat. In a second term he intends to smash through the constraints that inhibited him in his first.
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Blumenthal possesses the clarity to ascertain that Trump’s signature bluster is more than a theatrical performance, a grandiose display of bravado lacking the substance of true tyranny. According to Blumenthal:
Trump’s years in office showed him on a learning curve of fascism. He saw democracy as a plot against him that he had to break down. Like a hotel burglar jimmying door locks, through trial and error he discovered how to turn the keys. He pushed and prodded looking for weaknesses and loopholes. He located the places where he encountered resistance. He felt for the limits and how to go beyond them. He found out who would deter him and who would enable him. He calculated the price of everyone. He discovered those whose craven ambition would serve him. He realized that ideology was a tool he could use like a crowbar. He absorbed the lessons of crime and punishment in order to commit greater crimes without punishment. His administration was a school for the making of a fascist.
Should Trump reclaim the mantle of power, unfettered by the looming specter of another election, he would unleash his most untamed impulses, plunging the nation into unprecedented debt and fanning the flames of a dangerous resurgence of fascist ideologies that the mainstream media is still in danger of normalizing. In his grasp, the nation’s future would dangle precariously, teetering on the brink of a chasm from which there may be no return. In this dystopian tableau, the essence of freedom would be stifled, and the specter of tyranny would cast a long shadow over the land, as fear and control reign supreme, feeding on the fears and frustrations of a world adrift, while those who should steer the course merely wring their hands in futile indecision.
And we, too, would bear the burden of blame for not resisting more fervently.
We find ourselves at a crossroads, an hour of dreadful consequence, where the heart of global democracy beats weaker, its pulse fraying against the grinding edge of unchecked capitalism. Those ideals of liberty and justice, once forged in fire and steadfast conviction, now stretch thin, their fibers worn by the relentless advance of a new barbarism. It rises as a wave, foul and unyielding, a gathering tempest that threatens to wash away the last remnants of civil governance and drown the human spirit in a growing mire of chaos and division.
Yet it is not the might of this rightward surge alone that bolsters its climb but the limp acquiescence of those who should be its fiercest opposition. Neoliberals and social democrats, in their pallid compromise and measured speech, watch from the sidelines as this poisonous tide rises, their voices little more than whispers before the shrill cacophony of encroaching fascism. And now, upon the brittle threshold of tomorrow, as the revenant forces of history’s darkest passages return, unchained and ravenous, we must face the choices before us, lest we fall, unwittingly, into the void.
The once-proud Republican Party has devolved into a mere specter of its former self, a hollow echo reverberating with the discord of a tin-pot dictator’s whims.
The once-proud Republican Party has devolved into a mere specter of its former self, a hollow echo reverberating with the discord of a tin-pot dictator’s whims. Donald Trump, clad in the ideological finery of a self-styled monarch, has reduced the party to ashes, stripping it of its principles, its dignity, and its very essence. No longer a bastion of conservative ideals, the GOP now festers as a den of sycophants and yes-men, their spines bent and broken beneath the weight of a cult of personality that has poisoned the well of political discourse. In this bleak landscape, the ideals that once defined a party lie abandoned, sacrificed on the altar of greed and ambition.
Whispers of election subversion are once more weaving through the air, haunting this critical battleground state—a stage where he had previously attempted to overturn the will of the people with unsubstantiated claims of rampant electoral fraud and conspiracy theories branding the election as “rigged.”
In Trump’s chilling vision, detention camps would rise like dark monoliths on the horizon, where millions deemed unworthy would be corralled under the steely gaze of his militarized enforcers. These forces would not merely patrol the borders; they would penetrate the very essence of the nation, relentless in their pursuit, ensuring that no immigrant could evade their iron grasp.
The red states, fueled by a fervor of ideological zeal, would become the vanguard of this new order, wielding power with an unyielding fist. Plans would be crafted by Republican operatives to police women’s bodies, hunting down those who dared to defy the regime.
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With the caprice of an autocrat, he would seize the nation’s coffers, plundering funds that rightfully belong to the people, redirecting them to stoke the fires of his ambitions. The very foundation of American justice, once a revered institution, would tremble beneath his scrutiny, as laws are twisted and contorted to serve his whims. In a cruel irony, those who stormed the Capitol in their treasonous fervor might find their sins erased by the stroke of his pen, while the world watches in disbelief, caught in the throes of a dark transformation.
America’s allies, once esteemed partners, would be relegated to supplicants, compelled to pay tribute for even a fleeting moment of his attention. His admiration for autocrats like Orbán, Putin and Kim Jong Un would deepen, as he yearns to remold the world in their stark image. The civil servants—those steadfast stewards who have long navigated the complexities of governance—would be replaced by sycophants eager to echo his every command.
In our grasp lies the nation's fate, a fragile pendulum poised to swing wildly into an abyss from which no redemption may rise, where the very bedrock of freedom threatens to crumble beneath our feet. Our quiet acquiescence, our failure to rage against this fascist machine, will cast us as architects of our own undoing, complicit in the dismantling of our liberties.
For now, the United States stands on the cusp of its gravest decision, an election whose reverberations will echo through the ages.
For now, the United States stands on the cusp of its gravest decision, an election whose reverberations will echo through the ages, ensuring the republic remains committed to democracy or devolves into a shadowed realm reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale. Against this looming darkness, we must hold faith in the watchful eyes of our most courageous journalists. Demand that they chart a course through the murky labyrinths of falsehood and partisan malice, grounding us in reason and shedding light on the perilous politics of our age.
As the forces of chaos and division grow ever more formidable, the future of democratic governance hangs precariously in the balance, its cherished ideal, once a fortress against tyranny, now quivers on the brink of collapse, its future a wraith-like specter, fraught with uncertainty and fear.
The question now looms like an ancient riddle: can humanity muster the strength, the unity, to seize this rabid beast and wrestle it to the ground? Can we, with desperate hands, halt its ravenous advance before it consumes the remnants of our shared world, leaving nothing but the ashes of our highest aspirations? This is the precipice upon which we stand, a final chance to reclaim the future or fall forever into shadow.
In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Brazilian, educator Paulo Freire described education as a practice of freedom. Schools of journalism should put this book on their required reading lists. The hour has come for journalists to raise the banner of freedom with unyielding conviction, to wrest their calling from the grip of timidity and rise as vanguards against the shadow of fascism. For as long as the press remains shackled by the chains of its billionaire overlords, freedom itself lies compromised, a mere mirage in the desert of corporate dominion. Only when the fourth estate breaks these fetters—when it summons the courage to defy those who would see truth drowned in silence—can it confront the insidious specter of fascism with unrelenting clarity.