By Jason Renard Walker 

An authoritarian regime doesn’t really care about partisanship, it only cares about power. While some do pose as partisan and even finger those on the left as right-wing hating communists, it’s all for show and to scare the most gullible citizens into supporting their own repression, by allowing the regime to enforce a rule of law on what is good or bad, right or wrong, and true or false. 

One of the most common features of an autocrat is blaming the opposition for the consequences of their own actions, claiming powers that they don’t have, passing executive orders that aren’t worth the ink they were signed with, and testing whether people will allow them to use these unconstitutional powers, for how long, and in which ways. 

In any society that operates under a democracy, where elections are won and lost through a people’s voting ballot, it is up to the people to protect these tools and institutions as if they were protecting their own lives. That’s because when democracy is destroyed, it simply doesn’t come back to save those you like, be they Democrat or Republican, it’s gone. And if you don’t show an act of resistance or you remain silent, the regime that’s aiming to silence you is going to use that silence as consent. One example would be if citizens in blue cities did nothing as Donald Trump sent unwanted troops there to intimidate them. 

We are entering an era in history where Trump and his billionaire flunkies are attempting to turn back the clock by normalizing racism, repressing dissent and obliterating the constitution in favor of a King’s nation that shows no empathy and doesn’t have any guardrails. But this era didn’t simply evolve on its own. Political forces, particularly on the left, assisted in this unprecedented cultural shift and are to blame. 

As far back as Barack Obama’s first term in office, Democrats did everything in their power to prevent the emergence of any constructive alternative to the existing system that has tediously failed the people. This includes outsourcing, censoring and slandering any Green Party or independent candidates that ran as an alternate choice with real solutions, and failing to endorse any charismatic candidates that couldn’t be marginalized or otherwise corrupted into running on a Democrat platform, under the condition of advancing capitalism and not engaging in any serious struggles for power. 

In the 2016 election Senator Bernie Sanders, a capitalist who parades as a socialist, emerged as a favorite among college students and young voters, with his straightforward free health care for all agenda and other social programs. Against the wishes of most working-class Democrat voters who were seeking real change, war criminal Hillary Clinton was chosen by the Democrat party as their candidate, despite Sanders appealing more to voters’ needs. This error showed on election day as enough voters felt an unknown Trump presidency wasn’t as risky as Clinton, who we all knew would preserve the status quo of driving the wedge of capitalism between the working class and their needs. 

Even in these times, the fight for an alternate solution to this two-party system of neoliberalism has to come forward, or else the people will see themselves forever being swung back and forth on the pendulum of a political system that has long gone through the metamorphosis of becoming its neoliberal self. 

DESTROYING DEMOCRACY 

Autocracy is most effective when the people are led to believe that democracy has failed and alternatives like rebelling, socialism or communism will only pin them deeper into the pit of repression. Autocrats don’t just ban or deny the existence of elections and dissenting voices, they render them meaningless. This is why the voting system, the media and the right to peacefully protest are among the first democratic institutions they go after.

This, Trump knows all too well. Every move he has made thus far is designed to bring him closer to his authoritarian kingdom, and the people further away from seeking their own independence and enjoying freedoms as they slowly wither away. Trump losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden was his fuel. Without producing a scintilla of evidence, a move straight out of the MAGA playbook, he declared that the election was rigged. He used social media to enrage his manipulated loyalists, and provoked 1500 of them to storm the Capitol, vandalize the inside, assault police officers and attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Without apology, they did as they were told and Trump rewarded them with full pardons for participating in a treasonous event he calls “a day of love.” 

Trump also capriciously exonerated friends, a couple of reality TV stars that got rich off of white collar crimes, because he claims they didn’t get a fair trial, and an online drug kingpin (Ross William Ulbricht) who was serving a life sentence in federal prison and whose mother donated money to his campaign. 

The beginning stages of autocracy are here. The regime’s baseless claim that the electoral system is rigged, the media is biased and liberal professors are eroding higher education is what makes this clear. Those unwilling to promote this fantasy are the enemy at this point. 

Like Trump, they come to power and begin to build their authoritarian regime, lie-by-lie. But it’s the last fair election as we know it. His pre-2026-midterms push to redistrict Texas and other states to maintain the Republican majority in congress is a case in point. He suggests the move was made through an entitlement the Republican party has for more seats. But the truth in the matter is that he’s very self-aware that his incompetence is starting to show, his popularity has plummeted and there’s a real possibility that the Democrats could regain control of the House after the 2026 midterms, if he doesn’t gerrymander a district or two before then. 

In the midst of this, the United States Supreme Court is reviewing a lawsuit that seeks to gut a provision from section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That way, this redistricting scheme can be pulled, slowly but surely, in whatever district the Republican party desires. 

One of the plaintiffs out of Louisiana brought the case after a federal judge ordered the state to redraw its congressional map to include a second majority-Black district that was won by a Democrat last year. This landmark civil rights law requires the drawing of legislative districts that allow minorities to select representatives of their choosing. It was specifically included in the Civil Rights Act to root out racial discrimination in voting or, in other words, to prevent what the Republicans are attempting now. If the conservative majority Supreme Court rule in the plaintiff’s favor, it could turn the district back into one a Republican is likely to represent, and possibly eliminate its other Democratic seat. 

Not only is team MAGA trying to reverse pro-democratic laws and norms that don’t support Trump’s authoritarian agenda, they are egregiously violating any unamendable laws that restrict it. If it goes their way, we will have gone from the people having the right to vote for the leader of their choice, to these leaders choosing who the voters are in their districts. 

Essentially, these moves aren’t being made to fix a decayed democracy that is long overdue for a reform; the current system operating under the laws of capitalism will never be able to correct anyways. They are perniciously advancing its extinction by trampling over every effort, with antidemocratic solutions. 

Don’t expect the Democrats to ever blitz the Republicans on this matter either; they too represent the ruling class. And history shows the capitalist class will yield to dictatorship, as long as it can secure their endeavor to continue exploiting the working class.

This ongoing crisis in no way should be an indictment on the effectiveness of democracy, or discourage the working class from including it in their arsenal. This just further exposes that a democracy cannot and will not ever be allowed to live up to its full potential under the helms of the capitalist class. Their unattainable vision of infinite power, profits and resources require an unconsenting exploitation of the masses, while giving workers no viable path to vote themselves out of being exploited for their labor. The mere existence of democracy in the U.S. is just a mirage that gives the working class a vista through which it can only be imagined. At best, only a fraction of it, the limited right to cast a vote, is all the people will be given to play with. And even this fragment is a court-ruling away from being  cut out. 

The nationally held ‘No kings’ protest of October 18 further exposes the ruling elites disinterest in showing that they are trying to be a pillar of democracy, address the peoples concerns, or respect their constitutional right to peacefully protest and criticize the government. This is because they are beyond the point of pretending to champion the working class. Trump has admitted himself that a full court press to attack the enemy within i.e. protesters, the media, and anyone not fully aligned with him, is under construction. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson and many others from the MAGA base are propagating the event as a “Hate America protest” and are trying to discourage people from attending by hypothesizing that it might be led by Marxists, ultra left militants, pro Hamas supporters and Antifa. When in fact the people aren’t protesting because they hate America. They are disgusted with an overtly fascist Trump administration and are exercising the right to show their displeasure, because the country they live in is turning into a police state under the rule of one criminal-minded murderer and autocrat. 

Even these quasi united fronts are limited in scope and durability because officials from the Democrat party will redirect the challenge against authoritarianism, to leading the protestors into hearing them out, being patient and let the Democrats take control and fight for them. The protests will eventually end, just as the people’s threat to challenge the king will. Then it’s another step back for the people and two steps forward for the ruling class and their agenda. 

The fact that this two-party system births the concept that one side has to be chosen over the other, based merely on one’s personal preferences and status, will never unite anyone to a common cause, or create a society where equality is an unbreakable commandment and democracy is as real as the definition that describes it. 

An anticapitalist workers’ party that will play David to this Goliath is the only viable solution in advancing the rot of capitalism, as it will inevitably crumble under the weight of its own inner contradictions and cannibalistic traits. Drawing order out of this chaos, and building a system rooted in a socialist ideology and the working class’s visions, whether they be Black, White, Gay or poor, is the only way forward. Capitalism is on its deathbed and must not be revived. 

CONSOLIDATING POWER 

When autocrats assume power they immediately reduce the role of government and expand power by pushing it beyond all legal boundaries. They capture the other branches of government and eliminate any federally funded programs that don’t advance their agenda. This allows them to weaken competing powers, and drag the the surviving programs into the clutches of the regime, which will then create its own agency to do the checks and balances. Any federally funded programs that catered to minorities, women and the poor, that once were, will be replaced by institutions that give billionaires avenues to invest their money and over-stuff their bank accounts at the expense of tax payers.

In part, this is the role the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) played in Trump’s first phase of consolidating power. In an article by Tyler Walicek, Trump and DOGE’s Determination to Crush Workers, he explains, DOGE’s purpose was to wage an attack on labor unions and laborers. 

The gullible were expected to believe DOGE’s duty was to siphon misused money into coffers for the working class and destroy the programs misusing it. In reality it was the most subtle way to consolidate power. It sought to eliminate agencies of resistance and those with outside influences on culture, race, ethical dilemmas and the history of slavery in America. Without the contrast of these institutions, his plan had a smoother path. 

When most people think about DOGE they aren’t analyzing it in relation to being a vessel for desensitizing racist ideologies or pioneering Trump’s autocratic ambitions. Their analysis is more directed at why Elon Musk says he created it and the havoc it has wrecked above the surface, which was, taking away the jobs of civil servants. Those who held this view and called out The Trump administration on this, from my perspective, didn’t intimidate or rattle his regime at all because the connection between DOGE and the purpose it really served still remained hidden to the average person, even after the fact. 

Trump’s rise to power was based on racism and white supremacy. In order to ensure that his regime and their supporters are able to unapologetically operate under this standard, white supremacy and hate has to be normalized, in that the history of its burden on society is removed from contemporary culture, or remade in the likes of a historic romance novel: white peacemaker saves the world from barbaric savages, the end. 

Only a fool could believe that Musk would really find two trillion dollars worth of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government funded programs, nearly one third of the entire federal budget. Under false pretenses, they slashed away and defunded those that were DEI-leaning and effective or obviously under control of Democrat-supporting civil servants. 

DOGE’s hack job resulted in thousands of federal workers either getting fired, under the unfounded premise that their work performance was bad, or laid off because the institutions they served had been dismantled, or renamed and taken over by Trump loyalists. The ripple effect that caused people to lose their homes and income was mere collateral damage and a means to achieve an end. 

One of many contradictory consequences of the DOGE cuts is that they reduced the number of immigration court judges and their personnel. This resulted in detainees spending more time in ICE detention centers and eliminated opportunities for due process. In terms of Trump’s speedy mass deportation plan, DOGE actually had an adverse effect on it. 

This parody had him complaining that the over-docketed immigration judges left standing were taking too long, so he kept trying to displace migrants in foreign countries without satisfying their due process rights. But the faster judges moved to hold court, Trump moved even faster to deport migrants before their court dates. After the courts deemed his acts unconstitutional, he recruited military lawyers to play judge and speed up the process. 

While some of the workers were allowed to return to work after filing lawsuits and complaints, DOGE was deactivated without fulfilling ten percent of its intended goal, and Musk packed his bags and hit the road. This would not be the endgame, Trump was just getting started. Next up? The media and the courts. 

From the beginning of his second term Trump installed loyalists and put people in charge, like U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who are not loyal to the constitution, but loyal to him. It’s part of his effort to eliminate checks and balances, while neutralizing the judiciary, by ignoring any court orders he disagree with.

This move was to test the limits of the federal courts, to see if there were any loopholes or prior rulings supporting his rebellion against being ordered to return migrants back to the U.S., they’d illegally deported to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. Trump was hoping to establish that the president was chief and immune from court intervention, regardless of it being a long shot in the dark. The opportunism in an autocrat is that they’ll take power any way they can, and in any form if it’s given to them. 

By manipulating Noem and others to express that the only person they’re obligated to answer to is the president. This pushed the courts passed their own understanding of the judicial system, because this defiance from Trump was pulling them into uncharted waters, infested with misguided sycophants and a nosy media. 

The Supreme Court previously ruled that a president was immune from being charged with crimes he committed while in office. So how the courts were to punish him for not following a court order was a question for the Supreme Courts. 

In his first term Trump’s cabinet wasn’t teeming with loyalists, like FBI Director Kash Patel, so his agenda stalled and he was deduced to more of a loud mouth, low tolerance visionary, than a president with the power and guts to knock down legal guardrails. That’s because each time he tried, members of his cabinet like former FBI Director, James Comey and former National Security Adviser, John Bolton would push back. In his second term, he took the gloves off. 

Instead of filling his administration with Republicans operating under politically correct stanzas, he’d eventually fire for not complying, he screened a variety of hopefuls despite conflicting political views and only chose those that agreed to be loyal to him and his agenda. This is why you see pre anti Trump bigots like Tulsi Gabbard (an ex Democrat), JD Vance (who called Trump Hitler) and RFK getting big gigs, despite obviously being unqualified to fill the positions. The thought of having such people agreeing in advance to do whatever he says, was enough for Trump to play political Russian roulette, with a loaded pistol aimed straight at the Democrats. 

He understood that in order to overreach his authority and seek retribution against political foes that exposed him like Comey and Bolton, (Bolton writing a tell-all book) and those responsible for bringing criminal charges against him, like Letitia James. It required the complicity of the entire federal government, particularly the Department of Justice and the FBI. If the three could meld, he knew weaponizing the two would be a huge power grab: one as a sword to attack political foes and the other as a shield to protect his henchmen, like border czar Tom Holman, from being charged with crimes they commit. 

As of date the FBI dropped their criminal investigation on Holman, despite being caught on camera accepting a $50,000 bribe from an undercover FBI agent. And Comey, Bolton and James have all been indicted in federal court on charges, that are obviously retaliatory in nature. Before this, Trump was sure to settle an old beef by firing every individual that contributed to indicting him for instigating the January 6 insurrection, and getting his insurrectionists convicted. 

In Comey’s case, the casual connection between Trump weaponizing the DOJ to charge him with a crime, playing middleman to get it brokered, and Pam Bondi proving her loyalty to him by granting his wish, is clear as day. 

Career prosecutors in Virginia said Comey’s charge didn’t meet the bar for indictment. Rather than fold under Trump’s pressure, the prosecutor in charge resigned and Trump replaced him with his former attorney, Lindsay Halligan, who had no prior prosecutorial experience. Days before the statute of limitations were set to expire in Comey’s case, Trump dropped Bondi a message on social media asking her what the delay was, because time was running out and to get all three indicted immediately.

A TRUMP INFLUENCED CONGRESS 

With the DOJ and FBI proving, by example, Trump weaponized both departments as planned, he can focus on coopting Congress until they subtly allow him to assume power of the purse, even though it’s in the constitution that such powers are granted to them. In many ways he acts as if he has done this, and from the looks of it, he is gaining ground. 

He’d already extorted law firms, got big business and the Federal Reserve to cave, and influenced the Supreme Court to mandate the firing of thousands of federal workers, cancel NIH grants, discharge transgender service members, and gave ICE agents unlimited power to round up anyone based on their perceived ethnicity. Essentially Trump’s entire agenda was affirmed by the highest court in the land, with the majority giving little to no explanation on why they ruled in his favor. 

The Trump administration sent a few messages to the U.S. and abroad during the recent bombing of Iran, who he claims were enriching nuclear material, and missile strikes on six different boats off the coast of Venezuela. Without providing any proof, Trump’s rationale for authorizing the military to murder civilians is that they were attempting to bring drugs to the U.S. and their boats were too fast for the Coast Guard to stop them. A page out of ex president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte’s playbook. This adds 20 innocent people to Trump’s body count. 

One message well received is that he will diabolically use military force on foreign nations and civilians in foreign countries, when neither pose a threat and against the intelligence of his National Security Director. The second message states he will do these things without the approval of Congress, nor is he bound to consult them about his military affairs and that this evasion will be the norm. 

Past presidents like George Bush and Obama both launched attacks on other countries without the approval of Congress, so this is nothing new. In Trumps instance you get a feel that he’s not trying to give Congress the cold shoulder, but reshape the role Congress plays in American politics. 

Several key moves House Speaker Johnson has made, or a lack thereof, seemed to appease Trump’s paranoia about the release of the Epstein files. Further showing that his power and influence over Congress is seeping in and spilling out. Just back in July and as lawmakers were pressing for a vote on a measure that would get the Epstein files released. Johnson abruptly sent them home, called for an early recess and shut the House down until September. 

With the government shutdown taking shape at the end of September, Johnson also shutdown the House and stated there will be no special session held to swear-in newly elected Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. Though during the government shutdown in Trump’s first term, a special session was held so that his appointees could be sworn in. The incentive for Johnson not to give Grijalva this same deference is that it extends the delay in addressing the Epstein scandal. She did publicly promise to be the deciding 218th vote to force the DOJ to release the files. 

Looking back, these stall tactics curtailing discussions about voting to release the Epstein files has not only become a pattern, it has become a habit of Johnson’s. The timing couldn’t be more perfect and the rationale for not having a special session doesn’t hold weight. 

What does all this power grabbing, deception and King making mean for the duration of Trump’s presidency? It means a new norm has been established. Trump’s antics are basically a ‘game on’ taunt that called democracy’s bluff, while exposing its illusions to the public. It sends the message that it’s OK for the military to murder civilians, as long as the order comes from the president. It makes it clear that those protesting Trump’s authoritarian agenda will be met with a military blockade and slandered in conservative news through state sponsored propaganda.

STATE SPONSORED PROPAGANDA AND A CAPITULATED MEDIA 

It has not even been a full year into Trump’s second term and we are already seeing a split in the reality of where the country is headed, which is into a state of fascism, and where he wants us to believe he is taking it. 

The contradicting fallacy that his state sponsored propagandists Fox News are shit-kicking to the public, the don’t panic what you are seeing is the ‘art of the deal’ notion, is what has drawn this distinction. In this right wing conservative media corporation, you have: Hispanics, Blacks and other races all pushing the same whacked out propaganda – “believe in Trump, Democrats are racist and sexist liars. Oh, and what you think you are seeing (a racist and sexist lying autocrat) you are not.” 

The truism is that these pro-Trump networks are using non-white stool pigeons and women to conceal the racist and sexist ideologies that run rampant in the Trump administration and the military, by expressing diversity elsewhere. 

Media outlets like Fox News, that dedicate themselves to Trump, don’t run their propaganda for the Republican party to learn from, or other political parties to believe. It has reshaped itself into a state-sponsored broadcasting system, that sucks its conservative viewers into a world that is haphazardly built and perpetually destroyed by Trump, like a child forcing pieces of a puzzle together that don’t fit. 

Their message is only aimed at followers and those that will not question or challenge any order or lie dished out, but act according to them. As long as Trump’s voters are tuning in and buying into what is being sold, journalists that are reporting the truth about MAGA’s agenda and exposing Trump’s lies, aren’t likely to be heard, or in the alternate, not believed. This is what creates that cult of personality standing. 

The MAGA base’s conspiracies don’t conform to logic or reality, so they have to imagine one where what they say is believable and never a debate. Fox news and other like-minded outlets are places where politicians, these fantasies, and reality become one. Let’s not be mistaken though, these aren’t fantasies that every Republican and conservative media rep believe. Most under Trump’s leadership are corrupted into falling in line because the presidency is a cult of one individual: a pathological liar and megalomaniac, that has the backing of billionaires, the corporate elite and other world leaders. Challenging a wrong he made can result in these zealots using their unlimited resources to slander, criminally charge or primary the ‘lunatic’ and get them replaced. 

Being easily corrupted is often the default position government and military officials take because they care more about their job security, staying in power and consolidating their own power, than exposing a corrupt empire. There are instances where some break this trend, but career wise, it never ends well. See Comey, Bolton and Chelsea Manning. 

In an authoritarian nation there is no right to exercise free speech. Criticism of the government through poetry, media, books, music and the arts is often punishable by death or indefinite captivity. As expected, what is and isn’t criticism is usually left up to the government to decide and can change without notice. This is a practice a variety of nations in the middle east engage in to some degree. These powers are often used, not to enforce rule, but as a tool to eliminate threats to their authority. Opposition leaders, clergymen and activists are often used as examples for merely documenting or publicly expressing that there are unaddressed human rights violations in their country. 

This is a direction Trump is taking the U.S. and any countries opportunistically clinging to it for resources and bailouts. For instance, Trump is obsessed with attacking the media and free speech, discrediting independent journalists, and attempting to replace it with North Korea style state sponsored propaganda.

In nations under an authoritarian leader the media is either directly controlled by the government, or it can be indirectly controlled by government regulations, or media executives and spokespeople that are sympathetic to the regime. The nonpartisan, nontraditional media that continues to conduct what’s called independent journalism and relies on funding from the federal government to operate, is usually defunded if it refuses to change its mission and report exclusively along the regime’s party lines. 

When Trump waged his defund war against media programs PBS and NPR, by threatening to defund them for being “too woke” he was pulling the U.S. into the phase of fascism, where state-sponsored propaganda slowly begins to erode traditional and independent reporting. 

In Trump’s first term, legacy media, which are reporters allowed in the White House briefing room, etc, were sure to fact-check him and press him whenever he told a lie. Even Trump 1.0 was more reserved. Which has more to do with the administration in his first term being mainly Republican establishment people, like John Kelly, who were more reactive to bad press than Noem or Bondi. In his second term, this same media is more primed to only asking questions and receiving answers, without following up on an obvious lie. 

Trump 2.0 has lost all reservations, is zero tolerant and goes as far as to curse at the media and tell them in their faces that their reporting is fake news. In return, they are editing out his nasties and cosmetically running stories on his foreign relations in the middle east and Ukraine. 

What this shows is that a legacy media who branded itself as defenders of Democracy, has capitulated to Trump’s defiance, lies and tendencies. They act as if they’ve lost faith in the power of their own duty to expose lies and report the truth, which has a lot to do with this trend of media outlets settling out of court with Trump each time he files a frivolous lawsuit on them. 

There has been some resistance. Reporters with clearance to the Defense Department from nearly every news organization in the U.S. turned in their access badges and exited the Pentagon, rather than sign an agreement to government imposed restrictions on their reporting. Now in order to keep their access privilege, the Trump administration is requiring journalists to comply with a policy that says they can’t solicit or obtain information the Defense Department doesn’t explicitly authorize. And doing so would be a criminal act, not considered protected activity. 

The ten months Pete Hegseth has been Secretary of Defense he has only held two press briefings and has aggressively gone after reporters who publish unfavorable content. This new policy is his effort to prevent journalists from reporting scandals within the Pentagon. 

The impenetrable media ecosystem Trump built around the entire Republican establishment has reduced mainstream criticisms of Trump in this arena, to white noise and hogwash. It has deeply fractured the community of media, and broken its truth into two halves, both controlled by the corporate elite, with quasi-journalist podcast antagonists in the shadows playing little brother. 

Trump’s 16 million dollar settlement with Paramount, the 15 million dollar settlement with the Disney corporation and other abstract settlements with Facebook and law firms, to do away with his frivolous lawsuits, is evidence that CEOs and corporations are preemptively bowing down to him. In regard to Paramount, who owns CBS, during Trump’s lawsuit against them, they had a merger pending before the FCC (run by Trump’s pals). If this merger was approved, the owners of Paramount would get billions of dollars. So this 16 million dollar settlement might as well have been a scenario where the fear of pissing off Trump, who curries favor with the FCC, was the motivating factor to buy their way out of a meritless lawsuit that experts on the left and right said was bogus on its face.

To seek the rationale in why billion dollar corporations, universities, and corporate law firms, stocked with high power lawyers, would fold makes no sense. That’s because as it stands and how passive the mainstream media and the Democrat party are to Trump and his affiliates using the media to promote lies and hate speech, show we are beyond rational. They fear Trump and are not afraid of the opposition. They don’t view the people not wanting to live in autocracy as a problem they have to worry about. 

The industrial and business sector of an autocratic nation are usually the ones who put the regime into power, creating a business government relationship that benefits the elite. See Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. Expressing free speech and the right to peacefully protest has gone from a right protected by the first amendment established in 1791, to an act that the Trump administration defines as pro Hamas and anti American Marxist philosophy, that can only be countered with military might, attacks on the working class, civil rights violations and misleading propaganda. 

Trump has sought to wiggle around respecting the protections of the first amendment by suggesting that a law passed by Congress in 1934, the Communications Act, may be used to crack down on media outlets enjoying those freedoms. He is even pressuring FCC chairman Brendan Carr to revoke the licenses of any media that broadcast anything negative about him. In autocratic glare when he’s called out for using social media to threaten, slander or sabotage an innocent victim, MAGA leans back on the heels of the first amendment and wrap themselves in its immunity. 

This past ‘no kings’ peaceful protest, that over seven million people participated in and which Trump deemed a small crowd of lunatics who don’t represent the values of the working class, is one example. ABC temporarily canceling the late night TV show ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ at the illegal behest of Carr who said “we can either do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way” in relation to warning TV personalities who criticize MAGA through satire, is another. 

In both scenarios, the activity that took place was well within the legal confines of those enjoying it, while the retaliation they faced: getting their show cancelled and an AI video of a crown wearing Trump dropping feces on protesters and the American flag, is an exaggerated response that House Speaker Johnson justified as Trump using satire and free speech to get his point across. What point? That he believes he’s king and those protesting against it are a waste dump. What the Trump administration is aiming to do is redraw the line in free speech to suppress opposition and criticism. 

While Trump parades as unprecedented, the working class are matching his speed, independent of the Democrat party, with unprecedented moves that are keeping them grounded and ripe for mobilizing the next phase of struggles. But these struggles can only be won without the reactionary influences of the Democrat party who will redirect them back into a state of repression under another name. 

First off the ‘no kings’ protest was the largest protest of any kind in U.S. history. Second off, after people started canceling their Disney+ subscriptions and Hollywood writers protested in solidarity with Kimmel, he was put back on the air. Not because ABC was righting a wrong, only because a loss of money and control was at stake. 

These are not only signs that Trump is seeking to weaponize radio and television against the people it was created for, it’s a sign that a united people can and will beat him at every game he chooses to play. 

He can pretend that the resistance he’s facing is a mirage and his challenged efforts are a result of being dealt a bad hand. But even he knows when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. 

Jason Renard Walker 1532092 

Powledge Unit 

PO Box 660400 

Dallas, TX 75040

Jason Renard Walker is a prison journalist who has published articles and essays in various print and online media outlets since 2016. His work can be viewed at: www.jasonsprisonjournal.com You can also purchase his paperback book ‘Reports From Within The Belly Of The Beast: Torture And Injustice Inside Texas Department Of Criminal Justice’ available on amazon.com