President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA regime have promised revenge and retribution against a range of targeted groups such as the Democrats, “the deep state” and “the globalists,” “the Left,” “liberals,” “Woke,” the news media, i.e. “the enemy of the people,” nonwhite “illegal aliens," the LGBTQ community (specifically transgender people) and a range of other groups. Trump’s selections for his Cabinet are distinguished both by their personal loyalty to him as well as ferocity in pursuing his personal and political “enemies.” Trump has repeatedly threatened to remove these “enemies within” from society by using the Alien Enemies Act, the Insurrection Act and other means including prison. All indications suggest that Trump’s dictatorial presidency will begin by targeting those groups and individuals who are “the enemy” on day one.

On the other hand, Trump has repeatedly promised to pardon his followers who attacked the Capitol as part of his coup attempt on Jan. 6. They will likely serve as Trump’s personal MAGA street enforcers and paramilitaries.

Central to Trump and his agents’ plans to impose their authoritarian vision on American society is Nazi legal theorist and jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept of a state of exception and the distinction between “friend and enemy” in a permanent state of emergency where the ruler, i.e. Trump and his regime, possess what is essentially unlimited power. In this model of citizenship and national belonging, support for Trumpism and MAGA is synonymous with being a “real American.” The enemy, however defined, is to be marginalized and oppressed as the Other.

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In a must-read article at The New Republic, Nina Burleigh provides a roadmap and warning for how Donald Trump and his fascist regime will attack the core tenets of American democracy and civil society — and how there is little that normal politics and the institutions can do to stop him and his forces:

We are headed into uncharted territory as a people and a nation. Trump and his allies have promised to initiate their radical right-wing agenda the minute after he takes his hand off the Bible on Inauguration Day. We are about to experience an unprecedented assault on the Constitution and our civil liberties related to speech and assembly, and an abandonment of norms related to the military, the Justice Department, and government contracting that will make the first term look, well, normal….

In May and June, the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law invited 250 participants to take part in five tabletop exercises aimed at gaming out how a Trump presidency might use existing weaknesses in the American legal and constitutional system to implant an autocratic regime.

The results were disheartening at best, and at worst, frightening. The exercises demonstrated repeatedly that an authoritarian in control of the executive branch with little concern for legal limits holds a structural advantage over any lawful effort to restrain him. “None of the exercises left us sanguine,” the organizer, Bart Gellman, later reported. “Participants were almost uniformly sobered by the paucity of effective constraints on abuse of power.”

In a new article that not too long ago would describe life in a banana republic and not “the world’s greatest democracy,” The Washington Post examines how some of the high-profile targets of Trump and the MAGA movement are preparing for his return to power:

A retired U.S. Army officer who clashed with senior officials in Donald Trump’s first White House looked into acquiring Italian citizenship in the run-up to this month’s election but wasn’t eligible and instead packed a “go bag” with cash and a list of emergency numbers in case he needs to flee.

A member of Trump’s first administration who publicly denounced him is applying for foreign citizenship and weighing whether to watch and wait or leave the country before the Jan. 20 inauguration.

And a former U.S. official who signed a notorious October 2020 letter suggesting that emails purportedly taken from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden could be part of a “Russian information operation” is seeking a passport from a European country, uncertain about whether the getaway will prove necessary but concluding, “You don’t want to have to scramble.”

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid undermining their own preparations. The planning, they acknowledge, responds to a hypothetical worst case in which a second Trump presidency ushers in systematic suppression of free speech and criminalization of dissent. Trump’s victory alone has set off alarms among some of his most outspoken critics, as well as within parts of the intelligence and national security communities he denigrated as the “deep state” and accused of subverting his agenda.

Their anxiety has intensified amid the drumbeat of picks for critical Cabinet posts.

The Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans are going to have to quickly recalibrate their strategy and understanding of the core fundamentals of politics in the Age of Trump and American fascism if they are to find a way to take back the White House and country’s other governing institutions before it is too late and MAGA is widely synonymous with that it means to be a “real American” both here and around the world.

In an attempt to make sense of Trump’s victory, our collective emotions in this time of trouble and dread, what this election reveals about American values and character and what comes next when Trump takes power in January, I recently spoke with a range of experts.

Randolph Hohle is a professor of Sociology at SUNY Fredonia and author of "Racism in the Neoliberal Era" and "American Housing Question: Racism, Urban Citizenship, and the Privilege of Mobility." He studies the nexus of racism and political economy.

I’m feeling a bit taken back and a little alarmed. It's not that Trump won, but how much the country moved to the right. To see Trump win 45% of the vote in New York State and sweep every swing state is telling the direction the US is heading. I won’t do anything special to manage the feelings. I’ll just continue to lift weights and exercise like I normally do. I don’t experience elections as trauma.

"MAGA is the streets for marginalized white men. “Owning the libs” is just a middle finger........

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