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Trump has made terror attacks almost inevitable - and will use them to solidify his grip on power [1]
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Date: 2025-04-20
Timothy Snyder writing at Substack has provided a devastating analysis of just how vulnerable Trump has made America to terror attacks, both domestic and foreign. If that wasn’t bad enough, Snyder predicts how Trump will seize on any such attack to further solidify his authoritarian rule.
..In just three months, the Trump people have made the unthinkable much more likely. They have created the conditions for terrorism, and thus for terror management. This is true at several levels. Most obviously, they have debilitated the services that detect terrorist threats and prevent attacks: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA is a foreign intelligence service. The FBI is the federal police force. The NSA, which specializes in cryptography and foreign signals intelligence, is part of the Department of Defense. Homeland Security is a cabinet-level department that amalgamates a number of functions from immigration control through disaster relief and anti-terrorism. Overall guidance over the intelligence agencies is exercised by Tulsi Gabbard, who is known as an apologist for the now-overthrown Assad regime in Syria and the Putin regime in Russia. The director of the FBI is Kash Patel, an author of children's books that promote conspiracy theories, and a recipient of payments from sources linked to Russia. Patel plans to run the agency from Las Vegas, where he resides in the home of a Republican megadonor. The deputy director of the FBI is Dan Bongino, a right-wing entertainer who has called the FBI "irredeemable corrupt" and indulged in conspiracy theories about its special agents. He now draws FBI special agents away from their usual duties to serve as a personal bodyguard. The director of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem, who lacks relevant expertise.
Snyder goes on to detail just how bad things are, and how deep the damage goes. He mentions DOGE and Elon Musk in passing — see the companion diary here.
He lists three groups as likely to be perpetrators of a major terrorist attack in the United States: “native right-wing nationalists or white supremacists (“domestic violent extremists”), Islamicists, and Russians.”
He notes domestic attacks from the right are now more likely. Trump’s pardon of January 6 attackers sent a message. They feel empowered, or conversely may be impatient that things aren’t happening fast enough. Islamicists have reason to be incited by Trump’s call for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, ordering strikes in Yemen, etc. Trump is also choosing to ignore threats from Russia, even though they have been engaging in cyber attacks for years, and have been carrying out assassinations and sabotage in Europe, and paying others to do so.
All of the systems, agencies, watchdogs, and people we rely on to protect us from threats have been disabled, compromised, eliminated, or otherwise rendered ineffective, across the board.
A Terror Attack is only the Start — What Comes Next will be Worse
Timothy Snyder predicts that if and when there is a major terror attack, the Trump administration will use it as a tool to solidify their rule. He quotes #18 from his 20 lessons on Tyranny from the 20th Century.
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.
Does anyone think the Trump regime would not hesitate to use any attack for its own advantage? Does anyone think the Trump regime would not seek to avoid any responsibility and shift the blame to others. Does anyone think the die-hard Trumpets would not demand Trump seize total power — or that the rest of us might have a reflex desire to have someone do something?
Snyder:
I wish that terrorist attacks were a moment when government could be trusted. But the temptation, for any government, is to take the shock and to divert it in a convenient direction. And the temptation, for us, is to imagine that our leaders will rise to the occasion. After 9/11, I listened to President Bush address the nation, sitting in my pickup, on the driveway outside a friend’s house. Though my own politics were very different, I remember the pull inside me, the wish to believe that he would do the right thing. I didn’t let myself believe anything of the sort, but I remember the feeling: and it is that tug that we cannot let get the best of us. Our present government would be the last to resist the temptation to exploit terror. Musk-Trump would, I fear, make little if any attempt to apprehend the responsible people, especially if they are Americans or Russians. They might blame the Democratic Party, or Americans they hate for other reasons, or the opposition generally, or Canadians or Ukrainians or other Europeans. They will likely try to put an end to the American republic.
Read the whole thing. Forewarned is forearmed.
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