“We Intend to Defend Our Democracy”: The “No Kings” Protests of October 18, 2025

Earlier today I participated in one of a number of the planned “No Kings” protests that took place throughout the Twin Cities metro area.

The largest of these protests was in downtown Minneapolis (right) where an estimated 30,000 people gathered to send the message that they intend to defend democracy and the rule of law from the authoritarian rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration.

My friend Joseph and I attended a smaller protest of around 3,000 people in St. Paul, at the intersection of Randolph and Fairview Avenues (left).

The message of defending democracy against Trump’s increasingly dictitorial presidency was the same here as it was in Minneapolis and at each of the 2,600 “No Kings” protests that took place across the country and in every state. Indeed, with close to 7 million people nationwide attending today’s peaceful protests, it was the largest single-day of protest against tyranny in U.S. history.

Following are images that I took at today’s “No Kings” protest in St. Paul. They are accompanied by a number of excerpts from articles about “No Kings Day” 2.0. (For my post about the first “No Kings Day” in June, click here.)

[Today in Washington, D.C.] was awesome. We had hundreds of thousands of people on the street to protest Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. It was passionate, then it was joyful. There was a dance party on the steps of the Labor Department where people inflatable costumes. There were hysterical signs.

But there was a really clear message that we intend to defend our democracy by exercising our democratic rights. We’re not capitulating to Donald Trump and his authoritarianism, his effort to scare us into submission.

I think that Trump’s authoritarianism is getting worse and mobilizing more people, but I think his effort to intimidate is failing as well. And each time people turn out, each time people protest, each time people stand up, it makes it easier for the next set of people to do that. So we think that today, when all is said and done, it will have been the largest day of protest in American history.

All to defend our democracy, oppose the ICE raids, oppose the National Guard on our streets, oppose the illegal firings of federal employees, opposing the illegal shutdown of agencies. And more people want a government that works for us, not for Donald Trump and his oligarch friends.

. . . [P]eople are really worried about the fate of our country and understand that, in total, what Trump is trying to do is take away our democracy and replace it with authoritarian regime.

So some people may be more motivated by the pressure on universities or by the illegal abductions of immigrants or by the deployment of the National Guard, or by the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that’s protecting us from financial fraudsters, or by the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

But everybody understands whatever the thing that gets them going, it’s all part of a bigger tapestry of this authoritarian agenda, and they’re ready, willing, and passionate about standing up to it.

– Robert Weissman
Quoted in “‘We Intend to Defend Our Democracy,’
Says ‘No Kings’ Protest Organizer”
PBS Newshour
October 18, 2025

Authoritarianism feeds on fear. The No Kings Day protests showed that fear can be broken. Peaceful demonstrations signal more than opposition; they reveal a widespread sense of being ignored. The No Kings Day protests make visible what millions already know: Republican representatives understand their constituents are being harmed by this administration and have chosen silence. They no longer hold town halls. They no longer answer questions. Instead, they parrot Trump, labeling the protest a “hate America” rally, and frame participants as radical leftists or terrorists. The message is unmistakable – this administration not only refuses to listen, it no longer cares what people think.

Our government rests on majority rule, compromise, and the slow, difficult work of consensus. Dictators reject all three. Force replaces deliberation; opponents become “enemies within.” The message this regime delivers is not through debate, but through deployment—troops in the streets, mass arrests, and intimidation dressed up as law and order. Consent has been replaced by fear – the new currency of governance. I live in a community that historically votes Republican. The so-called “enemy within” are our neighbors, many of them lifelong conservatives. Like me, they have learned that when the choice is between tyranny and constitutional freedom, partisanship disappears. That is what makes the No Kings Day protests so remarkable. Their message is clear and loud: we are not afraid and we will not be intimidated.

– James Greenberg
Excerpted from “The No Kings Day Protests”
James’s Substack
October 19, 2025

Today, millions of Americans and their allies turned out across the United States and around the globe to demonstrate their commitment to American democracy and their opposition to a president and an administration apparently bent on replacing that democracy with a dictatorship.

Administration loyalists tried to claim the No Kings protests would be “hate America” rallies of “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed the Texas National Guard ahead of the No Kings Day protests, warning that “[v]iolence and destruction will never be tolerated in Texas.”

In fact, protesters turned out waving American flags and wearing frog and unicorn and banana costumes and carrying homemade signs that demanded the release of the Epstein files and defended Lady Liberty. They laughed and danced and took selfies and sang. City police departments, including those of New York City, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., said they had made no protest-related arrests.

In Oakland, California, Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic interviewed a man named Justin, asking him if, as a Black man, he had particular concerns about the actions of the Trump administration.

Justin answered: “You know . . . a lot of times I have a hopeless feeling, but . . . being out here today just reminds me about the beauty of America and American protests. And, you know, the fact that they tried to . . . stomp on this, step on this, you know, say it’s non-American, because that’s what I've been reading a lot about. No, this is the point of America right here: to be able to have this opportunity to protest. . . . [This] does not look like Antifa, Hamas, none of this stuff that they’re talking about. . . . [Y]ou know, this is the beauty of America.”

The No Kings demonstrations ran the gamut from hundreds of thousands of protesters in large, blue cities, to smaller crowds in small towns in Republican-dominated states. Together, they demonstrate that the administration’s claims to popularity are a lie. Such a high turnout means businesses and institutions that thought they must cater to the administration to appeal to a majority of Americans will be forced to recalculate. And the protests showed that Americans care fervently about democracy.

– Heather Cox Richardson
via social media
October 18, 2025

What happened on October 18 was a civic thunderclap. From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, from Atlanta to Seattle, Americans poured into streets, parks, bridges, and capitol steps under a single, simple banner: No Kings. Early tallies from organizers, municipal transit data, cell-mobility snapshots, and live aerial counts point to a turnout on the scale of the largest demonstrations in modern U.S. history. In city after city, the photos tell the same story: corridors of people, handmade signs, strollers and wheelchairs, clergy and veterans, students and seniors. It looked less like a rally than a referendum.

The most remarkable part was not the size. It was the discipline. Across hundreds of permitted marches and spontaneous gatherings, the overwhelming pattern was calm crowds, cooperative marshals, and largely routine interactions with local police. Volunteer de-escalators were everywhere. Medical tents, water stations, ADA escorts, “leave-no-trace” cleanups. In a political climate drenched in attempts to bait the public into televised chaos, millions refused the script.

Despite relentless efforts to frame the movement as dangerous, the arrest picture cut the other way. As of the first full sweep of police incident logs and verified media reports, there were no confirmed arrests of No Kings demonstrators for violence. The confirmed arrests tied to the day’s events were counter-protesters aligned with MAGA branding. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a woman in a Trump shirt was arrested after allegedly brandishing a firearm near marchers. In downtown Cincinnati, police took a female counter-protester into custody after she allegedly grabbed and tried to rip away an American flag from an older participant. Both cases were processed without incident. Everywhere else, the tape shows chants, speeches, and people going home.

That outcome was not an accident. Organizers built for it. The “peace first” posture was baked into the trainings, route plans, communications, and on-the-ground logistics. Crowd briefings reminded people how to film safely, how to avoid provocations, and how to exit quickly if needed. Legal hotlines were staffed. Rally MCs repeated the same refrain: “We are here to be seen, not to be baited.” When an event refuses to supply the violence its opponents are praying for, the narrative starves.

– Brent Molnar
via social media
October 20, 2025

They called it the “No Kings” rally for a reason.
Because power isn’t sacred just because someone grabs it.
Because democracy isn’t self-sustaining.
Because deep down, we all know that freedom has to be guarded, especially from those who crave control.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus stood in the shadow of an empire that demanded loyalty to Caesar. He refused. He preached a way of love, equity, and liberation so threatening to those in charge that Rome hung him on a cross. Not because he was “too spiritual.” But because he was too political for the comfort of the powerful.

When people filled the streets on October 18 shouting “No Kings”, they weren’t just talking about one man, they were invoking a truth as old as faith itself: no human being is meant to wield godlike power over others.

Not Caesar.
Not any president.
Not any would-be strongman whose ego demands our submission.

History has seen this story before. Every empire insists it’s different. Every would-be ruler says “trust me.” And every time, ordinary people have to decide whether they’ll stay quiet or if they’ll stand up.

Authoritarianism doesn’t start with military boots and torches. It starts with fear. With apathy. With churches blessing cruelty because it’s wrapped in the flag. With leaders who treat compassion as weakness and dissent as disloyalty.

That’s why progressive Christians are speaking up: because our faith requires it. The same love that moved Jesus to challenge empire calls us to do the same today.

This is not about left or right. It’s about whether we still believe in “we the people.”
It’s about whether we’ll trade our neighbors’ freedom for the illusion of control.
It’s about whether we’ll let history repeat itself or write a different ending.

Love resists empire.
It’s done it before.
It’s doing it now.
And it’s not about to quit.

– Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin
via social media
October 20, 2025

Above and below: The two-sided sign I’ve now taken to both today’s “No Kings” protest and the first one on June 14. For my thoughts on the overall message of my sign, click here.

I wore my “Omar Fateh for Minneapolis Mayor” shirt to the “No Kings” event I attended today. The man himself took part in the march and rally in downtown Minneapolis (right and below).

For more about Omar’s campaign, one which (clearly) I support, click here, here and here.

Related Off-site Links:
“We the People Will Rule!”: Millions Turn Out for “No Kings” Protests Against Trump Tyranny – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, October 18, 2025).
Millions Across All 50 U.S. States March in “No Kings” Protests Against Trump – Rachel Leingang and Edward Helmore (The Guardian, October 18, 2025).
Protesters Decry Trump Administration Policies in “No Kings” Rallies Across the U.S. – NPR News (October 18, 2025).
Minneapolis “No Kings” Rally Draws Out Thousands Opposed to Trump Policies – MPR Newshour (October 18, 2025).

UPDATES: The Country Showed Up – Marianne Williamson (Transform, October 19, 2025).
Long Live “No Kings” – William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift (The Bulwark, October 20, 2025).
“No Kings” Protests Are Just Not Enough – John Ross and Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, October 20, 2025).
Seven Million Turn Out for “No Kings” Protests Nationwide. Next Up, Massive Disruptions Backed by Unions? – Luis Feliz Leon (In These Times, October 20, 2025).
Troops on the Streets, a Polarized Country and Climbing Prices: Welcome to Trump’s “Golden Age” – Steven Greenhouse (The Guardian, October 20, 2025).
The “No Kings” Day Project Must Evolve From Protest to Civil Disobedience – Phil Wilson (Common Dreams, October 23, 2025).
Billionaires Support Groups Behind “No Kings,” But They Didn't Spend $300M to Fund Protests – Rae Deng (Snopes, October 24, 2025).
The “No Kings” Protests: An Affirmation of Democracy in the Face of Authoritarianism – Chloe Atkinson (Common Dreams, October 25, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Thoughts on the Eve of “No Kings Day” 2.0
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Bruce Fanger on Jesus’s Theology of No Kings
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• Norman Solomon: Quote of the Day – June 16, 2025

Images of the “No Kings” rally in St. Paul: Michael Bayly

James Greenberg on Trump’s “Larger Design” – the Construction of a Military Dictatorship

James B. Greenberg is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and the past president of the Political Ecology Society.

Yesterday Greenberg published the following commentary on his substack. I find it to be a very insightful though disturbing piece. Perhaps you will too.

_______________

As we are distracted by Trump’s latest headline, it is easy to miss the larger design. As an anthropologist, I have learned to look for patterns beneath the surface: the deeper structures and the ways systems of relationships interact. In this case, not much imagination was required. The design was already in print. Project 2025 spelled it out in extraordinary detail. Since Trump returned to office, it is clear he is not improvising. He is following a plan to dismantle the Bill of Rights, turn liberties into conditional privileges, and build a dictatorship in plain sight.

The first target was freedom of speech and of the press, for the First Amendment is the foundation of American democracy. In February 2025, the White House barred the Associated Press from coverage unless it renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” The AP refused and sued. Soon after, the Correspondents’ Association gave up managing the press pool, handing the White House control over access. The Pentagon then imposed a pledge requiring reporters to avoid publishing “unauthorized” material or risk losing credentials. When Mario Guevara, an immigrant journalist, was deported, the message to the foreign press was unmistakable: freedom of the press is conditional, revocable at any moment.

Trump’s assault on the public’s right to know has been steady, often carried out quietly through regulation and funding. His FCC launched investigations into CBS, NPR, and PBS. He issued an executive order slashing their support, and Congress soon followed with the Rescissions Act of 2025, stripping $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR sued, but intimidation moves faster than the courts. In this climate, budgets become weapons – starving independent outlets while allies thrive. Project 2025 explicitly called for breaking the independence of public broadcasting and tightening executive grip over information.

Bringing institutions to heel is only one side of the campaign. Bending language to serve power is the other. Protesters are labeled “domestic terrorists.” Immigrants are cast as “invaders.” Political opponents are branded “traitors.” The press is vilified as “the enemy of the people.” Stephen Miller, who shaped immigration bans, and Tom Fitton, whose legal campaigns helped suppress voter access, have pushed to designate Antifa and Black Lives Matter as terrorist organizations despite their decentralized character. These labels do more than stigmatize. They create an ambient climate of fear in which people censor themselves. A teacher skips a lesson on civil rights. A student deletes a protest photo from social media. A journalist rewrites a headline. None have been punished, but all expect they might be.

Protest is treated not as dissent but as insurrection, and the right to assemble has become a pretext for force. Trump has deployed National Guard units to Democratic cities over the objections of mayors and governors. At the border, he stages “shows of force” with troops against a supposed invasion. These operations are not about security; they are political theater, rehearsals for repression. And when ICE carried out a nighttime raid in Chicago – agents rappelling from helicopters, breaking down doors, and zip-tying children, including U.S. citizens, before separating them from their parents – it became clear that this was more than an enforcement action. It was a warning to the entire country, a preview of things to come.

Such rehearsals prepare the ground for the next step: the open talk of martial law and the Insurrection Act. His allies now float the idea of invoking both as solutions to unrest or even disputed elections. The precedent is not new. After his 2020 defeat, Michael Flynn openly advocated for military intervention to rerun the vote. We hear these threats so often they begin to sound routine. The National Guard appears so frequently in civic life that their presence begins to feel ordinary. Once the extraordinary feels normal, any crisis – immigration, protest, or fiscal standoff – can be used to suspend liberties. And history reminds us that emergencies, once declared, rarely end quickly.

The rule of law and the right to due process are also under assault. Visas and green cards have been revoked with little explanation. The Department of Justice has been weaponized against officials who resist Trump’s directives. Surveillance of journalists and activists has expanded, while loyal judges are promoted and critics discredited. The law, once a shield, now serves as a tool of discipline – punishing dissent, threatening critics, undermining its legitimacy.

Economic power has likewise been turned into a weapon. Institutions that resist the administration’s directives face financial retaliation. Public broadcasting has been stripped of federal funds. Nonprofits labeled “left-wing” are harassed by the IRS. Universities – the engines of knowledge and speech – are smeared as “anti-American” propaganda mills, threatened with the loss of federal grants and tax exemptions unless they conform. Allies are rewarded with contracts, subsidies, and favorable rulings. Funding, which once sustained civic institutions, has been twisted into a tool of political control. As Project 2025 recommended, opponents are to be defunded while allies are rewarded, and the state’s economic leverage is used to enforce loyalty.

And just as institutions are punished or rewarded, so too are the terms of political participation. The right to vote is being rewritten in real time. Trump loyalists now hold seats on the Election Assistance Commission and inside the DOJ’s voting rights division. His aim is nothing less than to rig the 2026 election. Districts are gerrymandered. Voter rolls are purged. Restrictions mount. With federal oversight rolled back, manipulation proceeds unchecked. Minority communities are targeted with disinformation campaigns that threaten penalties for voting. Elections may remain as ritual, but their substance is stripped away, staged to provide the illusion of legitimacy.

Even freedom of thought and belief has come under siege. In March 2025, Trump reestablished the 1776 Commission as a permanent office, tying education grants to “patriotic” curricula. His administration scrubbed federal websites of terms such as “climate change,” “LGBTQ,” and “environmental justice.” Museums that mount critical exhibits face threats to their funding. ABC, under political pressure, has announced it will cancel Stephen Colbert’s show at the end of the season. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended after a joke offended the administration. None of this is accidental. Project 2025 outlined the capture of education, culture, and public discourse. This is more than censorship – it is a narrowing of what may be studied, remembered, or even laughed at in public.

When NPR is defunded, when a foreign journalist is deported, when troops patrol city streets, the fingerprints of Project 2025 are unmistakable. Rights of speech and assembly are hollowed out. Due process bends to political ends. Elections are managed for appearance. Knowledge that contradicts the official narrative is silenced. Citizens are taught to behave as if their liberties have already vanished.

These are not isolated acts. They form a machinery of command, recognizable to anyone who has studied past regimes. What is at stake could not be clearer: the right to speak, the right to publish, the right to assemble, the right to due process, the right to vote, and the right to think and believe without coercion. As each is stripped away, democracy does not collapse in a single moment; it hollows out piece by piece, until only its forms remain.

Authoritarians fear resistance because they know it grows with every outrage, every injury, every life trampled under their power. Trump’s priority is to construct the machinery of repression. Ours must be to expose it, resist it, and refuse to normalize it. The plan is not speculative – it is operational, unfolding in full view. The only uncertainty is whether we will confront it with the clarity and resolve this moment demands.

– James Greenberg
“Constructing a Military Dictatorship:
A Strategic Outline of Authoritarian Drift”
James’s Substack
October 7, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
As Troops Invade Chicago, Trump Threatens to Jail the Mayor and Governor – Julianne McShane (Mother Jones, October 8, 2025).
Trump Destroys Another Guardrail of Democracy: Inspectors General – Steven Harper (Common Dreams, October 8, 2025).
Stephen Miller Says “Quiet Part Out Loud,” Claims Trump Has Unlimited “Plenary Authority” Before Going Silent in Interview – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, October 8, 2025).
“Trump’s Invasion”: Illinois Officials Denounce Troop Deployment to Chicago as ICE Escalates Raids – Democracy Now! (October 7, 2025).
“Legal Orders” and Trump’s Military – Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark, October 7, 2025)
“Illegal ... Unconstitutional ... Dangerous ... Wrong”: Texas National Guard Troops Invade Illinois – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, October 7, 2025).
Are We on the Road to a Totalitarian U.S.? – Ted Morgan (Common Dreams, October 7, 2025).
Trump’s Plan – Robert Reich (RobertReich.Substack, October 6, 2025)
The Shutdown as Strategy: Authoritarianism by Other Means – James Greenberg (James’s Substack, October 6, 2025)
Governors Warn of “Martial Law” and Trump “Invasion” as U.S. Judge Halts Troop Order – for Now – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, October 6, 2025).
White House Responds with “Authoritarian Propaganda” as Judge Blocks National Guard in Portland – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, October 5, 2025).
Now That Fascism Is Here – John Pavlovitz (The Beautiful Mess, October 4, 2025)
Chicago Mayor on Trump’s Threat to Use “Dangerous” Cities as “Training Grounds for Our Military” – Democracy Now! (October 1, 2025).
Is This the Beginning of the End for U.S. Democracy? – Amy La Porte (Common Dreams, September 30, 2025).
What to Do If the Insurrection Act Is Invoked – Daniel Hunter (Waging Nonviolence, April 4, 2025).

UPDATES: Why Has the Media Become So Vulnerable to Trump, and What Can We Do About It? – Robert Reich (RobertReich.Substack, October 9, 2025).
“Trump’s Gestapo”: Chicago Marches to Resist ICE and National Guard Deployment – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, October 9, 2025).
Who Are the Real American? We Are – Kirk Swearingen (Salon, October 11, 2025).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – October 6, 2025

See also:
• Phil Wilson Remembers “American Fascism’s First Casualty” and Warns That Donald Trump’s “MAGA Death Cult Is Coming for Us All”
• Marianne Williamson on America’s “Cults of Madness”
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – April 11, 2023
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy

James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”

James B. Greenberg is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and the past president of the Political Ecology Society.

Earlier today Greenberg published the following commentary on his substack. I find it to be a very insightful though sobering piece. Perhaps you will too.

_______________

I am in mourning for America. The grief feels heavy, like losing someone I loved. The country I grew up with – flawed yet still striving – feels almost alien now. The values that shaped me, liberty, equality, the freedom to dissent, no longer seem to have a place.

The reason for that grief was on display at Quantico, where Trump and Hegseth outlined what looked less like a campaign and more like a new order. They never used the word dictatorship, yet the intent was unmistakable. The “enemy within,” they warned, would now fall to the armed forces to confront. Opposition was no longer disagreement among citizens; it was insurgency.

In anthropology, words do not simply describe reality – they remake it. To call opponents “enemies within” is to push them out of the category of rival and into the category of threat. Once that shift takes hold, repression no longer appears a violation but a duty.

This is why the rhetoric matters. Trump’s call to repurpose cities as training grounds, Hegseth’s vow to instill “warrior culture,” the proposal to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War – none of these are stray lines. They are signals that the military is being reshaped from external defense toward domestic enforcement. This is not drift but a deliberate reshaping of the military’s purpose.

The ambiguity is calculated. They never said, “We are declaring a dictatorship.” Instead, they spoke in terms elastic enough to give cover. Defenders can dismiss it as metaphor. But for those in the room – military officers being told their real battle lies at home – the meaning was unmistakable.

History shows where this path leads. When Roman generals crossed the Rubicon, they redefined loyalty to the republic as loyalty to a man. In 20th-century Latin America, juntas seized power in the name of defending against “internal enemies.” Pinochet in Chile and Franco in Spain both used the rhetoric of national salvation to justify the silencing of opposition. And even here at home, the Red Scare and COINTELPRO blurred dissent and danger, branding citizens as subversives for the ideas they held. Each case began not with a decree, but with speeches and signals that invited the military and security services to turn inward. Democracies survive only when a clear boundary separates civilian politics from the armed forces; once that wall is breached, the garrison overtakes the government.

From an anthropological lens, the Quantico speeches worked as ritual. They staged a performance that bound insiders together through repetition of threat and loyalty. Civic space was turned into a symbolic battlefield; dissent cast as heresy. The words did cultural work: producing a shared understanding that domestic opposition is no longer subjects for debate, but targets to be subdued.

The danger is not abstract. Once opponents are named enemies, the shift cascades. Police departments remake themselves in the image of an army. Protesters are policed as insurgents. Communities already marked as suspect – immigrants, students, organizers – become targets of surveillance and force. Everyday civic life contracts until obedience feels like the only form of safety.

Was this a declaration of military dictatorship? Legally, nothing was signed into law. Culturally and politically, the declaration had already been made. It was a declaration without the name – a soft launch of a governing order where citizens are sorted into loyalists and enemies, where institutions are bent toward war footing, and where the armed forces are invited to cross the line from defending the republic to enforcing the executive.

Democracy doesn’t turn into dictatorship overnight; it seeps in through the steady drip of speeches, symbols, and directives that recast rivals as threats until repression feels inevitable. Quantico was one of those moments. And it is why I mourn: because the vocabulary of war is being welded onto everyday politics, and the country I loved drifts further from itself.

I grieve because the America I knew is slipping away – a flawed republic, yes, but one that still aspired to liberty, equality, and dissent. What remains is something harder, colder, and less familiar: a nation teaching its citizens to see neighbors as enemies, and its soldiers to turn inward. That is the loss I feel most deeply: not only of a country, but of the promise it once carried.

– James Greenberg
“Mourning America:
Quantico and the Drift Toward Military Rule”
James’s Substack
October 3, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Questions After Quantico – Mark Hertling (The Bulwark, October 3, 2025).
A “Green Light” for War Crimes? What Trump and Hegseth’s Lecture to Generals Really Means: An Interview with Eugene Fidell – Democracy Now! (October 1, 2025).
Furious Navy Commander Bobby Jones Speaks Out After Trump Military Stunt – MeidasTouch (October 1, 2025).
The “Department of War” Is Designed to Fight American Citizens – Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark, October 1, 2025).
“Hitleresque”: Retired Major General William Enyart Links Trump Speech to Nazi Propaganda – MSNBC (September 30, 2025).
Is This the Beginning of the End for U.S. Democracy? – Amy La Porte (Common Dreams, September 30, 2025).
Trump and Hegseth Want to Turn the Military Into a Tool of Personal Loyalty – Eugene Fidell, William D. Baumgartner and Steven J. Lepper (The Hill, September 4, 2025).

UPDATES: Now That Fascism Is Here – John Pavlovitz (The Beautiful Mess, October 4, 2025)
White House Responds with “Authoritarian Propaganda” as Judge Blocks National Guard in Portland – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, October 5, 2025).
Governors Warn of “Martial Law” and Trump “Invasion” as U.S. Judge Halts Troop Order – for Now – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, October 6, 2025).
Trump Troops “Deliberately Attacking Peaceful Protesters” in U.S. Cities, Senator Says – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, October 6, 2025).
Lawsuits Target Trump and Noem to Beat Back Federal “War on Chicago” – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, October 6, 2025).
The Rule of Law vs. the Rule of Trump – William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift (The Bulwark, October 6, 2025).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”

See also:
• Phil Wilson Remembers “American Fascism’s First Casualty” and Warns That Donald Trump’s “MAGA Death Cult Is Coming for Us All”
• Marianne Williamson on America’s “Cults of Madness”
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – April 11, 2023
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy

James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA

James B. Greenberg is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and the past president of the Political Ecology Society.

Earlier this week Greenberg published the following commentary on his substack. I find it to be a very informative and insightful piece. Perhaps you will too.

___________________

For a long time, I labored under the illusion that Republicans – once confronted with the true scope of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and the depth of his betrayal – would come to their senses. I imagined a reckoning. I expected disillusionment. What I failed to grasp was that while I became disillusioned, they did not.

My mistake stemmed from a misplaced faith in rationality. I underestimated the degree to which the MAGA movement had metastasized into something more than politics: a cult, a brand, an identity. It is no longer about policy or governance. It is about who they are – and, more importantly, who they are not.

Like religions, these identities are not sustained only by belief, but by practice. Rallies, chants, merchandise, even memes function as rituals – repeated acts that anchor belonging. The community reinforces itself by marking who is inside and who is outside, who is pure and who is profane. Once politics takes on the rhythm of liturgy, it no longer depends on persuasion. It depends on repetition.

Christian Nationalism and the culture wars have become the scaffolding of this identity. These aren’t just positions; they are articles of faith. Religions rest on the acceptance of propositions that the faithful take to be unquestionably true – “God is One,” “Jesus Christ is our Savior.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, once someone believes something to be true, they’ll spend the rest of their life defending it – patching it, propping it up, shielding it from collapse.

Trump captured this dynamic with unsettling clarity: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” That wasn’t a boast tossed off at a rally. It was recognition that once belief fuses with identity, loyalty is no longer conditional. It survives contradiction. It outlasts betrayal.

In this sense, loyalty to Trump mirrors the logic of domestic abuse. The victim internalizes blame, rationalizes harm, and defends the abuser. Even when the evidence is plain – Trump has not made America great again. He has re-engineered the economy to benefit the wealthy at the expense of his base – they persist in the belief that prosperity is just around the corner.

Anthropologists would recognize this as a revitalization movement: a promise of renewal offered to those who feel dispossessed, framed as a return to a lost golden age. At its center is a messianic figure, cast as uniquely chosen to redeem and restore. His failures become tests of faith, his betrayals reframed as sacrifices on the path to deliverance.

They are told that the undocumented stole their jobs, when in truth it was globalization, automation, and the erosion of labor protections. They are promised that tariffs will bring back manufacturing, despite decades of structural offshoring and corporate consolidation. These are not policy errors – they are narrative strategies, and their power lies in how they redirect anger away from the architects of economic abandonment. Deindustrialization, union-busting, and deregulation hollowed out communities, yet instead of naming corporate power or state retreat, the story fixes blame on scapegoats who cannot fight back. This is not just misdirection – it is a political economy of grievance, transforming material dispossession into cultural warfare.

So why can’t the spell be broken?

Because belief, once weaponized, becomes a fortress. It resists contradiction, metabolizes betrayal, and punishes dissent. The MAGA movement is not simply a political coalition – it is a system of meaning. And systems like that do not collapse under the weight of facts, but when the stories that sustain them lose their grip.

Collapse rarely comes from external critique. It begins within, when the story starts to fray – through promises of prosperity that never arrive, scandals that cut too deep, or the slow realization that the narrative no longer explains the world, no longer offers dignity, coherence, or agency.

Belief systems tied to identity are especially resilient. They absorb failure by reframing it as persecution. They turn betrayal into proof of righteousness. They survive not because they are true, but because they are useful – psychologically, socially, politically. And when alternative narratives emerge – ones that offer a clearer sense of self, a more honest reckoning with reality – they are met not with curiosity but with hostility.

This is why appeals to reason fall flat. The MAGA movement is not a debate. It is a worldview. And worldviews do not yield to evidence; they yield to rupture.

If rupture is rare, then resilience must be cultivated. Not through fact-checking alone, but through narrative reformation – stories that offer coherence without conspiracy, dignity without domination, and agency without scapegoating.

We have glimpses of what this looks like. When labor movements organize around dignity on the job rather than resentment of the outsider, they create belonging through solidarity. When local communities reclaim public institutions — schools, libraries, clinics – they generate meaning that resists privatization and fear. These efforts are fragile, but they remind us that counter-narratives are possible when they are lived as well as told.

That means confronting the architecture of belief not with contempt, but with clarity. It means recognizing that for many, MAGA is not a political position – it’s a survival strategy. And if we want to dislodge it, we must offer something more resilient than resentment. We must offer belonging.

The work ahead is not just political. It is anthropological, in how people make meaning together; ecological, in how survival depends on the world we share; and narrative, in how stories anchor belonging. And it begins with the courage to name what’s broken – and the imagination to build what comes next.

– James Greenberg
“Beyond Facts: The Identity Politics of MAGA”
James’s Substack
September 17, 2025

See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”

See also:
• Phil Wilson Remembers “American Fascism’s First Casualty” and Warns That Donald Trump’s “MAGA Death Cult Is Coming for Us All”
• Marianne Williamson on America’s “Cults of Madness”
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – April 11, 2023
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy

James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”

James B. Greenberg is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and the past president of the Political Ecology Society.

Last week Greenberg published the following commentary on his substack. It’s a timely and insightful piece, and one that I find in many ways hopeful. Perhaps you will too.

___________________

We are living through a moment in which authoritarianism is no longer merely a threat. It is an organizing principle, a mode of governance that normalizes cruelty, criminalizes dissent, and hollows out the very institutions built to protect the public. The executive orders and legislative measures being pushed today are not bureaucratic accidents. They are acts of political redesign.

What replaces democratic law doesn’t need new institutions. It rewires the ones we already have to serve a different purpose. Law is not discarded; it is weaponized – not to defend the public, but to protect power.

To resist this is not only a political act. It is a historical one. We are shaping the memory of what was accepted, what was contested, and what was possible. Each refusal to comply, each protest, legal challenge, policy safeguard, or act of moral courage becomes part of the long record that future generations will study when they ask what we did in the face of creeping tyranny.

Authoritarianism doesn’t only rely on repression. It thrives on resignation. It tells us nothing can be done, that resistance is futile, that hope is naïve. But history does not support this. The fall of every repressive system – from the plantation economy to apartheid to the Berlin Wall – was not the result of inevitability but of struggle. Accumulated over time. Advanced at great cost. But sustained.

Standing up now may not mean defeating a regime in a single act. It may mean refusing collaboration, protecting a threatened colleague, exposing corruption, or showing up for a neighbor. These acts may seem small. They are not. They are part of the infrastructure of resistance: the human infrastructure on which every democratic revival has depended.

The same perspective holds when we confront climate collapse. The atmosphere, like history, records everything. Carbon released in 1850 is still warming the Earth. The emissions we generate today will linger for centuries. And the ecological systems we’ve disrupted – ice sheets, ocean currents, forests – are shifting in response on timescales far longer than those of our institutions.

We are told it’s too late. That the damage is done. That nothing we do matters. But that defeatism only makes collapse more likely. The truth is: every tenth of a degree we prevent, every ecosystem we protect, every just policy we implement shapes the conditions of life for generations. These are not gestures. They are boundaries: of habitability, of hope, of survival.

This isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s a civilizational one. Climate change magnifies inequality, accelerates displacement, and exposes every crack in the systems meant to mediate power. Its effects fall heaviest on those least responsible. It is not a problem of carbon alone, but of political economy – of systems that reward extraction, commodify nature, and externalize harm.

But not all futures are lost. The choices we make now matter, not only for their immediate effects but for the pathways they open or foreclose. Resistance and renewal are not separate acts. They are part of the same long arc of care. That arc is held up by relationships: between people and place, between generations, between those who came before and those who are not yet born.

We are the inheritors of choices others made. And we are now the ones who must choose what to defend, what to dismantle, what to remember, and what to become.

This all matters because the dominant systems we live under are designed to make us forget. Authoritarianism relies not only on force but on erasure: of memory, of alternative ways of being, of solidarity, of history itself. Political repression and climate denial function in similar ways. Both depend on distraction and disconnection. They thrive on making the unacceptable seem inevitable.

But memory is a form of resistance. And attention is a form of care. Choosing what to remember, what to notice, teach, preserve, and defend is one way we stay human under systems that seek to render us fungible.

None of this guarantees an outcome. But it guarantees that nothing we do is meaningless. Every action, every refusal, every effort to repair is a form of presence that extends beyond the self. We are not spectators. We are participants in a long and tangled chain of causality. That brings with it responsibility, but also the extraordinary potential for transformation.

With what’s going on, we often feel powerless, as if history is something done to us rather than something we participate in. But that sense of smallness obscures a deeper truth: each of us shapes history, not only in our own time but for generations to come. Every action has consequences. Some are immediate, visible, and measurable. Most ripple outward in ways we rarely see, accumulating like sediment in a riverbed, altering the course of things long after we’re gone.

Our very existence is the product of such accumulations. The atoms in our bodies were forged in stars that exploded billions of years ago. We are composed of particles born in the Big Bang, shaped by cosmic events we’ll never witness. Our biological inheritance stretches back through eons, through the first self-replicating molecules in a primeval sea, through ancestors who endured, adapted, resisted.

What we call the present is only a cross-section of that deeper continuity: of energy, matter, and meaning moving forward. And we too are part of that movement. Our choices today, even the smallest ones, carry forward into futures we cannot predict. The same is true for information and practice. Knowledge accumulates, adapts, and corrects itself – but it doesn’t vanish. What we record, teach, preserve, or refuse becomes part of an ongoing inheritance. It enters the world as something real, with the potential to grow, resist, or transform.

A deep time ethic demands more than imagination. It requires commitment – to act not only for today’s outcomes, but for consequences that unfold over decades, centuries, or longer. Most of our systems, political, economic, even academic, are built around short-term returns. But the crises we face now – ecological collapse, democratic erosion, systemic dispossession – unfold on long and uneven timelines. Meeting them requires a horizon of responsibility that stretches far beyond our own comfort or lifespan.

From an anthropological view, agency is not only personal; it is always social. It emerges through relationship, memory, and the accumulation of shared action. Movements arise not from singular events but from networks of care, refusal, and solidarity. They rarely move in straight lines. They advance by persistence, retreat, reconfiguration. And over time, they reshape what is possible.

No authoritarian regime, no extractive order, no imperial system has lasted forever. All have eventually been undone by the patient force of collective will. But that will must be cultivated and remembered.

Indigenous traditions remind us of this differently. In many of these worldviews, we do not stand apart from time – we are woven into it. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our grandchildren. Responsibility is not heroic. It is relational. It lives in ritual, stewardship, kinship, and story. Time is not a line but a cycle. Consequence is not isolated to individuals; it moves through communities, watersheds, ecosystems, and generations. These are not abstractions. They are living systems of accountability that challenge the extractive worldview and offer an alternative rooted in endurance rather than domination.

Remember this: we are all powerful, not in theory but in action. Our voices and relationships matter. When we remember this, we reclaim the future from the logic of inevitability and become ancestors worth remembering.

– James Greenberg
“Why Connection – Not Control –
Is Our Greatest Source of Power”
James’s Substack
July 30, 2025

See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions