A Taste Of Authoritarianism

I have never, as a chronically online Americans, felt legally threatened by posting publicly available information. Today I did, and man, I’ve never squirmed quite so hard. 

The technofascist coup of the United States government is entering its fourth day. The takeover of the federal government finally got a story in the New York Times today, which is nice. I saw a cable news host mention it briefly. So we have that going for us. 

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Even so, tell an apolitical family member or a random person on the street that Elon Musk’s DOGE minions have taken over the nation’s checking account and you’re more likely to get a face full of mace than you are a knowing nod or an informed conversation about the most acute constitutional crisis in the history of the country. 

Our legislative branch has ceded the power of the purse to the leader of the international fascist movement, a man I have written about extensively over the past two and a half years because he was clearly never going to stop in his unwinding of multicultural democracy until someone stopped him. And still, as he effectively becomes the first American dictator, Elon Musk faces no serious pushback, and certainly no consequences. Musk’s takeover of our political dicrouse was always just the beginning. 

What appears to be the end – however temporary – of constitutional government means anyone who angers the American sovereign (Musk) risks legal consequences from the government he now controls. After the brave journalists at Wired – a publication we should support while most mainstream outfits bend to fascist terror – published the names of the Musk interns who had seized control of the nation’s payment systems, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward Martin released a statement pledging his office would go after anyone who published the names of the Musk interns who had done the coup, or interfered with their work in any way. Martin’s statement was a threat against anyone who would so much as dare to stand in the way of Musk’s fake department while it dismantled the U.S. government. 

After seeing requests in my mentions for the names of the Musk worker bees, I considered listing the DOGE workers’ names on Bluesky but thought twice about it. Then I thought three times and decided not to. A few hours later I logged on and saw that Martin was communicating with anonymous fascist accounts on the X platform who were identifying anyone who had mentioned the names of the DOGE workers, including folks on Bluesky, the only platform on which the technofascist coup (yes, I understand how nutty that sounds) has gotten any oxygen since it began last Friday night.

I have never felt legally in danger over a social media post. And I’m not going to list the names of the Musk coup-doers here for fear of someone with bad intentions finding this newsletter and forwarding it to the office of Ed Martin, who appears to be functioning as the personal lawyer for the first American dictator. As a 41-year-old born and raised in the United States, I have never before felt that kind of fear. I have never even considered the government would prosecute me for typing out names that have been exposed by a journalistic entity. 

The Techno-Fascists Are Here

The defining difference between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential run and his 2024 bid is the Big Boy’s ditching of the fundamentalist Christian right for the Silicon Valley fascists who have, until now, dabbled around the edges of American politics. Trump delivered for the evangelicals who twisted themselves into knots to

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

This is my first real taste of life under authoritarianism. It’s bitter. It leaves a wretched taste in your mouth and a rumbling in your gut that won’t go away. The unreality of it makes you paranoid. And it makes you long for the unencumbered speech you enjoyed for your entire life, before eggs got pretty expensive two years ago and forced Americans to re-elect a mad king to the highest land in the office. That this mad king would so quickly be usurped by the world’s leading fascist comes as a shock to the most cynical critic of American democracy. 

Maybe I’m capitulating ahead of time. Maybe I’m exaggerating the threat one would face if one posted about those doing Musk’s dirty work in our federal agencies. Whatever it is, it’s a loss of what I once had, and I want it back badly enough to fight for it. I believe there will be a critical mass of opposition that gathers against this coup, and soon. Probably that will come about through immense economic pain and societal upheaval the likes of which no living American has witnessed. But people will rally. I have to believe that right now, tonight, sitting alone in a hotel room while stopping myself from doomscrolling. I choose to believe that.

Until then, until scattered and confused and disoriented opposition to these anti-American forces can congeal and act as a counterweight to the coup, I think we need to be honest with ourselves about what has happened over these past two weeks. The constitutional order is dead. Americans no longer enjoy self governance. People have to want those things in order to have them, so now we face the question: How much do you want it?

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.