Inmates the Trump administration alleges are linked to criminal organizations are lined up by guards in their cells at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security prison, on March 16, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo: Salvadoran Government via Getty Images)
“How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are,” said one lawyer.
A U.S. judge on Friday ordered the return of a Maryland resident who the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month, according to The Associated Press.
Prior to issuing the ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia “an illegal act.”
The judge, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the Trump administration end of the day of the day on Monday to bring him back to the United States.
Supporters outside the courtroom cheered as the judge handed down her order, according to The Washington Post.
Responding to the ruling on social media, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said: “This is a big win. Now Trump must comply with the judge’s order.”
Immigration lawyer Ava Benach wrote: “The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.”
The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.
Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of people the administration expelled in mid-March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador after targeting them for alleged gang ties.
In a court papers filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting field office director admitted that the removal of Abrego Garcia on March 15 “was an error.”
Abrego Garcia was deported despite the fact that in 2019, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to his native El Salvador because he would likely face gang persecution there.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Federal employees rally in support of their jobs outside of the Kluczynski Federal Building on March 19, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. The rally was organized by the National Treasury Employees Union to voice concerns about the mass firing of federal workers by the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher.
At what junctures do Elon Musk and Donald Trump, each proceeding from a distinctive starting point, forge a new and hyper-dangerous coalition? Well, the Afrikaner refugee joins an extreme version of neoliberalism to a fascist drive to state takeover, and the fascist orange man, who demands unfettered state power and loves tariffs, nonetheless caters to neoliberal drives to concentrate wealth, income, and power even more extremely at the highest reaches of society. Together, they pursue what is best called oligopolistic fascism.
What’s more, while both may have once believed the old Friedrich Hayek story of how market deregulation secures a robust economy of steady growth, each displays active signs today of no longer believing the very ideology he pedals. Musk does so through his project of planetary escapism and his obsession with driving Inspector Generals from governmental institutions; Trump does so through his constant lies and belligerent demonization of vulnerable people who disagree with him. Indeed, each contains within himself a minor voice sliding into the major voice of the other. They both now believe that the old order that has sustained their extreme privileges can now only be protected by fascist means.
So, let’s define our terms a bit more closely. Neoliberalism was a market theory, most prominently developed by Friedrich Hayek in the 1960s and 1970s as a series of rejoinders to a Keynesian model of growth and social welfare. Neoliberalism promised rapid and sustained economic growth, if the state would radically reduce regulation of private corporations, subsidize them whenever needed, severely limit the power of labor unions, create a court system committed to neoliberal jurisprudence, and, most importantly (and too often less noted by critics), install a national ideology of regular individuals committed to a market regime–a national ideology saturating schools, unions, churches, the government, the media, think tanks, and universities.
In this ideology each individual and institution sees itself as first and foremost a participant and beneficiary of a privately owned market economy. Hayek himself emphasized these themes in his neoliberal social philosophy, a social philosophy that included an economic theory but extended well beyond it to include all other social and state institutions. This all found elaborate expression, for instance, in his 1970 book Rules and Order. In it he emphasizes how the Supreme Court must set rules beyond the powers of legislative revision to nurture the sinews of a neoliberal economy. And he says a neoliberal ideology “may well be something whose widespread acceptance is the indispensable condition for most of the particular things we strive for.” (Rules of Order, p. 58). He knew that minority groups who refused or could not imbibe this ideology had to be controlled by other means. A neoliberal regime along Hayek’s lines, then, is one in which the prison population grows.
In fact the neoliberal order in the United States, supported actively by neoliberal Supreme Court justices, has pushed previously unheard of wealth concentrations to the top of the social hierarchy; supported a unitary President; increased economic insecurity for workers, the poor and mid-level professionals; encouraged hi-tech, super-rich bros to pour vast amounts of money into right wing electoral campaigns; restricted state efforts to fend off climate change and help the poor; and supported media gaslighting to deny the contributions a neoliberal economy makes to accelerating climate wreckage and periodic crises. You can take the 2008 economic meltdown, during the G. W. Bush administration, to be a notable instance of the latter.
What about fascism? Well, fascist movements seek to secure capitalist states by new means during hard times. This was true even in the most extreme instance, when Hitler in Nazi Germany protected large private industrialists as he attacked Jews, social democrats, labor unions, homosexuals, the Romani, and communists. In Mein Kampf, the Jews were defined to be the “red thread” that tied them, social democrats and communists together in one phalanx. To attack the Jews was thus to attack these other organizations and movements too. The regime was inaccurately called “National Socialism”; a closer label would be “National Capitalism,” an economic regime of private profit in which a fascist state became the key definer and regulator of life.
How does a distinctive aspiration to fascism proceed today? It does so by promulgating “big lies” to mobilize hatred in its base; fostering an extreme version of white, Christian nationalism; ransacking state regulatory institutions; intimidating the media, courts, unions, localities, and universities; engaging in coups; mobilizing private militia to intimidate vulnerable elements of the populace; treating immigrants of color to be inferior and “vile” people; and joining with other autocratic states to weaken democracy and promote oligarchical rule. Indeed, today Trump treats immigrants of color and their liberal supporters to be the red threads tying all his enemies together. And he never acknowledges how the very anti-climate policies he promotes accelerate the desperate marches from South to North that he castigates so fervently.
As I previewed in a 2017 book, Aspirational Fascism, Trump has profound fascist aspirations, displayed prominently today in promulgating a battery of big lies, fostering a violent coup attempt after he lost an election, aligning with Putin in foreign policy, pardoning all those who participated in his 2021 violent coup attempt, attacking universities, insisting upon the hegemony of a unitary president who sidelines Congress, the states and (increasingly) courts, and unleashing Musk to reshape the state.
What draws Musk and Trump so closely together now?
Well, Musk shows signs of losing faith in the neoliberal ideology that informed his thinking hitherto, while continuing to deploy it strategically to clean out the federal government of officials—the “Deep State”—who could expose fraud and regulate corporate excesses. To take one instance, he has moved from an earlier stance of concern about accelerating climate wreckage to saying, even as he knows better, that climate change is real but moving at a very slow pace. Even after more extreme hurricanes, the Los Angeles wildfires, and other destructive events.
And Trump, who knew in fact that he had lost the 2020 election, has joined belligerently the project of heaping more and more wealth on the extremely wealthy at the expense of those working and middle class white nationalists who provide a key portion of his political base. The tax cut for the rich he is pushing through Congress shows that. He may well think he will not need to cater to that portion of his base so much, after he has silenced the media, universities, unions, progressive churches, and Democratic Party. He has already silenced critical Republicans and high rolling donors.
What about white working- and middle-class members of the Trump/Musk base? They have displayed signs not so much of believing all the Trumpian lies peddled to them as embracing the lies because of the ways they unsettle liberal elites on both coasts and activate racist impulses already there. Not too many Trump supporters believed the ugly story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. They merely loved to hear and repeat the story. That is why intense media efforts to expose Trump’s lies have not penetrated the armored base. That protective armor itself was forged during a period when the democratic left had lost touch with the needs and insecurities of those constituents, while focusing only on their ugly racist and misogynist tendencies. In fact, curtailments of racism and misogyny need to be pursued in tandem with reductions in class inequality, if either agenda is to succeed. But it remains to be seen whether Democrats can learn this lesson.
Today, the neoliberal/fascist nexus is taking another turn. While it focuses white working class attention on violent immigrant deportations, it also plans to weaken Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security severely, perhaps even to destroy them. Why? To give yet another huge tax break to the superrich who also finance their campaigns. Increasing numbers of the old base are now beginning to see through this scam by the scammer they used to love. It turns out the “Deep State” contains many essential services and protections, now on the block.
The Trump/Musk team hopes to complete dismantling and then reordering the Deep State before the base catches on. Then, once the media, universities and liberal donors have been intimidated sufficiently, it will be too late to protest effectively. That is the plan.
The urgent task today is to expose this nexus and its plan at every turn, in every possible venue, and by all democratic means necessary, from publicity to protest to electoral mobilization. For time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher, nor the urgency more acute.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
European Union flag on wall with a crack. Credit: Alexander Borisenko / Alamy Stock Photo
The group behind the radical Project 2025 agenda is increasingly turning its attention to Europe.
The group that drafted a key blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term convened a meeting in Washington D.C. this week to consider proposals for bulldozing the European Union (EU).
The Polish investigative outlet VSquare revealed that the Heritage Foundation gathered hardline conservative groups on 11 March to hear how they would overhaul the current structures of the EU.
The “closed-door workshop” featured a debate on a new paper produced by the lobby groups MCC and Ordo Iuris entitled: “The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the 21st Century”.
The paper proposes dismantling the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. It claims that the “EU is evolving into a quasi-federal state, limiting national decision-making power” and is imposing “ideologically motivated policies on member states, without any mandate”. Under the plan, the EU would cease to function in its current guise, and would instead be renamed the European Community of Nations (ECN).
Kenneth Haar, a researcher and campaigner at the transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, said it was “quite simply terrifying” to see the Heritage Foundation moving its attention to Europe.”
“Most of the attacks made by the Trump presidency in recent weeks on civil rights, on migrants, on LGBTQ+ rights and more, can be traced back to Project 2025,” he said. “We should be worried about them building up ambitions and strength in Europe.”
DeSmog can also reveal that the Heritage Foundation has been holding private meetings with European politicians in recent months, as the group attempts to forge new alliances on the continent.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Then President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk pose for a photo during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
“If you think back at the last economic crashes… the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before,” noted one progressive commentator.
Are U.S. President Donald Trump, top adviser Elon Musk, and allied oligarchs deliberately trying to tank the economy in order to line their own gilded pockets?
More and more observers from both sides of the political aisle are asking the question this week as the U.S. president implemented steep tariffs on some of the country’s biggest trade partners, threatened a global trade war, and is taking chainsaw to government spending and programs—policies that, while inflicting economic pain upon nearly everyone else, could dramatically boost their already stratospheric wealth.
Numerous observers have likened it to the ” disaster capitalism” examined in Naomi Klein’s seminal 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism—politicians and plutocrats exploit the chaos of natural or human-caused crises to push through unpopular policies like privatization and deregulation that harm the masses while boosting the wealth and power of the ruling class.
Economic alarm bells were already ringing before Trump’s 25% tariffs on most products from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China—for a total of 20%—took effect on Tuesday, prompting retaliatory measures and threats of more to come.
Then, during his rambling joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, Trump threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on every nation on Earth starting April 2 (because he “didn’t want to be accused of April Fools’ Day”) if those countries did not lower barriers to trade with the United States.
New York Times economic policy reporters Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson called Trump’s sweeping tariffs “one of the biggest gambles of his presidency,” and a move “that risks undermining the United States economy.”
But what if that’s the whole point?
“I’ve been entertaining this theory a little bit more lately, because [Trump’s] economic moves seem so stupid and terrible and counterproductive without thinking that he is intentionally trying to cause harm,” progressive political commentator Krystal Ball—who also has a degree in economics and is a certified public accountant— said Tuesday on the social media site X.
Ball cited an X post by Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive Democrat running for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) House seat who worked on Wall Street for six years and helped found the online payment processing company Stripe, in which he accused Trump of “manufacturing a recession.”
“But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is run by a few oligarchs loyal to him,” Chakrabarti added. “Creating that state is hard in a large, dynamic, powerful economy with too many actors who can oppose him. So he’s accelerating concentrating money and power into the hands of his loyalists while he crashes the rest out.”
It really is confusing why Trump would want to intentionally massively shrink the US economy. None of this is due to external circumstances – he is manufacturing a recession.
But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is…
Responding to this, Ball asserted that “at this point, until proven otherwise, the primary actor in the government and the economy is actually Elon, so I think it makes sense to think of Elon’s incentives here and what he may actually want to accomplish.”
“If you think back at the last economic crashes—both in Covid and in the 2008 financial crash—while initially everyone suffered, including the rich, out of both, the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before,” she noted.
“So in 2008, not only did they get their own custom bailout, but they were able to buy housing stock at absurdly low prices,” Ball recalled. “The rich got richer than ever, inequality skyrocketed, and the big banks got bigger than ever.”
“Same deal with the Covid-era recession,” she continued. “So, while again, everyone suffered initially, there was a huge bailout package which, yes, did benefit ordinary people, but if you look at who came out really on top… you could see people like Elon Musk, people like Jeff Bezos, people like Mark Zuckerberg getting far wealthier. Their net worths, which were already very high, skyrocketed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”
Indeed, as Common Dreams reported, 700 billionaires got $1.7 trillion richer during two years of pandemic. Between March 2020 and April 2022, Musk got 10 times richer, while Zuckerberg’s net worth more than tripled and Bezos’ grew by nearly $80 billion, according to Forbes.
“Here’s the other piece that’s worth thinking about as well,” Ball added. “Crash and crisis leads to governments and authoritarian leaders claiming more power for themselves. They can use the crisis and the emergency as a justification for taking on extraordinary powers and for taking extraordinary measures… measures that can be custom fit to primarily benefit oligarchs like Elon Musk.”
“So I don’t know guys, while we’re running around here going… ‘can’t they understand how this is going to be devastating for the economy,’ maybe they do understand,” she concluded, “and maybe that’s kind of the point.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Would love the explainer on why they are pushing us into a (likely) recession
dizzy: While it is accepted that the filthy rich benefit from economic collapse I suspect that there might be a more deliberate action to benefit certain actors more directly.
I suggest that you compare to the experience of short-lived former Prime Minister Liz Truss in UK. She was also supported and followed the instruction of an established, influential think-tank. Powerful and wealthy Capitalists may have benefited directly from market reactions to their directed actions. I would look at hedge funds and similar actors associated with those respective think tanks. Is it the same actor dominating and directing both think-tanks? Was the Liz Truss experience an initial test run?
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaking at the 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. Credit: ARC / YouTube
The Trump appointee and fossil fuel executive called the transition to renewable energy “lunacy” at an event packed with climate science deniers.
Donald Trump’s new energy secretary has today vowed to “get out of the way” of coal, oil and gas, and called the UK’s 2050 net zero target “a sinister goal” that would “impoverish” people.
Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive appointed by U.S. President Trump, was speaking via video link at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, a right-wing forum run by fierce opponents of climate policies.
He also downplayed the threat from extreme weather, and suggested that climate action is part of a plot to “grow government power” and “shrink human freedom”.
The ARC conference, taking place this week at the ExCel centre in east London, includes speeches by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, Republican Party Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and Canadian psychologist and ARC founder Jordan Peterson.
As DeSmog revealed on Monday, a leaked guest list for the event includes executives from oil and gas giants, including BP, Koch Inc., Valero Energy, and Energy Transfer.
Until his appointment, Wright was the CEO of the fracking services company Liberty Energy. According to its 2023 tax filing, Wright was also a director of the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), a trade group representing more than 300 companies in the oil and gas industry. WEA has historically lobbied against oil and gas industry restrictions.
In a video posted to LinkedIn in January 2023, Wright said, “There is no climate crisis”.
‘Sinister Agenda’
Wright told the ARC audience today that he wanted to “increase the supply of affordable, reliable energy” by lifting the pause on natural gas and scrapping regulations on nuclear energy.
When asked about coal, oil and gas, he said: “Oh absolutely. The world today runs on coal oil and gas, and it’s been a tremendous success. I should have said number one [of his plan] is get out of the way of the production, export and enhancement of our volumes of coal, oil and gas.”
The energy secretary also attacked the UK’s legally-binding target of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal”, he said. “It’s a terrible goal. It’s both unachievable by any practical means, but the aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous cost.”
He added: “This is not energy transition, this is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow gonna make the world a better place. It’s not.”
The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that – without achieving net zero by 2050 and limiting warming to 1.5C – the world will struggle to contain the worst effects of climate change. These include droughts, flooding, poverty, and mass displacement.
Wright went on to claim that “We’re scaring children all the time with stories of extreme weather” when “deaths from extreme weather have plummeted for 100 years”.
Better forecasting and preparation have cut extreme weather deaths over this period, but the number and intensity of extreme weather events have increased, and they continue to be disproportionately fatal in the least developed countries.
The energy secretary also claimed that “climate-obsessed people […] know very little about the climate data”, before alluding to the conspiracy theory that climate change is being used to impose a green tyranny.
“I think the agenda might be different here than climate change”, he said. “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power, top down control, and shrink human freedom. This is sinister.”
Oil and Gas at ARC
Senior representatives from several major fossil fuel producers will be at the ARC event, according to a leaked list of attendees viewed by DeSmog.
Billed as an effort to “re-lay the foundations of civilization,” the conference will feature panels about energy and environment that are filled with prominent deniers of the climate crisis.
That includes Vivek Ramaswamy, a former contender for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination, who has referred to the “climate agenda” as a “hoax,” as well as Nigel Farage, who has called for the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions policies to be “scrapped” entirely.
They will be joined by representatives of prominent climate denial organizations including the CO2 Coalition, and libertarian anti-climate think tanks such as the Cato Institute.
“I had a chance to sit down one-on-one with Chris in 2022 in his Denver office,” claimed Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, in a newsletter in late 2024.
Wrightstone “was impressed with his [Wright’s] knowledge and views on energy philosophy, which aligned closely with those of the CO2 Coalition.”
“The key takeaway is that he’s a big supporter of the continuing use of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas,” Wrightstone said.
ARC is backed by the UAE-based investment firm Legatum Group and British hedge fund millionaire Paul Marshall, who together own the right-wing broadcaster GB News. Marshall provided £1 million in funding to ARC in 2023, which is run by Conservative peer and UK government advisor Baroness Philippa Stroud.
Speaking to the Financial Times ahead of the conference, Marshall claimed that Britain is “going bust” in its pursuit of net zero. As revealed by DeSmog, Paul Marshall’s hedge fund held £1.8 million worth of shares in fossil fuel companies – including in oil and gas giants Chevron, Shell, and Equinor – as of June 2023. One of Marshall Wace’s biggest investors, U.S. private equity firm KKR, also has a large fossil fuel portfolio, including 188 assets in oil, gas, and coal.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
