Authoritarian Occupation: Los Angeles and the Next Chapter of Our Lives

We've entered a new chapter in the crisis. Time to get up to speed in a hurry.

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We knew this was coming, we just didn’t know where or when. The fascistic operations of ICE in brutalizing and disappearing people was always leading here. Eventually, a community would step in and say no, you’re not stealing people from us. And the result was inevitable.

I had a feeling this summer would be active. The onslaught by the Trump Administration, strategized and implemented by the wealth class, was designed to overwhelm, but with these actions there is always a responding backlash. Healthy people do not want to live like this, and the state abuse, as it mounts, will always inspire a response.

What Angelenos did in standing up to ICE agents trying to disappear their neighbors and friends was necessary, brave, and exactly what we should be doing in the midst of this power grab. It is the essence of anti-fascism and history tells us that when fascists come to your town, you don’t just back down and hope they’ll leave shortly. You let them know, with no room for misunderstanding, that they are not welcome and they will not be tolerated.

Of course, with an authoritarian in power, there is always going to be a response to the response. Donald Trump seizing the National Guard to put down what he is now labeling an “insurrection” is, again, predictable. To be an authoritarian is to be weak and insecure, so any pushback and any inconvenience is an excuse for violence. It is necessary, for the authoritarian, to wield this violence as quickly as humanly possible lest their abusive hold on reality and power be threatened. And that is the crux here: he and his criminal cronies enjoy a very, very fragile hold on power.

The only question was where and when. If it wasn’t Los Angeles, it would be somewhere. And things are going exactly as they would be expected to. The regime puffs up, responds with more state violence, then the discourse is splintered between those who recognize every conflict now is existentially important and those who are more concerned about decorum. This is the major friction point in what should be a united front. Some see this as a fight for the future, others see it a passing discomfort as they wait for some kind of institutional fix or, I guess, the next election. Witness, as I’ve talked about elsewhere, what the Democratic Party represents in our political paradigm: tepid “support” for protests but an unceasing fear of it “getting out of hand” and beyond their control. Because that is the divide between moderate liberals and the rest of us. Some see this as a battle from which there is no return. Others consider it an uncomfortable moment that needs to pass.

In this, the moderates are always, either consciously or unconsciously, working with the authoritarians and enabling their agenda. We are, according to those who want nothing more than to maintain control, supposed to protest enough, but not too much. Because we should rely on them. Because we need to maintain our subservient position under the party as opposed to in conversation and discourse with the party. Fighting a battle with a corrupt and immoral system while also adhering to the rules that were created, maintained, and enforced by the system on behalf of the system is an exercise in self-destruction.

As I said earlier, liberals are often much more worried about how they are perceived than they are actually gaining power.

So, let us be clear. We are a nation on the brink of a full-blown authoritarian takeover, and we are being advised, by moderates, by wealth class owned media outlets, by personalities who make their living leeching off the wealth class and are inextricably beholden to them, to stay calm and carry on. This diverts us from the very real struggle that is not only here but is being forced upon us. What is happening in Los Angeles will not stay there. If the regime manages to snuff this out and exert authority, it will continue anywhere there is dissent. That is, if they do not cow us into giving us dissent entirely.

This is a cycle of abuse and enabling and, in the end, it is a matter of kicking the can down the road in the misguided hope it will magically get better. It will not. Authoritarians rely on this magical thinking to continue corrupting and contorting the system. It gives them time, space, momentum, and more and more power over our perception of reality.

And, what’s more, the people of Los Angeles deserve our solidarity. They are doing the hard, brave work that we should have everywhere. Instead of wringing our hands, we should be looking around in our own communities and at the people we are losing or at risk of losing, and wondering how we join the fight. Because, like it or not, the fight is here and the fight is coming to your town. You cannot reason with authoritarianism. You cannot make deals with authoritarians. It is a disease that spreads and will consume everyone and everything if it is not stopped. Every individual we sacrifice, every person we allow to be disappeared and cast into a hellish prison, that disease grows and worsens.

Where we are heading is not comfortable. We will have to reconsider everything we think we know about the world. We have been conditioned to see life as separated between those who deserve safety and those who deserve violence. Those expectations are a weapon of the wealth class and their pet authoritarians and short-circuit solidarity. Stop worrying about property. Stop worrying about decorum. Stop giving in, like white liberals of the past, to accusations of “outside agitators,” a favorite term that has been used against everything from Civil Rights to labor actions.

Because this is not new. The police and military state we are currently fighting has been put into place for a very long time now. Republicans and Democrats alike have strengthened it as they have served the wealth class, and so it should be no surprise that one is wielding it happily like a weapon and the other is asking us to go along quietly. This is the natural evolution of these past few decades and, by extension, centuries’ worth of conflict over power. Waiting for the next election, if we can trust there will be a next election, does not solve the issue. That comes with conflict, as uncomfortable as it may be. Each of these moments, with all of their uncertainty and discomfort, allow us the opportunity to begin turning the tide of history and actually realize change. We will not do so if we are not brave and chance failure or suffering. This moment asks too much of us, but we must answer it all the same.