I’ll admit that it can be challenging to know when to write about the Trump administration. It’s like having a noisy neighbour: for the sake of your sanity, oftentimes it’s simply best to ignore them. Other times, you simply have to name the behaviour for what it is.
That time is now.
When it became known the Trump administration had summoned the nation’s top generals and admirals from around the world to gather at a mysterious event in Quantico, Virginia, conspiracy theories swirled. Perhaps it was to formulate battle plans for World War Three. Maybe it was to announce a new foreign deployment or signal some global provocation.
But, as we have come to expect from the administration, the truth was stranger than fiction. What unfolded at Quantico was not the unveiling of plans for war abroad, but a chilling signal aimed inward, at America itself.
It wasn’t the usual spectacle of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric that set this gathering apart. Yes, there were the predictable broadsides against “woke” policies, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s glorification of the “warrior spirit,” and tired justifications for renaming the Department of Defense back to the “Department of War.” Trump even dusted off his greatest hits: Biden’s autopen, the Nobel Peace Prize and even Canada as the “51st state,”
All of that was predictable theatre.
What was new was this: America’s military leadership was told their next priority would not be overseas in some conflict-ridden corner of the globe, but home in the United States — specifically in those cities run by Democratic mayors. The likes of Washington, Chicago and Portland, which by Trump’s logic are breeding grounds for chaos and “career criminals” where police have lost control. Democratic idylls that, to any God-fearing MAGA follower, must be hellscapes. And that Trump suggested should serve as “training grounds” for troops to combat “the enemy within.”
Some of the greatest writers and theorists of the 20th century attempted to define fascism. For Walter Benjamin, it is the “introduction of esthetics into political life.” For (the sociologist) Michael Mann, a “movement of the lesser intelligentsia.” For Robert Paxton, the “most self-consciously visual of all political forms … a chauvinist demagogue haranguing an ecstatic crowd.”
And it is all those things. Hegseth’s pointed emphasis on male grooming, his disdain for “fat generals,” his obsession with male fitness standards — all reinforce these points.
But fascism isn’t just pageantry, to function it requires the hard machinery of power and intimidation: the military itself.
The U.S. armed forces, with its tradition of political neutrality, stands as one of the final institutions resistant to Trump’s project of total partisan capture. Last week, that firewall showed signs of cracking.
The message from Quantico was unmistakable: the defenders of democracy, both at home and abroad, are now to become enforcers of the MAGA agenda.
Actions speak louder than words and Trump and Hegseth’s words were meant to drive action. More boots on the ground in American cities. Soldiers patrolling not in a foreign nation but on domestic streets. To intimidate Americans into submission under Trump’s rule and, yes, to pick up trash when they have nothing better to do.
That is about as unmistakable a step toward fascist rule as one can imagine.
Unlike his first term, the safeguards on Trump’s ambitions are now exceedingly thin. But if the impassive looks on those generals and admirals were any indication, hope rests in the men and women who swore an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Trump himself put the stakes in stark relief when he said: “It’s a war from within. We have to handle it before it gets out of control.”
He’s dead right about one thing: there is a war from within. The question now is who’s waging it — and on whom?
