President Donald Trump has struck another blow against free speech and democracy by sending at least 2,000 members of the California National Guard, armed with automatic weapons, into Los Angeles to quell protests against raids by government agents which target illegal immigrants.
He posted on social media that Los Angeles was being “invaded and occupied” by “violent insurrectionist mobs,” and told three of his senior cabinet officials to take any action necessary “to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion”. So far, the most extreme act of violence by the protesters has been to set fire to four self-drive taxis.
Clearly, Trump and his administration are eager to have a confrontation on the issue of illegal immigration in a Democrat-controlled state like California, though the legal justification for their actions is demonstrably spurious. The law in question allows the federal deployment of the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States”.
The attack on civil rights is accompanied by Trump syphoning off authority from the states, the judiciary, universities, and Congress – and concentrating it in the White House. The United States under Trump is repeating a pattern already seen under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India. Both are popularly elected leaders with a personality cult who systematically eliminated or brought under control all other power centres in their countries, and who persecute any opponents expressing dissent. The same process is now well under way in the US.
The protests in Los Angeles began last Friday with a raid by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) searching for illegal migrant workers in the garment district of the city. Demonstrations against the raids spread on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city nearby.
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These are likely to spread fear among all immigrants, legal and illegal alike; in California they make up 34 per cent of working age adults between 25 and 54, while 45 per cent of children in California have at least one immigrant parent.
A danger is that many of the 2,000 National Guard deployed by Trump to face protesters will believe some of his administration’s inflammatory lies about those who may be legally taking part in demonstrations. “Illegal criminal aliens and violent mobs have been committing arson, throwing rocks at vehicles, and attacking federal law enforcement for days,” wrote Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
One feature of the demonstration in Tiananmen which the Chinese authorities found particularly provocative was a large statue named “The Goddess of Democracy”, which strongly resembled the Statue of Liberty in New York.
On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, almost to the day, it is ironic that American protesters in Los Angeles who might erect a similar statue as an emblem of liberty and democracy might face denunciation by the White House – and risk death at the hands of American soldiers.
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