Experts Warn of Trump's Fast Decline & MAGA Panics to Pick Successor
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What expertise does Jason Stanley bring to the discussion?
Welcome to IHIP News. Today, I am joined by Jason Stanley. He is a professor of American Studies and Philosophy at the University of Toronto's Munk School. He is the author of several books, including Erasing History, How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. That seems relevant. And also How Fascism Works, which seems incredibly relevant considering I think we're living in the epicenter of it. Jason, how are you today?
Decent, and how are you?
Well, hanging in there, I think it's really important. I want to always bring on experts on my channel so that our listeners can be armed with facts and expertise as to what is happening. You probably saw over social media and in the news that ICE executed another American citizen and seemed to offer no help afterwards and loaded 10 bullets into him. From your perspective, area of expertise, are they priming the public for something here? Is this use of force intentional?
Oh, well, I mean, I'm not sure how you would describe intentional. It's fully expected, right? I mean, you can't invade an American city with armed goons, masked goons who have very little training and preparation. Not that there should be training and preparation for something like this, for this kind of ethnic cleansing that we're seeing. But it's fully expected. And of course, they knew this was going to happen. And it's part of a preparation for for gearing up, trying to incite resistance. And then they want to incite resistance to get a big backlash, to perhaps invoke the Insurrection Act, to perhaps close down the midterm elections, to just generally give a sense of anarchy and chaos in the streets, and then give them license to crack down.
It seems to me like this regime is governing and doing things that they think they're never going to be held accountable for in the future.
How is the current political climate compared to historical fascism?
And that terrifies me. What are your thoughts on that?
Absolutely right, and very accurate insight. They are behaving like Democrats will never be in power again. They are behaving like public opinion does not matter. So they are behaving like they already have their dictatorship on lockdown. That's the goal, is a dictatorship, a one-party state. Right now it'll be Trump, then there'll be some successor struggle. It'll be the next dictator. Stephen Miller is very, it's all seems very explicit. They want to say that Democrats, that anyone who calls them fascists, like you and I do accurately, is a domestic terrorist, is sort of in cahoots with motivating Americans to resistance. So they want a full one party dictatorship, whether it's gonna continue to be led by a dictator like Trump or not is something we're gonna have to see.
But they seem to believe they have that done. I don't believe they do. I think they have moved too quickly.
Yes. So I was speaking to your colleague, our mutual friend, Ruth Ben-Ghiat on this. And I feel like if you really wanted this to sink in, you would do it incrementally. You would incrementally get us to a place to where we didn't really feel it. This is so jarring, the whiplash of this. He's only been in We're one year in, Trump 2.0, and he's moving so rapidly. And I have a question for you. He clearly is in really poor health. I mean, you could see at Davos, the bruises are bad. I mean, he's kind of swollen like a bubble tick.
What role does ICE play in the current regime's strategy?
In this regime, when the strong man, like if he were to have a stroke and he was in the ICU, or if he were to drop dead, Jason, do you think there's conversations about who the heir apparent is? Or is that like never spoken about because he's immortal?
Yeah, great question. So what we have is we have a kind of electoral autocracy, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat said on your show. And the big problem with autocracy, with the kind of dictatorship that the United States is leaning into, is the successor problem. How do you appoint a successor? It's all like a mess and a disaster and reshuffling when there is a successor dispute. Right. And sometimes those successor disputes roll into things. Things might turn into a democracy. Other times it's just like someone even worse.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What expertise does Jason Stanley bring to the discussion?
0:04–2:27
2
How is the current political climate compared to historical fascism?
2:27–4:23
3
What role does ICE play in the current regime's strategy?
4:23–26:10
4
How does the regime prepare for potential leadership succession?
26:10–28:44
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from IHIP News
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