Why African Americans should be nervous about all the talk of dictatorships, Trump

It is almost inconceivable that a nation built on the bones of Democracy would ever consider being run under a dictatorship…until now. On winding and sometimes treacherous road by November 5th, black Americans were hit with everything possible, including fears of fascism.

Just this week, Vice President Kamala Harris called his opponentformer President Donald Trump, “a fascist,” a term if used 50 years ago would conjure up a witch trial. Now, “fascist” and “dictator” have found a comfortable place in American politics, and most of all, those words are thrown mostly at one person: the GOP nominee.

Most troubling of all, John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, said in a series of interviews this week that Trump “fits the broad definition of a fascist,” but also said the former president had talked about his loyalty to Hitler. generals.

If that wasn’t scary enough, Kelly told him too New York Times that Trump “definitely prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Trump’s campaign has denied all of this. Alex Pfeiffer, Trump’s campaign manager, told reporters that those comments and more from Kelly were “absolutely false. President Trump never said that.”

Whether it’s true or not, the fact that people who know Trump are saying these things and throwing around the word “dictatorship” makes African Americans uncomfortable. Because of the many things Trump has said about black people, it would be a lie to say that some of us aren’t afraid of what a second Trump term could mean for us. Black people, according to history, have the most at stake, according to experts.

“I don’t think many of us have processed the trauma of living under a Trump administration, let alone being prepared for what it’s better equipped to do,” Dr. David Johns, executive director of the National Coalition for Justice Black (NBJC). ), The Root said. For him, this election is about more than a president. Johns fears for the political and civil safety of marginalized groups, especially black and queer people.

A recent one survey conducted by YouGov found that 84% of American voters say “America was more divided than 10 years ago.” If that’s not enough, the same poll reported that “more than a quarter of Americans think a civil war could break out after this year’s presidential election.”

Johns recalls the anti-immigrant sentiments of Trump’s first presidency, citing his Muslim ban and Trump’s border wall. The LGBTQ+ activist also recalled all of Trump’s anti-black and “tough on crime” rhetoric, which further polarized the country leading to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Most recently, the former president outlined plans to arm the US government against what he calls the “enemy within.” From the GOP candidate’s own mouth, threatened violence against American citizens saying“It should be handled very easily by — if necessary, by the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

These alarming words, along with his slogan “Make America Great Again” frighten black Americans. Dr. Rashawn Ray, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, told The Root that even though the government’s system of checks and balances theoretically prevents a dictatorship, he sees former dictators as a clear example of why we should still be wary.

Ray said it was a process for one of the worst men to become a terrible dictator and implement what we now know to be Nazi Germany. And with Trump, the sociologist argues, “some of the nuts and bolts are being put back together.”

One of the first steps to dictatorship is “allowing the president or ruler to be above the law,” he said. “And in many ways, we’ve seen that with the Supreme Court.”

Last summer, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor, saying that presidents “are entitled to immunity from prosecution for certain actions taken while in office.” Root reported.

Ray, who spent time teaching in Germany, struggles to hear Trump say “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” according to Kelly.

Right or wrong, in our ears, these words are troubling to us. According to Ray, such words “literally speak of the purpose of wiping out an entire group of people—the purpose of creating a system where we don’t have the freedoms we have now.”

And that’s why experts say black Americans should be nervous. With civil rights, bodily rights and even the right to higher education at stake, the battle between Trump and Harris is shaping up to be perhaps the most important in modern history. Ray said, “By no means is the United States of America perfect, but if anything, it’s better than it was 50 and 100 years ago.”

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