THE OTHER SIDE: Going back

On July 1, 2024, The New York Times directed our attention to yet another campaign threat coming from Donald Trump, a man who loves to threaten:

I imagine most people paid little attention. But there is a very big difference between campaign rhetoric and the exercise of the awesome power of the presidency—especially after Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court’s decision to transform our president into a king and provide him immunity.

First off, let me apologize and acknowledge that I got it wrong. Big time. People often say of their mistakes, “Well, it’s not like your life depends on it.” But, it is pretty clear that people’s lives have depended on it ever since Donald Trump’s MAGA judges have worked to make America in their image: the right-wing Christian autocracy they love so much. Exhibit A: Dobbs. It is very likely, with Trump’s victory, that we are going to have to delete “we’re not” from Kamala Harris’ slogan about “going back.”

Human history is filled with similar tragedies: Throughout time, in every corner of the globe, authoritarians have fed on popular discontent, seized power, or been granted it, amplifying hate and distrust as they turned one faith against another, pitted one race against another, men against women, and exploited the political divide.

Over the past decades, we watched as the unacceptable was whitewashed and redefined. For a while, the success of the Civil Rights Movement made it difficult for racists to say out loud what they deeply felt: People of color just weren’t as good as white people. Yes, you had Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, and Roberto Clemente, but there are always the few you let slip through. Introducing “woke” helped a lot. The perfect excuse to dismiss the fuss about gay rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and as JD Vance reminded us, you could include the pushy white women who found giving birth inconvenient. MAGA proclaimed the death of “woke-ism.” Make America Hate Again.

Trump’s victory was aided by the 2024 MAGA lies that Democrats were killing “babies” up to and even after birth, somehow minimizing the continuing crimes against American women now multiplied by Dobbs, by continuously priming our mythic fears that the others are taking and will continue to take everything that is ours. They offer up the terrifying vision of well-armed migrant hordes pouring past Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ open borders to ravage small-town America. They rewrite recent history: The invited Haitians, who earnestly filled the jobs real Americans didn’t want in Springfield, Ohio, were instead dangerous invaders who couldn’t help but dine on their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

If that wasn’t enough, there were the women who so deviously transitioned themselves to take away our traditional male sports, the ultimate crime for men who aren’t talented enough to play themselves but need to watch other men play ball to feel whole. Then add Trump’s tale of the little boys sent to elementary school in the morning only to return home as girls.

Of course, the Democrats helped in their own way, never quite willing to truly appreciate the large numbers of Americans who were just barely surviving an economy markedly different than their touted successful version of “Bidenomics.” They were told the stock market was at a record-breaking high, or that the success of the CHIPS Act would mean revitalization and the return of higher paying manufacturing jobs. Of course, the decreasing unemployment rates didn’t erase the difficult realities of what groceries cost, nor did being told by your landlord when he raised your rent that he could easily get twice what you would be paying from someone making three times more than you. Or that your paycheck was drastically reduced by what you had to pay for the childcare that enabled you to work. At some point, Democratic members of Congress are going to realize that their life is much better and easier than that of so many of their constituents, which ought to help explain why their rhetoric lost to the reality of the working poor.

Yes, anger, disappointment, and resentment, even hatred, won over hope and an optimism that so many distrusted and believed undeserved.

Yes, of course, credit the MAGA con. Simple, oft-repeated lies are so much easier to swallow than complexity, especially when so often uncorrected by the media. Even the self-convinced, supposedly “left” couldn’t appreciate the real-life complications of the Middle East, of peoples who have engaged in mutual hatred for millennia. It was easier for them to despise Netanyahu than Hamas. Convinced Harris deserved no benefit of the doubt, they turned against the Democrats who, at least, were trying to use what little leverage they still had to wrest a cease-fire from the madness. One more irony, Trump, in a heartbeat, would level Palestine to build his tasteless seaside towers.

Credit Donald Trump, who sold not only exorbitant watches and Bibles made in China, crummy sneakers, and AI-generated heroic pictures of himself, then, more importantly, successfully peddled the preposterous notion that a man who had bankrupted multiple businesses and repeatedly cheated the taxpayers of New York State would bring down grocery prices with his 20 percent tariff (read surcharge) on all imported goods. Beats me, but Donald Trump convinced enough women of the insanely inappropriate idea that a convicted sexual assaulter would better protect American women than a female prosecutor with a record of convicting sexual predators.

As we have learned yet again, Trump could indeed win in a land where few people read anymore; where news/propaganda is read from teleprompters; and where, despite being forced to fork over $800 million to Dominion (the voting machine company FOX repeatedly slandered), Rupert Murdoch’s FOX still lied for Trump 24/7. Of course, it helped mightily that the Democrats have more reliably represented corporate America than American workers.

More Americans preferred a white, not-very-bright brute who repeatedly assaults women than a smart woman of color who has been successful in everything she has done.

Now I expect I am uniquely qualified to shed some light on what we may very well face as a result of the decision to go back. My history differs significantly from most of yours. I grew up in Cold War, segregated America. My dad was on an enemies list. I was born “an enemy within.” We were occasionally stopped by the several FBI agents assigned to him. Besides the effort to intimidate me, they were always hoping they could elicit some information about God knows what. So much of J. Edgar Hoover’s focus was to get people to spill their secrets, to inform on one another. Why my dad? Because he was one of the few publicly known communists in New York City, an editor at their newspaper, The Daily Worker.

In case you were wondering, whatever Trump needs to make good on his desire for retribution has already been done before. Change a few words to better fit his current enemies list, and everything is ready. As you will see, both the Smith Act of 1940 and the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 took as gospel the notion that the enemies of their times—those who joined the Communist Party of the U.S. (CPUSA)—were truly secret agents ready to violently overthrow the government and needed to be dealt with without debate.

In reality, my father was a self-taught intellectual who, having survived great hardship, became the main support of his Hungarian-American family when his father died. Along the way, he became a union organizer. And because the CPUSA embraced workers’ rights and racial equality, he came to mistakenly embrace the Soviet myth that they really cared about their workers. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union was led by sociopath Josef Stalin and not Karl Marx. Most American communists tried to hide their allegiance, but my father’s politics were public. His crime—if you need to call it that—was stupidly believing the Soviet lies that they were building a land where workers ruled and workers owned the wealth their labor created. You can argue that he and his comrades should have known that Stalin destroyed anyone who disagreed, about the forced-labor camps, but so very far removed from Russia, they really didn’t know until Khrushchev told the world.

I can still remember his crisis of conscience as Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest in 1956. As a response, he and some other party members tried to democratize the CPUSA and embrace the revolution against the revolution that wasn’t. Not at all interested in democracy, they were quickly escorted out of the party. As a consequence, I lost my piano teacher who now drew the line at teaching the son of a newly minted counterrevolutionary.

You should know, in case it happens to you, that once you are on the enemies list, you remain an enemy. Unless, of course, you publicly betray some of your friends. While many did, my dad and several others wouldn’t. Years after he left—and for many years the FBI made sure he was fired from job after job—he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and compelled to answer a series of questions/insults from stupid Democrats and Republicans who reveled in their opportunity to take pot shots at him in the hope that, so cowed and exhausted, he too would name names. He agreed to share his own story but refused to testify about anyone else. His terrific lawyer, Joseph Rauh, kept him from being cited for Contempt of Congress and jailed. The great irony for my father was later learning that the upper echelon of the CPUSA had indeed taken money from the Soviets and used those funds to buy vacation homes in Florida, transforming themselves into slumlords. The glorious intersection of corrupt socialism and the irresistible charms of American capitalism.

Years later, I wrote “A Red Family,” a book about Junius Scales, the first American imprisoned under the Membership Clause of the Smith Act, the Alien Registration Act of 1940.

In the case of both the Smith and McCarran acts, mere membership was proof positive you were guilty of communist subversion. No matter your true intention, Congress proclaimed that your membership equaled a commitment to advocate and conspire to overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence.

Junius, like my father, was an incredibly smart man, dedicated to fighting for equal rights and social justice, and never violent. Theirs was an effort to convince America that workers deserved the major share of the wealth their labor produced and that segregation was immoral. Like my father, Junius left the Communist Party after Hungary but was convicted and jailed years after he was no longer a communist.

So you can add the precedent of the McCarran Act, the Internal Security Act of 1950, to Donald Trump’s Christmas list. Enemies like desperate immigrants fleeing likely execution, or those desperate for a safe space to raise their children, turned into rapists, thugs, and escapees from foreign prisons who now clearly deserve deportation, rather than a fair and prompt asylum hearing.

And so it was in the 1950s that my father and Junius were transformed into the opposite of who they really were, hard-working, gentle advocates for fair wages, safe working conditions, and social justice. It is not surprising that the McCarran Act was the source of so many of my childhood nightmares. I wouldn’t want to be the children of Jack Smith or the many others on Trump’s list. McCarran declared that the greatest danger of all to our republic, akin to the horrifying invasion of The Body Snatchers, was the treacherous communist agent who, while he or she looked like your neighbor and could blend in, was dedicated to destroying our way of life. Imagine if the Haitians of Springfield wanted more than just our cats and dogs:

(1) There exists a world Communist movement which, in its origins, its development, and its present practice, is a world-wide revolutionary movement whose purpose it is, by treachery, deceit, infiltration into other groups (governmental and otherwise), espionage, sabotage, terrorism, and any other means deemed necessary, to establish a Communist totalitarian dictatorship in the countries throughout the world through the medium of a world-wide Communist organization … resulting in the suppression of all opposition to the party in power, the subordination of the rights of individuals to the state, the denial of fundamental rights and liberties which are characteristic of a representative form of government, such as freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of religious worship, and results in the maintenance of control over the people through fear, terrorism, and brutality …

(11) The agents of communism have devised clever and ruthless espionage and sabotage tactics which are carried out in many instances in form or manner successfully evasive of existing law …

(13) There are, under our present immigration laws, numerous aliens who have been found to be deportable, many of whom are in the subversive, criminal, or immoral classes who are free to roam the country at will without supervision or control … (15) The Communist movement in the United States is an organization numbering thousands of adherents, rigidly and ruthlessly disciplined. Awaiting and seeking to advance a moment when the United States may be so far extended by foreign engagements, so far divided in counsel, or so far in industrial or financial straits, that overthrow of the Government of the United States by force and violence may seem possible of achievement, it seeks converts far and wide by an extensive system of schooling and indoctrination …

[Emphasis added.]

The “extensive system of schooling and indoctrination” sounds an awful lot like teaching about slavery and segregation and programs about diversity and equity.

So what is to be done? First, we criminalize:

Then we punish:

Denial of Passports to Members of Communist Organizations …

Sec. 6. (a) When a Communist organization as defined in paragraph (5) of section 3 of this title is registered, or there is in effect a final order of the Board requiring such organization to register, it shall be unlawful for any member of such organization, with knowledge or notice that such organization is so registered or that such order has become final: (1) to make application for a passport, or the renewal of a passport, to be issued or renewed by or under the authority of the United States; or (2) to use or attempt to use any such passport.

Registration and Annual Reports of Communist Organizations … (2) It shall be the duty of each Communist-action organization registered under this section to keep, in such manner and form as the Attorney General shall by regulations prescribe, accurate records of the names and addresses of the members of such organization and of persons who actively participate in the activities of such organization …

And every member of these designated organizations was required to register. And every piece of mail sent by those organizations was required to acknowledge their mailings were “Disseminated by ____________, a Communist organization.”

The Act called for the establishment of the Subversive Activities Control Board:

(a) Whenever the Attorney General shall have reason to believe that any organization which has not registered under subsection (a) or subsection (b) of section 7 of this title is in fact an organization of a kind required to be registered under such subsection, or that any individual who has not registered under section 8 of this title is in fact required to register under such section, he shall file with the Board and serve upon such organization or individual a petition for an order requiring such organization or individual to register pursuant to such subsection or section, as the case may be … and may require by subpena (sic) the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of books, papers, correspondence, memoranda, and other records deemed relevant, to the matter under inquiry… In case of disobedience to a subpena (sic), the Board may invoke the aid of any court of the United States in requiring the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of documentary evidence … and any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by such court as a contempt thereof.

Board shall take into consideration (1) the extent to which its policies are formulated and carried out and its activities performed, pursuant to directives or to effectuate the policies of the foreign government or foreign organization in which is vested, or under the domination or control of which is exercised, the direction and control of the world Communist movement referred to in section 2 of this title; and

(2) the extent to which its views and policies do not deviate from those of such foreign government or foreign organization …

Judicial Review: Sec. 14. (a) The party aggrieved by any order entered by the Board under subsection (g), (h), (i) or (j) of section 13 may obtain a review of such order by filing in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, within sixty days from the date of service upon it of such order, a written petition praying that the order of the Board be set aside.

Penalties: … each individual having a duty under subsection (h) of section 7 to register or to file any registration statement or annual report on behalf of such organization, and each individual having a duty to register under section 8, shall, upon conviction of failure to so register or to file any such registration statement or annual report, be punished for each such offense by a fine of not more than $10,000, or imprisonment for not more than five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

For the purposes of this subsection, each day of failure to register, whether on the part of the organization or any individual, shall constitute a separate offense.

Period of Limitation

Sec. 19. An indictment for any violation of title 18, United States Code, section 792, 793, or 794, other than a violation constituting a capital offense, may be found at any time within ten years next after such violation shall have been committed. This section shall not authorize prosecution, trial, or punishment for any offense now barred by the provisions of existing law.

[Emphasis added.]

And here is the stuff of my nightmares:

Sec. 100. This title may be cited as the ‘Emergency Detention Act of 1950’ …

(9) The agents of communism have devised clever and ruthless espionage and sabotage tactics which are carried out in many instances in form or manner successfully evasive of existing law, and which in this country are directed against the safety and peace of the United States …

(11) The security and safety of the territory and Constitution of the United States, and the successfully prosecution of the common defense, especially in time of invasion, war, or insurrection in aid of a foreign enemy, require every reasonable and lawful protection against espionage, and against sabotage to national-defense material, premises, forces and utilities, including related facilities for mining, manufacturing, transportation, research, training, military and civilian supply, and other activities essential to national defense.

Declaration of ‘Internal Security Emergency’

Sec. 102. (a) In the event of any one of the following:

(1) Invasion of the territory of the United States or its possessions,

(2) Declaration of war by Congress, or

(3) Insurrection within the United States in aid of a foreign enemy, and if, upon the occurrence of one or more of the above, the President shall find that the proclamation of an emergency pursuant to this section is essential to the preservation, protection and defense of the Constitution, and to the common defense and safety of the territory and people of the United States, the President is authorized to make public proclamation of the existence of an ‘Internal Security Emergency’.

(b) A state of ‘Internal Security Emergency’ (hereinafter referred to as the ‘emergency’) so declared shall continue in exercise until terminated by proclamation of the President or by concurrent resolution of the Congress.

[Emphasis added.]

Imagine Attorney General Matt Gaetz with these powers:

Procedure for Apprehension and Detention

Sec. 104. (a) The Attorney General, or such officer or officers of the Department of Justice as he may from time to time designate, are authorized during such emergency to execute in writing and to issue-

(1) a warrant for the apprehension of each person as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such person probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with others to engage in, acts of espionage or sabotage; and

(2) an application for an order to be issued pursuant to subsection (d) of this section for the detention of such person for the duration of such emergency.

Each such warrant shall issue only upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and shall particularly describe the person to be apprehended or detained …

(c) Persons apprehended or detained under this title shall be confined in such places of detention as may be prescribed by the Attorney General…

(h) In deciding the question of the existence of reasonable ground to believe a person probably will engage in or conspire with others to engage in espionage or sabotage, the Attorney General, any preliminary hearing officer, and the Board of Detention Review are authorized to consider evidence of the following:

(1) Whether such person has knowledge of or has received or given instruction or assignment in the espionage, counterespionage, or sabotage service or procedures of a government or political party of a foreign country, or in the espionage, counterespionage, or sabotage service or procedures of the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization or political party which seeks to overthrow or destroy by force and violence the Government of the United States or of any of its subdivisions and to substitute therefor a totalitarian dictatorship controlled by a foreign government, and whether such knowledge, instruction, or assignment has been acquired or given by reason of civilian, military, or police service with the United States Government, the governments of the several States, their political subdivisions, the District of Columbia, the Territories, the Canal Zone, or the insular possessions, or whether such knowledge has been acquired solely by reason of academic or personal interest not under the supervision of or in preparation for service with the government of a foreign country or a foreign political party …

[Emphasis added.]

As for helping the enemy:

Sec. 113. Whoever knowingly-

(a) advises, aids, assists, or procures the resistance, disregard, or evasion of apprehension pursuant to this title by any person named in a warrant or order of detention as one as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such person probably will engage in, or conspire with others to engage in espionage or sabotage; or

(b) advises, aids, assists, or procures the escape from confinement or detention pursuant to this title of any person so named; or

(c) aids, relieves, transports, harbors, conceals, shelters, protects, or otherwise assists any person so named for the purpose of the evasion of such apprehension by such person or the escape of such person from such confinement or detention; or (d) attempts to commit or conspires with any other person to commit any act punishable under subsections (a), (b), or (c) of this section, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned nor more than ten years, or both.

Could Attorney General Gaetz imagine this applies to sanctuary cities?

A simple summary from “An American Paradox: The Emergency Detention Act of 1950” by Cornelius P. Cotter and J. Malcolm Smith:

Back to my dad. In 1963, seven years after Hungary, when my dad and a large percentage of the CPUSA’s members had departed in disgust, here is how the House Un-American Activities Committee referred to the non-existent domestic threat posed by the mostly member-less CPUSA:

Despite having written remarkably naïve, even stupid articles for The Daily Worker, there is no doubt in my mind that HUAC and the FBI considered my father a “hard-core” member of the Communist Party, and there were many times I imagined my father in one of those camps.

Years later, here are just a few of those I now worry about: those patriots who have already made it onto Trump’s enemies list. Yes, he has already transformed those who disagree with him into precisely the kind of enemy aliens whom he imagines properly deserve deportation, prosecution, or execution: General Mark Milley, retired, 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 39th Chief of Staff of the Army:

Then there is Liz Cheney, who dared to investigate the January 6, 2021, insurrection:

This re-posting makes it more clear than ever that Trump still despises former President Barack Obama and wouldn’t hesitate to punish him:

Finally, Donald Trump’s new best friend, billionaire Elon Musk, once an illegal immigrant, suggests Special Counsel Jack Smith needs to suffer for doing his job so well:

Perhaps another time I will explain how it didn’t take all that long for me to earn my own spot on the 1960s’ version of the enemies list. All of which means I know all too well what Donald Trump’s threats could mean to honorable prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and judges like Arthur Engoron, to brave journalists and those who speak up and speak out. To those who told the truth about his election denial and insurrection to the House Select Committee on January 6. To outspoken Republicans like Adam Kinzinger. If he means to implement his threat to round up “illegal immigrants,” you may well see the disappearance of those who cook your food and wash dishes in your favorite restaurants, clean your houses, milk our cows, those who work incredibly long hours to send money home to their struggling families.

As The New York Times pointed out on November 13, 2024, Donald Trump, by naming completely incompetent but loyal sycophants to the critically important offices of director of national intelligence, secretary of defense, and attorney general, has taken the first steps to punishing those he imagines as his enemies:

A Fox News ally for defense secretary. A former Democrat-turned-Trump-World-celebrity to oversee 18 spy agencies. A right-wing provocateur for the nation’s top law enforcement job.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s picks for top government jobs continued to roll in fast and furiously on Wednesday, and his promise to build a presidential administration fueled by retribution quickly came into view.

Now, I also know better than most what happens when we surrender our powers to tyrants who have no use for those who question them, challenge them, and try to hold them accountable for their crimes. As Trump has told us again and again: They are the enemy within. And he can’t wait to dispense with them.

And I know better than most the price we will pay as he drags us back.