On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of the paramilitary members who had been convicted of (or who had pled guilty to) seditious conspiracy for their part in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.
Maybe you voted for Trump because you were against abortion; or maybe because you were frustrated with the price of milk, eggs, and bread--and gas; or maybe because you disliked Democrats; or maybe because you felt deceived by news commentators; or maybe because you feared the “deep state;” or maybe because you believed Washington just needed a good house-cleaning; or maybe because you liked Trump’s style, his hutzpah, his irreverence, his willingness to “tell it like it is;” or maybe because you felt Trump embodied your grievances against all those not like you (gay, trans, immigrant, etc.) — and personified your anger at them, and your nostalgia for simpler times when they were invisible.
Whatever the reasons, you got lots more than you voted for. You got the Whole Trump, not just the sliver you voted for. You got his approval for the use of violence to gain political power. The law that applies to you and me does not apply to those members of, e.g., The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, whose sentences have now been wiped out by the President.
It was the fear of such a paramilitary group, The Black Shirts, that brought Mussolini to power in Italy, in October of 1922. For nearly two years they had been “attacking and destroying the organizations ... of communists, republicans, Catholics, [and] trade unionists” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blackshirt). The Squadre d’Azione (Action Squad) had been formed in 1919 to destroy Mussolini’s political enemies. On the 29th of October, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing reprisals from the Black Shirts, asked Mussolini to form a new government, and on the 30th, he marched into Rome as Il Duce, The Leader. Britannica goes on to observe that Mussolini assumed power due to “a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution, a transfer made possible by the surrender of public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation.”
Also on Inauguration Day, the new President pardoned all those convicted of attacking police officers in the attempted coup at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was ok for them to assault police officers on that day, but it would not be ok for you or me to attack the police officers in our own cities and towns. With those pardons, the new President legitimated the use of violence in pursuit of political power.
Violence for power. That’s been the playbook of all the kings, emperors and dictators since, well, since the Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar, or the Chinese, Qin Shi Huang, or the Viking, Ragnar Lodbrok, or . . . name your favorite despot. Political power by violence or the threat of violence. That’s the way the world was run for millennia.
That is, until the 17th century, and the advent of the then novel notion that governments exercise their powers by the consent of the governed — consent not given under threat of violence but freely given, by deliberation, debate, compromise and voting.
Now Trump has his paramilitaries and his mob, and he is signing Executive Orders as if they were decrees. He has declared a national emergency on the Mexican border, which permits him to deploy the US Army there, to do what soldiers are trained to do. The last thing we need in his hands is a national police force.
Here, Timothy Snyder’s compact handbook, On Tyranny, is instructive. On pp. 104 and 105 he writes: “On the claim that the [Reichstag] fire was the work of Germany’s enemies, the Nazi Party won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections on March 5 [1933]. The police and Nazi paramilitaries began to round up members of left-wing political parties and place them in improvised concentration camps. On March 23, the new parliament passed an ‘enabling act,’ which allowed Hitler to rule by decree. Germany then remained in a state of emergency for the next twelve years, until the end of the Second World War.”
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly is rhyming right now. Beware. Be informed. Be brave. Pray, and be kind.
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This column previously appeared in the January 23, 2025 Baptist News Global.
Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies at The University of Southern Mississippi and a long-time resident of Hattiesburg, MS. Reach him at rlconville@yahoo.com.
