Trumpageddon: It's time to take Trump's threats of "retribution" seriously
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
After a seven-year-long political crime spree (which is predated by decades of lawbreaking), it appears that Donald Trump may finally be held accountable for his crimes against society.
How has Trump responded to the possibility that he may be indicted and arrested for his alleged crimes connected to paying his former mistress Stormy Daniels hush money in connection with his 2016 presidential campaign? With predictable rage, fury, fire, and incitements to political violence and mayhem .
For example, over the weekend Trump sent out this proclamation via his Truth Social disinformation platform:
"OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE..."
Trump continued:
"NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!"
These statements by Trump are a veritable firehouse of antisemitism, white supremacy, conspiracism, paranoia, lies, and other delusional thinking.
Trump's proclamation – in keeping with a much larger pattern – is also an example of stochastic terrorism. Trump's threats of violence are not idle or empty: he is the only president in United States history to attempt a lethal coup against American democracy and the will of the people.
Trump has been channeling Hitler and Mussolini with threats of "retribution" and revenge for his followers if they can retake the White House and then punish their common "enemies."
Like other demagogues and political cult leaders, the former president is a type of political monster and chimera. For his supporters, Trump is a role model and personal God who models the worst of human behavior and gives them permission to behave the same way. For those who oppose Trump because they believe in real democracy, the rule of law, common decency and the truth, Trump is an evil and dangerous force who must be stopped.
His followers online and in other spaces are now rallying their troops to protect him, with force if necessary, from being arrested and taken into custody by law enforcement.
In an act of textbook stochastic terrorism, Trump is now feigning concern about violence and urging his followers to be "peaceful" after the incitements to violence have already been made. But over the last weeks and months, Trump has been channeling Hitler and Mussolini with threats of "retribution" and revenge for his followers if they can retake the White House and then punish their common "enemies." Following through on the cult leader-follower power dynamic, Trump has also repeatedly told his followers that he and they are "victims" of some type of conspiracy and only he has the power to save them. In this twisted view, if Trump is indicted for his crimes it means that the MAGA movement is under assault and in danger of becoming political prisoners of the "Biden regime."
As mental health experts have repeatedly warned, Donald Trump's threats are more evidence of his apparent megalomania, emotional decompensation, delusions, and other severe mental pathologies that make him a threat to public safety. Yet, as is their habit, the mainstream news media, for the most part, laughed at, mocked, or outright ignored Trump's threats of Armageddon and destruction.
To ignore or mock Trump's threats of destruction are a great error because such apocalyptic allusions are not an outlier or aberration: they are now the template and model for the Republican Party. A new study by the Washington Post highlights this growing GOP trend :
Speaking to conservative activists this month just outside of D.C., former president Donald Trump promised to be "your warrior" and "your justice," vowing: "And to those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
The same day, speaking to a group of conservative donors in Florida, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R) warned, "Joe Biden and the Democrats are destroying our people's patriotism and swapping it out for dangerous self-loathing."
And speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on March 5, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) argued that his state offered a refuge from a Democratic-led "dystopia, where people's rights were curtailed and their livelihoods were destroyed."
The trio of comments from 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls — either declared or expected — underscore the dark undertones and apocalyptic rhetoric that have pervaded much of the Republican Party in the era of Trump….
But much of the rhetoric from the declared and potential Republican candidates so far is remarkable for its dystopian tone. In many high-profile moments, these Republicans portray the nation as locked in an existential battle, where the stark combat lines denote not just policy disagreements but warring camps of saviors vs. villains, and where political opponents are regularly demonized.
The Washington Post delves deeper into the dangers this poses:
"At its worst, it divides and excludes," said Alison McQueen, associate professor of political science at Stanford University and author of "Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times." "It casts one set of people as heroes and saviors and another set of people as beyond the pale and evil. It's good and evil rhetoric, and once you see your opponents as evil or the belligerent side in a war, that seems to legitimize treating them in ways we'd otherwise find very objectionable."…
McQueen noted that other periods in American history — the Puritans arriving in New England, the Civil War and the post-9/11 era — have featured similarly dark and foreboding political language.
It works. It's that simple. That is why Republicans use this strategy of apocalypse and destruction.
The Republican Party's leaders and strategists know that they cannot win free and fair elections where voters decide based on substantive issues of public concern. Instead, fear and terror are deemed to be viable tools for mobilizing Republican and MAGA voters while simultaneously intimidating and therefore demobilizing Democrats and others who don't support the Republican Party.
This strategy of apocalypse and destruction is also a function of how Republican and MAGA voters have also been trained and conditioned into apocalyptic thinking and beliefs by their political and religious leaders and other influentials. The strategy is amplified in its effectiveness because of how the political personalities and decision-making of conservative-authoritarians fixate on death anxieties and accompanying fears of victimhood, destruction, pollution, and contamination from some type of Other.
Not to be overlooked or ignored, the white red state rural and working-class communities that constitute the base of Trumpism and today's Republican-fascist movement have experienced economic devastation from deindustrialization and globalization, are suffering through what social scientists describe as "the deaths of despair", and in total are mired in deep malaise and despair. For many (white) people in these regions of the country it literally does appear to be the end of days.
In an excellent essay at Religion Dispatches in response to Trump's recent CPAC speech and its themes of destruction , historian Thomas Lecaque noted:
The former president opened his speech—after a long list of far-right celebrity shout outs—by framing the 2024 election as a battle: "the greatest in our history, most important battle in our lives is taking place right now as we speak. For seven years, you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it." The stakes aren't just political control—though political control is part of it—but existential. It's more than a victory in the election, it's a victory about the future, about survival, a zero sum game….:
This is the final battle. An epic struggle, the most important battle, against "the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it." This is the framework for Trump's entire speech, an apocalyptic confrontation, the final battle between good and evil.
It's apocalyptic, but not out of the Christian Bible. There's an entire strain of biblical theological apocalypticism, but this veers heavily towards straightforward ideological nihilism. Trump is happy to play with the optics of Christendom, and to hand over whatever he needs to his evangelical allies to keep them on his side. This is certainly not to say that Christian apocalypticism is not part of his repertoire. He surrounds himself with evangelicals that embrace it—the Robert Jeffresses, the John Hagees, the Mike Pompeos and the Michael Pences—but when they ceased being fellow travelers, he waited while crowds chanted "Hang Mike Pence" in the Capitol Building.
Trump's speech was not the apocalypse of Christendom, it was the apocalypse of QAnon. Trump's playbook is not about the Kingdom of Heaven, it's about America First—and the eschatology of QAnon ends in murder.
Ultimately, the Republican-fascists and conservative movement's Armageddon politics are inherently antidemocratic because it is based on constant fear and terror which in turn makes contemplation, reason, communication, and consensus building to address common problems and shared concerns based on truth and empirical reality all but impossible. America's democracy crisis can only escalate because the Republicans see destruction and violence and a political (and perhaps even literal) Armageddon and apocalypse as integral to their plan to get and keep power by any means necessary for all time.
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The person who wrote this should be hauled away in a strait jacket.
40 people showed up to support the turd outside trump tower. There were more calling for them to LOCK HIM UP.
His enablers were also going to do a bank run - pull all their money out of their accounts - in support of the turd.
Like it would cause a crash.
LOL!
Uh huh.../s
I'm not even going to bother asking you what you mean.
Only that the constant hateful, anti-Trump, anti Republican, anti-conservative posts that come from you just get real old and boring after a while. Have a good day John.
i guess the truth hurts
the person who wrote that insane hysteria quoted at the top of the seed belongs in a mental institution , not campaigning for the office of president of the united states. you know that as well as i do, but you cant or wont say it.
Your Truth does not necessarily mean truth to others. You need to deal with that.
You might be correct on Trump's mental state, might not, but I'm not medically qualified to judge that and neither are you.
I have told you repeatedly in the past that I really do not like Trump and did not vote for him either time. I voted 3rd party both times. I just happen to dislike Biden and the liberal left a lot more than I do Trump and the Republicans of which I am not one of. I am a conservative right leaning registered Independant, which is anathema to people on the liberal left. Your problem and others here as well, is that any that do not share your political views, by default must be a Trump supporter. There is no middle ground with you. It has to be proverbially all your way or the highway, nothing else. Again have a good day. I'm done.
Amazing how many words are needed to spin a brief statement. Trump didn't call for violence. Unless protest is now considered violence.
Trump is using the same sort of language that liberal activists use. And for liberal activists, that's a problem.
the person who wrote that insane hysteria quoted at the top of the seed belongs in a mental institution , not campaigning for the office of president of the united states. you know that as well as i do, but you cant or wont say it.
So, don't vote for Trump. Pretty simple.
Trump's rhetoric is not insane. Trump's rhetoric isn't any more over-the-top than the current President's rhetoric about abortions, elections, democracy, oil, and guns.
[Deleted]
Nerm Nerm Nerm.....
When leftists break down doors, loot, pillage, burn, destroy, attempt murder and secede from the United States, that's called "peaceful protest".
When conservatives do it, it's called "insurrection".
Glad we've cleared that up.
Please remember this distinction. If you forget, no worries. We can get you a nice spot in a re-education camp.
Right on the money!
The real distinction is that 'peaceful protest' is violence against communities and people where they live. 'Insurrection' is violence against politicians and government. That says a lot about the left's priorities.
ditto
what "American patriots" are being treated like animals ?
what "leftist thugs" are allowed to roam the streets burning and pillaging?
what evidence is there that substantial numbers of migrants are coming from mental institutions and prisons?
are crime and inflation destroying your way of life?
crime and inflation are as old as the hills in the US, why are they suddenly destroying our way of life now, when they didnt over previous decades and century?
No no no Nerm. Whatever are we going to do with you?
When leftists commit violence against the government, it's still "peaceful protest".
For example, when leftists lock government employees in their offices and try to burn the building down with those people in it, that's "peaceful protesting".
Do you see how this works?
You've clearly confused my comments with someone else's.
I dont think so
Well, you seem to be demanding an explanation to confirm a bunch of shit I never said.
Some people would not know a real American patriot if they saw one.
Trump was obviously referring to the arrested Jan 6 rioters.
NONE of those people are legitimate American patriots.
I was not talking about Trump.
The defenders of the indefensible tell us to seek help. . .
Being kept in captivity and treated like animals
You haven't
You must be because Jack never said anything about anybody being "treated like animals." If you can, feel free to show it.
These comments alone serve to prove the author is an idiot and should not be taken seriously.
How can anyone believe this stuff?
When was this photo taken?
tomorrow
A really shitty photoshop.
You can do better than that.
It is almost like you aren't trying.
And it is readily available on the internet.
A left-winger's wet dream.
This is how stupid some MAGA are - they are on twitter saying that the fact that Trump wasnt arrested today is proof the investigation and grand jury is a witch hunt.
Uh, dumbasses, the only one who said Trump was going to be arrested today was Trump.
It's pathetic how ignorant some of the right wingers are. How do you like the right wing blowhards who've probably never even read a book, but come on here and pretend to lecture everyone about things of which they know absolutely nothing? There are a couple of particularly blatant examples on this seed.
You are a very empathetic fellow.
What do you base your assumption on?
No need to identify what is self evident.
It's disgusting how brainwashed some of our radical leftwingers are.
How do you like the right wing blowhards who've probably never even read a book, but come on here and pretend to lecture everyone about things of which they know absolutely nothing?
How do you like the morons who had parents pay to send them to go to college and get screwed up?
There are a couple of particularly blatant examples on this seed.
NT is lucky to have them stay on.
Empathetic and open minded /
No need to identify what is self evident.
Well done! Your best yet and well delivered.
I didn't, obviously, but if I did, many of your comments would be on the list.
Thank you for proving my point.
You're lucky your parents were able to pay for you.
Something no one would ever accuse most of the right wingers on here of being.
Their comments. Your inability to discern something so self-evident is very telling.
And the New York Times & you believed him.
Maybe Bragg is simply going on another day simply to contradict Trump?
Imagine a Democrat Party so totally void of ethics and morals that they ignore the rule of law completely. Statute of limitations; attorney client confidentiality; political paybacks; and not holding their own accountable under the law. Third world tin horn dictators all over the world are taking notes on the Democrats two tier justice system.
No imagination required.
ATTONEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE DOES NOT COME IN TO PLAY/MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHEN HIS ATTORNEY/ATTORNIES ARE IMPLICIT IN THE FURTHERANCE OF A CRIME!!!!!!!
You should have waited until this afternoon. It appears that Alvin Bragg is ready to ditch the whole thing, AGAIN!
The author of such drivel is clearly insane.
John, I hear Ukraine is recruiting- and they are taking all volunteers. It isn't Moscow; but it is as close as you are ever going to get.
Why aren't you over there killing some Ruskies?/S