By Fraser Turnbull, Contributor to The Progressive Column
The Capitol Hill Putsch is over. But, ten years after Hitler’s first attempt, he became Chancellor. Never forget.
Make no mistake, he knew what he was doing.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Donald Trump had exposure to some of the most malevolent criminal minds in the Western Hemisphere. Not only was he tutored at the feet of his father in how to manipulate and cheat in the game of real estate, he spent tens of millions of dollars building in and around Manhattan. During that time, scarcely an ounce of cement was poured that did not flow through the hands of the five major crime families in New York City. They owned unions. They marketed drugs. They bribed cops. And they had people killed. It’s unimaginable that the Trump empire was built without exposure to the best practices of organized crime.
Even a cursory look at how a mafia boss operates exposes their secret language. When something “serious” needs to happen, the boss has a code for carefully communicating it. They never directly state what they want done, who they want to hurt, who they want bribed or who they want dead. They Dons and Captains have a pattern of speech that dances around the order without ever giving it directly. It provides cover- plausible deniability- for what the real intent may be. Trump’s now disbarred fixer/lawyer, Michael Cohen, admits that his boss worked in the exact same fashion. Stunningly, he confessed to intimidating no less than 500 citizens of the United States.
“He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders,” Cohen said. “He speaks in a code, and I understand the code because I’ve been around him for a decade.”
To those that cared to acknowledge the obvious, the President of the United States has been speaking in code throughout his entire tenure. Whether it was his failure to appropriately disavow David Duke or the talk of “both sides” in Charlottesville, he was communicating in “mob code” to rabid members of his base. And they loved it.
Referring to a kneeling athlete as a “son of a bitch”, one imagines him soiling himself at the prospect of an altercation with a professional athlete.
Trump’s reference to the “second amendment people” taking care of Hilary Clinton, disguised as a joke, was code. His continuous attacks on African American public figures as “low IQ” or “dumb” are so clearly racist tropes that only the most disingenuous refuse to admit it. While he referred to kneeling athletes as “sons of a bitches”, one imagines him soiling himself at the prospect of an altercation with a professional athlete. You don’t have to study him long to smell a coward.
His boasts and insults are code. It does not have to be laid out for you. The list of his plausibly deniable mob talk is as extensive as it is obvious. Tens of millions of people refuse- to this day- to believe it was anything more than fake news parsing a narrative together. Their stubborn refusal to admit their mistake has almost cost them a republic. Seventy-five million Americans came to believe that he was something beyond a failed businessman rescued by a carefully spliced game show. That phenomena will feed freshmen term papers for decades. The pressing concern is not the everyday voters that were duped by this scam of a president. The most immediate problem is those disaffected citizens- motivated by Trump’s mob code- that think it’s acceptable to storm the castle.
In 1923 Germany, a group of outsiders took several hundred people as hostages in a Bavarian beer hall. The establishment was filled with political insiders who were trading ideas, speeches and ale. It will forever be known as The Beer Hall Putsch. Several Nazis died when they got into a gunfight with police officers during the skirmish. For his part in the attempted coup d’etat, Adolph Hitler served eight months. A scant ten years later, he became the Chancellor of Germany. Six years after that, World War II began, the Holocaust gained momentum, and a group of misfits from 1923 left a permanent scar on humanity.
Now, it’s 2021. For those of us that ranted and raved for the last four years, it’s tempting to tell anyone and everyone how correct we were in detecting an authoritarian streak.
The parallels to an attempted coup in Bavaria in November of 1923 are on display for those of us that choose to look. In the events leading up to January 6, 2021, the President of the United States- a nation with the self-awarded title of “leaders of the free world”- spoke mafia code to the fringe element of his supporters.
“Now, it’s 2021. For those of us that ranted and raved for the last four years, it’s tempting to tell anyone and everyone how correct we were in detecting an authoritarian streak.”
He refused to concede an election where he lost by 7 million votes. He cast doubt on the results of the tally, citing wide-spread voter fraud. Though rejected thoroughly by every court that heard the complaints, few Republicans stood up to him when it truly mattered. Those that could not muster the courage must own it to their everlasting shame.
Donald Trump’s admiration for strong-man authoritarians is well documented. His desire to have a Kremlin style military parade is on the record. Unlike his predecessors, he once chose to address the nation from the White House balcony, mimicking Mussolini, Hitler, or any number of tin-pot dictators so often caricatured by western sensibilities. Could an election stealing coup really be unimaginable?
“We all know what the godfather is saying- but he never really says it.”
Leading up to January 6, Donald Trump knew exactly what he was doing. His sons knew what they were doing. The nation is a powder keg packed full of racial divide, economic disparity, xenophobic whispers and a two-party system in need of a third. When he told the insurrectionists that he would march up to the capitol with them, he might just as well have looked into the camera and winked. No responsible leader would approve “Stop the Steal” as a rallying cry. No-one who cares about the republic would promise the protest would be “wild”. A dignified leader would not urge angry protestors to “never give up”, and to march on “weak” elected officials to provide them with the “pride and boldness to take back our country”. That is mob talk. That is code. And if you need a translation, it reads like this- “Go scare the hell out of congress. You have my blessing and support. But what you don’t have is a direct statement implicating me in what you are about to do.” It’s no different than a mafia boss talking about “unfortunate accidents” or people “disappearing”. We all know what the Don is saying- but he never really says it. He thought it was cute, and he thought we didn’t see him. We did.
When the Capitol Putsch was over, Trump took to a green-screen video to tell the terrorists to go home. The contrast to his threatening tone during Black Lives Matter rallies in June was the latest offensive action that this mob boss has on the record. In fact, he told the rebels that he loved them. African Americans were rightly disgusted by the disparate messaging.
“The contrast to his threatening tone during Black Lives Matter rallies in June was the latest offensive action this mob boss has on the record.”
The Capitol Putsch rabble desecrated the sanctity of American democracy. Among the insurrectionists, there were guns, zip ties and pipe bombs. Four years of incitement by the Commander-In-Chief manifested in a takeover of congress. The mafia code-talk that Michael Cohen built his career on resulted in some of the most frightening images of domestic terror that those in the West have ever seen.
Let’s be clear- he was and is corrupt. His racism and sexual assaults are documented. He knew next to nothing about government or law before getting the job. But he is not dumb. He has two skills- an ability to bullshit and a charisma built by inherited wealth and carefully crafted public relations. The skill that served his presidency was one he surely learned in New York. It was perfected in his run up to the presidency. Trump learned to use his mob-code to inspire those motivated by fear and hatred of “the other”. He hoped that someone would light the fuse to set off a domino of events that would allow him to hold power. This was an attempted coup in all but name. And now he has the plausible deniability. Mob code to the bitter end.
The Capitol Hill Putsch is over. But, ten years after Hitler’s first attempt, he became Chancellor. Never forget.
