00:00And for more, let's cross to New York. Ruth Ben-Ghiad is professor of history at New York University, author of the New York Times bestseller, Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present. Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:13Glad to be here.
00:15Based on the past, how would you characterize Stephen Miller? Is he the ideologue? Is he just a strategist? What role is he playing?
00:26He's an ideologue. I do see him as an ideological fanatic. And he is in my book, which was written during the first Trump administration.
00:39He's very important as a kind of theorist of the idea of population engineering based on, you know, getting rid of immigrants.
00:49He's consistently echoed right-wing narratives of Putin and Orban and others in Europe.
00:58He's very connected to this kind of transnational community, seeing this as a crusade to save white Christian civilization.
01:08His grandparents were Holocaust survivors, but he has embraced the cause of white Christian civilization.
01:14And so he's been depicting this these protests in Los Angeles as a kind of existential fight and putting this thing that's so dangerous is he's he's talking about this.
01:32I kind of try to manufacture this crisis, which is a crisis of the whole nation, which pits an internal enemy,
01:39which are criminal, illegal aliens, as he calls it. And and Secretary of Defense Hegseth uses the same script, same words and an external enemy.
01:50They're colluding with an external enemy, and that is foreign terrorists and drug cartels, this kind of transnational shadowy criminal elements.
01:59And then he's inserting this is the very the new and dangerous part, a third element, which is part of this, which is protesters, which were labeled by President Trump as insurrectionists.
02:11So once you start labeling domestic protesters, civilians, as part of this criminal mix, you're in very you're in uncharted territory.
02:22And that is why there's this recourse to National Guard and active duty Marines.
02:28And how much traction is he getting? We're speaking between the beginning of those riots in Los Angeles and next Saturday,
02:36where Donald Trump will be having a military parade on his birthday while there are no King's Day protests in many cities across the U.S.
02:45Yes. And and President Trump is doesn't want his birthday parade marred by any protesters.
02:54So he's already announced that there'll be any protests will be met with heavy force.
03:01And so, you know, many people see this as this whole thing as a kind of manufacturing in a crisis to justify a kind of crackdown.
03:10And I see this as when when we start to have federalized National Guards and an infantry battalion of Marines that has served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
03:24No wonder, as you said in your reportage, they're still training because they're not used to de-escalation.
03:32They're they're a battalion that fights enemies in the field.
03:37And so now they're supposed to be on the streets of Los Angeles.
03:40So this is obviously what some see as an authoritarian use of of the military.
03:47And that's why also it's getting so much attention.
03:50But there are those who say this is theater.
03:53They're going to stay barracks mostly or just in front of one or two federal buildings.
03:58And that perhaps, yeah, democracy may be under assault, as the governor of California says.
04:04But the United States has a court system.
04:07And in the end, there will be checks and balances.
04:10Well, the legal pushback against in general, this administration, which has been acting with a speed, rapidity that is unknown in actually other early, early months of other authoritarians, early Putin, first months of Orban.
04:31They don't have anything like the speed of the violations of rule of law that are going on.
04:38And in fact, we're in a period of testing since January 20th.
04:43We've had, you know, individual incidents.
04:46Each one of them breaks the taboo.
04:48We had the arrest of a judge.
04:50We had the arrest of a mayor, the mayor of a major city, Newark, New Jersey.
04:54And now we have the spectacle of active duty troops who could be on the streets but are being trained and mobilized.
05:06So each one of these things habituates the public.
05:10And Donald Trump is a man of images.
05:12He's a man of messaging.
05:13He understands that you have to condition the public.
05:17Each of these is a test.
05:18So I also see Los Angeles right now as not only a test of executive power over an insubordinate governor, Gavin Newsom of California, but a test to habituate the public to a different role for the military, which Donald Trump is on record for years saying he would like a military that's loyal to him.
05:40Which is why the former general of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, spoke out, even calling Trump a fascist before the election.
05:51And are we dealing with something akin to fascism or is this simply an authoritarian bend by one man?
06:03I'm originally a historian of fascism, but I use the word authoritarian because, honestly, Donald Trump has always been inspired as much by communist leaders.
06:17He's lauded China's system of justice.
06:20He's made friends with Kim Jong-un, as well as right-wing authoritarians.
06:26And what he wants is the eternal authoritarian dream of a boundless power, and all institutions have to be remade according to that mandate, and the military is supposed to be no exception.
06:41And is there a precedent in U.S. history?
06:48I mean, the National Guard was federalized and sent out during the civil rights era.
06:54There have been precedents, but we have to see it in context.
07:00It's this, as well as the roundups by, you know, masked bands of ICE agents, and who, you know, the images of this look like what happens in Turkey under Erdogan, an authoritarian leader himself, where you'll be minding your own business.
07:18And if you're considered an enemy of the state, you know, masked bands and in plainclothes come and stuff you into a van and take you away.
07:26And that has been happening even to international students, to all kinds of people, and now these ICE roundups.
07:31And this is why people are out protesting.
07:35And the question is, how many of these people are out protesting?
07:38Because you talk about those that are energized behind Donald Trump.
07:42There are those who are energized against them.
07:45You talked earlier about the general population just being made to feel as though this is the new normal.
07:52Is Donald Trump succeeding?
07:54Is it the new normal?
07:54It's not clear if he's going to succeed.
07:59And the fact that protests, that people are actually, despite the crackdowns, people are going out, ordinary people are going out on behalf of the vulnerable.
08:10That's the real image that this state doesn't want.
08:14They don't want people to see examples of empathy, of kindness, of trying to protect the vulnerable.
08:21So it's not clear to me what the end will be.
08:26But what we do know is that this mobilization of force with thousands of National Guard, again, calling up Marines who have fought abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan,
08:38is completely disproportionate to the threat presented by the protesters.
08:43And that's where the accusations of theater and performance come in.
08:48One final question for you, Ruth Ben-Ghiad.
08:51The period of history that you studied, the 1920s, the 1930s, the mass medium of the day was radio.
08:59You also had movies in those days to get your message across.
09:03In the age of social media, is the political agenda different?
09:11You know, one of the things I found in writing this book that goes over 100 years is that the scripts and the narratives are very similar.
09:22Mussolini talked about the need to, you know, crack down against criminals coming over the border.
09:30So did Pinochet.
09:31That's very important.
09:32Chile and the military dictatorship, very important.
09:35But social media allows for the circulation of propaganda, and we see that we're in a culture of images now.
09:43Think about the importance of TikTok and Instagram.
09:46And so Donald Trump is a leader who knows very well from being a reality TV host how important images are in cementing public perceptions and changing those perceptions.
09:59And he's been very successful, such as with election denial and having a cult of personality, which I believe he has, using images very effectively.
10:10And this is no exception, this episode.
10:13Ruth Ben-Ghiad, so many thanks for joining us from New York City.
10:15Ruth Ben-Ghiad, so many thanks for joining us from New York City.
