Trump and MAGA elites: Some comparison to fascism

Accumulating evidence indicates that Trump and MAGA elites are getting ready to declare martial law, use the Insurrection Act or otherwise start another coup attempt. How close that is to happening isn't clear, but it feels rather close. All it might take is a single shooter to kill one or more ICE agents to give Trump the excuse he is looking for to finish off our democracy and rule of law. Are we really that close to that kind of an Armageddon? I hope not. But maybe we're close to end of the American experiment.

 

The MSM may or may not be waking up. Or, maybe it's not capable of waking up, having been subverted.

A Common Dreams opinion piece, Mussolini Had His Blackshirts, Hitler Has the SS, and Trump Has ICE, is some evidence that parts of the MSM are still up for engagement. The evidence keeps pointing to increasing similarities between Trump and his MAGA elites and 1900s fascists and fascism. 

Apparently, the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis has got a lot of Americans riled up. According to a poll, the shooting appears to have catalyzed a major shift in public opinion. The Economist/YouGov poll conducted January 9-12, 2026, found that for the first time, more Americans support abolishing ICE (46%) than oppose it (43%). This was a substantial huge from July 2025, when only 27% supported abolition. Remarkably, 69% of Americans reported seeing video of the shooting, indicating unprecedented visibility into ICE operations.

Maybe it will mean something,

maybe it won't

Anyway, some Americans are starting to wake up. Whether it will make a major difference or will be too little or too late is unclear.  

FWIW, if anything, MAGA's radicalization and weaponization of ICE into what the Common Dreams article calls as "Trump's SS" reflects a gigantic expansion in resources and authority. MAGA's July 2025 spending bill allocated $75 billion to ICE over four years, tripling its budget from $10 billion in FY2024 to $28.7 billion in FY2025. There will be an average of approximately $37.5 billion annually through 2029. The MAGA weaponized ICE budget now exceeds the combined budgets of every other federal law enforcement agency—including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons.

That's exciting -- in a bad way, in my opinion.

Italian Fascism under Mussolini emphasized state supremacy over racial doctrine. The Doctrine of Fascism prioritized nationalism, corporatism, totalitarianism, and militarism with the state as all-encompassing. No human value existed beyond that. Fascism preserved the class system while promoting "corporatism" that integrated all societal elements into state structures. By contrast, German Nazism under Hitler elevated racial supremacy as its core doctrine, particularly the belief in Aryan superiority and biological antisemitism.

That this is even a topic for serious discussion is, IMHO, evidence of how bad our politics is and how shockingly weak our democracy and rule of law have become.