From the Streets of LA to the National Stage: The Left Must Win the Cultural War

[justaprogressive]

n June 6, resistance ignited in the streets of Los Angeles to confront the Trump regime’s brutal campaign against immigrants, enforced by the brutality of ICE agents and the machinery of mass deportation. In a chilling escalation, Trump branded the protesters “insurrectionists” and threatened the use of military force — turning dissent into a crime and protest into a pretext for repression. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, called Los Angeles “occupied territory,” adding, “We’ve been saying for years this is a fight to save civilization.”

This is not merely the rhetoric of strongman fantasies; it is the language of fascist ambition, a calculated pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act and erect a police state. Beneath this chilling facade lies something far more ominous: the weaponization of the war on immigrants as a means to orchestrate ethnic cleansing, veiled under the apparatus of law and the grotesque spectacle of state power. Moreover, as Kristi Noem and Trump have blatantly outlined, their assault on immigrants extends beyond individual lives — it’s a direct attack on the U.S.’s largest cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, which stand as Democratic Party strongholds. When they claim to be liberating these urban centers from “socialists,” they are not just declaring war on ideological foes, they are also setting the stage for a fascist takeover, one rooted in division and destruction. This is not about upholding law and order; it is the calculated weaponization of authoritarian culture to escalate state violence, instill terror, criminalize dissent, and legitimize white nationalist ideology. By framing defiance as treason, Trump attempts to cloak his own authoritarian crimes while constructing a political climate where any challenge to power is met with brutal retaliation. As Michelle Goldberg noted in The New York Times, “This is what autocracy looks like.”

The authoritarian dream is rooted in the belief that state violence should serve as the primary tool of governance. When the guardrails of democracy are dismantled, violence shifts from being a last resort to a governing principle. This is precisely what unfolded in Los Angeles, where Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to crush protests against his mass deportation policies, while mobilizing ICE as a modern-day Gestapo. What cannot be ignored is that the militarization of civil society is not merely an overreaction or illegal response to a fabricated insurrection; it is the very foundation upon which martial law is established, paving the way for a fully realized fascist state. What unfolded in LA was not an insurrection; it was the people rising in defense of democracy. The true insurrection happened on January 6, with Trump as its chief architect. Yet once again, violence was being used not to protect democracy, but to crush it.

https://truthout.org/articles/from-the-streets-of-la-to-the-national-stage-the-left-must-win-the-cultural-war/