Democracy dies in the US as Donald Trump took his second presidential term and from day one set about becoming the dictator he promised to be by dismantling the government, replacing it with himself at the helm of power.
When Trump took office all lined up at the trough at his inauguration were the billionaires Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel. They had come to kiss the ring of the new emperor. Musk had paid Trump a reportedly $280m for his campaign. In return he was given a seat at the table of power. Musk heads up his own department, DOGE, or rather he doesn't, when in fact he does - as they cannot be transparent about who is supposed to be legally in charge.
DOGE (ostensibly Department of Government Efficiency) is named after an outdated internet meme - a category of communication to which Musk is an avowed fan - and crypto coin. It is Musk's thing. Its function has been to dismantle government (federal) departments, firing tens of thousands of workers and as good as cancelling some departments outright (USAID, Dept of Education) as they seek to replace government with corporate power.
At first, Trump began by 'flooding the zone'1 with rhetoric that would freeze his opponents in disbelief. He laughably renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America'. He threatened trade tariffs with neighbours Mexico and Canada (these have begun). He has threatened to take over Greenland. He has threatened - and continues to do so - to make Canada "the 51st State". Trump blurts out a stream of unconscious verbal diarrhoea when anybody is listening but he is clearly privy to some kind of plan - as he talks about turning the continent of North America into the USA.
Trump is a clown but his actions and intentions are incredibly serious. He has already suggested changing the constitution to allow himself another term of office. He has sat at his desk at the Oval Office in the White House and signed executive order after executive order that is handed to him as it is clear that this is a plan that has been in the making. One such order was that he and the Attorney General alone can interpret the law as they see it:
Washington: US President Donald Trump has signed yet another executive order declaring that only the attorney general or the President can speak for the US when interpreting the meaning of laws. According to a report, the order now bars federal regulators or bureaucrats to interpret the law for the US.
"The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties," the order states, reported Washington Times.
www.msn.com
He won't have drafted any of these orders himself as he is clearly barely literate. When UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited him, he handed Trump a letter from King Charles, an invite to Buckingham Palace offered just as you would give sweets to placate a child, to which Trump had to ask Starmer to read it for him.
Trump pardoned the January 6th insurrectionists, his brown-shirts, releasing 1500 convicted criminals or so from prison, and in the process green-lighting any future disobedience in his name as immune from prosecution. He has been threatening to withhold funding outright as a tool of coercing obedience among the legislative branch. As for the judiciary he already has a stranglehold. He has begun removing powerful people across the board and replacing them with his stooges. He fired among others the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the highest-ranking and most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces), Charles Q. Brown Jr, a black 4 star general 'for being DEI/woke' and put in charge a 3 star who is officially unqualified. He fired the TJAGS, the top military lawyers, as they might 'be roadblocks' - to whatever he will enact next, possibly martial law. A MAGA podcaster was given the role of deputy director of the FBI. In the name of rolling back DEI, the names of black and female veterans were removed from the website of the largest national cemetery. 'DEI' and 'Woke' are just stand-ins for people of colour, women, LGBTQI+ and any minority and their rights are being vanished in front of our eyes.
And its not just domestic politics Trump has concerned himself with. He has always been a Putin sympathiser and parrot. Now, just like with everything else, it is out in the open for everyone to see. He called Ukraine President Zelensky a dictator and blamed Ukraine for starting the war (the opposite of the truth). On Zelensky's visit to the White House, Trump and Vice President JD Vance ganged up on him in an attempt to humiliate him into giving in to Putin's demands. It was a watershed moment. Even Murdoch, absent from the inaugural trough, his own conservative New York Post published a rebuke to Trump's allyship with Putin on its front cover named as the real dictator.
Vance had come to Europe, to the Munich Conference, and made veiled threats to the liberal democratic order here, meeting with leaders of far-right parties over those elected to power. The European nations were left in shock, trying to figure out just who is their ally (America is not). Europe is still in shock and working out what to do. The rug has been completely pulled from under them. The new power is an American-Russian alliance which sees Europe as weak and too liberal for their liking.
Trump is drunk on power and his narcissism is laid bare, with his fawning over the authoritarianism of Putin and his sadistic glee at the suffering of those who he is deporting (the Immigration and customs dept 'ICE' being the new gestapo). The liberal establishment which this movement will destroy has been completely unable to do anything about all of this. They are frozen with disbelief and confusion.
On the 20th Jan, at a Trump rally, Musk twice gave the nazi salute from the podium. In-keeping with post-truth fascism it was denied as for what it really was. But the signal was given. The liberal media conjectured that it might be 'controversial' but couldn't call it out. The truth was trying to put its trousers on while the salute went round the world. Immediately after the rally, Musk appeared by videolink at the German far-right (neo-nazi) Afd party rally and told them that the 'Germans were an ancient people' that risked 'dilution from multiculturalism'. Since then, Steve Bannon gave the salute again at the CPAC conference, after imploring his audience to "fight, fight, fight'. At that same conference Musk, indoors, wearing dark sunglasses to conceal his eyes but not his ketamine fuelled behaviour, wielded a pimped up chainsaw, handed to him by the fawning Argentinian President Milei, and yodelled 'chainsaw of bureaucracy!'.
Trump has referred to himself as king2 but it is not clear who exactly is in charge. Musk has clearly bought his place in the regime and is stripping away all regulation to his business empire and already looks to have removed obstructions or competitors to lucrative contracts for his companies Tesla and Spacex, increasing his stratospheric wealth and power. Putin has a strong allure over Trump and his more old fashioned cold war geopolitik has potentially finally come to fruit in destabilising Europe while holding the ventriloquists dummy back across the Atlantic. All this, along with many of Trump's voters finding themselves on the end of his cuts, has plummeted his popularity, apart from with his extremist MAGA base that is. But Trump doesn't care a bit.
Much of this plan was already laid out as 'project 2025', by conservative organisation the Heritage Foundation and is being enacted almost verbatim. Keys to the project are making the President solely in charge of the executive branch, dismantling the federal State and rolling back civil rights in the name of White Christian Nationalism.
The billionaires come with their ideology too - a recognisably fascist one, re-vamped for the 21stC called Dark Enlightenment, a racist 'neo-reactionary' fantasy born in silicon valley. Thiel, Vance's handler, is a proponent3 as is Vance himself. Musk also dresses up and refers to himself as 'Dark MAGA': black MAGA cap, black coat, gold chain, sunglasses and chainsaw. Fascism is back and looms over us. So what happens next?
Project 2025 is laid out and Dark Enlightenment has tactics that are aligned with it such as 'RAGE' - Retire All Government Employees - an influence on the concept of DOGE perhaps. Dark Enlightenment however seeks to dismantle not only liberal democracy but the whole of the Enlightenment itself, represented by what it calls 'the Cathedral', comprised of all liberal institutions such as the State and universities. Musk's email to all federal employees requesting that they validate their jobs or be fired has been pushed back by some agencies, such as the FBI itself, even with Trumps new picks in charge of it. These parts of government will inevitably strive for self preservation and against the Dark Enlightenment. While the Heritage Foundation's project ostensibly concerns itself mainly with domestic American politics, the Dark Enlightenment seeks to engage entirely with 'the west' and its historic institutions, cultural and political. Some kind of civil resistance might take place in America, and with the power and fantasies of the billionaires at the helm, it is unlikely to end there.
1. Trump's first term election conspirator Steve Bannon's tactic for power: make so much controversy with your words and actions that the media cannot cope.
2 "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING! –President Donald J. Trump", posted on truth social, 19.02.2025
3. In his 'essay', 'Dark Enlightenment', Nick Land quotes Thiel's “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible"