“Trump is perhaps the most dangerous president in American history. He is an authoritarian; an oligarch whose vision for the future involves a small group of incredibly wealthy people becoming even richer while pushing the United States toward authoritarianism. What he is doing, both domestically and internationally, is very alarming. Many of us are fighting him as best we can. And I think we are succeeding; his popularity is falling every day,” said Bernie Sanders, an independent progressive legislator who votes with the Democratic Party and a longtime fighter against the ills that corrode what is called American democracy.

Trump is trying to undermine the Constitution by usurping the powers of Congress. He has illegally canceled laws and passed funding, which is unprecedented. He has also taken federal money away from states that did not vote for him. And that is outrageous, as well as illegal. He is also attacking the courts, choosing which decisions to abide by. He has gone after universities that offer courses he dislikes, and he intimidates the media with lawsuits and by having his billionaire friends buy them, like Larry Ellison, who now wields significant power in TikTok and has acquired Paramount, owner of Columbia Broadcasting System, which now has a more reactionary style.

In short, what we are witnessing is a handful of oligarchs who control the media, the economy, and, due to the corrupt campaign finance system, the political process as well.

What was a drift toward the extreme right, under Trump administration, is becoming an ideological and political persecution using every lever of power. And woe to anyone who dares to resist on campuses and in the streets. This is what Trump is waiting for to impose a state of emergency with severe restrictions on freedoms and indiscriminate arrests. He is counting on the fact that at the judicial summit, the majority of the Supreme Court usually rules in favor of Trump, who was the one who appointed them. Meanwhile, judges who dare to challenge him are subjected to pressure from the Justice Department and intimidation by Trump supporters.

In other words, there may not be a civil war—although some yearn for a repeat of the ending of the successful 2024 film (Civil War)—but widespread repression has already begun as if one had occurred.

THE LIE

In the United States, we have lived with lies systematically for far too long, at all hours and in all places, to avoid discouragement, to keep believing, to keep voting for the end times, to take stock, burn, and clean.

Everyone knows and denies everything, and lying is part of the cunning of the ruler and those who aspire to it, a virtue like competence or eloquence. To lie and not care. To be lied to and not care.

Now Trump has declared a domestic war, announcing that the military will have to "fight" against American civilians.

In an unprecedented move, Donald Trump summoned more than 800 top military commanders and called on them to prepare for “a domestic war” against the “radical left” and immigrants, in an authoritarian shift that redefines the role of the U.S. military. The purge at the Pentagon, the elimination of inclusive policies, and the renaming of the Department of Defense to a “Department of War” foreshadow a repressive escalation both within and outside the United States. Meanwhile, the military alliance with Javier Milei once again puts Argentina at risk of being caught in the Trump administration's imperial offensive.

To justify such a dangerous and illegal political-military onslaught, the U.S. president appealed to national memory. “Our history is full of military heroes who faced all enemies, both foreign and domestic. You know very well that the oath says: domestic and foreign. We also have domestic enemies. Washington, Lincoln, Bush Sr., and many of our leaders used the armed forces to maintain internal order and peace.”

A SECRET CIVIL WAR

In several parts of his speech, Trump admitted what the press has been pointing out for some time and what is now common knowledge in the United States: the country is experiencing a simmering civil war. “Now many like to say, ‘Oh! You can’t use the military for that’ (…) We have to control the territory before it gets out of control,” he emphasized. In addition to criticizing Joseph Biden—whom he repeatedly mocked because, due to his precarious mental health, Biden had to use an autopen to sign documents when he was president—Trump singled out progressive Democrats as part of the wartime targets the Pentagon will have to take on.

“The cities that are in bad shape are the ones run by the radical left Democrats: San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles… They’re very unsafe, and we’re going to clean them up one by one,” he warned.

As if this weren’t enough, Trump urged the use of these dangerous cities as a training ground for urban commandos to combat immigrants, fentanyl traffickers, and the radical left. “Last month I signed an executive order to train a rapid reaction force that can help quell civil unrest,” he said, citing as an example “the radicals, many of them paid by George Soros or others.” Yes, many of those insurgents are paid by the radical left.”

“We are suffering an invasion from within. It’s the same as a foreign invasion, but in many ways it’s more difficult because they don’t wear uniforms,” he said to justify this violent militarization to which he wants to subject the American people.

“Our armed forces will be stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer, and more powerful than ever before,” the president promised.

For his part, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War (a few weeks ago Trump changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War without submitting it to Congressional approval), also provided details about the new guidelines that will govern the U.S. Armed Forces from now on, to fix “decades of decline” caused by “foolish and reckless politicians.”

According to The Washington Post, the Department of War wants to stop leaks and dissent within the Pentagon and has adopted pure and simple McCarthyism. According to that publication, all members of the War Department, from four-star generals to civilian employees and contract workers, will be subjected to polygraph tests (lie detectors).

Furthermore, everyone will be required to sign confidentiality agreements prohibiting them from disclosing any internal public information except with special authorization.

In other words, the green light for repression, the disregard for democratic principles, and militarization as a form of social control are the new internal rules of Trumpism. This policy is part of a larger plan that involves us all: the strategic withdrawal of the United States from the entire American continent to gather strength and confront the geopolitical and geoeconomic changes the world is undergoing, which are placing it on a path to catastrophic decline.

BARBARA F. WALTER: THERE IS A THREAT OF CIVIL WAR

Barbara Walter, Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego, is one of the world's leading experts on civil wars, political violence, and terrorism. She is an active advisor to the World Bank. She has worked for the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, and writes for publications such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.

Here in Cuba, she interviewed Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro.

Civil war expert Barbara F. Walter argued in an interview that the probability of a civil war in the United States was higher than it had been 20 years earlier, but this was due to Trump's refusal to accept the election results and his desire to remain in power, should he return to it (which has now happened).

She made this statement in connection with the publication of her book, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, which, although it also addresses Iraq, Spain, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, focuses on the United States. The book has just been published in Spain under the title Cómo empieza una guerra civil y cómo evitar que ocurra (How a Civil War Starts and How to Prevent It).

One of Barbara Walter's arguments is that the countries most prone to civil war are not autocracies, but rather those in transition, in any sense, between autocracy and democracy, a situation, moreover, that is becoming increasingly common. In any case, the civil wars to come will not resemble those of the past; they will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror amplified by social media.

In her book, she states that she has observed “something unsettling: the warning signs of instability that we have identified elsewhere are the same ones that, over the past decade, I have begun to detect in my own country, on American soil. That’s why I watched with such dismay the events in Lansing [referring to a far-right plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan], and also the assault on the nation's Capitol in January 2021. I have seen how a civil war erupts, and I know how to recognize the signs that ordinary people overlook. And now I perceive the emergence of these signs in the United States, and at an astonishing speed.”

“The civil war of the 21st century has characteristics that differentiate it from the civil wars of the past,” Walter adds. “There are no longer large battlefields, armies, and conventional tactics. Today, civil wars are fought primarily between different religious and ethnic groups, and those who fight are guerrillas and paramilitaries, who often attack civilians. If you look closely, the Michigan episode presents all these elements… Today’s civil wars begin with vigilantes of this kind, with armed paramilitaries who perpetrate violent acts directly against people.”

“ARE WE CLOSE?”

In a chapter significantly titled “Are We Close?”, the author recalls the events of January 2021, when a crowd of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Those events, she says, shocked her and, at the same time, felt familiar because of her experience in civil conflicts.

And based on that experience and the approach of political science, she concluded that the United States was venturing “into a quagmire.” Precisely because it met the two conditions considered by experts to be risk factors for civil war: being in a state of “anocracy,” between democracy and autocracy, and the division of the population into factions along ethnic lines. For Barbara Walter, Donald Trump’s bid for power is based on an identity appeal that encourages this division into ethnic factions: he denigrates Mexicans, Black people, and Muslims and emphasizes the supposed grievances suffered by white, Christian, rural American men.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff