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Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force—a military coup, that sort of thing. Second, a bit more stealthily, and legally—through legislation, executive decrees, and court decisions that hand more power to the leader.
Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.
That’s exactly what’s happening with Social Security. The Washington Post reported this week that the SSA is breaking down: Its website “crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” A Wall Street multimillionaire who probably doesn’t need his Social Security check and who has pledged that he will “100 percent work with DOGE” has already cut around 12 percent of the staff and doesn’t look like he’s stopping there.
In other words: Start by lying about the agency, with absurd and false claims about 140-year-olds cashing checks. Then wreck the agency so that its service becomes crap. Let public anger at it build. And in time, they can just dismantle it and privatize the greatest social insurance system ever devised by this government and put people’s financial fate in the hands of rich cronies. If that’s not chaos fascism, I don’t know what is.
Trump probably doesn’t have some secret plan. As we know, he doesn’t think far enough ahead. Elon Musk, however, probably does. It’s no accident he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” That statement either (1) reflected his ignorance of how both Social Security and Ponzi schemes work or (2) was made in full knowledge of how both work—that is, he knew it was nonsense, but he said it anyway because his goal is to destroy Social Security.
This applies to just about everything Trump and Musk are doing.
It applies even to Signalgate. Trump has contempt for rules and procedures, and so he appoints unqualified stooges like Pete Hegseth to run the world’s largest military, who share that contempt—who think being tough means showing the world that they can do anything they want with no consequences. Again—ignore the law, trash the rules, establish that procedure is whatever you say it is. Chaos fascism.
And it will almost certainly go unpunished. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that the Justice Department wasn’t the least bit interested in looking into it. Some GOP lawmakers are making noises about the need for an investigation of some kind. But really—are the GOP’s leaders in Congress, Senator John Thune and Representative Mike Johnson, really likely to green-light an investigation? Seems pretty unlikely to me, unless it’s done with the secret, express goal of exonerating all involved.
Some senators say the Pentagon inspector general should conduct a probe. OK, we might get that. But remember that Trump has already fired 17 inspectors general, so who’d really care if he fired one more? Break the rules, and then ensure that there’s no accountability. Chaos fascism.
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It’s important to note that the reason this can happen here is because of how our checks and balances in the government are structured. None of them are automatic, and the GOP has ensured they will not be used.
Congress can function as a check on the Executive, but only by passing laws (and, to a lesser extent, Senate approval, of appointments). So Congress has to take action to rein in the chaos (and, in the case of legislation, override a veto). If Congress takes no action, it cannot function as a check on the Executive at all. Essentially, their lack of action is permitting the chaos just as surely as what Elon Musk is doing.
Similarly, the Courts can function as a powerful check on the Executive, but they rely on someone challenging something done by the Executive, and that starts off a lengthy review process. Individual judges have a lot of discretion, but their rulings get reviewed and it can take a while for appeals to be exhausted. Our court system also relies in all parties having respect for its process and judgements, and it’s clear that this administration does not have respect for rulings it doesn’t like. So even if a ruling against it goes all the way through the appellate process and is “binding”, they are very likely to ignore it anyway, and start another lengthy review.
Both of these checks on the Executive have been effectively neutered, one by complicity and one by contempt. So Trump and Musk can do whatever the hell they want. It is always easier to tear down than build up. Even if, by some miracle, Congress changes hands in 2026, the Federal Administrative State will be a shell of itself, and while we set about to rebuild it Trump and Musk will loot it for their own enrichment.
The next Federal election is critical, precisely because the President is not on the ballot, so all the elections will be for Congress, and hyper-local. Musk has already proven he can buy a national election. If he is successful at buying 50 state elections as well, he may build up enough power in enough states to call for a Constitutional Convention, where they can rip the whole thing up and start over. I think that is Musk’s endgame, where he can turn the US into Apartheid-era South Africa, totally legally.