As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence, the country is fast returning to the autocratic rule against which the Thirteen Colonies rebelled in 1776.
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.
The dispatch of the soldiers by Trump was justified by the pretence that Los Angeles is in the grip of an insurrection, rather than seeing demonstrations by largely non-violent protesters in a few blocks of the city, which has a population of just under four million.
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.
The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said that sending in the troops was “purposefully inflammatory”, and likely to escalate confrontation, calling Trump “a stone cold liar”. He asked protesters not to allow themselves to be provoked into providing an excuse for Trump to extend his power by using the National Guard without a request from a state governor – something that has not happened since the 1960s.
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”.
There obviously is no such rebellion – and the nearest the US has come to an uprising against the government in recent years was the invasion of the Capitol building in Washington in 2021 by Trump supporters, whom the president has since pardoned. In other words, those who back Trump can break the law with impunity, while those who resist or criticise his authority can expect to be harshly punished.
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.
Unauthorised immigrants in the US were estimated to number 11 million in 2022, of whom 1.8 million are in California according to the Public Policy Institute of California. But “illegal” immigrants exist alongside a much larger legal foreign-born community in the state, estimated to number 10.6 million – or 27 per cent of the population of California.
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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Trump’s astonishing political rise has been fuelled most powerfully by his hostility to immigrants, which won him the White House in 2016 and again in 2024. He began his administration with high-profile deportations of immigrants whom Trump claimed were criminals – though researchers soon revealed that the majority had no criminal records – to places like El Salvador. This approach appears to have largely choked off immigration across the southern US border from Mexico. The government is now going after illegal immigrants in general, through raids on businesses like DIY company Home Depot and restaurants.
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.
The ICE offensive against illegal immigrants is the cutting edge of the Trump administration’s approach, which in general terms is sympathetic to white males and antipathetic to Hispanic and black people and other minorities. Trump has given repeated examples of his racist approach to politics, falsely claiming that South Africa is carrying out a genocide against white South Africans and banning citizens from 12 countries – mostly African, Asian and South American – entering the US.
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.
Whipped up by official mendacity like this, it would not be surprising if some of the well armed troops brought in to police a protest might open fire causing mass casualties. “I’ve feared all along this could end up like an American version of Tiananmen Square,” commented a former resident of Beijing, referring to the massacre of protesters there on 4 June 1989.
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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