“Authoritarian Capacity” and the Trump Regime

In May of 2022, the Department of Homeland Security tried to stand up a group to coordinate government anti-disinformation efforts. As Deepa Shivaram wrote at NPR, the “decision” resulted from a “coordinated, right-wing smear campaign against” the board’s director, Nina Jankowicz.

A DHS spokesperson on Wednesday said in a statement that the board has been “grossly and intentionally mischaracterized: it was never about censorship or policing speech in any manner. … False attacks have become a significant distraction from the Department’s vitally important work to combat disinformation that threatens the safety and security of the American people.”

Readers here will remember many other right-wing conspiracies that, through the magic of the right-wing propaganda ecosystem and unhinged Republican politicians, made their way into the mainstream media, such as the idea that the 2015 Jade Helm military training exercise was an operation to arrest political dissidents or a front for a Chinese takeover of the American southwest.

The irony here comes in many layers. The Biden administration attempted to coordinate and standardize anti-disinformation efforts; it backed down after a disinformation campaign. The one that really stands out, however, is now its own sub-genre on social media: the people who used to scream about non-existent authoritarian plots have, in the face of a real one, either gone completely silent or are cheering it on.

The Trump administration, after all, is an overtly authoritarian regime. Yes, it remains unconsolidated. Yes, the model it pursues is “competitive authoritarianism,” in which opposition parties remain able to contest elections and even, in principle, defeat the regime. But every single day the administration unleashes a torrent of fascistic propaganda, declarations of war against “enemies within,” and otherwise makes its intentions clear.

Meanwhile, it expands its “authoritarian capacity.” That is, it develops the infrastructure and instruments it needs to impose authoritarian rule, intimidate its opponents, and condition the American people to accept violent crackdowns. The epicenter of these efforts: the Department of Homeland Security. The pretext is also one of the goals: the mass deportation of foreign citizens — some here illegally, others seeking their legal right to claim asylum, and many in the process of comporting with U.S. immigration law. In the classic fashion of past fascistic regimes, the Trump administration portrays all of these human beings as violent criminals, members of invading cartels, or parasites stealing “your” jobs, healthcare, and housing.

And it is working. ICE — or maybe DEA or FBI agents, since apparently no one in the American NKVD is required to identify themselves — has emerged as a loyalist paramilitary force. It is happy to attack and detain protestors, members of the press, opposition officials, and young children sleeping in their homes. Masked agents throw tear gas out of their windows on the streets of Chicago. We have a network of concentration camps in which people, including American citizens, disappear for days, weeks, or apparently forever.

Now Wired — which has become indispensable and deserves your subscription dollars — reports that DHS wants to create dedicated centers to mass monitor social-media in real time.

United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages—raw material to be transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests.

Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED show that the agency is seeking private vendors to run a multiyear surveillance program out of two of its little-known targeting centers. The program envisions stationing nearly 30 private analysts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Vermont and Southern California. Their job: Scour Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms, converting posts and profiles into fresh leads for enforcement raids.

I don’t doubt that these systems are intended to target foreign citizens — whether here illegally or legally — and facilitate their deportation. But they are, sometimes explicitly, dual-use systems, with the capability to target “national security threats” and even opponents of ICE.

Earlier this year, The Intercept revealed that ICE had floated plans for a system that could automatically scan social media for “negative sentiment” toward the agency and flag users thought to show a “proclivity for violence.” Procurement records previously reviewed by 404 Media identified software used by the agency to build dossiers on flagged individuals, compiling personal details, family links, and even using facial recognition to connect images across the web. Observers warned it was unclear how such technology could distinguish genuine threats from political speech.

ICE’s main investigative database, built by Palantir Technologies, already uses algorithmic analysis to filter huge populations and generate leads. The new contract would funnel fresh social media and open-source inputs directly into that system, further automating the process.

We are not in the domain of unhinged conspiracy theories. As I noted above, the administration tells us every day that it considers opponents of the regime threats to national security.

It is also clearly trying to create “carve outs” for actions that are otherwise prohibited by the constitution, federal law, and treaty obligations. The strategy is exactly the same as the one that the Trump administrations uses to build authoritarian capacity. Start by going after people whose rights are, whether in a political or legal sense, more precarious. Then use those “carve outs” to justify stripping more difficult targets of their rights. This precisely what Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” is about, and we’re already past the first line of the remake.

The problem with Niemöller’s poem, however, is that it describes a linear progression from group to group. We are seeing that, but the actual process is more akin to building a lattice of repression. It justifies its terror raids and its denials of due process on the grounds that the victims are gang members. It orders the military to murder people, who may or may not be running drugs, in speedboats. It declares anyone “associated” with a cartel “unlawful combatants” — and thus outside the scope of even the laws of armed conflict. In doing so, it builds a framework in which it can target virtually anyone — brown or white, documented or non-documented, non-citizen or citizen — without necessarily having to come for the “entire group” at once.

I am appalled, but not surprised, that so-called moderate and institutionalist Republicans — including ones who privately oppose Trump — not only stand idly by, but actively voted to give Trump the additional resources he needed to build this capacity. I am furious that the majority of the U.S. government — including the U.S. military — is currently acting as if their oath to uphold the constitution applies only to a few lines in Article II. But until this changes — and, indeed, in order for it to change — we know what we need to do.