ALCATRAZ ~
It is not that we have no choice. But to choose requires conscious awareness of the situation as well as the alternatives and some ideas about how to achieve them. Some folks have difficulty making decisions and would rather have someone in authority make decisions for us. I think it was Theodore Adorno, over a half century ago in his classic work, The Authoritarian Personality (1950), who stated that authoritarians want an autocrat to exercise power over us all, including them, but want others to submit to themselves. They want to keep their cake while ‘the boss’ eats it.
Freedom is not free; it is a responsibility. In any functioning society both are necessary and interactive. They are sustained by agreed-to processes oforf resolving problems and issues by negotiation, agreement, and implementation, while respecting everyone’s rights. In the democracy in the making that is now being undone by the MAGA autocratic attempt, the constitutional right to due process was specifically designed to assure that both freedom and responsibility are maintained. Any attempt to circumvent due process is a threat to both.
Due Process Denied
In the current “administration,” where in diverse ways due process is dismissed and denied in the attempt to assert absolute executive authority in order to overthrow the anti-authoritarian concept of the separation of powers among the three branches of government—the legislative, executive, and judicial—due process is a hindrance to the attempted imposition of a dictatorship. (I put “administration” in quotes because Trump and his gang of sycophants do not administer, they defund, disorganize, and destroy.)
If due process were adhered to, it would be nearly impossible to abduct people at will and disappear them to a foreign gulag solely on the basis of their skin color, a tattoo the ICE kidnapers misinterpret, or some constitutionally guaranteed political speech. Under due process, it would be very difficult to execute blatantly white supremacist firings of anyone in a position where their responsibility is to assure the implementation of civil rights laws.
It is important to note that some of the first firings targeted numerous inspector-generals, whose role in the government was to be independent watchdogs responsible to investigate ‘waste, fraud, and abuse.’ These are the very same infractions that Trump’s biggest donor and recipient of billions of dollars in government contracts, claims to be rooting out as he slashes jobs indiscriminately and burns their institutions’ ability to function. Fascists are not shy about accelerating corruption. Due process?
The denial of due process is an explicit tactic executed as part of the strategy of the autocratic attempt. It also has the direct function of purging both people and programs, as well as the historical record of the struggles and achievement of both people of color and women as well as gender minorities, all of whom are to become subjugated populations under white supremacist rule. No wonder they want to open new prisons, such as the infamous Alcatraz.
Promoting Precursors to Dictatorship
In a “good society,” where mutual respect reigns, dictatorship has no chance of taking hold. That is because would-be dictators thrive on fomenting fear, dehumanization, division, and hatred. In turbulent times such as we live in today, the wannabe fascist can make his autocratic attempt much more easily by creating crises than he can under conditions of domestic peace and tranquility—like too many Americans today imagine we had in the past.
But we cannot learn to create a better future if we imagine a perfect past devoid of the strife, inhumanity, and predatory practices that characterized various periods in our history. That kind of denial is a threat to a free and open society. The oppression inherent in book banning, attempts to suppress free speech in universities, erase scientific findings that contradict autocratic ideology, and defund government projects that are intended to support the people who the would-be dictator wants to make fearful and angry, are means to achieve the goal of creating tyranny.
The only reason to ban books is to suppress ideas that might interfere with the attempt to dominate others on the road to dictatorship. The only reason to deport migrant people of color (and offer wealthy Europeans golden trinkets for immigrating with their wealth) is to execute the ideology of white supremacy in seeking to create an imaginary white nation.
Domination and elimination of the hated and imagined subhuman other is far more important to the would-be white supremacist autocrat than building a strong or, heaven forbid, an ecological economy for the wellbeing of all the people. He energizes subliminal feelings of white supremacy by currying anxiety, fear (“They are taking our jobs.”), and hatred. This ultimately leads to collective as well as individual violence. One of the first steps is denial of due process.
Due Process and Resistance to the Autocratic Attempt
Due process is not just a political or legislated procedure. It is a fundamental feature of any good society. It is a reflection of fundamental rights of both individuals and the society in which they live. To lose due process is more than a legal defeat; it is the defeat of civil society itself.
That is because due process—the process by which any government process that claims the right to restrict individual freedom must be demonstrated in court—is the institutional form of respect for all humans that is the first line of defense against dehumanization, which , if allowed to fester, ultimately leads to tyranny.
It would seem that dehumanization is always waiting in the wings, ready to infect just about any protest group, whatever the injustice they may object to, real or imagined. And then, if a counter protest forms, the field is wide open to all the forms of dehumanization the human mind can produce. Even the most rational and humanistic critics fall into the lopsided pit of allowing differential human rights to be allotted to conflicting groups.
When former Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010, as well as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006,, Larry Summers, now a professor at Harvard, and Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard history professor, exchanged views on the MSNBC Weekend Primetime show last Sunday night, both prejudice and civility were demonstrated.
While Summers displayed a distinct preference for more ‘discipline’ and offense at the pro-Palestinian language of stopping the slaughter of Gaza civilians, he strongly defended the university’s right to protect free speech against the Trumpist demand that it subordinate itself to the MAGA mentality in just about every aspect of university life. His counterparty, Professor Maya Jasanoff, clearly objected to the more heavy handed response to the protestors against the Israeli massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, whether you want to call it genocide or not.
Antisemitism has been a feature, no, a bug in American culture for a long time. Anti-Arab sentiment has a more recent history of intense hatred, especially since the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent twenty years of ‘wars of choice’ in the Middle East. Now, Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza with the much slower expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, the American sensitivity to antisemitism has been heightened.
Because the U.S. has supplied armaments to Israel regardless of how indiscriminately they are used against Palestinian civilians, including large percentages of children, humanitarian frustration and anger have grown. Those who object to blatant war crimes are labeled anti-Semitic, conflating objections to dehumanization and brutality with ethnic prejudice. Little room is left for reasonable discussion of actual right and wrong behavior under such conditions. But Summers and Jasanoff tried.
These conditions are exactly what makes the county ripe for the suspension of due process in more ways than the legal ones. Those who are victims of dehumanization are perceived as undeserving of the respect owed humans. This is clearly evident in foreign policy as well as in domestic politics. Such situations as confront us today are ripe for the tyranny of those who would exploit human fear and foment hatred to override human rights. Their purpose is clear: attempt a fascistic takeover to destroy the last vestiges of democracy and impose a dictatorship—the epitome of Trumpery.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 