Thomas Zimmer

https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history

Historian - Democracy and Its Discontents - Podcast: Is This Democracy https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/is-this-democracy - Newsletter: Democracy Americana https://democracyamericana.com

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Last Notes

2026-04-12 13:23:52 UTC

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This regime is not systematically implementing a masterplan. We are dealing with chaotic destruction wrought by an increasingly delusional wannabe-dictator who leads a comically incompetent government and a movement drowning in its own conspiratorial hyperreality.

2026-04-12 13:22:36 UTC

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I have zero doubt that Donald Trump would love to cancel the elections or nullify a result he doesn’t like and rule as a dictator.
But I strongly disagree with the suggestion that Trump and his regime are currently executing a coherent scheme to get us to that end result.

2026-04-12 13:21:33 UTC

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The greatest danger now is not that they will systematically execute some complex secret masterplan, but that delusion, ideology, and ineptitude are conspiring to make escalation almost inevitable. Chaos, zealotry, and a violent obsession with projecting dominance breed destruction.

2026-04-12 13:20:05 UTC

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There really is no need to come up with some long-term scheme to explain why Trump and Hegseth love committing war crimes. The American government is in the hands of delusional, abusive bigots and zealots. They believe this sort of violence projects dominance and power.

2026-04-12 13:18:47 UTC

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But Trump and Hegseth are not committing war crimes and threatening genocide because they decided it was the best way to distract from their *real* agenda. They are doing it because this is how they understand power, how they want to exert power, how they feel powerful.

2026-04-12 13:17:34 UTC

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In reaction to the President’s genocidal threats, some prominent politicians and political commentators insisted it was either all a cunning distraction or perhaps, as Timothy Snyder suggested, all part of a devious long-term scheme to erect dictatorship.

2026-04-12 13:16:36 UTC

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If we suspect coherence and foresight as the main drivers, we fail to understand the inner thinking of this regime. If we insist there must be strategic deliberation underneath the escalating chaos, we risk sanitizing what this government is doing and what fuels the man who leads it.

2026-04-12 13:15:25 UTC

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The notion of a masterplan or secret scheme becomes problematic when it is used to end or even pre-empt that investigation - “They are following the authoritarian playbook! Emulating Orbán! It’s all Project 2025! What else is there to discuss?” – rather than start that reflection.

2026-04-12 13:14:35 UTC

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What is the best way to make sense of what this President and this government are doing? What is the best framework for understanding what drives and motivates them, what causes them to act the way they are acting? The inner thinking of the regime deserves serious investigation.

2026-04-12 13:13:38 UTC

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Although borne out of an understandable impulse to emphasize the authoritarian threat, the notion that Trump is executing a coherent masterplan nevertheless constitutes a form of sanewashing.
The man who is president is acutely dangerous. But he does not have a plan.

2026-04-12 13:11:26 UTC

Sunday reading - I wrote about the coherence fallacy:
The MAGA regime will continue to escalate because they are ideologically, temperamentally, and psycho-politically incapable of anything else.
But there is no strategic genius at work here.
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/70c12168-9b07-44a1-aadc-a4ced5a2d5aa

2026-04-11 18:10:11 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/116386197737824806
This regime is not systematically implementing a masterplan. We are dealing with chaotic destruction wrought by an increasingly delusional wannabe-dictator who leads a comically incompetent government and a movement drowning in its own conspiratorial hyperreality.
#note1dlc…0km9

2026-04-11 13:00:41 UTC

Donald Trump Does Not Have a Plan
He has dictatorial desires. But not everything is a brilliant distraction or part of a cunning masterplan. Let’s not turn incompetent agents of malice into omnipotent supervillains.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
🧵
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/70c12168-9b07-44a1-aadc-a4ced5a2d5aa

2026-04-11 12:01:47 UTC

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I wrote about the coherence fallacy:
This regime is not systematically implementing a masterplan. We are dealing with chaotic destruction wrought by an increasingly delusional wannabe-dictator who leads a comically incompetent government and a movement drowning in its own conspiratorial hyperreality

2026-04-11 11:59:46 UTC

Donald Trump Does Not Have a Plan
He has dictatorial desires. But not everything is a brilliant distraction or part of a cunning masterplan. Let’s not turn incompetent agents of malice into omnipotent supervillains.
My new piece:
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/70c12168-9b07-44a1-aadc-a4ced5a2d5aa

2026-04-04 13:11:57 UTC

No Right Is Ever Safe – but Progress Is Possible
The outrageous assault on birthright citizenship should prompt us to reflect on the fragility of democratic progress - and our own responsibility to defend it.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/0999474f-9069-4edc-8afa-14ba857741fa

2026-03-28 13:02:10 UTC

Forget all the “Protests don’t matter” and “No Kings is just silly” nonsense.
Protests matter. Societal resistance has been hardening. It’s a massive problem for the MAGA regime.
And “No Kings” is crucial as part of an effort to dispel the idea that “real America” stands behind Trump.
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/a40ac673-b42b-4108-9756-feeae62ca5e8

2026-03-27 17:38:30 UTC

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What’s come under pressure is white Christian patriarchal dominance – what the Right likes to call the “natural order.” In a way, we have never been closer to finally realizing that promise of egalitarian democracy. And that is precisely why the Right is freaking out.

2026-03-27 17:37:13 UTC

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And they are reacting to something real: Our “Western” societies have indeed become more pluralistic, less white, less overwhelmingly Christian.
In that sense, it was not some perfectly stable liberal democracy that suddenly fell into crisis (because such an order never existed).

2026-03-27 17:36:06 UTC

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And here comes the glass-half-full perspective: The reason why the Right has been radicalizing so much is that they feel their backs against the wall. The anti-democratic radicalization of the Right has not been fueled by a sense of strength, but by a pervasive sense of weakness.

2026-03-27 17:35:04 UTC

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A truly egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy in which an individual’s status was not determined to a significant degree by race, gender, religion, or wealth?
I don’t think that’s ever been achieved anywhere.

2026-03-27 17:33:54 UTC

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The stakes in this moment are so high because of the world-historic significance of the current fight over democracy: Is it possible to establish a stable liberal democracy under conditions of gender-egalitarian, multiracial, multi-religious pluralism?

2026-03-27 17:31:42 UTC

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Finally, a reader recalled that I used to combine explorations of why/how everything was so messed up with a reminder that the situation is not hopeless, that there is, in fact, a glass-half-full interpretation of our moment in world history. That strikes me as important.

2026-03-27 17:29:46 UTC

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Even if you believe, quite plausibly, that the focus now needs to be on the question of how we get out of here, any project of renewal and transformation better be based on a proper understanding of what it is that ails the nation, of what we are actually living through right now.

2026-03-27 17:27:53 UTC

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Another recurring theme: A general sense that explorations of how we got here are less valuable now – that the focus should firmly be on the question of how we get out of here, and what comes next. I get it. But I am also alarmed by this general “We don’t need more historical takes” sense.

2026-03-27 17:26:23 UTC

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Don’t allow yourself to be bombarded with “Breaking News!” alerts constantly, don’t scroll news sites all day, reading hundreds of headlines… It only simulates staying informed. But it actually has the opposite effect: We are drowning. Look instead for clarity, perspective.

2026-03-27 17:25:07 UTC

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There is no magic solution here, and who am I to give out advice. But I do want to tell you: I am a big believer in airplane rules. In case of emergency, you pull that oxygen mask over your own face first – because no one is helped by you passing out trying to take care of others. Find refuge.

2026-03-27 17:24:14 UTC

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As much as the desire to escape, to flee, is relatable, and as much as the temptation to resort to cynicism is understandable: Democracy relies on some form of active participation. A populace that has largely checked out only helps the authoritarians.

2026-03-27 17:23:02 UTC

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There is, as an aggravating factor, the media and information landscape through which we have to experience it all. The media landscape has fractured. And as a result, the way we stay informed has fractured too.

2026-03-27 17:21:56 UTC

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Over a decade into the Trump experience, how could there not be a sense of fatigue and exhaustion? American politics has been a shitshow for so long that it is hard to remember it was ever different - a draining combination of bizarre and threatening, of deranged and terrifying.

2026-03-27 17:19:01 UTC

This week, I asked my readers for feedback and what they are looking for from political writers.
Their responses tell of a pervasive sense of exasperation with politics, the search for ways out of this mess, and the longing for optimism amidst all the dark chaos.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
🧵
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/81aeedda-914b-4278-9577-7c2850965471

2026-03-10 13:25:35 UTC

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No tiered citizenship in America: That is what the 14th Amendment declares.
But a polity that excludes anyone who doesn’t fit certain ethno-religious criteria or relegates them to lesser status is exactly the vision that animates the Trumpist Right.

2026-03-10 13:24:33 UTC

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This is also the context for the regime’s attack on birthright citizenship. It is not merely a policy dispute or a disagreement over constitutional interpretation. It is a battleground for what this nation should be, what its identity, its defining aspiration should be going forward.

2026-03-10 13:22:26 UTC

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It is the defining project of today’s Right: To vanquish the very idea that America should aspire to be a nation defined by equal citizenship in a pluralistic, multiracial society - and to fight instead for white Christian male supremacy at home and in the world.

2026-03-10 13:20:59 UTC

“Pluralism is a lie”
That really is the consensus on the Right: It’s all a lie, no one actually wants it, it’s all just a conspiracy orchestrated by globalist elites, it destroys the nation.
It’s the one thing that unites all the factions on the MAGA right: A rabid disdain of pluralism.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/205/083/399/459/917/original/390cfc0a2bf65cae.jpeg

2026-03-04 14:27:47 UTC

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We are experiencing a heightened version of that foundational paranoid siege mentality now. It will only get worse as the leaders on the Right start thinking about what will happen to them once their project fails and they are removed from power. They fear accountability.

2026-03-04 14:27:27 UTC

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MAGA is also ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of moderating. It is a hysterical movement that exists in a constant state of imagined emergency. There is no room for compromise or restraint. Every crisis, every defeat only heightens their sense of being under siege.

2026-03-04 14:25:09 UTC

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If only the rest of us could relax and watch as the Right descends further into madness.
But MAGA controls the levers of state power. This is where the gravest danger lies: Delusion, ideology, and ineptitude are conspiring to make escalation almost inevitable.

2026-03-04 14:19:35 UTC

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Trumpism presents an extreme example of the pitfalls of personalism: Personalist rule with a lazy, delusional leader at the top, a bunch of sycophants and zealots around him, and a base drifting ever deeper into fantasy land – that’s not a recipe for efficient authoritarian consolidation.

2026-03-04 14:17:45 UTC

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As a result, this regime has so far been incapable of adapting to the changing political and public environment. Instead of acting strategically, they keep overreaching, clinging to the fantasy that “real America” stands behind them and is about to rise up in support of the MAGA vision.

2026-03-04 14:16:27 UTC

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Because they are perceiving the world almost exclusively through the prism of the far-right media landscape, they have their delusions constantly reflected back at them and thereby confirmed, especially by an extremist online scene that eternally lusts for violence.

2026-03-04 14:15:16 UTC

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Even if some people in this administration must be aware that Trump is constantly making stuff up, most of them are convinced what they are doing is popular. The degree to which the Trumpist leaders have bought into their own propaganda is astonishing.

2026-03-04 14:14:25 UTC

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What is striking is how no one around him is acting as a corrective to even the most outlandish nonsense Trump propagates. And that has a lot to do with the unreality bubble in which basically everyone of consequence in this regime and in MAGA land more broadly exists.

2026-03-04 14:11:15 UTC

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Trump has been hemorrhaging public support. A smarter, more prudent regime would have changed tactics long ago. But the Trumpists keep doubling down. What may look like mere stubbornness is actually the result of significant structural weaknesses and ideological blind spots.

2026-03-04 14:09:27 UTC

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We must grapple with MAGA’s unreality as both a major impediment to the Right’s authoritarian project - as well as an acute threat for the republic, the international order, and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, literally everyone else on the planet.

2026-03-04 14:07:57 UTC

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The U.S. government is in the hands of a disturbed authoritarian who is surrounded by people who either share his delusions, are too sycophantic to confront him, or believe the president’s delusions serve just fine as a vehicle for their own zealotry and ideological extremism.

2026-03-04 14:05:15 UTC

MAGA Unreality vs the World
The U.S. government is in the hands of people who are fully detached from reality. That is a major weakness for the regime – but also a source of further radicalization.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
🧵
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/55dc578f-c914-4239-8dc9-e2bbef1fe5c6

2026-02-16 15:05:01 UTC

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I quote James Baldwin in this piece:
“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
I believe this is profoundly true. It should be the paradigm that guides our political imagination and choices.

2026-02-16 15:03:48 UTC

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The Right’s vision of white Christian patriarchal domination is indeed deeply rooted in U.S. history. To counter it, we should take heart from that other American tradition, that boldly democratic promise of egalitarian pluralism.

2026-02-16 15:02:36 UTC

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The reluctance by those on the liberal-left to engage the Right on this terrain, the tendency to abdicate and surrender the field of patriotism to the Right, has allowed a bunch of ethno-nationalist extremists to present themselves as the guardians of the national mythos.

2026-02-16 15:01:32 UTC

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Too long have rightwingers been allowed to drape their grievances and bigotries in the nation’s collective symbols, to call on the patriotic mythology of the nation in order to pretend that their desire to dominate is somehow an expression of the timeless essence of the nation.

2026-02-16 15:00:18 UTC

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I believe such dark mirror exceptionalism is deeply mistaken. We must distinguish between acknowledging traditions of racial violence and state authoritarianism on the one hand – and reducing the nation’s history to those traditions on the other.

2026-02-16 14:58:57 UTC

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Whereas the traditional exceptionalist tale presented America as intrinsically good, noble, and democratic, this dark mirror narrative views the nation as inherently incapable of anything but hierarchical violence: There never was democracy in America – and there never will be.

2026-02-16 14:57:52 UTC

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If we finally get rid of the willfully naïve exceptionalism that glorifies America, let us not replace it with its dark mirror equivalent that only serves to confirm MAGA’s tale – but with an aspirational creed, fueled by an acknowledgment of injustice, as our common understanding.

2026-02-16 14:55:47 UTC

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MAGA claims that “real America” was only ever intended to be and only ever existed as a white Christian ethno-state. Let us not help them perpetuate this idea that the injustices of the past and present represent the sole true essence of the nation by renouncing America’s aspirational tradition.

2026-02-16 14:54:09 UTC

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That aspirational tradition isn’t any less authentically American than the idea of a white Christian “homeland” defined by hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth. There simply has never been a consensual answer to the question of “who we are.”

2026-02-16 14:52:54 UTC

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But to insist that America – its history, identity, and political tradition – is solely defined by these continuities of racist authoritarianism and white patriarchal domination is equally ahistorical. From the start, the American experiment was also shaped by an egalitarian promise.

2026-02-16 14:51:37 UTC

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For too long, a willfully ignorant, self-exculpatory exceptionalism that mythologizes U.S. history into an easily digestible, triumphant tale has hampered the struggle against authoritarianism by engendering a dangerously unimaginative “It cannot happen here” complacency.

2026-02-16 14:50:16 UTC

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What the MAGA government is doing does not constitute some accidental departure from an otherwise heroic democratic tradition. America has a long history of racial violence perpetrated and condoned by the state, of state authoritarianism in service of a white supremacist vision.

2026-02-16 14:47:39 UTC

Let’s Make MAGA un-American, finally.
I wrote about the conflict over national identity, the need to reclaim patriotism from the Right, and the struggle between two traditions that are both authentically American: White male supremacy vs. the egalitarian promise of democratic pluralism.
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/27faead7-855d-4228-a4ea-5cc01a2221eb

2026-02-09 14:16:42 UTC

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Here is the spirit of the “neighborism”: Solidarity with those targeted by the regime is imperative. For we bear responsibility. We are not just all at risk. We are all implicated.
Outside a city council meeting in Surprise, Arizona, a woman held up a sign: “Be a neighbor, not a Nazi.”

2026-02-09 14:15:01 UTC

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That is why the Trumpists have been raging against liberal white women like Renee Good (who not only betrayed her duty to submit to male authority, but also her obligation as a *white* women to sustain the ethno-state); why thex have been deriding Alex Pretti as a “race traitor.”

2026-02-09 14:13:41 UTC

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MFor MAGA, this form of cross-racial solidarity and anti-authoritarian “neighborism” is acutely dangerous. Trumpism as a political project stipulates that whiteness would override other forms of solidarity. If not, then what do they have to offer with their vastly destructive policies?

2026-02-09 14:12:23 UTC

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Even if millions of white Americans understood the authoritarian nature of the threat, there is a visceral quality to the realization forced by the images of the public executions in the streets of Minneapolis that is different: We are all at risk. And if we don’t act, we are all implicated.

2026-02-09 14:10:14 UTC

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In fact, authoritarianism is always distributed unequally – and therefore experienced very differently by various groups, depending on their status in society and their relationship towards the regime.

2026-02-09 14:07:34 UTC

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The reality of American life is that white people, certainly middle- and upper-class whites, are generally more protected and insulated from state violence than other groups. Generally speaking, that didn’t change when Trump returned to the White House.

2026-02-09 14:06:33 UTC

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This does in no way invalidate the acts of heroism and sacrifice we witness out on those streets. But if we want to properly understand what is happening here, and why these developments are so acutely threatening to the regime, we must examine why these events broke through.

2026-02-09 14:05:27 UTC

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The racial makeup of the protests, the fact that they are coded as white middle class, and the identity of the victims of state murder make it more difficult for white Americans to distance themselves from what is happening here.

2026-02-09 14:04:11 UTC

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In Minnesota, the MAGA regime must now reckon with the fact that a lot of white “heartlanders,” who Trumpist intellectuals love to idealize as “authentic Americans,” are not willing to let race and religion define the boundaries of their solidarity.

2026-02-09 14:03:16 UTC

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What we’re seeing are not “protests,” but what Adam Serwer has so aptly called “neighborism”: Acts of democratic solidarity that directly confront the political project that is fueling the violent occupation and defy the MAGA vision of terrorizing those who don’t “belong” into isolation.

2026-02-09 13:59:54 UTC

“Be a neighbor, not a Nazi.”
ICYMI yesterday: A reflection on the anatomy of the resistance and the regime’s response - on “neighborism,” cross-racial solidarity, and the responsibility we bear for what happens in our community.
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/d7e07dc3-dad1-41e3-992a-28b4aa4e0b47

2026-02-02 17:40:53 UTC

What the Trumpists are encountering in Minnesota is a community exhibiting exactly the kind of cohesion and solidarity across racial, cultural, and religious lines they claimed was impossible.
Nothing could be more terrifying to the blood-and-soil nationalists.
My new piece:
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/38dc5fd1-0e5a-4047-b8f0-0da0e2416c38

2026-02-02 14:22:03 UTC

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In that struggle, they envisioned Minneapolis as a breakthrough that would serve as a warning to rest of the nation. But as the resistance is holding, the paramilitary occupation of this city is turning into something else: A reminder of democratic freedom and solidarity.

2026-02-02 14:21:32 UTC

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But the Trumpists have not yet been able to turn America into a stable authoritarian society, to consolidate authoritarian rule across all spheres of life. That is the key question now: How successful is the regime at getting from where we are now to consolidated autocracy?

2026-02-02 14:21:06 UTC

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It should have been clear for a long time to anyone who cared to look that the levers of state power are currently in the hands of an authoritarian government, and that this government has been terrifyingly successful at turning the state into an authoritarian instrument.

2026-02-02 14:16:55 UTC

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But that is not how things have been working out. Instead, to stick with the military analogies, the regime’s army has not been able to break through those enemy defenses. They expected them to collapse quickly; instead, they are left probing the front lines, searching for a weak spot.

2026-02-02 14:14:03 UTC

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Apparently, Stephen Miller was envisioning something like Sherman’s March to the Sea in the Civil War: Send the paramilitary arm of the regime deep into “blue” enemy territory like Minneapolis, vanquish the resistance, leave nothing but rubble behind.

2026-02-02 14:13:12 UTC

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Forget all the nonsense about Trump “pivoting” to moderation. This regime is ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of that. They will continue to escalate, hoping to intimidate people and institutions into compliance and submission.
But the resistance still matters greatly.

2026-02-02 14:10:37 UTC

Turning Points and Authoritarian Escalations
Is America’s descent into autocracy accelerating or is the Trump regime struggling to break through the democratic defenses?
In Minneapolis, the tenets of the white nationalist worldview are being refuted.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
🧵
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/38dc5fd1-0e5a-4047-b8f0-0da0e2416c38

2026-01-31 14:55:54 UTC

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I am hoping to publish an English version of the piece soon via my own newsletter. You can subscribe for free.
Or, better yet: Consider becoming a paid member. Democracy Americana is solely funded by readers. I need your support to continue this work.
https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/about#js-publication_plans

2026-01-31 14:53:20 UTC

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What is happening in Minneapolis stands in contrast to the idea of Trumpism’s irresistible power.
It should be a reminder: Being lawless, immoral, and violent does not make the Trumpists omnipotent. Obscuring that distinction is an act of defeatism that only serves the regime.

2026-01-31 14:50:25 UTC

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Finally, the regime has no conception of exerting power beyond brutal force. That is why they’ll continue to escalate. It’s extremely dangerous. But this kind of violent spectacle is simply not an effective strategy of consolidating authoritarian rule against majority opinion in a country the size of Continental Europe.

2026-01-31 14:48:10 UTC

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Extremists like Stephen Miller simply cannot fathom that there is an authentic resistance fueled by a sincere rejection of the MAGA project. The idea that white people would act in solidarity with their non-white neighbors is beyond what the Trumpists can imagine.

2026-01-31 14:46:34 UTC

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The regime’s inability to change course reveals some key weaknesses. The Trumpists have bought into their own propaganda – they really believe they represent the “will of the people.” And they exist in a rightwing information bubble that constantly affirms such nonsense.

2026-01-31 14:45:17 UTC

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They could, theoretically, ramp up oppression dramatically in the face of popular discontent. But the Trumpists do not have the apparatus to do that on a national scale. And such a strategy also has inherent limits: The regime still needs millions to comply in order to keep the machine going.

2026-01-31 14:43:41 UTC

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America still has competitive elections. And more generally, in a complex modern society, the government – no matter the regime type – inevitably depends on millions of people following along to some degree. They depend on some measure of consent from institutions and individuals alike.

2026-01-31 14:42:17 UTC

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The idea that protests and public opinion are meaningless in the face of the Trumpist assault, that authoritarian regimes are impervious to public pressure, is still widespread. But it is wrong. And it perpetuates the regime's assertion of inevitability.

2026-01-31 14:40:38 UTC

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What the regime is doing in Minneapolis is extremely unpopular. While Trump and the extremists around him may think they can ignore public opinion, they are mistaken. Even the most staunchly authoritarian regime will ultimately be affected by its public standing.

2026-01-31 14:39:41 UTC

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ICE/CBP want to terrify people into submission and compliance so that they can operate with impunity, unimpeded, in semi-secrecy. It is not working. In every urban center these masked goons descend upon, the local community is rallying in solidarity.

2026-01-31 14:38:16 UTC

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And “protest,” in a narrow sense, isn’t even the right term for what we are seeing now. Crucially, in reaction to the regime sending an occupation force of masked goons, a new form of resistance emerged: Communities organizing to help their neighbors, confrontational but peaceful.

2026-01-31 14:36:52 UTC

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The “Where are the protests?” lament after Trump’s inauguration was always based on a (willful) misperception. Over the past year, protests have been far more numerous, more geographically widespread, and more sustained than what we saw in 2017, for instance.

2026-01-31 14:35:33 UTC

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Forget all the nonsense about Trump “pivoting” to moderation. The regime will continue to escalate.
But the thing is: In Minneapolis, people are holding the line. And the Trumpists have no effective strategy to consolidate authoritarian rule in the face of sustained resistance.

2026-01-31 14:30:32 UTC

The Trumpists will continue to escalate. But in Minneapolis, we can see the limits of MAGA’s assault.
Trump’s authoritarian desires are limitless. But his ability to impose them on America is not.
Some thoughts from my new piece for Zeit Online (gift link):
https://www.zeit.de/digital/2026-01/us-regierung-maga-widerstand-ice-donald-trump?freebie=ab9d76f6

2026-01-27 14:27:11 UTC

I’m really glad I got to call Bovino a fascist on German television (German mainstream audiences still gasp when you do that), in a feature that aired on Sunday and is also available for streaming online - right before he got his ass handed to him by the good people of Minnesota:
https://www.zdf.de/video/dokus/terra-x-history-102/donald-trump--amerikas-neue-revolution-100

2026-01-26 15:28:21 UTC

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In the midst of the violence, let’s allow ourselves to be inspired by the heroism that is on display here.
Another execution of an American citizen. A regime at war with the majority of the population.
But the people are resisting. A counter-mobilization against tyranny.

2026-01-26 15:20:54 UTC

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But there is reason for hope, optimism. Look at the cities that have been raided by ICE: Where the communities are engaging in mass resistance – normal people who must know they risk getting attacked and detained, who are willing to sacrifice their freedom and their bodies.

2026-01-26 15:19:13 UTC

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Alas, while they may not have an effective strategy to consolidate authoritarian rule, they will certainly cause tremendous harm. I do not say this lightly: From here on out, the struggle against Trumpist authoritarianism is only getting bloodier.

2026-01-26 15:15:07 UTC

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The Trumpist strategy, to the extent there is one, is centered around an assertion of absolute power. They want to convince people that resistance futile. A crucial part of the struggle against encroaching authoritarianism is to reject such notions. Don’t acquiesce. Make them earn it.

2026-01-26 15:13:03 UTC

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As a matter of practical reality, the idea that the minute Trump invokes the Insurrection Act all resistance is futile, Trump has won, Game Over is nonsense. That’s just regime propaganda. Let us not perpetuate it. Make them earn every inch of creeping authoritarianism.

2026-01-26 15:11:28 UTC

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But the question we must ask is: What is the path from there to a consolidated autocracy? What are the logistics and the mechanisms that would get the Trumpists from deploying troops in a mid-sized city to the regime eliminating all political, legal, and societal resistance?