{"id":84608,"date":"2025-08-02T07:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T06:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=84608"},"modified":"2025-08-02T07:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T06:45:08","slug":"trump-takes-another-fascist-step-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/08\/02\/trump-takes-another-fascist-step-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump takes another fascist step forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times reported<\/a> this last night:<\/p>\n

President Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market, saying without evidence that the data were \u201cmanipulated\u201d and that he was firing the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official responsible for pulling together the numbers each month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is Orwellian in the extreme. The era of the Ministry of Truth has arrived. For those not familiar, a Google search suggests:<\/p>\n

In\u00a0George Orwell<\/span><\/a>'<\/span><\/span>s novel\u00a0Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/a>,<\/span>\u00a0the Ministry of Truth, or\u00a0Minitrue<\/a>,<\/span> is one of the four governmental ministries in the totalitarian state of Oceania. <\/span><\/span>Its primary function is the dissemination of propaganda and the manipulation of historical records to align with the Party's ideology.\u00a0It is a place where lies are manufactured and truth is systematically distorted.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is precisely what Trump is now trying to do. A fascist, authoritarian leader cannot face the truth. The news must always be good, and as they want it.<\/p>\n

We are living in very dangerous times, as I seem to have said for a while now, but all I feared is coming true. It is not only obvious that Trump lives inside his own fantasy, but that he wants all of us to join him in that fantasy, and has the power to try to make that totalitarian and fascist dream of his come true.<\/p>\n

Trump is already destroying the US Constitution and the powers within it that are meant to constrain his ability to rule by decree. Now he wants to ensure that people do not know that his plans are totally destructive.<\/p>\n

He will not, of course, be able to hold back the truth for long. But the possibility of an ugly conflict when his fantasy meets reality cannot be avoided now, and has to be thought about as a real risk.<\/p>\n

This is profoundly worrying, because when what even approximates to the truth in the neoliberal world is abandoned, what happens next is simply unknown, but all the precedents suggest that the outcomes are never good for humankind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times reported this last night: President Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market, saying without evidence that the data
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,14,203,106,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-corruption","category-fascism","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84609,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84608\/revisions\/84609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}