Trump's pardons: The legitimization of political violence
Compare: Germany in February 1933
BACKGROUND
See,
1)Spencer S. Hsu, Yom Jackman, Hannah Knowles, and Clara Ence Morse, “Trump pardons almost all involved in Jan. 6 riot, commutes remaining 14 sentences; Trump ordered those still incarcerated to be released immediately from federal prison,” Washington Post, January 20, 2025 (10:31 p.m. EST);
2)Aaron Blake, “The gravity of Trump pardoning Jan. 6ers who assaulted police; Donald Trump’s decision to do something so obviously unpopular and fraught should put to rest any GOP attempts to minimize his intentions.,” Washington Post, January 21, 2025 (9:07 a.m. EST);
Donald Trump has pardoned and commuted the sentences of all participants in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection and attempted coup d’état.
In doing so, he has given great impetus to political violence by his supporters against his opponents in the United States.
Together with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. U.S. (2024) granting the president immunity for any official acts undertaken while in office, Trump’s pardons virtually ensure that private militias will act with violence against Trump’s opponents if so directed, as they were on January 6, 2021.
If they are thoughtful, and they are not likely to be, they will consider the possibility that state officials and federal officials under a future non-MAGA president might prosecute them for any violence committed against Trump’s opponents.
In practice, they are not likely to feel any more fear of arrest and prosecution than did Adolf Hitler’s thugs in Prussia in 1932 and then in all of Germany after he became Chancellor in January 1933. These thugs had no fear of the police or prosecutors as they beat up and killed Socialists, Communists, and others who opposed the Nazi regime.
Trump now has his brownshirts and is himself immune from criminal liability for any of his official acts.
The scaffolding of a fascist regime is being built before our eyes.
Viewing the handsome young faces at Trump’s Inauguration today, one is reminded of all of the beautiful young German faces of those who came out to cheer Adolf Hitler as he passed in a motorcade, or at pro-Nazi demonstrations, or at the annualNazi party congress in Nuremberg.
Beautiful young people, lost in the rapture of the moment, lost in the rapture of being part of a powerful group and a movement which threatens to crush everything and everyone who stands in its way.
The rapture of such glorious moments in Germany was captured for all time in Leni Riefenstahl ‘s brilliant 1935 propaganda film of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Triumph of the Will. There you can see the ecstatic faces of young Germans in the heady early days of the Third Reich.
The handsome young faces at today’s Inauguration stand in sharp contrast to the faces of those attacked by Trump’s mob on January 6, 2021, which Trump in his attempt to erase history now refers to as ”J-6”.
Trump has now pardoned them, demonstrating that impunity extends from the top to the bottom.
Trump will not forget them.
That is the message. Their faith in him is justified.
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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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