Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling

https://newrepublic.com/post/193309/trump-destruction-government-chaos-fascism

Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling

We assumed that the destruction of democracy would be done by rewriting laws. That’s so twentieth century.

Michael Tomasky
March 28, 2025 10:29 a.m. ET


Madness everywhere. Just glance at the headlines leading The New York Times this morning:

A Disregard for Rules Trickles Down From Trump to His Aides
Trump Takes Government Secrecy Seriously. But Only When it Suits Him.
10,000 Federal Health Workers to Be Laid Off
President Trump Moves to Punish the Law Firm Where Robert Mueller Worked

There’s more, but you get the picture. The Washington Post adds a hot scoop: Internal White House document shows agencies preparing to cut between 8% and 50% of staff.

That’s a lot of mayhem, and it barely scratches the surface. The Social Security Administration is being destroyed. ICE is throwing people out of the country for what look to be obviously political reasons, notably a scientist at Harvard Medical School who was detained in Boston and told she’s being sent back to her native Russia. She protested Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion and called for his impeachment. Wonder what’s in store for her.

Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force—a military coup, that sort of thing. Second, a bit more stealthily, and legally—through legislation, executive decrees, and court decisions that hand more power to the leader.

Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.

That’s exactly what’s happening with Social Security. The Washington Post reported this week that the SSA is breaking down: Its website “crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” A Wall Street multimillionaire who probably doesn’t need his Social Security check and who has pledged that he will “100 percent work with DOGE” has already cut around 12 percent of the staff and doesn’t look like he’s stopping there.

In other words: Start by lying about the agency, with absurd and false claims about 140-year-olds cashing checks. Then wreck the agency so that its service becomes crap. Let public anger at it build. And in time, they can just dismantle it and privatize the greatest social insurance system ever devised by this government and put people’s financial fate in the hands of rich cronies. If that’s not chaos fascism, I don’t know what is.

Trump probably doesn’t have some secret plan. As we know, he doesn’t think far enough ahead. Elon Musk, however, probably does. It’s no accident he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” That statement either (1) reflected his ignorance of how both Social Security and Ponzi schemes work or (2) was made in full knowledge of how both work—that is, he knew it was nonsense, but he said it anyway because his goal is to destroy Social Security.

This applies to just about everything Trump and Musk are doing.

It applies even to Signalgate. Trump has contempt for rules and procedures, and so he appoints unqualified stooges like Pete Hegseth to run the world’s largest military, who share that contempt—who think being tough means showing the world that they can do anything they want with no consequences. Again—ignore the law, trash the rules, establish that procedure is whatever you say it is. Chaos fascism.

And it will almost certainly go unpunished. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that the Justice Department wasn’t the least bit interested in looking into it. Some GOP lawmakers are making noises about the need for an investigation of some kind. But really—are the GOP’s leaders in Congress, Senator John Thune and Representative Mike Johnson, really likely to green-light an investigation? Seems pretty unlikely to me, unless it’s done with the secret, express goal of exonerating all involved.

Some senators say the Pentagon inspector general should conduct a probe. OK, we might get that. But remember that Trump has already fired 17 inspectors general, so who’d really care if he fired one more? Break the rules, and then ensure that there’s no accountability. Chaos fascism.

And if you want an image, just one image, that absolutely screams chaos fascism? Feast your eyes upon this photo of Department of Homeland Security Secretary and noted dog killer Kristi Noem at that notorious El Salvador prison this week, the prison where the Trump administration sent a couple hundred alleged Venezuelan gang members. They positioned her in front of prisoners behind bars, most of them bald and tattooed as if extras in a dystopian sci-fi movie, warning others that what happened to those Venezuelan men could happen to you. It’s a chilling photograph—to think that this is now the kind of image the United States wishes to project to the world.

And remember—those men are being held in that notorious prison in defiance of a federal court order. Wreck the rules. Chaos fascism.

Where in the world will we be six months or a year from now? What shape will Social Security be in? Veterans Affairs? What will be the impact of all these tariffs? Trump thinks he’ll force American companies to build factories here, and no doubt a few will, enough that Pravda (Fox News) can promote them as “proof” that the tariffs were a miracle. But most economists predict—well, chaos.

Trump will orchestrate no military coup. The Republican Congress will probably pass no laws that make Trump president for life. That would be too obvious. What they’ll do is make stealthier moves across the board that discredit and destroy our democratic institutions until he and his billionaire friends can strip them for parts. Chaos fascism is here to stay.


This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky.

@Suzianne


What astonishes me is that the GOP is walking into this with their eyes open. It's not as though they did not have any warning signs; but they keep spinning the signs into something else.

Take the recent security breach. Trump claims it is a hoax, his underlings say the The Atlantic editor hacked his way into the chat, and that the operational details of the attack did not constitute "confidential war plans"--they are literally falling all over themselves to pretend this was anything but a massive breach of security protocols. They send out such a barrage of lies that one cannot refute every one, one at a time, and tomorrow comes the next barrage of lies.

As Hannah Arendt pointed out, the barrage of lies is not intended to make anyone actually believe anything which is not true. The purpose of such a torrent of lies is to render truth as such irrelevant. Once truth is rendered irrelevant, people can be easily manipulated into thinking right is wrong and wrong is right. This is exactly how Hitler and Goebbels got the German people to build death camps and put their neighbors into them.

@moonbus said
@Suzianne


What astonishes me is that the GOP is walking into this with their eyes open. It's not as though they did not have any warning signs; but they keep spinning the signs into something else.

@moonbus said
@Suzianne


What astonishes me is that the GOP is walking into this with their eyes open. It's not as though they did not have any warning signs; but they keep spinning the signs into something else.

Take the recent security breach. Trump claims it is a hoax, his underlings say the The Atlantic editor hacked his way into the chat, and that the operational details of the ...[text shortened]... ow Hitler and Goebbels got the German people to build death camps and put their neighbors into them.

@spruce112358

Lord Of The Flies, good comparison. Wait it out is a bad idea. People thought they could wait out Hitler, Pinochet, and Assad. Some did, but every family lost people to the dungeons before it was over.

@AverageJoe1 said
This one says that we are 'spinning the signs'??

Here is one that is not spinnable by you, Moonbus.

Elon is not cutting benefits to those who need them. He's cutting money to the scammers so that we can afford to keep giving benefits to those who need them.

Really hate putting you on the spot.

@moonbus said
@spruce112358

Lord Of The Flies, good comparison. Wait it out is a bad idea. People thought they could wait out Hitler, Pinochet, and Assad. Some did, but every family lost people to the dungeons before it was over.

@moonbus said
@spruce112358

Lord Of The Flies, good comparison. Wait it out is a bad idea. People thought they could wait out Hitler, Pinochet, and Assad. Some did, but every family lost people to the dungeons before it was over.

@spruce112358 said
Good people ALWAYS choose, first, to 'wait it out.' 😆

@AverageJoe1 said
One of your (very few) alpha males is James Carville. He said a few weeks ago for Dems to just cool it and wait it out.
So here is one of your quasi-pundits, very smart and a totally political mind, saying to wait, and you say do 'not' wait.
Who to believe.
We repubs have a hard time following.

@spruce112358 said
Wrong. If we wanted to balance the Federal budget, we could have done that at any time over the last 50 years. Nobody votes for that - and voting for things is important. That is the only way we do things. 😆

We don't 'appoint' someone to reduce spending. That's not in the Constitution.

And anyway, Repubs are increasing defense spending - which means they are NOT in ...[text shortened]... So you are wrong in just about every way possible. I guess that's why you are just 'Average Joe'. 😆

@spruce112358 said

BTW, you've never met an 'alpha' male - apart from me.* 😆

@moonbus said
@Suzianne


What astonishes me is that the GOP is walking into this with their eyes open. It's not as though they did not have any warning signs; but they keep spinning the signs into something else.

Take the recent security breach. Trump claims it is a hoax, his underlings say the The Atlantic editor hacked his way into the chat, and that the operational details of the ...[text shortened]... ow Hitler and Goebbels got the German people to build death camps and put their neighbors into them.

@AverageJoe1 said
This one says that we are 'spinning the signs'??

Here is one that is not spinnable by you, Moonbus.

Elon is not cutting benefits to those who need them. He's cutting money to the scammers so that we can afford to keep giving benefits to those who need them.

Really hate putting you on the spot.

@spruce112358 said
Good people ALWAYS choose, first, to 'wait it out.' 😆