Arlington, VA— For over five months on consecutive weekends and Tuesdays, the Tesla Takedown boycott line has been taking on Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, diminishing his wealth in terms of Tesla stock value, exposing his illegal Doge takedown of federal government agencies, and the firing of tens of thousands of federal civil servants.
The Tesla Takedown of Musk is credited with creating friction between Trump and Musk and they have been successful beyond expectations.
Meanwhile, in March and April, Trump gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) permission to begin illegal kidnappings of green card holders. Then a wave of so-called ICE agents—no one could actually tell who they were or if they were legitimate because they covered their faces and car license plates—began forcefully taking people out of their communities and work spaces. During these raids, ICE also swept up American citizens—children born on U.S. soil—with these kidnappings. Like Lara C., these victims were brown-skinned or Muslim but not White, and they were being taken by the thousands to places unknown, and families, loved ones, and attorneys often could not determine where they were.
The idea to challenge the regime’s rapid goose step toward authoritarianism came to Lara C., a participant of Tesla Takedowns, as she watched the trickle of ICE agents snatching brown-skinned people grow to a rush and then explode into a torrent. In fear, she began carrying copies of her birth certificate proving where she was born and that she was a U.S. citizen. It, too, could certainly happen to her she thought, simply because she was brown.
Habeas Corpus—‘you should have the body’
A bedrock of liberty is the right to know what charges are being made against an individual and to be able to appear in a public court to have those charges read and explained. We understand it in modern terms as due process. The Founding Fathers specifically wrote this into the Constitution right up at the top in Article I, Section 9. One might say it was a very important aspect of liberty because King George III had an unfair inclination to disappear people who disagreed with him into indefinite detention in the Tower of London without any charges, explanation, or recourse.
Article I, Section 9 reads, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
What ICE has been doing and continues to do is deny the liberty of Habeas Corpus to thousands, Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding. It remains one of the most basic rights provided in the Constitution. On the issue of birthright citizenship, on which the Supreme Court recently ruled in Trump’s favor on the issue of whether or not District Courts could grant class standing of suits against the government for any citizens born in the U.S. to immigrants, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson published a blistering dissent against the conservative Court majority to grant Trump’s request. “I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more,” she wrote.
Lara thought about how wrong it was that a handful of people could authorize kidnappings of so many, without due process, at the whims of the President, and just like King George III did, deny them rights to appearance before a judge to hear the charges against them, be afforded a trial, and have an opportunity to challenge those charges before legal proceedings. She knew that these bedrock principles and rights were wrongfully being swept away.
Lara wondered what she could do to educate others about the injustice of growing ICE actions against innocent people. She thought of making street signs to educate others and those passing by the Tesla Takedowns about the elements of fascism. The societal conditions that she saw materializing around her certainly weren’t anything normal.
She quoted Nelson Mandela as the impetus for helping her come up with her idea to fight back against fascism: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”
ICE—The Dream Team Fit For A Dictator
ICE went into hyperdrive and blew through its budget within months of its new authorization to round up green card holders. Congress recently allocated more than a 265% increase in its spending bill—more money for new detainment camps and for ICE agents—more than the budgets for the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, the DEA combined; and more than the U.S. Marine Corps.
With the passage of the Big Ugly Bill aka HR1, it was time for Lara to say out loud what fascism is so there could be no confusion or ambiguity about what was happening in the U.S. She and others from We of Action (WofA) and Third Act created the messaging on signs with 17 characteristics of a fascist regime. They attached H wire stakes to each sign and set them about 20 feet apart at the Tesla Takedown action. Now the drivers passing Tesla would have something to think about:
- Combining Church and State
- Human Rights Violations
- Eliminating Due Process
- Attacking Free Press
- Disinformation, Lies, and Propaganda
- Militarized Police
- Corporate Profits over Workers
- Assault on Academia and Arts
- Attacking Political Opposition
- Unqualified Political Appointments
- Blaming Immigrants for Problems
- Using Fear and Violence
- Legalized Gender Discrimination
- Racism
- Persecution of Minorities
- Centralized Power (Dictator)
- Anti-Science
The Trump culture embodies all of these indicators. There are multiple instances of how they have ticked the characteristics in every case.
Fascism Its Indicators and Characteristics
It’s difficult to actually define what fascism is and tell when a elected government becomes authoritarian and then has crossed over the line to meet the definition of fascism. Fascism is a hybrid of authoritarianism. Different social justice groups have published a varying number of character traits to define what fascism is.
Fascism Fighters lists 22 indicators of what Fascism is and assigns Trump as meeting all 22 of the characteristics on its website.
—Use of enemy as a scapegoat and distraction
—Anti-minority / chauvinistic
—Call for a national rebirth
—Extreme nationalism
—Use of violence
—Aggressive militarism
—Cult of personality
—Anti-intellectualism and cultural repression
—Advancement of propaganda through a controlled mass media
—Authoritarian tendencies and aspirations
—Imperialistic ambitions
—Mass mobilization
—Elimination of human rights to prioritize the state
—Religion and government are intertwined
—Promotion of corporate power / Suppression of labor power
—Obsession with law and order
—Youth indoctrination
—Cronyism and corruption
—Demand of unwavering loyalty
—Fraudulent elections
—Desire for economic self-sufficiency
—“Work makes you free”
The Political Science Blog characterizes Fascism with 10 major indicators:
- Opposition to Marxism
- Opposition to Political and Cultural Liberalism
- Glorification of the State
- Extreme Nationalism
- Imperialism
- Opposition to Parliamentary Democracy
- Totalitarian Ambition
- Millitary Values
- Acceptance of Racism
- Economic Policies that are conservative
- Mass Mobilisation
- Education as Character Building
In each of these definitions, within 5 months, Trump and his group of cabinet-appointed enforcers has quickly corralled the republic into a fascist regime.
Hope Is Not Lost—The People Are Mobilizing
All across the country people are mobilizing to fight this political scourge. There are many actions planned for the coming weeks and months. Today’s action outside the Arlington Tesla showroom is but one of many Tesla showroom protests.
The historian vlogger, Heather Cox Richardson said in her video series posted on July 3, Letters From An American, that the passage of the budget bill was a major setback but she also championed the diversity, resources, and capacity of people of the resistance. She urged people to get involved because “if we don’t step up, each day is going to get harder and harder.” Harriet Tubman said, “ The only way out is through.” These are not the times we chose but we must do what we must because we don’t have a choice.
One last point Richardson made was that a few days ago “we just got the support of a whole lot of people who didn’t realize they were part of the resistance.”
