Who Let The Doge Out?
The last few weeks have been an ever-darkening black cloud of policy changes and departmental vanishing acts. Elon Musk, backed by a small army of just -graduates (high school) and early twenty something’s, is well under way combing through the institutions that make up the back bone of our society and threatening them with defunding or dissolve if they don’t grant the DOGE team access. DOGE, standing for the Department of Government Efficiency, is on a prowl that they are neither equipped for, nor do they seem to have a lot of information themselves on what exactly it is they’re trying to do.
They took the Department of the Treasury first, and then the Department of Education while senate democrats like Chuck Schumer gathered outside to voice their disapproval and demand to see what the DOGE staff is up to. Notably, they at no point pushed the issue, but asked for entry and left when they were denied by private contractors Elon and company hired to be personal security. Article after article this month highlighted how these kids now have access to social security numbers and private information on government employees and citizens alike. With the confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI head, these injustices and violations against private citizens will only get worse.
The DOGE team actions have come under intense scrutiny in only the last few days while Elon waved a chainsaw on stage and former Trump aide Steve Bannon half -heartedly sieg heiled at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). Town halls across the nation are erupting with even republican voters coming out to ask their representatives what the hell is going on as social security and Medicaid coverage hang in the air and the SAVE act, which would suspend married women’s right to vote because their married name doesn’t match the name on their birth certificate, pass the House and come up for a vote in the Senate.
I’ve seen the word Nazi used in mass media for weeks now with prominent retired sports ball players and politicians alike finally calling the regime out for pushing forward on fascist ideals. I’ve seen people who downplayed what was happening all the way up to the Inauguration finally start to doubt what they voted for. I have, of course, also seen the praise and loud cheers for ICE raids and the first plane of immigrants landing at Guantanamo on February 5th. I’ve seen the removal of transgender history as the administration crawls website after website deciding if it’s “too woke” to continue educating the public on very real and prominent and important history that belongs to the people that were there, not the unbelievable 4chan meme lords currently rewriting our country in the name of the victors. Or, well, that’s what they want to believe anyway.
Hitler was voted in legally on January 30th, 1933 following a series of electoral victories for the Nazi party. This is post the Beer Hall Putsch, where he tried and failed to forcefully take power and spent a year in prison for it (remind you of anything?). It is so important for people to understand that the Nazi party had a base of tired Germans who voted for it, because fascism is very, very good at having solutions. They’re often nonsensical and divisive solutions that unite around a “common enemy” that displace the blame for economic disparity onto a specific group, or groups, of people. Homosexual’s were largely targeted alongside the Jews in the early days and throughout the war with extensive propaganda campaigns that villainized and dehumanized them. In the years leading up to the official start to the war, the invasion of Poland in 1939, Hitler made a concentrated power grab not unlike the one we’re seeing now.
Hitler shook Germany’s faith in democratic solutions. He made democracy the problem and pushed a need for dramatic reform. He was very pro -war and, like most regimes, smartly targeted his competition (like Ernst Thälmann of the communist party) first. Shortly after his confirmation as Chancellor, a fire burned the Reichstag building in Berlin. Hitler seized the opportunity to use emergency powers in the aftermath to take a staggering amount of power, which included the right to detain citizens without cause. He violated the Treaty of Versailles, the result of World War I that many blame for Germanys economic problems that led to Hitler, by reinstating the Air Force and expanding the army. Musk said in the lead up to the Trump power grab that things would become briefly uncomfortable for Americans, reminiscent of the German peoples belief that Hitler’s tidal wave would eventually be good for Germany even as German Storm Troopers carried out the Night of Long Knives, a series of political executions that consolidated Hitler’s power.
While we haven’t yet seen how far this modern regime, who are not at all the war -born SS but man -children who have spent most of their lives hiding from women behind a screen, are willing to push the violence, I don’t think that day is far off. As protests and unrest mount and people begin to call for the heads of Musk and Trump alike, it is unlikely we have much farther to go before they use some semblance of emergency power to cement their control. They might push the boundary without emergency powers, since the Democrats response has been bumbling at best and purposefully negligent at worst. The official White House twitter account posted a chilling message only a few days ago after Trump eradicated the Manhattan congestion pricing initiative with a capitalized “Long Live the King.” The outrage amongst the Dems as a whole has been mostly administrative, with only Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Jasmine Crockett, and Bernie Sanders doing significant outreach. We are on our own to organize and protect ourselves and each other.
None of this is to say lose hope, but to tell you that we’re in the long fight now. There will never be one solution. There will be no chosen person who comes forward to solve this. It will take all of us doing one thousand small things to combat it. It will take the archive of research, the solidarity of our communities, and everyone picking up a lot of new skills outside their comfort zone to get the work done. And it will be work, but it will also be worth it to stand in the ash and rebuild a nation that is accepting and kind and, maybe someday, truly proud to be American.
Thank you so much for reading.
AF
Housekeeping! I’ve added a poetry section to my website but I am not going to push it on people who don’t want it, so if you would like to receive my poetry posts alongside the newsletter please shoot me an email at oneofthefwords@proton.me or contact me on signal oneofthefwords.77 and I’ll add you to the list. I am also starting a monthly anti-fascist movie watchers club where we watch movies with political undertones and discuss what that looks like in the world today. I will be updating the website soon to include the movie watched and the discussion questions. Thanks again :)
Some links on organizing, security, and what we can do that helped this week:
Antoine
View all posts by spencersunshine
Media for Justice
Margaret Killjoy
CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective