June 13, 2025
The quickest way for the United States to become fascist is by politicizing the military.
“No Kings” has become a potent rallying cry in Donald Trump’s second term. On Saturday, protesters in hundreds of American cities will gather under the “No Kings” banner to offer a counter-message to the president who is using the coincidence of Flag Day falling on his birthday to throw a massive military parade to satisfy his ego. The appeal of “No Kings” as a message is obvious: It both invokes the noble small-r republican spirit of the American Revolution and rebukes Trump’s autocratic pretensions.
But while “No Kings” is a resonant and popular, it might be more analytically accurate to say “No Warlords.” After all, kings base their power on some claim (however spurious) to tradition-sanctioned legitimacy. Trump’s abuse of power is cruder than that, based on nothing more than his assertion that as president he should be able to order around anyone in the government (including law enforcement and the military) without checks from the judiciary or Congress. This is not kingly power—which even under its absolutist form was bound by tradition and concessions to powerful nobles—but something closer to the governance of a warlord, a ruler whose every command must be executed.
That Trump is an aspirant warlord is clear from the way he has tried to break down the tradition of keeping the military depoliticized. In the last few weeks Trump has taken a string of actions—ranging from turning a speech at Fort Bragg into a campaign rally to sending troops to quell protesters in Los Angeles—that make it clear that he wants the military to be subservient to himself alone.
Trump’s project of subduing the military is central to his authoritarianism. Pundits and historians who are skeptical of the claim that Trump is a fascist threat often point to the fact that he doesn’t have the mobilized mass movement of the classic fascist dictators: The Proud Boys might be annoying goons, but they hardly measure up to Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts or Adolf Hitler’s Brownshirts—organized terror gangs that smashed political foes. The attack on the Capitol on January 6 was a serious attempt to subvert democracy, but it also fizzled when the Capitol Police, supported by the National Guard, restored order. The MAGA movement, as befits the age of social media, is more about passive spectatorship than street battles.
But despite the limitations of MAGA as a mass movement, Trump has always had a clear path toward fascist-style governance. If Trump were able to overcome the traditional taboo against politicizing the military, he might then be able to destroy democracy. In lieu of MAGA Blackshirts, Trump could just command a MAGA military. He could also do the same with federal law enforcement, giving him a MAGA gestapo.
In Trump’s first term, a crucial moment of danger came when Trump wanted to use the military to crush protesters enraged by the killing of George Floyd. As I noted at the time, this was the clearest example of Trump’s authoritarianism, and the fact that military leaders resisted Trump’s attempt to use them as political tools helped save American democracy at a moment of maximum peril.
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With Trump’s second term, he’s clearly making an effort to remove any military resistance to his rule. On Tuesday, he gave a speech at Fort Bragg that broke with tradition by being highly partisan. Addressing troops, Trump said, “In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, they’re incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. They’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
Disturbingly, some of soldiers cheered Trump’s invective. But as the new site Miliary.com revealed, this applause was also a form of political manipulation, since the troops in the audience had been vetted for their beliefs:
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump’s recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.
One unit-level message bluntly said “no fat soldiers.”
Trump’s Fort Bragg speech was an orchestrated use of the military as a political prop. Trump merchandise was even sold at the base. As The New York Times notes, this speech “was just the latest in a string of high-profile efforts to reshape the military more in his own likeness.”
The Times provides a striking catalog of Trump’s politicization of the military:
It began with his administration’s decision to remove senior officers, many Black and female, from positions on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other command positions, reportedly as part of its initiative against diversity, equity and inclusion. It continued with his determination to reinstate and pay former service members who had been discharged after refusing Covid vaccinations, in violation of military health mandates. And it was on full display when he sent active-duty troops to create military zones along the US border with Mexico.
But it is best exemplified by Mr. Trump’s decision this week to deploy some 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines in the streets of Los Angeles after protests broke out over his immigration policies. The president is now pitting American forces directly against American citizens, most of whom are not violent and are simply angered by the Trump administration’s decisions.
At congressional hearings on Thursday, Representative Ro Khanna asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth if the administration would respect a Supreme Court decision that declared the deployment of troops into Los Angeles to be illegal. Disturbingly, Hegseth repeatedly refused to affirm that he would follow the law. This also is an example of how the tradition of the military’s being restrained by the Constitution is being replaced by warlordism.
Aside from the danger of dictatorship, Trump’s politization is also harming military morale. On Thursday, The Guardian reported, “California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.”
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Trump makes a curious sort of warlord. Unlike the great military despots of the past—ranging from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan—Trump was never a soldier himself. He notoriously avoided the draft during the Vienam War. In 1997, he said avoiding STDs while being single was his “personal Vietnam.” In 2015, Trump said about Senator John McCain that “he’s not a war hero.… He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Trump associates, including former senior White House advisers, report that in private he refers to soldiers who die in war as “losers” and “suckers.” (Trump denies making these comments.)
But Trump doesn’t have to respect the troops to be commander in chief, nor does he have to have a high regard for soldiers to govern as warlord.
Trump’s warlordism is merely an exaggerated version of a persistent American problem dating to the Second World War: the imperial presidency. As power has been increasingly centralized in the White House, the president has enjoyed an unchecked authority that is closer to that of an autocrat than of a statesman in a democracy. With the invention of nuclear weapons, American presidents became thermonuclear monarchs with the power of life and death over billions. As a mass movement coalesces to oppose Trump’s autocracy and warlordism, it will have to confront not just the lawlessness of one man but also the constitutional crisis created by the imperial presidency.
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