In a 1939 book review, as Hitler’s regime threatened Europe, George Orwell wrote of a recently published volume by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, “If there are certain passages of [the book] which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So it is in America today: Obvious truths whose utterances previously qualified as banalities now serve, when spoken, as essential testimony on behalf of a dying republic.
Stopping the movement of American fascism led by Donald Trump and advanced by a combination of true believers, sycophants, collaborators, enablers, and denialists is a political and ethical imperative that will require action guided by the gifts, talents, and commitments of the tens of millions of Americans who seek to live in an open society under a decent, democratic government. As part of this work and amidst the bustle of daily outrages, which so easily overwhelms, there is merit, for one simple reason, in plainly describing the actions of those in power: The truth matters. By bearing witness to it, by matter-of-factly naming it and calling it out, we can help ourselves and others better understand the meaning and consequence of the fascist regime that has its hands tightly wrapped around the throat of the American republic.
This occasional inventory is intended to be neither exhaustive nor innovative. Nothing said here won’t be said elsewhere. And yet, so long as American fascism threatens our republic, there may be value in adding another voice to the chorus of those who dissent in the name of truth and decency.
Among those who have dissented is James Comey, the former FBI director whom Donald Trump fired after Comey declined Trump’s invitation at the beginning of his first term to swear a loyalty oath to him. For years, Trump has publicly called on Comey to be punished for his intransigence.
And now Comey has been indicted.
Erik Siebert, a Republican and well-respected federal prosecutor who was named as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia upon Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, declined to bring charges against Comey for lying to Congress because, Siebert concluded, there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. This angered Trump, who publicly smeared and fired Siebert.
Trump then used social media to instruct Attorney General Pam Bondi and Lindsey Halligan, the attorney Trump named to replace Siebert, to avoid any further delays in criminally charging his political opponents, including Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and New York Attorney General Leticia James. Halligan has no experience in criminal law, and her only qualification for the job is her loyalty to Trump, the very thing Comey refused to pledge nearly ten years ago.
Within days of Halligan’s installation in office, and with only days left before the statute of limitations ran on the lying-to-Congress charge for which Comey was previously investigated, she gave Trump what he wanted and convinced a grand jury to indict Comey on two counts, one for lying to Congress and another for obstruction of justice. This followed career prosecutors’ submission to Halligan of a memo outlining what they described as the lack of probable cause to charge Comey. Halligan disregarded the memo and, in an office staffed with hundreds of lawyers, was forced to present the case to the grand jury herself, a sign that the career prosecutors who are charged with faithfully executing their duties did not think they could do so while seeking a baseless indictment at the retributive command of the President.
After news of the indictment broke, Comey proclaimed his innocence in a video posted online and said he welcomed a trial. Meanwhile, Trump celebrated the indictment, writing on social media, “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”
Trump’s outburst is a fine distillation of his delusional worldview: He barks, someone jumps, and he sees no relation of cause and effect between the two phenomena. He’s like someone who cheats and then proudly puffs out his chest upon winning, somehow convinced he earned it when everyone knows otherwise. In Trump’s world, personal whims become the imperatives of state policy while revenge stands in for justice — for no other reason than Trump’s say-so. There is no standard outside of him; he is the beginning and the end not only of the state, but of the moral order in which we live: He personally defines truth and justice themselves — right and wrong, good and bad, fair and foul. It’s the perspective of a mad king or a spoiled, petulant man-child.
So, too, should it be noted that real justice is to be found not at a criminal prosecution’s initiation, but its conclusion: After an indictment is brought, and after a criminal defendant enjoys his presumption of innocence, and after a criminal defendant has a trial at which he is represented by counsel and entitled to cross examine witnesses and introduce evidence, and after the government is put to the test of convincing twelve jurors of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then may justice be served.
Of course, we already knew Trump doesn’t care about justice as any republic would conceive it: He cares about mere accusations.
Recall his phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 that prompted his first impeachment: In the lead up to the 2020 presidential election in which Trump was worried that then-former Vice President Joe Biden would be his Democratic opponent, Trump tried to pressure Zelensky into announcing an investigation of Biden and his son, Hunter, related to business dealings in Ukraine. Trump didn’t care about the truth or justice of the case, but its optics: If Zelensky announced an investigation, Trump could use the fact of the investigation, without regard to the truth, to smear a political opponent.
Trumpian justice, as opposed to republican justice under law, is a bludgeon to be used against enemies, perceived or real, and the fruits of Trumpian justice are to be found not in the lawful conviction of criminal defendants, but in the humiliation and destruction of political opponents. In the hands of American fascists, the criminal law becomes not a system that seeks to fairly and objectively punish particular, specific acts in the name of the public, but a reservoir of vengeance for the leader’s bottomless, generalized grievances. In a criminal justice system operating under law, prosecutors investigate acts; in a failing, fading republic in which the criminal justice system becomes the weapon of bullies, prosecutors first decide who to target and then look for acts to pin on them. It is this ethos that the administration called upon when Trump recently signed an executive order characterizing Democratic and left-leaning political organizations as domestic extremists who qualify as legitimate targets of government disruption, investigation, and prosecution: Trump’s opponents, by definition, must be criminals. Call them such and then find the acts to justify the label. It is this attitude toward criminality that may also soon prompt our malignant regime to try to use RICO laws — traditionally used to go after criminal enterprises like the mafia, for example — as a tool to criminalize political dissent and opposition.
It’s a measure of how far we’ve fallen that Trump’s social media post instructing the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents is the sort of thing that used to be said in private and caused outrage when revealed in public. Richard Nixon’s White House compiled a so-called enemy’s list that it planned to use to target opponents with criminal prosecutions, tax audits, and other forms of governmental harassment. Its existence, which was revealed during the Watergate investigation, was among the things that helped to bring down the Nixon administration. Now, Trump publicly instructs his prosecutors to target his opponents, they immediately do so, and a third of the country seems unfazed while another third celebrates the denigration of their birthright.
Such things happen only when the rot of American fascism has taken hold of our institutions and imaginations.
Charlotte Citizen 