How Donald Trump became a threat to the US and how to stop his plan
In the nine months since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the overall goals of his agenda have become clear enough.
On the one hand, to weaken the United States abroad in order to create a favorable environment for dictators. At the same time, to use the U.S. government and armed forces to establish a dictatorship at home.
Read morea about what Americans must do to protect their country and democracy in the column by Timothy Snyder, the founding chair of modern European history at the University of Toronto: A course of intimidation: how Donald Trump is attacking democracy in the US.
The author warns that Americans might choose not to notice, look away as their neighbors and coworkers are swept up in immigration raids and their cities become militarized, and then pretend that they had no other choice but to abandon democracy.
The military deployments are obviously illegal and designed to intimidate, stresses the University of Toronto scholar.
But no one is invading America, the historian notes.
"We can only invade ourselves," he adds.
In his view, all of this "moves us, mindlessly, towards fascism."
These urban deployments are the political equivalent of a lit fuse, Snyder warns.
According to him, by sending troops to city after city, the Trump administration is creating the statistical likelihood of an incident – a service member’s suicide, a friendly-fire incident, the shooting of a protester – that can be used to manufacture some greater crisis.
"Preventing this outcome requires seeing where passivity leads. If we do not communicate with our friends and family in the armed services about the risks, we are accomplices to their being used and abused in the service of authoritarianism," the columnist writes.
And only Americans themselves, Snyder insists, will determine whether authoritarianism takes hold in the United States.
"Many people, such as undocumented workers – or those who merely look like they fit that profile – have good reason to be fearful and lie low. But many of us, both citizens and especially elected officials at the state level, have an obligation to think and react creatively," Snyder emphasizes.
In his view, for starters, that means refusing to be co-opted into the "show" staged by US President Donald Trump, in which ordinary Americans have no role.
The author urges whether that happens depends on whether we choose to see the overall logic, call things what they are, talk to one another, and get on with the work of defending democracy, decency, and humane values.
"The question, of course, is whether civil courage can be channeled into effective democratic resistance. America’s federalist system offers grounds for hope," the historian believes.
According to him, democratic state governments must become a bulwark against authoritarianism.