[D66] Trump’s plan to send paramilitary police throughout the US: The ruling class prepares for civil war

[R.O.]

wsws.org:

Trump’s plan to send paramilitary police throughout the US: The ruling 
class prepares for civil war
22 July 2020

The Trump administration’s plans to deploy federal paramilitary police 
forces in major cities throughout the United States is a sharp 
escalation of the assault on democratic rights and the erection of 
police state forms of rule.

In Portland, the mobilization of these forces has already led to scenes 
reminiscent of Latin American death squads. Gangs of men, wearing 
generic camouflage without unit insignias or name tags, seize 
protesters, bundle them into unmarked vans and cars, and take them away 
for questioning, or worse.

On Monday, Trump threatened similar action in New York City, Chicago, 
Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland and other cities. Referring to 
those protesting police violence, Trump said, “These people are 
anarchists, people who hate our country, and we’re not going to let them 
go forward.”

There is no legal or constitutional basis for the invasion of American 
cities by these federal agents. Congress has not authorized their 
deployment, and there is no actual emergency to which they are 
responding. For all of Trump’s claims of violence and anarchy, the main 
violence is being perpetrated by his thugs.

In Portland, the federal attack has been spearheaded by heavily armed 
agents of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), specifically by members 
of its internal SWAT team, known as BORTAC, which is used to fight 
narcotics traffickers at the border and to suppress disturbances at US 
detention camps for immigrants. But Portland is 400 miles from the 
closest US border, and BORTAC is not targeting either drug dealers or 
immigrants, but protesters against police violence.

Joining the CBP officers are groups of armed men drawn from other 
agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the 
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Like CBP, these are 
components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and were 
deployed at the direction of its top officials—Trump lackeys Chad Wolf 
and Ken Cuccinelli. The DHS has reportedly placed a total of 2,000 
officers on standby for deployment around the country.

Trump is, in essence, seeking to develop a paramilitary force—consisting 
of fascistic immigration SWAT teams, along with local police 
forces—operating under his personal authority.

There are ominous historical parallels. In Germany, after its defeat in 
World War I, the ruling class sponsored the creation of the Freikorps, 
heavily armed groups of demobilized soldiers who acted as shock troops 
against the working class, murdering revolutionary leaders Rosa 
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The Freikorps became the initial levies 
of Hitler’s stormtroopers.

In Argentina, Chile, Brazil and other Latin American counties, the 
CIA-backed military regimes in the 1970s utilized fascistic paramilitary 
organizations, such as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (Triple A) 
to eliminate militants in the factories. The signature tactic of the 
Triple A was to drag their victims into unmarked Ford Falcons that 
roamed Buenos Aires and other cities. After extended torture, the bodies 
were frequently dumped into the Atlantic Ocean from helicopters and planes.

Those who have been kidnapped by Trump’s agents in Portland have been 
released to tell their stories, up to now. Only seven people have been 
arrested by federal agents, most for misdemeanor vandalism. Only tear 
gas and “nonlethal” projectiles have been used, not live ammunition. But 
precedents are being set. People are to become accustomed to the 
deployment of paramilitary forces, with the military in the background 
to intervene or act as arbiters.

The main target of Trump’s authoritarian efforts is the working class. 
The Trump administration’s actions take place as the ruling class 
anticipates an enormous growth of social conflict and resistance.

After handing trillions of dollars to themselves, the corporations and 
banks are enforcing a homicidal back-to-work campaign that has already 
produced an explosion of coronavirus cases and deaths. Foreclosures are 
about to begin again after a temporary moratorium, and the federal 
unemployment subsidy of $600 a week is scheduled to expire at the end of 
this week.

There is seething anger in workplaces and factories, with workers 
beginning to resist being forced to work and place their lives and the 
lives of their loved ones at risk. There is particularly intense 
opposition to the reopening of public schools, only weeks away, with the 
accompanying threat to the lives of children, their families, their 
teachers and all school employees.

While Trump’s actions are a major escalation, they are the outcome of a 
protracted crisis of American democracy. The Trump administration is 
utilizing the entire apparatus of the “war on terror” against domestic 
opposition. Indeed, as the WSWS warned from the beginning, this was its 
intended purpose.

The Democratic Party is complicit in all of this. It helped create, in 
the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the apparatus of the 
police state: the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security, 
domestic spying and the Northern Command to control military operations 
within the United States.

In 2013, it was the Obama administration that carried out the military 
siege against the population of Boston, using the Boston Marathon 
bombing as a pretext. As the WSWS wrote at the time, with the 
military-police house-to-house searches in violation of basic 
constitutional rights:

      ... the American ruling class crossed a historical, legal and 
political Rubicon. The die is cast, and the sun is setting on the 
democratic forms of rule that have existed in the United States for the 
past two centuries.

     What history will remember as most significant about the events in 
Boston will not be the bombing near the marathon’s finish line or the 
perpetrators or their motives. What will be remembered instead will be 
the unprecedented military lockdown of an entire major American city, 
with military vehicles in the streets and heavily armed soldiers going 
house to house—tromping through living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, 
staring down their assault rifles at terrified, barefoot families in 
their pajamas.

The response of the Democratic Party to Trump’s coup attempts is 
hypocritical and dishonest. In Oregon, local and state Democrats sought 
to dismiss Trump’s actions as “political theater.” Governor Kate Brown 
said, “Trump is looking for a confrontation in Oregon in the hopes of 
winning political points in Ohio or Iowa.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 
issued a statement decrying “President Trump’s political games.”

At the same time, Pelosi agreed to take up the new budget for the 
Department of Homeland Security next week, including full funding for 
the CBP, ICE and other agencies whose paramilitary units are engaged in 
attacks on both immigrants and the American people as a whole.

No Democrat has called for Trump’s impeachment over the plans to invade 
Democratic Party-controlled cities.

Trump’s actions come less than two months after he went on national 
television to declare his intention to invoke the Insurrection Act of 
1807 and deploy military forces to suppress the mass protests that 
erupted after the police murder of George Floyd.

The Democrats ceded all opposition to Trump’s attempted coup to the 
military and retired generals who opposed the action out of fear that it 
could backfire because it had not been politically prepared. They 
regarded such a major step as not yet necessary. Trump pulled back 
temporarily and did not invoke the Insurrection Act.

As the Socialist Equality Party warned on June 8, “The dangers are very 
real. The conspirators in the White House have not ceased their 
plotting. The military is biding its time and considering its options. 
The police remain armed to the teeth.”

These warnings are now being confirmed. The coming elections will be 
held under conditions of explosive social unrest and political crisis. 
Trump has already declared that he may not accept the outcome of the 
elections if he is defeated. The Democrats are counting on the military 
to intervene to force him out. All factions of the ruling class are 
preparing for civil war against the working class.

It is the social power of the working class that must be mobilized 
against Trump’s attacks on democratic rights and his drive to establish 
a presidential dictatorship.

Patrick Martin