“American fascism would . . . be correspondingly democratic in the American fashion.”— Bertolt Brecht, JournalsAt the end of last year, Donald Trump deployed more than two thousand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis and St Paul, essentially occupying the Twin Cities and making his previous deployments of the National Guard to Washington, DC, and other Democrat-run cities look like a neighborhood patrol in comparison. Agents hunted down and arrested some three thousand migrants and murdered Reneé Good and Alex Pretti, two US citizens who had joined protests against the operation.The blitz in Minneapolis made it clear that Trump intended for ICE to function not just as an authoritarian police force with an outsize budget, but as his own political militia. This was evident not least in ICE’s blatant unprofessionalism, with agents often wearing casual clothing and receiving only minimal training, while purposefully and repeatedly undermining local governments and police departments. But it was also meant to be a spectacle: a public display of cruelty toward migrants that simultaneously demonstrated the limits of peaceful protest to his opponents. Even the podcaster Joe Rogan compared ICE to the Gestapo.Though Rogan’s analogy may have been flawed, it hints at the more fundamental issue of the nature of the Trump administration. During his first term, that question appeared to be settled. Despite his noxious rhetoric, Trump’s track record in office was more or less what could be expected from a Republican president, and with his loss in 2020, it seemed US politics would largely return to normal. That is, until January 6, 2021, when a mob whipped up by Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about a stolen election stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power. By then, it should have become clear that Trump was more than just another populist with authoritarian leanings. But was he, then, a…
