This fascist US clown show will bring wreckage to American society

To the surprise of nobody they are a toxic mix of white supremacists, evangelists, Islamophobes, TV hosts, Zionists, foreign assets, Christian nationalists, homophobes, sociopaths and deranged conspiracists.

Some of these posts need to be confirmed by the Senate, some do not. Among them are: Stephen Miller – deputy chief of staff; Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – Doge “Department of Government Efficiency”; Pete Hegseth – secretary of defence; Mike Huckabee – ambassador to Israel; Tom Homan – border czar; Tulsi Gabbard – director of national intelligence; Matt Gaetz – attorney general; RFK Jr – secretary of health; Kristi Noem – secretary of homeland security.

Hegseth (pictured) is a Fox News host and former ­Guantanamo Bay prison guard. He’s a former Bear Stearns banker and head of the Republican-friendly political action committee Vets For Freedom.

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He’s just published a book where he seems to be calling for civil war.

Hegseth was one of a number of National Guard members ordered to stand down from Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to CBS News reporter Jim LaPorta. In January 2021, the Associated Press ­reported 12 National Guard members had been ­removed from guarding Biden’s inauguration after they were linked to “right-wing militia groups”, or found to have “posted extremist views online”.

In a post on Twitter/X, ­LaPorta said one of these 12 National Guard ­members was Hegseth. His tattoo is a “Deus Vult” (God wills it), which was the symbol of the First Crusade. In ­recent years it’s been adopted by far-right extremists, and was widely displayed by many insurrectionists at January 6. That specific cross is associated with neo-Nazis and Christian/White nationalists.

The responses to his nomination have been ­uniform. Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Association, commented: “He is a highly effective and ferocious media, culture and political warrior for Maga. And beyond loyal to and trusted by Trump. Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for secretary of defence in American ­history. And the most overtly political.”

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Former Republican congressman Adam ­Kinzinger, an outspoken Trump critic who was a former ­lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, said in response to the news on X: “Trump picking Pete ­Hegseth is the most hilariously predictably stupid thing.”

One commentator posted: “This is beyond stupid. But honestly, I can’t stop laughing. Like if this was a TV show, people would say f*** this is too made up. The greatest military machine in the history of mankind to be under the thumb of a TV show host...”

Jeff Sharlet, author of The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War, has written: “Pete Hegseth, soon to be the second only to Trump in command of the most ­powerful military in US history, declares liberals, leftists, Democrats, even Presidents of the US ‘domestic enemies’. He doesn’t mean it as a figure of speech.”

If anyone would be the one to enact sending the military against US citizens, as Trump threatened, it would be Hegseth. Hegseth served as a National Guard officer, but he has no ­experience in government leadership that could ­inform the management of the ­federal ­government’s largest agency. His ­complete ­unsuitability – and lack of any ­experience for the post – is overridden by his ideological fervour and maniacal ­loyalty to Trump.

Kiera Butler has written for Mother Jones: “Hegseth has connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly ­millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian ­nationalists. Among the tenets of their branch of Protestant Christianity – known as Reformed or Reconstructionist – is the idea that the United States should be subject to Biblical law.

“Last year, the magazine Nashville Christian Family ran a profile of Hegseth, in which he mentioned being a member of a ‘Bible and book study’ that focused on the book My Life For Yours by Doug ­Wilson, the 71-year-old unofficial ­patriarch of the TheoBros.

“Patriarch is the right word: When I interviewed Wilson a few months ago he said that he, like many other TheoBros, believes women never should have been given the right to vote.”

Next up, Mike Huckabee (above). Huckabee is a former governor of Arkansas and a devout evangelical Christian. He has been appointed the US ambassador to Israel.

Huckabee has visited Israel more than 100 times, leading evangelical tours there since 1981. During his own run for the presidency he was quoted as saying “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian”.

Huckabee has himself considered ­buying a house in an Israeli settlement and typically refers to the West Bank by the Hebrew biblical name Judea and ­Samaria. His appointment is widely ­considered to be the green light for the next stage in the next stage of the ­complete obliteration of Palestine and the seizure of the West Bank.

Alongside Huckabee, Trump has ­appointed Steve Witkoff, a real ­estate ­investor as “Middle East envoy”. ­Witkoff raised huge amounts of money from ­Jewish donors who were persuaded to back Trump after Joe Biden paused ­shipments of certain weapons to ­Israel following its invasion of Rafah in ­southern Gaza.

Next up, Robert F Kennedy Jr. ­Having dropped out of the race due to the bear story breaking, RFK Jr then threw his lot in with Trump, bringing with him the votes of a mixture of QAnon cultists, Kennedy enthusiasts and the anti-vax brigade to the party.

Kennedy’s appointment as the US secretary of health and human services (HHS) will have to be approved by the Senate. But the Senate (and the House of Representatives) has been won by the Republicans, and the idea that there are somehow constitutional “guardrails” on Trump is fanciful.

In his victory speech Trump declared: “He’s going to help make America healthy again … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it ... Go have a good time, Bobby.”

RFK Jr (above) taps into a mixture of Covid conspiracies and anti-vax “theories” as well as riding on the back of the opioid epidemic and America’s vast problem of diet-related disease. He successfully channels fears and insecurities about the role of Big Pharma and, although he has recently been trying to backtrack on his vaccination position, his position is ­crystal clear.

According to his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, And The Global War On Democracy And Public Health, RFK Jr believes that ­Fauci and Gates are members of a “­vaccine cartel” trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

In response to Kennedy’s nomination, Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit organisation focusing on consumer ­advocacy, said: “Robert F Kennedy Jnr is a clear and present danger to the ­nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the department of health and human services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.

“Donald Trump’s bungling of public health policy during the Covid ­pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives. By appointing Kennedy as his secretary of HHS, Trump is courting another, ­policy-driven public health catastrophe,” the organisation added.

The conservative pundit George ­Conway also commented on Kennedy’s nomination, along with that of Tulsi ­Gabbard and Matt Gaetz saying: “Very little of what Trump does these days amazes me. Any one of the last three of Trump’s Cabinet-level picks (­Gabbard as DNI, Gaetz as AG, RFK Jnr for HHS), standing alone, would arguably have been the worst in American history. The fact that Trump made all three in a span of roughly 24 hours is astonishing,” ­Conway wrote.

Robert Garcia, Democratic representative from California, called the ­nomination “fucking insane”, writing on X: “He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.”

The appointment of someone who has no grasp of the most basic tenets of scientific facts has potentially disastrous consequences for research, public health and safety at an unimaginable scale.

In a very competitive group the appointment of the former Florida Republican congressman Gaetz as attorney general has been met, perhaps, with the most disbelief and astonishment. Gaetz has faced multiple allegations of wrongdoing, including a federal sex trafficking probe that ended without charges against him and a House ethics inquiry that he dodged being released by resigning this week.

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Four months ago, Gabbard was alleged to have been placed on a secret domestic terror watchlist by Biden and Kamala Harris. Now, she’s been appointed the director of national intelligence.

Gabbard’s extraordinary career has ­involved multiple chameleon-like ­changes over the past 10 years. She has been a Bernie Saunders supporter but is now a Trump loyalist endorsed by David Duke and Steve Bannon.

As the journalist Michael Tracey ­explains: “Tulsi Gabbard ran an entire presidential campaign advocating for such things as: federal codification of abortion rights, eliminating fossil fuels, banning ‘assault weapons’, unraveling virtually all US sanctions, ­condemning ­Israel for its ‘illegal occupation’ of ­Palestine – as well as denouncing Trump for betraying his voters, violating the Constitution, and running an ‘imperial’ foreign policy that was hurtling the world into war and ­nuclear apocalypse.

“She subsequently abandoned these ­positions, because an opportunity arose to insinuate herself into the ­Republican Party – which of course requires ­abandoning any critique of Trump. This was to be accomplished by a steadfast campaign of aggressive memory-holing, along with throwing a bunch of Culture War red meat to Republican voters (a ­tactic she also used to ridicule.)”

These appointments are disturbing and collectively utterly disastrous. These people are clearly chosen for their loyalty rather than any skillset, and it remains to be seen how such a group will be able to work together. Certainly the last time Trump was in office his reign was characterised by the chaos of endless feuds, sackings and constant recriminations.

But behind the extraordinary collection of individual extremists and oddballs is a theory of government. This comes from Project 2025, created by the conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation whose 900-page Mandate for Leadership sets out in detail what an incoming Trump ­administration should do.

As Jill Filipovic writes: “Core to Project 2025’s mandate is the unitary executive theory: the idea that the president is the only source of executive authority – that his whims should dictate those of every agency under the executive umbrella.

“That means that the ­Department of ­Justice, instead of operating independently­, would work at the behest of President Trump, with its ­resources dedicated to his priorities (even ­prosecuting his political opponents).”

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It’s in this sense that these ­appointments might matter less. They will all be ­expected to bend the knee to the president, and such is their craven nature, or complete lack of suitability for their posts, or their absolute commitment to Trump, this will not be difficult.

Project 2025, Filipovic argues “is a wholesale remaking of American ­government. It is one of the most ­terrifying political documents drawn up in modern American history. And we’re about to see how it plays out”.

There are good reasons to see how Trump’s second presidency will be quite different from his first. First, he is wildly emboldened by his election victory and considers, rightly if tragically, that it has given him a mandate to carry out his plans.

The connecting idea behind Trump’s appointments is that government is bad, and the “deep state” (however defined) must be abolished. This taps into deeply held fears and beliefs in America about the nature of the US government and its institutions.

Filipovic explains: “The US government is a huge bureaucracy, staffed by ­almost three million civilians. This ­workforce keeps the country ­running, from ­implementing specific ­policies to ­maintaining long-standing ones. ­Project 2025 proposes not just downsizing ­federal bureaucracies but firing career ­government employees and staffing ­whatever agencies are left with Trump loyalists.

“In Trump’s first term, he was hemmed in from two directions: the more ­traditional Republicans who at least ­prevented him from carrying out his most extreme desires (for example, the then vice-president Mike Pence ­certifying the 2020 election), and non-partisan ­government employees who kept the country grinding forward.

“Eliminating huge chunks of the ­federal workforce could mean, for ­example, that the Environmental Protection Agency would essentially cease to be able to carry out its mandates. Trump could also ­simply fire government employees he finds insufficiently loyal.”

This overarching thinking is why Musk and Ramaswamy have been appointed to something called Doge (“­Department of Government Efficiency”). It is why Curtis Yarvin, often cited as the “house ­philosopher” of the new right, has talked about “rebooting” the American ­government. He coined the acronym “RAGE”, which he defined as “Retire All Government Employees”.

“Draining the swamp” and the idea of dismantling the “deep state” ­offers carte blanche to the Maga ­government to do anything they like. The ­proposal for the Department of Education ­involves ­dismantling it entirely.

Americans are about to find out that the ­government that they hate so much ­actually does a bunch of stuff they need, like ­healthcare, ­education, or ­environmental ­regulations.

Far-right ­libertarians may dream of dismantling the state, but may be ­ill-equipped to live in the conditions their politics creates.

Equally the hatred or denial of ­ecological problems that characterises much of the far-right doesn’t make any sense. You can “deny climate change” all you like but it’s here now. Even those poor people who explained the wild storms that hit the southern coast of America just before the elections as created by the US government, needed assistance when their homes flooded. You don’t hear much objection to the “deep state” from residents of Valencia these days.

NOR is it likely to be popular should Project 25 be implemented. The proposals for immigration are predictably fascistic. Project 2025 proposes calling in the military and local law enforcement to end undocumented immigration, and suggests that those people should be rounded up anywhere and everywhere.

This has prompted fears of vigilante groups enacting this themselves, and given the armed and febrile nature of the Maga forces, this would seem to be well founded. As with Brexit, the political ­language and messaging will give “permission” for the most racist and violent actions.

Again, this may be popular on the stump, but how will America respond to the actual logistics of, say, deporting 11 million people?

The appointments of Miller as deputy chief of staff and Homan as border czar will be key here to ­pushing these policies through, and, perhaps, ­having someone as extreme as Hegseth as secretary of defence if serious resistance becomes a response.

If all of this sounds dystopian it’s ­because it is. I don’t think anyone ­fully understands the reality of what’s about to happen. It’s as if people are so ­traumatised and exhausted by the ­election that they have no response. It’s not just that ­“progressive” or “liberal” or “left” America has been defeated, it’s that rationality itself has.

Added to this, progressive America has been sleep-walking into this nightmare. Surrounded by the comfort blanket of centrist media, the losing side of the ­electorate were just as siloed and cut off as the Trump supporters. All the talk of the election being “too close to call” was just a liberal fantasy.

It remains to be seen if the impending regime, the most extreme the USA has ever seen, will be a wake-up call for the American left to learn the political ­lessons that the electorate have given them: that the Harris-Walz strategy was misconceived at a fundamental level and repeating the same politics over and over will get the same result.

As Richard Seymour, author of Disaster Nationalism, has put it: “The ruptures on the right thrive as much on the pattern of liberal decay and demoralisation as on its own toxic emotional gyrations. To break out of this deadlock, the left needs ­ruptures of its own.”

He is right and there are lessons for us here in Scotland, where the ­persistence with a continuity centrism will be ­countered (and potentially defeated) by the politics of Project Fear.

The right, deranged as they may seem, were able to run as the insurgents, the disruptors. The old order has collapsed. Traditional Western democratic parties don’t have the solutions to the critical problems that late capitalism manifests, and the simplistic solutions that are offered by the far-right – vicious and stupid as they are – have appeal.

The danger of this administration is not just the violence and calamity this fascist clown show will bring in the short-term but the long-term wreckage to American society.