In recent days, the spectacle of state power abusing American citizens has reached critical mass. Coast to coast, masked thugs are dragging Americans off by their clothes and hair. Peaceful protestors branded as “terrorists” are being shoved into unmarked vans. Untold numbers of immigrants with and without documents have already disappeared into an American gulag. Even city cops are being tear gassed by masked federal agents.
All without due process.
Most of us are appalled. But not all. Some of these activities have been recorded, set to music and released by the Trump administration for the viewing pleasure, presumably, of MAGA fans. As artifacts of this time, these little works of art don’t reach for the mythologizing grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl (that will come later, surely), but they capture the granularity of the American 21st century fascist aesthetic, which is, of course, the Marvel comic.
Around the time Trump rode down the golden escalator to blame “Mexican rapists” for America’s problems, America slipped through a wormhole into a Freakshow of cartoonish evil. Trump, the saurian reality show impresario, overseeing a cast of characters with analogues in comic books or horror classics. The senior official behind the assault on American cities is a dead ringer for Nosferatu. Trump advisor Roger Stone, dandy in bespoke Penguin suits, bares his teeth like a Tasmanian devil. The Health and Human Services Secretary had a literal dead worm in his brain. “Stormy” and “Pecker” starred in the Presidential sex scandal, a “Trashelle” in another. Raven-haired plastic-fantastic villainess Laura Loomer is a millennial Cruella DeVil. And a shaky dry drunk weekend anchorman has nominal control over the most lethal military in human history.
As the administration ramps up its assault on American cities, the Marvel movie production values are undeniable. Over the weekend, right wing influencer Benny Johnson went to Chicago with ICE, donned a flak vest and got to cosplay warrior, selfie-sashaying past a line of sign-holding protesters he called “terrorists.” He later created an AI-generated video of himself as Batman, battling sombrero-wearing “terrorists.”
Benny makes a fitting mascot for this phase of the MAGA insurrection. Like all MAGA influencers, he’s a longtime fraud whose shamelessness helped him fail upward. Sacked for plagiarism not only by mainstream media but by a right wing outlet, he was rescued from oblivion by Russian covert disinformation money that literally made him rich and famous.
Now, like all the superstar MAGA influencer-bros, Benny leans on performative uxoriousness (they all profess to be happily married), fake-Christian sanctimony, and racist/misogynist political insult comedy. Tweeting out his slick embed video, he announced, “From tunnels under Trump Tower to the most targeted ICE facility, we faced violent Antifa, chaos, and criminals on the run.” Anyone who bothered to actually watch the video didn’t see any violence from the sign-holding protesters, and the only chaos appeared to be among the twitchy men in flak vests.
Before he “deployed” to the streets, he snagged an interview with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. In the video, they hug and then have a chat… about Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl. For those blissfully unaware of MAGA’s buffet of racialist obsessions, they’ve lately been losing it over the NFL’s choice of halftime entertainment. Bad Bunny, born and raised in Puerto Rico, a US territory, is an American citizen. But because he sings mostly in Spanish and is vocally anti-Trump, MAGA world views his selection as a personal affront, a pro football diss to the greater whiteness project.
Bad Bunny outright said that he excluded the US from his forthcoming world tour because of fears that ICE would deploy immigration raids targeting his fans, something Benny brought up in his video. He tees up Kristi Noem: “What is your message to Bad Bunny? Will there be ICE enforcement at the Super Bowl?”
“We’ll be all over that place,” replies the fake frontier woman and unrepentant puppy-killer. “We are going to enforce the law. You shouldn’t be coming to the Super Bowl unless you are a law-abiding American citizen.”
(As if any undocumented immigrant would have the thousands of dollars for a ticket or the audacity to come around one of the most heavily guarded sporting events in America.)
The fact that two adults – one of whom is overseeing an extralegal assault on a major American city they claim is “under siege” by the left– appear to be chiefly concerned with the ideology of Super Bowl halftime entertainment is laughable.
During the presidential debate, Kamala Harris stated of Trump: “He’s not a serious person.” His greatest living biographer, Michael Wolff, calls him “an idiot.” But the spectacle is not supposed to be serious. Trump is an idiot savant when it comes to entertainingly manipulating race and class grievances.
The cartoon world his voters bought into last November has now turned dark, real and serious. Hundreds of Texas National Guard troops are headed up to Chicago, dispatched in accordance with Trump’s wishes, in defiance of judges and the governor of Illinois. A West Coast federal judge has managed to stave off the deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon (where the chief of police is on record that the so-called emergency is a tiny protest taking place within one square block of the city). How long before armed men with Dixieland accents are shoving northern cops aside in the northern cities?
After ICE’s Blackhawk helicopter assault on a Chicago apartment building, right wing social media justified it by sharing reports of “30 shootings” in the city over the weekend. Sadly, 30 shootings in a weekend is not a lot by American standards. It is less than average. This year, there have been 11,359 gun deaths and 20,574 gun injuries nationwide. And according to the CDC, last year, the states with the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000 were Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The lowest were New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
Fox “News” has done its part for a decade at least, terrorizing white rural and suburban Americans with stories about urban crime infernos. That myth of blue city violence is a new Big Lie pretext for the Insurrectionist in Chief to realize a dream he’s cherished since at least January 6, 2021.
Would he really invoke the Insurrection Act? He footsied around with that question last night. Maaaybe …
Kinda depends: how much American carnage will it take to make us forget Trump-Epstein? This morning, Pam Bondi remained silent at a Congressional hearing when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), asked her if there were pictures of “Trump with half-naked young women” in the DOJ’s Epstein files.
She didn’t say no.
Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.
Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow
