Liberal repression and MAGA repression: Compare and contrast

In one of the most insightful pieces I’ve read in some time, Jason Willick discusses the difference between “the ‘liberals’ version of political repression that occurred in the early 2020s and the populist version Trump is attempting now.” The difference is this:

The liberal version was veiled and superficially neutral, while the populist version is overt and undisguisedly political.

Willick explains:

Consider how the Biden Justice Department handled its prosecution of Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. It never admitted a political purpose. It made a point of insisting that Trump was being treated like anyone else. But prosecutors also made the political decision to try to fast-track the case through the judicial system in an election year.

Having waited to charge Trump until the summer of 2023, the Justice Department suddenly insisted that time was of the essence. It urged lower courts to rush their rulings and asked the Supreme Court to resolve Trump’s immunity claim before the appeals court had a chance to weigh in. (The justices declined.) The real goal of the rush — to convict Trump before the 2024 election — was easily inferred, even as the special counsel, Jack Smith, vigorously denied that politics was playing any role.

Last month, Smith was still insisting, through lawyers, that he “did not let the pending election influence his investigative or prosecutorial decision-making.” But there was no other plausible reason for the extraordinary procedural sprint he attempted toward the end of Biden’s term. The point isn’t that this was the worst abuse ever; it’s that even on the question of the timing of a criminal prosecution, the Biden Justice Department could not admit the role of politics.

By contrast, Trump makes no bones about the vindictive, personal nature of the prosecutions he’s pushing for:

Trump could not have been clearer in social media posts directed at his attorney general that he wants certain of his critics prosecuted as soon as possible. He made his retributive motive clear by adding: “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!).”

The same difference in approach to repression exists when it comes to speech:

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, overtly threatened ABC with regulatory reprisals if it did not discipline Jimmy Kimmel for a disparaging remark about the “MAGA gang” after Kirk’s killing. . . .

Compare this ham-handedness with the Biden administration’s campaign to influence what could be posted on social media during the coronavirus pandemic.

That censorship. . .operated subtly — sometimes so subtly that the administration didn’t need to give commands because it had a mind-meld with the companies’ employees about what constituted harmful misinformation. Trump is trying something very different. He’s. . .openly brandishing executive power to serve his own interests.

Willick’s key insight is that because it’s more subtle, the liberal approach to repression is more dangerous — more likely than Trump’s to be effective in the long run:

To successfully jail your opponents — as Smith got close to doing with Trump — it helps to at least pretend to be following the facts and the law. Trump’s refusal to maintain this pretense will hem him in if and when the cases make their way from Truth Social to a federal court’s docket.

The same dynamic probably applies when it comes to censoring your opponents. The Biden administration got away with its campaign to curb speech on social media. The Supreme Court declined (by a 6-3 vote) to rule that campaign unconstitutional.

By contrast, Trump’s campaign against Jimmy Kimmel has backfired. He’s back on the air, carried even by Salem’s affiliates, with more viewers than ever (at least for now). Meanwhile, Trump’s FCC chairman is viewed as an ogre — criticized even by Ted Cruz.

Willick puts the explanation point on his thesis by citing Tocqueville, never a bad note on which to end:

Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1831 insight about the kind of despotism most likely to take root in America is still relevant. He argued that democratic nations were unlikely to experience old-fashioned tyranny. Instead, the risk is something milder and more paternalistic: a “tutelary power” that keeps people “in perpetual childhood” for their own good. Think of the high-minded “misinformation” police and liberal legal experts admonishing that “no one is above the law.”

When confronted with a willful sovereign, Tocqueville wrote, democracies can usually check “within certain limits the inordinate stretch of his desires.” That clash is what is now happening with Trump, the courts and civil society. The greater threat will come when Trump, or his GOP successor, makes the apparatus of repression more sophisticated and discreet — presenting its censorship and weaponization of government as moral and uplifting. People around Trump are presumably learning those dark arts.

I’ll add only that as long as Trump is in charge, attempts at repression are unlikely to be subtle. And when the Democrats, full of anger and outrage, return to power, their attempts might not be subtle either.