Authoritarianism and Aggression, #6
Notes at time of crisis, March 12-19, 2025
Image from the CBC with the caption: “Elon Musk gestures as he speaks on screen during a central election campaign event for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in Halle, Germany, on Jan. 25. (Karina Hessland/Reuters)”
This post is one of a series, in each of which I have created a compendium of Substack "notes" that I have written this last month that are on the substantial side. All the notes engage the historical moment in which we find ourselves, thus the general theme of authoritarianism and aggression.
The series is introduced in the emailed post called An Age of Authoritarianism and Aggression: Introducing a Series of Crisis Notes.
Usually, my notes are not free-standing but in reaction to a news item, a Substack post, and so on; you can link to the item to which I am responding by clicking on the sub-heading. I am refraining from adding commentary other than the sub-heading.
I am proceeding reverse chronologically. This post -- #6 in the series – starts at March 12 and ends with March 19.
March 19: Note commenting on Marisa Kabas’ report in the Handbasket publication, entitled “Trump to declare “illicit” fentanyl “Weapon of Mass Destruction," per draft EO: A copy of the draft was obtained and reviewed by The Handbasket”
The Handbasket has a bombshell report. Its reputation is more than solid so I am assuming this will prove to be true.
The Handbasket reports on a leaked draft Executive Order where Trump is designating fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Yes, you heard me right. Yes, this is Hitlerian Big Lie territory. It marches in the same territory as calling drug dealers an « invasion » to justify using war measures and designating cartels as « terrorists » to justify taking military action in other countries. But it is much much more dangerous for Canada.
It is almost certainly papering a pretext for war. Think pretext of the phony ‘dead Polish soldier’ bodies placed by Nazi Germany at a German installation to trigger invasion in 1939. Think the creation of a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003 by the Cheney-Rumsfeld- Wolfowitz gang feeding lies to Colin Powell and George Bush (whatever Bush knew). That Canada already agreed to designate drug cartels as terrorist orgs was an ominous sign — something that passed almost without notice and doubly so with no Parliament sitting. This Canadian concession has already laid the groundwork for US ´targeted strikes’ doctrine.
But more broadly what we have now is this Big Lie being structured: « Canada is providing safe harbour for terrorists who have WMD and Canada is unable or unwilling to do what is needed, so we are entitled in ´self-defence’ to use military force we deem necessary against Canada. » This combines the Afghanistan rationale of the US (safe harbour) after 9/11 with the WMD pretext of Iraq 2003.
March 18: Reply/comment to a comment in the discussion of Pledge for Canada / Engagement pour le Canada’s post entitled “An election now? Are we ready for disinformation and foreign interference?”
A discussant answered the question of how soon to have the federal election as follows:
All of this is true, but the sooner we have the election, the less opportunity for interference and disinformation there will be. Since we don’t seem to be prepared to fight it, best to move fast.
I replied:
This a very good point. A sad state of affairs if we are not ready but the question of whether the threat will be worse the longer we wait is a really good one. And maybe our agencies really do have things under control re Russia etc as the CSE claims. Maybe Trump and Musk have too many other fish to fry right now than to try to interfere in way they surely must know will not help any candidate known to be the one they are assisting.
But I am all the same inclined to believe it is a travesty - of even our highly flexible Westminster system of democracy - not to at least call the current Parliament back as promised by the time of prorogation or before it ends. Parliament needs to hear what the preparations are and — through the parliamentary proceedings - Canadians need to receive reasonable assurances that measures are in place to detect, combat and alert parties and Canadians about social media disinformation and foreign interference.
Being a former MP myself, I also feel for the MPs who have been completely sidelined by the former PM’s prorogation. To add to that by adding a dissolution on top of prorogation without Parliament sitting again seems to me not just something worthy of empathy for MPs but also a sign of disrespect for our own system’s (supposed) placing of Parliament at the centre of our democracy. That it is perfectly constitutional for a PM to pile a dissolution on top of a prorogation — and keep Parliament silent for close to 6 months — it is hardly edifying and I worry about the longer- term signal that this sends. That longer-term signal is that an executive (Cabinet with a powerful PM) can govern just fine, thank you very much, without the bother and hassle of a Parliament for as often as the government wishes. We already see how gutted a lot of provinces’ democracies are by how infrequently the legislature convenes; we don’t need this nationally as well. Add to that the fact MPs don’t even need to be in Ottawa to vote in many cases (I am. It up on the precise rules) and things look increasingly unhealthy for the future of an in- person Parliament.
The discussant replied:
And the more we see of the spectacular mess south of the border, as the executive branch takes over more and more power and overrides the legislature and (it looks increasingly likely) the courts, the more important it is to make sure that our legislature is not overridden in the same way.
I would be in favour of recalling the legislature for 2 days (or similar) for an update. Then dissolve for an election.
March 17: Note in response to
“Trump Defies Federal Judge's Order (Again) -- But This Time, Is It Different?” postMichael D. Sellers is correct to see this (already signaled) development — mass deportation to offshored brutal prison conditions with an on-camera show of state violence and humiliation that was clearly coordinated by the US and El Salvador + defiance of judicial order to stop the deportation and indeed to have the prisoners returned to the US — as not outside his intelligence/espionage lane. The tie-ins to intel are clear enough but that is not the main point — which is that this is a primordial tipping-point-for-American-democracy moment. Everyone needs to see this as being in their lane. This is not just one more obscenity, travesty, madness, stupidity of the Trump regime but a major pan-Administration chessboard move — complete with Marco Rubio throwing away all pretense and making it clear he is all in with the Trump/Vance authoritarian agenda when he retweets the El Salvador president’s f**k-the-rule-of-law tweet deriding the voices of protest in the US.
One linguistic matter going forward. IMHO, lawyerly and cautious language like « constitutional crisis” plays into Trump’s hands. This terminology is what the legacy media are going with right now. It is dangerous to do so. It normalizes by making it seem there is a legitimate interpretive question of whether or not the Trump regime has doubly breached the constitution by ignoring Congressional legislation and by deliberately defying a court order.
As Sellers highlights, this is instead something of another order of magnitude. In my view, it needs to be discussed as falling in fascist/despotic coup by stealth territory. Despotic due to the claims of pure executive power — not just a unified executive but a SUPREME executive — and fascistic with all dehumanizing, propagandizing and coercion that surrounds this use of state power.
The Sellers post is attentive to the moment in the way that Timothy Snyder also is. On Sunday, Snyder already had a major newsletter come out on how the Trump approach to Canada is echoing and potentially mirroring the Nazi Germany approach to Poland in 1939 — but Snyder immediately turns out another major post today on this deportation and defiance development because he sees correctly that what is happening right now is a major deepening point on the road to full-blown authoritarianism / tyranny structural adjustment in the US.
Nobody should let this moment get lost in the stream of crap of the last two months or drowned out in the overall noise and flurry.
Frankly — one last thought — it may only be Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett who stand between the progressing of a full-bore coup and the start of a struggle that the courts and the sane US stand a chance to win. If even one of them bails and sides with Alito and Thomas and — judging by the most recent case at SCOTUS - Gorsuch and Cavanaugh, to cement a 5-4 or even 6-3 Supreme Court majority that kowtows to authoritarian power, we will be in a whole different ball game in terms of what resistance will need to come from other actors.
March 15: Note commenting on article in the Guardian called, “The big question on Ukraine: is Trump ready to push Putin into peace?”
Lies or delusions from Trump?
This Guardian report reporting on the latest Russia-Ukraine-US triangulation leaves one shaking one’s head in disbelief that there can be anyone leading the US is so incapable of both telling and grasping the truth — alternating between the two (lies and delusions) in such a constant blur that we haven’t a clue which untruth mode he is in at any given moment.
And within each category there are different permutations. Is a lie just a congenital one (part of the lifetime Trump) or a more calculated geopolitical deception (if he is capable of categorizing some lies into this instrumental category)?
Is a delusion because he simply can’t digest facts or remember facts, wishing them away, or because the yes-people around him hide the whole truth or enough of it that he just constructs his own reality?
Either way, so desperately pathetic and such an embarrassment to have a leader like this of one’s country.
Here is one passage from the Guardian article:
« The decisive question will be whether or not Trump is ready to really push Moscow when the scale of Putin’s “nuances” becomes clear. Putin put his position to Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff in closed-door talks on Thursday in Moscow. In a time-honoured tactic, he news.sky.com/story/trum… underlined the power dynamic of the meeting by keeping Witkoff waiting for eight hours before receiving him for discussions. In a social media post yesterday, Trump insisted “there was no wait whatsoever”, accusing those who suggested otherwise of being “sick degenerates”«
And a second:
« Indeed, the only concession Trump publicly demanded from Putin last week was for the Russian president to spare the lives of “thousands of Ukrainian troops” supposedly surrounded by the Russian army – a battlefield situation first claimed by Putin, but which the Ukrainian army and independent military analysts said did not actually exist.
Putin graciously agreed to consider Trump’s proposal – as long as the possibly imaginary Ukrainian troops surrendered first.«
March 13: Note commenting on New York Times article called “Rights Groups Condemn Trump for Using ‘Palestinian’ as a Slur Against Schumer”
Nothing like the gasp-generating moments that reveal everything in one or two sentences.
Trump reveals himself to be racist to his core — using « Palestinian » as a slur in the same way that right-wing Jewish groups throw around the term « self-hating Jew » to describe members of their own communities who are seeking an ethical path and who oppose their hard right, ethno-nationalist agendas.
And Trump continues his longstanding antisemitism of claiming that anyone who disagrees with a particular ethnonationalist—statist understanding of what it is to be Jewish are themselves either not Jewish or are antisemitic (for example, you must in effect believe that unqualified support for Israel’s policies and practices — despite whatever the state of Israel says or does — equates to believing in Israel as a state and is a condition precedent to being a ´good Jew’ or a ´real Jew’ and/or to not being accused of being an antisemite). Of course, there is an added layer with [Trump]. This is also fuelled by his own toxic narcissism — that has led him multiple times to say that no right-thinking Jew would vote for anyone but himself because he has been there for the Netanyahu vision of Israel.
And let us be clear: not just the Kahanist lunatics that are so influential in the Israeli government and society but also the two-decade Netanyahu epoch have been active participants in this distorted, grotesque attack on what it is to be ´acceptably’ Jewish. Netanyahu himself participates in this distortion with a mind-bending joint appeal to both extreme versions of religious supremacy that produce Greater Israel manifest destiny agendas and to secular ethno-nationalism that may or may not come with a Greater Israel agenda — alongside using all sorts of big lie and propaganda tools to try to con the average person. There is hardly a trace of ethical Jewish traditions, religious or secular, in Netanyahu’s politics.
Trump and Netanyahu are fascistic partners in crime when it comes to the attack on ethical Judaism and on free-thinking, ethically centred Jewish people.
March 13: Note commenting on New York Times article called “Trump Administration Must Rehire Thousands of Fired Workers, Judges Rule”
Two images for the rule of law in the US:
1) GOOD NEWS: A federal judge upholding clear statutory rules for firing workers but also denouncing in terms the average citizen can understand the « sham » nature of the Musk/Trump admin’s invocation of « poor performance » as the blanket ‘justification’ for indiscriminate mass firings.
2) BAD NEWS: The Department of Justice lawyers refused to obey the judge’s request/order for a lead official in the Office of Personnel Management to appear as a witness in the legal proceedings challenging the termination. This is the face of authoritarian defiance of the courts.
THE UNKNOWN: Will the US Supreme Court systematically undo all or most rulings of this sort by trial judges or will Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett side again with the three progressive/sane judges on the court for a 5-4 majority against a Trump gutting if the rule of law (they have once already but only with an ambiguous ruling in a procedurally complex matter)? Too early to know.
March 12: Note commenting on
/ PastPresentFuture’s Substack post, “Europe gets it. Does Canada?”Many Canadians are now grasping the outer edge of peril. It is not solely about tariffs and a despicable human being as a US president showing disrespect. And it is not even also about economic coercion as a club to force a kind of kowtowing ‘voluntary’ Anschluss (annexation) of Canada. It could easily be much more. With Trump and the inanity-parroting sycophants he has gathered around him in his palace court, at any time — in three weeks, in three months, in three years — all it would take is a momentary synapse spasm for Trump to start with pretexts (like an ´invalid’ 1908 boundary treaty!) designed to prime various forms of military pressure or incursion — including seeking to provoke reaction that he can sell to MAGA+, through lies, as a full casus belli.
Dan Gardner ’s great essay is bang on as to the risks Canada faces. And about how we as a country — especially as successive Liberal and Conservative governments (and indeed as an NDP that has long hidden behind the skirts of never being in government power as a way to be content with casting ourselves as solely a righteous peacekeeping state that does not need a military with major capabilities) — have been irresponsible in our approach to defence policy and spending. This is coming home to roost, in ways he describes so clearly.
He is also right about the need for sacrifice, big time. And right too about the failure of our federal leaders to fully grasp the moment we are in or at least to speak fully frankly to Canadians.
For my part, I find it unbelievable that our federal parties have either pushed for or stumbled into an election. The risks are serious when it is taking place at this time of escalating-by-the-day tensions. It is also a failure that we are not well on the path to a pan-partisan crisis cabinet or at least structuring some form of government of unity and resolve that could later pivot to a crisis or even war cabinet. I called for this on January 13 in an article in The Line when I predicted what I called a « blitzkrieg » coming our way from Trump (readtheline.ca/p/craig-…). The response to my call was mostly either partisan snorts of derision or fatalistic shrugs of the ‘our parties are incapable’ or, more deceptively, ‘our political system is incapable’ sort. What I see, rather, is visceral party-first politics, a lack of political courage, and that distinct Canadian cultural trait that may be the core reason for possible downfall—complacency.
By saying downfall, I am on the same page as Dan but — if this is possible given the despair in his post — even more despairing that we will rise to the challenge. Our ill-preparedness is manifest — we are no military dynamo like Ukraine nor even a well-defended Switzerland. And sheer circumstance may doom us (e g, as Dan argues, don’t expect Europe to necessarily want us in a NATO 2.0 if the US bolts).
The window for the worst kind of development in terms of a spiralling of Trump’s annexation lust is anything from next month to just before the next presidential transition. If the worst happened soon, I have no confidence our government and military have any workable plans for organizing the kind of long-haul resistance from society at large alongside armed defence that, combined, would be the only way that a US occupation - starting in slivers and chunks - would be made so costly that US society might act on that pain alongside responding to the injustice of invading a neighbour. Recall Vietnam protests were only belatedly about morality and justice; they were just as much about the pain and suffering of Americans being called to kill and be killed (and lied to) in a war that took time to be seen as unjust. Without Americans protesting en masse across the US and somehow changing the political calculus in Washington, we will have no shorter-term prospects for prevailing.
Should the worst happened, Canadians must prepare for persistent forms of mass peaceful resistance alongside whatever dispersed armed forces are capable of. We must earn the respect flowing both from fierce resistance and from the nobility of that resistance.