Will there be a surprise ending?
Donald Trump's reign of terror belies the tensions building with his own base
I am seeing a number of posts on social media that follow a simple syllogism:
1) ‘Antifa’ means anti-fascism or anti-fascist (true).
2) Right-wing politicians call ‘Antifa’ a terrorist organization (false) and seek to dismantle it by various means.
3) Therefore, what right-wing politicians really mean is that they are ‘anti-anti-fascist,’ reducing to pro-fascist (dubious).
I will set aside my anarchist doubt about Antifa’s earlier violence, where violence is the foundation beneath all illegitimate authority. In the present context, this does not apply as many current Antifa demonstrations are entirely peaceful.
The syllogism however shows a failure to comprehend an authoritarian mindset in which it is inconceivable that people can do anything without an authoritarian structure and leadership.
My quibbles about Antifa asserting illegitimate authority through violence aside, Antifa has never been an authoritarian hierarchical organization.[1] Authoritarians simply cannot comprehend this. And they understand (correctly) that Antifa is against them. And they (authoritarians) foundationally believe that they themselves are legitimate, they understand anarchy as chaos, and so they see Antifa as an organization (which it isn’t) dedicated to chaos and to their overthrow as keepers of ‘order.’
‘Order’ is another one of those words like ‘freedom.’ I have said many times that whenever you see the word ‘freedom,’ you must ask, for whom? To do what? To whom? At whose expense?
And so it is with ‘Order.’ Whose order? In the current context, this is an apparent white Christian nationalist order under an aconstitutional broligarchy[2] in which the very, very, very wealthy are ‘sovereign’ and thus beyond moral or legal challenge or question.[3]
There is something of a paradox in this ‘order’ which may yet be the seed of its demise: Donald Trump’s original political base was authoritarian populist. To this day, he rails against a supposedly ‘radical leftist elite’ that undermined him in his first term, kept him from his righteous election victory in 2020, and which he is determined to take vengeance against in his second term as with his claim that George Soros is funding Antifa and other ‘criminal left’ groups.[4]
Authoritarian populists (Thomas Frank has them as ‘Cons’[5] and Colin Woodard has them as Greater Appalachian people[6]), certainly among the larger groups in the white Christian nationalist coalition, are anti-elitist,[7] hence Trump’s rhetoric, which means they shouldn’t cotton to an aconstitutional broligarchy—and indeed we saw a flash of this with the controversy over H-1B visas, which pitted high technology oligarchs insisting they had to have the visas against the Make Amerikkka Great Again (MAGA) faithful who insisted the visas were taking away Amerikkkan jobs.[8] We saw another flash with the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ and it remains to be seen what happens when the Jeffrey Epstein files reveal that Trump is among the elite pedophiles his administration has been protecting.[9] (Michael Wolff has claimed to have seen photographs allegedly in Epstein’s possession of two topless girls or, less probably, young women sitting on Trump’s lap with a telltale wet spot on Trump’s pants.[10])
It isn’t really a white Christian nationalist order. It’s an aconstitutional broligarchy.[11] And a tension may develop as Trump continues to betray his MAGA base.
At that point, it becomes conceivable that many of the gun nuts who stand silently by as it’s their man who’s dictator now, may suddenly decide to defend ‘democracy’ (which our erstwhile constitutional oligarchy never really was[12]). Apart from organized militia—whose numbers and equipment can only be guessed at—this might be a very disorganized uprising, just like Antifa is on the left.
[1] Natasha Lennard, “Trump’s Idea of the Criminal Left Is a Fiction. A Coordinated Defense Against His Fascism Shouldn’t Be,” Intercept, September 19, 2025, https://theintercept.com/2025/09/19/trump-charlie-kirk-george-soros-antifa/
[2] Gil Duran, “How the 'Broligarchs' plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/
[3] David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
[4] Natasha Lennard, “Trump’s Idea of the Criminal Left Is a Fiction. A Coordinated Defense Against His Fascism Shouldn’t Be,” Intercept, September 19, 2025, https://theintercept.com/2025/09/19/trump-charlie-kirk-george-soros-antifa/
[5] Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas? (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).
[6] Colin Woodard, American Nations (New York: Penguin, 2012).
[7] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
[8] David Benfell, “Donald Trump repeats the Democrats' error,” Not Housebroken, January 5, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/donald-trump-repeats-the-democrats
[9] David Benfell, “Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?” Not Housebroken, October 2, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/will-the-big-beautiful-bill-crack
[10] Julia Ornedo, “I’ve Seen Epstein’s Photos of Trump With Topless Girls: Author,” Daily Beast, October 10, 2025, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ive-seen-epsteins-photos-of-trump-with-topless-girls-author/
[11] David Benfell, “It’s an aconstitutional broligarchy now,” Not Housebroken, September 23, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/its-an-aconstitutional-broligarchy
[12] James Madison, “Federalist No. 10,” in Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (New York: Bantam, 2003), 50-58.