Over the past few years, there has been an alarming surge of coups d’état across the world, particularly in Africa. The most common definition of a coup is an illegal attempt to seize control of the government. The seizure of power by coup leaders is often justified by pointing to poor governance and/or deteriorating security situations.

Coups are typically irregular transfers of power that occur in countries with weak democratic institutions and may be carried out by military or civilian elites. Consolidated democracies have long prided themselves of being immune to the conditions that generate coups d'etat, but the Trump phenomenon in U.S. politics seems to suggest that there are no absolutes, and that liberal democracy can be brought down.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was a coup attempt incited by outgoing president Donald Trump, and can be best described as an “attempted auto-coup.” Yet, shockingly enough, not only wasn’t Trump held accountable in the end for being criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election but was allowed to run again for the presidency in 2024. And what is even more shocking is that he prevailed in his third presidential bid by winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.

Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State.

Both Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. Citizens’ support not just for a democracy-eroding leader but for one who repeatedly promised during his campaign to be a dictator, even if only for one day, is ample evidence to make the case that the end of democracy in the U.S. (or whatever is left of it as the country was never designed to be democratic) is upon us.

Indeed, an actual neo-fascist coup is now underway. Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State. Trump had promised on numerous occasions during his campaign to “demolish the deep state,” and even offered specific details for how he planned to do so. And this is exactly what is happening right now.

During his first month back in office, Trump signed a plethora of executive orders which ranged from a militarized crackdown on immigration and pardoning those who had taken part in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt to shutting down scores of federal agencies and starting mass layoffs across governments. By declaring himself above the law, Trump’s intent is to use executive power not for the purpose of dismantling the “deep state” in order to make federal government more efficient and therefore more responsive to citizen needs, but rather in order to take over government and have it run by loyalists, by people who would faithfully obey the commands of the “Great Leader.”

The aims behind this neofascist coup are threefold: Oligarchic state capture; white Christian nationalism as the hegemonic project; and the rise of a new U.S. empire.

Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.” Dismantling the government bureaucracy is seen by the aspiring dictator and the world’s richest person as an essential course of action if “powerful individuals or corporations” are to have absolute freedom in creating rules and policies that serve their own benefit, at the expense of society. Trump and Musk are both fervent believers in the “natural right” of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit.

Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.”

The assault on

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