by AIJAZ AHMAD
Senator Elizabeth Warren. She was barred from saying anything more on the Senate floor about Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions after she quoted from an old letter from Martin Luther King Jr’s wife about Sessions. PHOTO/J. Scott Applewhite/AP
President Donald Trump came to occupy the White House about two weeks ago. He has so far ruled by presidential decrees and a punctual predawn blitz on Twitter that is meant to insult and intimidate. It is already clear, though, that the core of his incoming administration is so far to the Right—an authoritarian, militarist, irrationalist, distinctly pathological Right —that a question may be plausibly posed: are we witnessing the emergence of a pre-fascist state in the most powerful country in the world—the very pulsating heart of empire? This is no longer a spurious question. Scholars of great acumen and sobriety, such as Richard Falk and Noam Chomsky, have raised this question quite explicitly.
We shall return to the question. It is best to start with what we know so far, concretely, about the emerging power centres and policy orientations in the new administration.
Pack of hounds
Almost the most remarkable thing about key members of his Cabinet, especially the highly prominent generals, is that it is impossible to say which of them is the most dangerous. Since almost the beginning of the presidential campaign, Trump has conducted himself in such a manner, with full media collusion, of course, that attention has been fixed entirely on him, his outrageous behaviour and utterances, his shifting policy positions, his chameleon-like political personae—anti-establishment friend of the poor and the working class; woman-hating racist and bigoted billionaire—that he was able to conceal his true cohorts and covert agenda almost entirely. He was clearly an untrustworthy demagogue. Beyond that, it was unclear what he would do when in power. The ones who were often paraded in the media as the likely key members of his Cabinet—Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, John Bolton et al—were all swiftly set aside as, post-election, he proceeded to pack his real Cabinet with billionaires and ideologically driven military generals. Even the neo-Nazi Steve Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs luminary who had emerged as the CEO of the Trump campaign, was not much in the limelight as the harbinger of a dangerous future until Trump appointed him as his Chief Strategist at the White House and then elevated him, egregiously, to the core committee of the National Security Council (NSC). Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law with a real estate empire of his own and with no qualification for the position, has also emerged as the President’s closest adviser and the other chief strategist in his administration with an office and a staff inside the White House. Shades of dynastic ambitions but also perhaps much worse!
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