Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

By openly defying judicial orders, President Trump has now taken us to the brink of dictatorship. In polite circles and on NPR, this will be referred to as a “constitutional crisis,” but make no mistake: The lack of all restraint on executive power, should the judiciary be unable to prevail in the matter of law or to force compliance—and how can it?—is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

Congress, too, appears to have neither the power nor the votes to challenge Trump. The majority is his very own Nazi party; the minority is an ineffective pseudo-opposition. There remains the tantalizing question of whether the majority-Trump Supreme Court will resist Trump’s most blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions, but there again, how will they compel him to obey their rulings should they displease him?

It may be depressingly instructive to compare Trump’s actions to the rise and consolidation of Hitler’s power. While there are differences, of course, the overall trajectory has many parallels. Trump has not yet—at least to our knowledge or directly—been responsible for murders akin to the Night of the........

© CounterPunch