America: drifting toward dictatorship
By Pete North - January 18, 2021
More is coming to light on the disturbances at Capitol Hill in early January. The extent of Donald Trump’s complicity is still a matter of his debate – though there are allegations that senior members of his campaign were orchestrators. I make no comment on that – but the reaction is out of proportion to what actually occurred. What made it such an iconic and shocking moment was the culprits, the location and the symbols in play.
One can rightly criticise Trump for his role in fomenting all this, but I’m inclined to say the protesters alone are solely responsible for what they did. In any case, what happened should never have been allowed to happen and it beggars believe that it could even happen without immediate heavy handed police response. Were I American I’d be demanding answers about that. It was, however, a disaster in a more important sense. It’s a golden ticket the left can and will use to their every advantage.
What follows from this is a campaign of crybullying and gaslighting the likes we have never seen before, all in the name of safeguarding American democracy. Biden may be a doddery puppet but the people pulling his strings, unlike Trump, know exactly what they’re doing. We’re going to see a steady programme of de-platforming and an extension of “extremism” to mean even mildly conservative views – along with attempts to legislate for woke codes of speech followed by moves to criminalise organised opposition.
Ultimately Trump was just playing at it – a fantasist rabble rouser who didn’t know what to do with power when he had it, thus his administration accomplished little. The last four years was a sideshow – lacking the conviction and competence to wield power to any great effect. The real zealots, “Democrats”, make me fear for US democracy. There is no telling, however, just how much damage a Biden regime will do.
If there ever was a coup taking place, it started from the left the moment Trump took office by talking up the threat he posed as a “fascist”. There has never been anything coherent enough about the man to describe him as such. Apart from a misplaced protectionist agenda and a populist travel ban on Muslim countries (a political gimmick) there is nothing to peg him as conservative or even particularly right wing. He was just vehicle for those seeking to troll American politics.
No doubt this episode has done some considerable damage to America’s international reputation, but nothing he did is anything that cannot be undone at the stroke of a pen. But that hasn’t stopped a four year long campaign of histrionics from the left, culminating in orchestrated riots actively encouraged and excused by the Democrats. For the last four years they’ve been building their pretext and now they’ll play a cynical game as though America were pulled back from the brink of a fascist dictatorship and take steps to ensure an organic movement never takes office again.
For this Biden is their ideal front man – a near senile figurehead who won’t realise what is being done in his name, who won’t interfere, who they can roll out to make emollient noises to please the Hollywood luvvies and the media, while the Democrat party gets stuck in. If the right then attempts the equivalent agitation over the next term, the White House won’t think twice about deploying the national guard to put it down immediately. You can burn loot and murder if you’re waving a BLM banner, but not if you’re wearing a MAGA hat.
And you just know we won’t hear the last of it. They’re already going about guilt by association where anyone who voted Trump is an accessory to a white supremacist movement – largely as an excuse to silence any opposition and stigmatise them. Like Brexit we’ll see a demonisation of the working class among the elites. Deplorables all over again.
This will in no way go toward healing America and will only exacerbate the divisions, but with Twitter and Big Tech censorship working overtime, there will be no way for the right to coordinate a fight back. At least not for now. It will be pushed into the darker corners of the internet, which the Democrats will take as further proof that the real threat is right wing extremism – and an excuse to impose more draconian censorship.
As far as the media narrative goes, being that this will happen under a Biden banner, it’s all going to be wholesome censorship in the public interest, because Biden represents the “good guys”. So long as the discontent and economic injustice is out of sight and out of mind, who cares?
This then spells the end of the road for American democracy as we have known it. The voting rituals and pageantry will still take place – a pastiche of what came before, but the freedom of expression and vitality of debate will vanish under a cloak of fear. The left will then be free to impose its social programming agenda under the guise of racial justice, which will ultimately destroy America as a power. It can no longer call itself a beacon of freedom or a model of democracy to emulate. From here it’s just slow inexorable decline.