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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 27, 2024.
(Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Historian of Far-Right Issues Warning to Those 'Insufficiently Alarmed' by Trump
"What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?" asked Rick Perlstein.
Oct 31, 2024
An American historian who has published
thousands of pages on the nation's conservative movement—spanning from the failed candidacy of Barry Goldwater to the rise of Ronald Reagan—penned a warning Wednesday to anyone who may be inclined to downplay the threat posed by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?" Rick Perlstein writes at the start of his column for The American Prospect, referring to Trump's vow to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. "Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?"
The rest of the column follows that format, with Rick Perlstein outlining nightmarish—and all-too-plausible—scenarios that could result from a Trump victory over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in next week's election and asking Americans to contemplate how they would respond.
"What if the knock is for your daughter, and they're coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?" Perlstein asks. "Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such 'abortion trafficking' illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years."
In the wake of Trump's 2016 election victory, Perlstein acknowledged that he and other historians failed to anticipate the former president's ascent to dominance within the Republican Party. Now, Perlstein and other leading historians are sounding the alarm, describing Trump and the far-right movement propelling his campaign as a fascist threat to U.S. democracy and the world.
"What if you are in the army, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters?" Perlstein wrote Wednesday. "How about if you're a worker bee in the office of a Republican prosecutor who follows the call of Stephen Miller after Donald Trump's criminal conviction to use '[e]very facet of Republican Party politics and power' to 'go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat those Communists'? Your boss presents you his draft of a frivolous indictment of a Democratic officeholder, say for some fantastical accusation of supposed 'electoral fraud.' He asks you to draft the indictment. What do you do?"
The historian continued:
Or consider the scenario related to The New Republic's Greg Sargent by a senior Department of Labor official: evaluating a proposed regulation for a federal safety standard protecting workers in outdoor jobs from the increasingly prevalent risk of fatalities from heatstroke; "loyalists installed in key positions could easily ensure that quality science on the impact of heat on workers is ignored or downplayed during later stages of the rulemaking process. Meanwhile, career government officials—suddenly more vulnerable to firing—would surely hesitate to challenge or expose political appointees who are manipulating the process."
Say that career official is you. Do you risk your job? Or do you choose complicity?
Donald Trump is elected president.
What are you prepared to do?
Those are just some of what Perlstein described as the "life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins" the November 5 election, which is—if polling is to be believed—razor close.
Perlstein wrote on social media that his column was meant for readers to send to their "insufficiently alarmed friends" in the final days of the 2024 campaign.
Perlstein's column was published just days after a Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden that drew comparisons to the Nazi rally held at that same venue in 1939.
Fascism, according to historian Kathleen Belew, was "on full display" at Trump's rally—an alarming indication of what's to come in a possible second term.
In an interview with The Real News Network on Wednesday, Perlstein warned that some "are in denial" about the danger Trump and his allies represent.
"There's a lot of waking up that has to happen," said Perlstein, warning of the prospect of right-wing violence in the aftermath of the election given Trump's false narrative that "Democrats can't win an honest election so they always cheat."
"So one thing we have to be prepared for is the confusion that they're going to try and sow in the event they don't get the most electoral votes. And one of the kinds of complicity that they're hoping for is that the elites basically give up in the interest of order," Perlstein said. "People who should know better are not accepting what's happening."
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An American historian who has published
thousands of pages on the nation's conservative movement—spanning from the failed candidacy of Barry Goldwater to the rise of Ronald Reagan—penned a warning Wednesday to anyone who may be inclined to downplay the threat posed by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?" Rick Perlstein writes at the start of his column for The American Prospect, referring to Trump's vow to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. "Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?"
The rest of the column follows that format, with Rick Perlstein outlining nightmarish—and all-too-plausible—scenarios that could result from a Trump victory over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in next week's election and asking Americans to contemplate how they would respond.
"What if the knock is for your daughter, and they're coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?" Perlstein asks. "Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such 'abortion trafficking' illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years."
In the wake of Trump's 2016 election victory, Perlstein acknowledged that he and other historians failed to anticipate the former president's ascent to dominance within the Republican Party. Now, Perlstein and other leading historians are sounding the alarm, describing Trump and the far-right movement propelling his campaign as a fascist threat to U.S. democracy and the world.
"What if you are in the army, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters?" Perlstein wrote Wednesday. "How about if you're a worker bee in the office of a Republican prosecutor who follows the call of Stephen Miller after Donald Trump's criminal conviction to use '[e]very facet of Republican Party politics and power' to 'go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat those Communists'? Your boss presents you his draft of a frivolous indictment of a Democratic officeholder, say for some fantastical accusation of supposed 'electoral fraud.' He asks you to draft the indictment. What do you do?"
The historian continued:
Or consider the scenario related to The New Republic's Greg Sargent by a senior Department of Labor official: evaluating a proposed regulation for a federal safety standard protecting workers in outdoor jobs from the increasingly prevalent risk of fatalities from heatstroke; "loyalists installed in key positions could easily ensure that quality science on the impact of heat on workers is ignored or downplayed during later stages of the rulemaking process. Meanwhile, career government officials—suddenly more vulnerable to firing—would surely hesitate to challenge or expose political appointees who are manipulating the process."
Say that career official is you. Do you risk your job? Or do you choose complicity?
Donald Trump is elected president.
What are you prepared to do?
Those are just some of what Perlstein described as the "life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins" the November 5 election, which is—if polling is to be believed—razor close.
Perlstein wrote on social media that his column was meant for readers to send to their "insufficiently alarmed friends" in the final days of the 2024 campaign.
Perlstein's column was published just days after a Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden that drew comparisons to the Nazi rally held at that same venue in 1939.
Fascism, according to historian Kathleen Belew, was "on full display" at Trump's rally—an alarming indication of what's to come in a possible second term.
In an interview with The Real News Network on Wednesday, Perlstein warned that some "are in denial" about the danger Trump and his allies represent.
"There's a lot of waking up that has to happen," said Perlstein, warning of the prospect of right-wing violence in the aftermath of the election given Trump's false narrative that "Democrats can't win an honest election so they always cheat."
"So one thing we have to be prepared for is the confusion that they're going to try and sow in the event they don't get the most electoral votes. And one of the kinds of complicity that they're hoping for is that the elites basically give up in the interest of order," Perlstein said. "People who should know better are not accepting what's happening."
An American historian who has published
thousands of pages on the nation's conservative movement—spanning from the failed candidacy of Barry Goldwater to the rise of Ronald Reagan—penned a warning Wednesday to anyone who may be inclined to downplay the threat posed by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?" Rick Perlstein writes at the start of his column for The American Prospect, referring to Trump's vow to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. "Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?"
The rest of the column follows that format, with Rick Perlstein outlining nightmarish—and all-too-plausible—scenarios that could result from a Trump victory over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in next week's election and asking Americans to contemplate how they would respond.
"What if the knock is for your daughter, and they're coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?" Perlstein asks. "Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such 'abortion trafficking' illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years."
In the wake of Trump's 2016 election victory, Perlstein acknowledged that he and other historians failed to anticipate the former president's ascent to dominance within the Republican Party. Now, Perlstein and other leading historians are sounding the alarm, describing Trump and the far-right movement propelling his campaign as a fascist threat to U.S. democracy and the world.
"What if you are in the army, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters?" Perlstein wrote Wednesday. "How about if you're a worker bee in the office of a Republican prosecutor who follows the call of Stephen Miller after Donald Trump's criminal conviction to use '[e]very facet of Republican Party politics and power' to 'go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat those Communists'? Your boss presents you his draft of a frivolous indictment of a Democratic officeholder, say for some fantastical accusation of supposed 'electoral fraud.' He asks you to draft the indictment. What do you do?"
The historian continued:
Or consider the scenario related to The New Republic's Greg Sargent by a senior Department of Labor official: evaluating a proposed regulation for a federal safety standard protecting workers in outdoor jobs from the increasingly prevalent risk of fatalities from heatstroke; "loyalists installed in key positions could easily ensure that quality science on the impact of heat on workers is ignored or downplayed during later stages of the rulemaking process. Meanwhile, career government officials—suddenly more vulnerable to firing—would surely hesitate to challenge or expose political appointees who are manipulating the process."
Say that career official is you. Do you risk your job? Or do you choose complicity?
Donald Trump is elected president.
What are you prepared to do?
Those are just some of what Perlstein described as the "life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins" the November 5 election, which is—if polling is to be believed—razor close.
Perlstein wrote on social media that his column was meant for readers to send to their "insufficiently alarmed friends" in the final days of the 2024 campaign.
Perlstein's column was published just days after a Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden that drew comparisons to the Nazi rally held at that same venue in 1939.
Fascism, according to historian Kathleen Belew, was "on full display" at Trump's rally—an alarming indication of what's to come in a possible second term.
In an interview with The Real News Network on Wednesday, Perlstein warned that some "are in denial" about the danger Trump and his allies represent.
"There's a lot of waking up that has to happen," said Perlstein, warning of the prospect of right-wing violence in the aftermath of the election given Trump's false narrative that "Democrats can't win an honest election so they always cheat."
"So one thing we have to be prepared for is the confusion that they're going to try and sow in the event they don't get the most electoral votes. And one of the kinds of complicity that they're hoping for is that the elites basically give up in the interest of order," Perlstein said. "People who should know better are not accepting what's happening."
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