Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president for his second term, the twice impeached, convicted felon — along with billionaire Elon Musk — have unconstitutionally attempted to eliminate entire federal agencies, fire hundreds of thousands of government workers, frozen the funding for life saving programs here in the U.S. and abroad, and have begun the mass deportation of possibly millions of immigrants. The administration has also launched a witch hunt to fire and defund any individual or institution that’s ever worked to combat racial, gender and other discrimination — or promoted diversity, equity and inclusion programs, while attacking press freedom.
Donald Trump is also using his office for revenge and retribution by firing perceived political enemies inside the FBI and Department of Justice, while threatening to withhold federal funding to any institution that promotes policies he opposes. Trump and his appointees openly engage in corrupt practices, doing favors for Trump’s friends and recently blackmailing New York City Mayor Eric Adams by conditionally withdrawing corruption charges against him, but only if he assists ICE in mass deportations. More recently Trump ordered the politically motivated and unlawful detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia University student and permanent U.S. resident, with the intention of deporting him because of his lawful participation in Gaza war protests on campus last spring.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Fascism Works,” whose newest book is titled, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite The Past To Control The Future.” Here he examines the many facets of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy that clearly mirrors authoritarian regimes around the world.
JASON STANLEY: It’s a very fast progression towards autocracy, authoritarianism and fascism. You know, you shouldn’t bicker over the labels, but the United States is over as a democracy.
And there’s a slim chance that we could have the rule of law at some point in the future. But right now it’s just the president, Musk and their cronies taking a hatchet to the United States, to its great institutions, the federal government, the universities, the economy. They’re going to aim for Social Security, I suspect, but I don’t know.
It’s a frightening, horrifying authoritarian attack of exactly the sort they said they were going to do. And the American people voted for it. So you’re in a situation where the American people voted to end democracy and the rule of law and hand power to billionaires for tax cuts. And that’s what they said they were going to do.
They said they were going to target, they were going to try to take us back to the past. Project 2025 spelled it out. Trump told us that he was going to target universities. Target speech in universities, target the media and America, the American people voted for it. And many of our large institutions, a lot of the media is normalizing it.
It’s very clear for anyone looking at anyone with any international experience, it’s just obvious what’s happening.
But, you know, you have folks like Brad Stevens of the New York Times cheering on what’s happening — the attacks on universities. So, you know, it’s difficult to see when the media is so complicit in the situation and normalizing what’s happening.
It’s difficult to see how to put the brakes on this.
SCOTT HARRIS: Professor Stanley, our listeners are aware that over this past weekend, Trump directed ICE agents to arrest and remove a Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, at Columbia University is a student there. Mahmoud was a leader in last spring’s student protest movement against Israel’s war in Gaza and was targeted for deportation before a judge intervened, blocking the move pending his lawyer’s challenge to the deportation order.
Just last week, the Trump administration cut off $400 million in funding to Columbia University, accusing the university of not doing enough to end anti-Semitism on campus, a charge that is disputed by many people at Columbia — that’s included professors as well as students. Many Jewish students were, of course, involved in those Gaza protests. Trump recently posted on social media his intention to deport and arrest any student that engages in what he described as “illegal protest.”
In your article past fall, you talk about why fascists hate universities. Is this what we’re seeing unfold with Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest? And further, is this a test case to see how far Trump can go to suppress free speech on campus? And then, of course, he can expand that to all of us across the U.S.
JASON STANLEY: Yes, to all of your questions. Let’s note Khalil is still in a Louisiana prison and his wife, who’s an American citizen, is eight months pregnant. So he’s still under arrest. His he’s not being deported yet and he has a green card. So it’s completely illegal because he has free speech rights. We’re also, it should be noted, hearing blanket silence. There was hysteria about free speech on campus in 2015, 2016 from various organizations like Heterodox Academy or people like Steven Pinker. Total radio silence about the most significant attack on free speech in universities in history, including during the McCarthy era.
So it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It’s complete cynicism. It is exactly what we’ve seen in countries like Russia. Crackdown on the universities. Students are always the biggest protesters.
So this administration is aware of that. Note that Trump, when he said illegal protests, they’re going to punish any university who allows illegal protests. He didn’t say about what. Any protests. Of course, they were going to move past immigrants. They moved to federal workers and no one cares. And so they’re going to keep on going. Now they’re going to continue going after student protesters. They’re going to go after faculty. They’re going to go after media and they’re going to continue to watch whether people care.
And unfortunately, what I’m seeing is a lot of Americans not caring. And so they’re just going to go category by category, targeting anyone they can target for their own personal profit until there’s a much larger backlash than there’s evidence of there ever being. And even then, it might be too late.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Jason Stanley (26:04) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page. For weekly updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook now underway, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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