A historian of fascism is asked whether this was week was a turning point
I've felt echoes of that feeling the past few days, as downtown businesses boarded up their windows and the facts on the ground grew ever more fantastical.
Are we at the edge of some irreparable rupture in American democracy? Or is this just another strange and absurd chapter in a long series of them?
On Sunday, the president sent federalized National Guard troops into a city against the will of the state's governor for the first time in 60 years. On Thursday, California's senior senator was tackled to the ground by federal agents and handcuffed at a news conference.
Hundreds of active duty Marines were sent into the Los Angeles area, where for days they appeared to be performing heavily armed training exercises on what looked like a high school sports field. (A looming scoreboard, palm trees and jacaranda blooms were all visible behind their riot shields, according to a social media post from the U.S. Northern Command.)
The president and the governor are having a momentous fight about constitutional rights in the courts, and flaming each other with insults and photoshopped memes on Truth Social and X.
The ICE raids have thrown some Angelenos into a state of fear and virtual hiding. But for many others, ordinary life continues apace.
Mayor Karen Bass has repeatedly cautioned that L.A. is being treated like 'a grand experiment' — a testing ground for President Trump to see if he can usurp the authority of Democratic mayors or governors in other states.
Warning signs of democratic breakdown have been pointed out by scholars and Trump's critics since he took office for his first term in 2017 — so much so that many have grown numb to them. Has this week been any different?
I called Federico Finchelstein, a historian of fascism and dictatorships who chairs the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York, to ask whether he saw this week as a turning point for the country.
Finchelstein characterized Trump's federalizing of the California National Guard as a clear turn toward authoritarianism. He cited the move, along with attacks on the press and the judiciary and the manhandling of Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday, as assaults on democratic norms that 'create the conditions for a further erosion of democracy.'
But he hesitated about categorizing recent events as a turning point.
It's hard while living in the middle of history to know precisely where you stand, he explained.
'It's very difficult to know what is the exact outcome of this sort of militarization of politics,' Finchelstein said. 'What we know is that democracy is at the other end, and this path is towards either disabling, denigrating or even destroying democracy. It's hard to know where it ends.'
The outcome would also depend on more than Trump's next move, according to the historian.
History has shown that when anti-democratic attempts are met with institutional and public resistance, they are less likely to succeed, Finchelstein said.
'In other words, this is not the end of the story,' he told me.
A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Julia Wick, staff writerKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
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