Sam discusses the historic guilty verdict that was just rendered by a jury against Trump this past week (34 felonies for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, all for the purposes of ensuring his illegitimate election in 2016), along with the slew of unhinged fascist threats and rants that have come in the aftermath of the verdict.
Then, as this guilty verdict has in no way stopped his campaign for power again, she talks with two contributors to the June issue of The New Republic titled What American Fascism Would Look Like. Emmanuel Guerisoli discusses his essay The “Day One” Dictatorship (co-authored by Federico Finchelstein). Emmanuel is postdoctoral fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School. He can be followed at @emmaGuerisoli.
Then, Francisco Goldman discusses his essay From Texas to Massachusetts: On the border in a fascist America. Francisco is a novelist and journalist. His most recent novel is Monkey Boy, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He can be followed on ex-Twitter at @PacoGoldman or on Instagram @franciscogoldman.
Mentioned in this episode:
Escalator Redux by Jeff Sharlet (Scenes From a Slow Civil War)
The United States Looks Like a Sick Joke, The Paul Street Report
Trump’s Online MAGA Army Calls Guilty Verdict a Declaration of War by Tess Owen for Wired
“Make Them Pay”—The Far Right Responds to Trump’s Conviction By Kiera Butler for Mother Jones
Find out more about Refuse Fascism and get involved at RefuseFascism.org. We’re still on Twitter (@RefuseFascism) and other social platforms including Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky. Plus, Sam is on TikTok, check out @samgoldmanrf.
You can also send your comments to [email protected] or @SamBGoldman. Record a voice message for the show here. Connect with the movement at RefuseFascism.org and support:
· http://patreon.com/RefuseFascism
· Cashapp: $RefuseFascism
Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Refuse Fascism Episode 204
Sun, Jun 02, 2024 2:56PM • 1:09:50
Emmanuel Guerisoli 00:00
The Constitution of the United States does provide the executive, U.S. President, with a lot of power. Trump, in a discursive level has said: I will implement a dictatorship on day one. There is the other type of presidential powers that Trump could actually abuse in a much more serious way as article two, which is the emergency powers.
Francisco Goldman 00:21
He says he’s going to deport up to 20 million people — a warlike action against civilians in this country to cause that much suffering — so massive, so cruel. Do you know what happens if you demonize people in that way? If you dehumanize people in such an ugly way? What kind of violence are you inviting against them? History’s taught us what happens when you do that.
Sam Goldman 01:02
Welcome to Episode 204 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. Thank you, thank you to everyone who rates and reviews the show. Help us reach more listeners at a time where I know you can agree refusing fascism is needed more than ever.
So after listening to today’s episode, be sure to share it with others, click the share button in your app to send this episode to a friend or ten, or let the world know why you listen by rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. Thanks as well to all the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join the community over at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism. Today, we’re sharing two interviews with contributors to the June issue of New Republic’s June magazine, What American fascism would look like.
We’re gonna share interviews with Emanuel Guerisoli and Francisco Goldman, but first, we have to talk about the guilty verdict. I’m not gonna lie, I am surprised. 34 felony convictions delivered by the state of New York for this orange sack of fascist feces. Lock this sick motherfucker up now and throw away the key. He’s a danger to literally all of humanity. 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
If you’re listening, you know that Trump will be sentenced on July 11, just four days before the RNC. Trump, a man who loves to be first, is now the first former president to be a convicted felon. GOP presumptive nominee for president, a convicted felon, ad with a real chance of winning. I don’t revel in being a wet blanket, but when things get hot, you might need one, and right now, we need a bit of a reset. We are at a precarious moment right now: There is a large group of people inside and outside of power who see this trial through the lens of a holy war — as a battle against demons on Earth. In a situation where the larger fascist movement sees this election as their last chance to save their ability to dominate, have no pretense about following any law and order, no norms that constrain them. If you’re able, for instance, to give up on the peaceful transfer of power, which they’ve already done, and you now have this fueling of the persecution framework, there is nothing you won’t do. There is no end or limit to the depths they will go. The judge, the prosecutor, the jurors, witnesses, and their families have all been targeted by this fascist movement — their lives publicly threatened by MAGAts with what is purportedly their private information spread across fascist enabling social platforms.
As Jeff Sharlet noted, that Trump went after Judge Merchan in his post conviction speech at Trump Tower, saying that they were literally crucifying this man who looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil. Jeff writes: “It’s a metaphor, but he knows for many it’s not; it’s double duty language — accusation for the secular followers, revelation for the believers.” So here we are: They’re talking about lawfare, but what we’re really seeing here are the ingredients of a war. They are saying and knowing that they have the highest courts. They’re making clear that to them, the rule of law is garbage unless we are the law — telling the world that: We’re gonna use our powers on SCOTUS, whatever friends we have in the federal bench and everyone else, you’re marked; the target is on your back now.
To anyone who’s rational, we have to recognize that to this foaming at the mouth, misogynist, genocidally racist movement, this is very exciting. As Tess Owen, who extensively covers right wing extremists, tweeted following this conviction: “I don’t think Trump has ever been as dangerous as he is now.” And as we have hammered at on the show, this fascist movement is Trump and bigger than Trump. Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale and the author of How Fascism Works, (another previous guest of the show) said: “What we’re gearing up for is if Trump wins, he’s going to use the apparatus of the state to target his political opponents. He went on to say that history is full of examples of people not believing the rhetoric of fascists. Then, Stanley said: “Believe what they say. He’s literally telling you, he’s going to use the apparatus of the state to target his political opponents.”
So that’s on one side, and on the other side, you have people clinging to the status quo; people wanting to believe that this is a nation of laws, and when bad people do something wrong, they’re held to account. [mocking tone] We don’t have a king. It’s so satisfying for so many people to look at this verdict and say: The system works. You hear that from top Democrats, and the whole Democratic base is just celebrating without considering: What difference does this make, given that he remains the GOP presumptive nominee with a good chance of walking right back into the White House? What difference does this make if you can still just get annihilated by a movement that is thirsty for blood? If all you want or can imagine, is to just have Trump dinged, thinking that it doesn’t matter what it’s for or what it means, then you can literally end up thinking that up is down and down is up.
All of these think pieces out there on how Biden can use this conviction, you’re missing the point: The Democratic Party leadership are set in not fighting this — not on these terms. The fascists want to pour some gasoline and light a fire and the Dems want good vibes only, so that they can keep doing what America does. They don’t actually want to go into that division, because the deeper you get, you realize it cuts right to the heart of American Empire. They don’t want to call their base into the game on these terms. [In the voice of Democratic Party members] Just keep calm, just vote in November, otherwise, we can’t keep doing what we do. No polls exhibit a net gain of votes for Trump due to his conviction. That’s a good thing, but that’s not the story.
Stepping back, this is still an extremely tight race between a real life fascist at the head of a monstrous movement and a Democrat who, through trying to dig his heels into the horrendous status quo, is in fact digging the world into a deepening abyss of U.S. made genocide, unimpeded climate change, and the potential of World War 3. Zooming back in, the available polling data is too limited to get any big conclusions, but we can definitively say that this has not derailed the Trump Train. Trump’s campaign reported that they raised $52.8 million in the first 24 hours after the conviction. We’ve got polls saying that not only is the fascist movement consolidated around the idea that this case was cooked up to damage Trump’s campaign, but almost half of self described independents subscribe to that belief as well. And the majority of independents say that Trump should stay in the race despite the conviction, which would be unimaginable just a decade ago.
The fascist movement is not content with fact free delusions of innocence, or grievances against a “witch hunt,” They are already using this to justify and advance relentless, baseless, legal prosecution and worse of their political enemies if they regain power. After conviction, Trump didn’t hesitate to make his thoughts known. While the New York Times reports it was “all business,” it was, in fact, all grievance. And Trump wasn’t alone.
The MAGA-verse immediately went wild after the verdict, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, tweeting: “They rigged the trial to rig the election, make them pay.” Tim Pool tweeting only one word: “War.” The Heritage Foundation, in homage to Alito’s flying flags to support the coup, signaled to their base with a tweet of an upside down flag. Proud Boys channels for various chapters responded to the news, again, with one word: “War.” On Patriots.win, formerly the subreddit TheDonald, which was just a hotbed for organizing pre January 6th coup attempts, threats, end-times rhetoric are just going wild there as well. Here’s one example: “There are only two choices in November: Trump or civil war. I will hope for the former, but prepare for the latter.”
Sean Davis, co founder/CEO of fascist publication, The Federalist, tweeted: “In 2016, the presidential race was decided based on candidates releasing lists of potential Supreme Court nominees. In 2024, I want to see less of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison. This is what happens when you cross the Rubicon.” For more on the fascist space, including influencers in MAGA-world, see Christopher Mathias, writing for HuffPost, Tess Owens writing for Wired and Kiera Butler writing for Mother Jones in the show notes. What about the fascists in power? Well, House Judiciary Chairman Republican from Ohio, Jim Jordan, is demanding that D.A. Alvin Bragg testify about the “unprecedented persecution of Donald Trump.”
Christo fascist warrior, Speaker of the House, Louisiana Republican, Mike Johnson said on Fox News: “I do believe the Supreme Court should step in, obviously. This is totally unprecedented, and it’s dangerous to our system. We’ve all discussed this before. And you all talk about it all the time, and I think that the justices on the court — I know many of them personally — I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are.” Going on to say: “So, I think they will set this straight, but it’s going to take a while.” As Jeff Sharlet pointed out in his Substack “from Rambo to Scarface, Avenger to strongman, the story Trump is telling in ’24, the story out of which his believers reconfigure their American Nightmare dream isn’t just more of the same, it’s darker.”
On the other side of the aisle, polls show that a majority of Democratic voters feel the verdict bolsters their confidence in the system. Imagine seeing a fascist ex-President convicted on relatively minor charges, years too late with the probability that he won’t spend a day in jail, seeing Trump’s lawyers receive all the help they could want from the Supreme Court of the United States, federal courts and the Justice Department in indefinitely delaying more consequential court cases, seeing all of that, and having that bolster your confidence in a system that, for just one small example, gives you Trump as one of the two legitimate options for president.
Frequent guest and contributor to the pod, historian Paul Street notes on his Substack that “the Stormy Daniels path was a minor crime compared to Trump’s far more significant and openly fascist ones, the ones having to do with his effort to literally overthrow the Republic and institute a de facto authoritarian dictatorship.” Going on to say: “It’s not at all clear that last week’s conviction will significantly dent his support and the electorate, which backs him over Biden in all but one of the six contested states that absurdly determined presidential election outcomes under the nation’s archaic electoral college system.”
It’s significant that Trump who always declared himself above the law and transformed the GOP and its base into a party of fascist lawlessness and violence, culminating in the January 6th coup attempt, faces serious charges and multiple investigations, but we must not pin all our hopes on a mechanism that cannot and will not address the reasons we so badly want to see Trump locked up. Now, again, is a time for vigilance, not complacency. Let us not be lulled in submission by this verdict, for it cannot and will not stop this fascist movement. That continues to be up to us.
Every crisis Trump and his fascist party get through strengthens the U.S. fascist movement, leaving a core, battle tested and even more dangerous, genocidal revanchist lunatics in power to set the terms for all of society. It’s critical right now to spread the understanding of this fascist movement to the millions who righteously want to see Trump behind bars and to actively oppose this fascism in every sphere of life. With that, here’s my conversation with Emmanuel Guerisoli.
Emmanuel is a postdoctoral fellow at the Solberg Institute on migration and mobility at the New School. He’s working on a book on how colonial legal systems and racialization processes framed the legal architecture of the War on Terror. Together with Federico Finkelstein he wrote the essay, “The Day One Dictatorship: On the Law in a Fascist America” for the New Republic’s June magazine issue, “American Fascism, what ould it look like,” which is the topic of our discussion. Welcome. I’m so glad to have you on Emmanuel. Thanks for joining us.
Emmanuel Guerisoli 14:44
Thank you, Sam. I’m very happy to be here.
Sam Goldman 14:46
Let’s start — let’s go back in time, in 2016, Trump came to power with what I think we can agree was very little strategy to implement a relatively vague vision. There was Make America Great Again, but it was pretty amorphous. Today, he has one of the two major political parties in this country and a vast dedicated movement of tens of millions, and an army of loyal strategists including legal scholars and experts. I’m wondering if you could talk about what difference does this make, that he has this whole apparatus that including a clear vision that he didn’t have in 2016, and even has advanced since 2020.
Emmanuel Guerisoli 15:35
I think that it makes a lot of difference. It’s not good for a possible outcome of a Trump presidency. They have experience, first of all. They have experience in government, and by that I mean, not only Trump, but the Trump loyalists — the ones that were perhaps marginalized or set aside, not only during the first term, but perhaps during the first three years. We should remember that the first three months of the Trump administration, you had many people that were, if not fired, let go or that had to leave their position; of course, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, those are the ones that today are the most loyal to Trump.
But I think that what you mentioned about the Party is perhaps the most important element of a second Trump presidency. The Republican Party in 2016, was not entirely sold on the idea of Trump. Perhaps, not even Trump was sold on his own idea, because — this is my own perception — I don’t think that they expected to win, or at least they didn’t expect to win in that way, and not even the Republican Party expected to win the presidency. But today, if not the majority of the Republican Party, at least half of the Republican Party, and by that I mean, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, at the federal level, are really pro Trump.
Just look at 2021 when they had to go certify the 2020 election, I think it was 120 Republicans that actually voted against the certification of votes, because they considered the election was stolen. That is a huge deal. Besides many Republican representatives, or senators that are pro Trump, you also have the supporters and the voters that, if they weren’t perhaps, I wouldn’t say marginal, but they were voting for Trump, perhaps because they were against Clinton, or because they were against Obama or because there was a perception, particularly in the Midwest, and in the Rust Belt that they were forgotten by the elites, now, it’s a completely different game; it seems that Republican voters and supporters of Trump, many of them, the majority, believe that Trump actually won the 2020 election and it was stolen from him, and they also believe or they follow many of his and their ideas — not only Trump because it’s not just Trump, clearly, but he’s just a figure that engulfs everything.
Sam Goldman 18:05
I’m thinking about how even people who didn’t like Trump the person, and who in fact, despise Trump, the person, have gotten on board with Trump the program, who continue to see Trump as the vehicle to, despite what they would have liked to happen, this is the way that they’re gonna get back into power. He’s going to be there, and I think that there’s still an idea that the Republican Party will somehow be able to work around him, or they’ll be able to get their agenda through because of him. So I think that people will continue to be shocked, like: How can Nikki Haley, who said all these things, still turn around and tell her people that she’s gonna vote for Trump? It’s like: She was always gonna do that.
Emmanuel Guerisoli 18:54
Of course, because there is party loyalty. Also, if they see again, for themselves, I doubt that Nikki Haley will have any type of position in a possible cabinet – let’s just remember the Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney also tried really hard to have a position in the first Trump cabinet, and he was completely marginalized. So I think that Haley will have the same fate. What has happened many times, in 2016, the idea was that: Okay, he will be president, but the Republican Party — not even the deep state — the Republican Party will actually rein him in.
As history shows us, many fascistoid leaders, they are not only fascist leaders, they have many radical ideas, extremist ideas, they campaign on extremist ideas, but then when they get to power, they either don’t have the opportunity to enact those ideas, or they will be limited by either the state apparatus or by the party apparatus. I think, in this case, Trump had both, the state apparatus and the Party that didn’t allow him to put into motion his most extreme ideas, though they clearly tried. Because they have gained experience, and also they have gained legitimacy, which is even more important, the second time around, they will be able to enact the most extreme ideas, or part of them.
Sam Goldman 20:16
I agree that that legitimacy piece is essential and also deeply, deeply disturbing that they’ve been able to garner as much legitimacy as they have. For instance, the fact that it wasn’t totally the end when Trump declared the dictator for a day statement — that wasn’t just the end. Instead, he goes: I think a lot of people liked it. The journalist for Time magazine tells us: Many people are disturbed by this. No. A lot of people really liked it. I don’t think he’s entirely wrong. I don’t think it’s the majority that really like it, but I do think he has his finger on something, that there is not just a fascist movement within those who seek to rule, but there’s also a fascist base in this country.
I want to move to something that you walk people through along with Federico in your piece for the New Republic, which was about this dictatorship for a day, where Trump declared he is going to be a dictator for a day if he wins, and he’s made clear that he won’t respect the results of an election that does not declare him a victor. Much is said in the media and in public discourse about constitutional and legal provisions that are supposed to act as guardrails for American democracy, but it seems there are constitutional and legal provisions that can also enable Trump’s fascist transformation of government and society. For example, Article Two of the Constitution and a significant number of emergency power clauses. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what powers does our system grant the President, and how could they be used by a fascist, like Trump, or in this case, fascist Trump, to subvert the rule of law and consolidate fascism?
Emmanuel Guerisoli 22:10
The article that we wrote with Federico, at some point we were afraid that is this a recipe they’re going to follow? Are we actually providing a roadmap? They already know what they have to do, but this is also a warning not only for Trump, but just for any president. Abuse of power at this security level is not just a type of an exclusive, fascist characteristic, however, we have people like Ronald Reagan, or Bush, Jr, or Bush father, but neither of them campaigned, or even said at any moment, that I remember, at least, not even Nixon, if I recall, they never said: I’m going to transform, or I’m going to try to have dictatorship, or I will be authoritarian in some ways, and maybe not in others.
In this case, we have Trump that on a discursive level, he has said: I will implement and dictatorship on day one. He has not said for what, although he has implied mostly to persecute his political opponents. But also we have had the precedent of him trying to reverse the election results in 2020. That is already a huge red flag. Now, unfortunately, the Constitution of the United States does provide the executive, and by this, I mean, the U.S. President, with a lot of power. Even if the U.S. Constitution was designed in a way to have a separation of power and checks and balances that would try to minimize the power of the executive, through the 200 plus years of U.S. history, the President has abrogated, and both U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court have recognized some type of power that is inherent in the President because of the idea of sovereignty.
In this way, the idea of a type of almost absolute power, particularly in the foreign relation of Foreign Affairs realm, and, and almost everything related to national security. Article Two of the Constitution principally says that executive power is vested on the President. This means that it’s up to the President to execute the laws of the country. Now, the President doesn’t make laws. That is the role of Congress, although the President has the power to enact certain types of executive orders or presidential decrees. So, already in Article Two, the President the executive, could abuse that power by completely eradicating any type of autonomy over the different agencies that depend on executive power, like the FBI, or the different secretaries or departments, like the Department of Defense, or very importantly, the Department of Justice.
This has been not something that either Federico or I are saying just by ourselves, but it has been It said that Trump will actually order FBI and the Department of Justice to start prosecuting his political opponents or journalist, Joe Biden or the family of precedent by then, by directing the Justice Department and the FBI to start investigations against them. That, of course, would be an abuse of power, because even if the person legally can do that, normally, the President does not tell the Justice Department how to start, or where to start an investigation; it’s up to the Department of Justice to start one and then of course, the U.S. Attorney General can stop that investigation or not.
Normally, it should be autonomous or have some degree of autonomy. There is the other type of presidential powers that Trump could actually abuse in a much more serious way as Article Two, which is the emergency powers. Most Republics, most liberal democracies have certain type of contingencies in the case of war or internal strife that allow for what is called martial law, or the state of siege or a state of emergencies. What they do is to limit certain type of civil liberties, or, in the case of the U.S. augment the power of the executive, particularly by avoiding certain type of proceduralism that would actually require extra steps on normal times.
For example, when there’s a hurricane, normally, there is a declaration of a state emergency, and that allows certain agencies like FEMA, to provide assistance without all the necessary normal steps that are actually required to do in normal times, or without an emergency. One thing is a hurricane, other [chuckling], there are other situations, particularly related to foreign threats, but also internal threats, that would allow Trump to declare a national emergency, and then use that emergency to, for example, freeze the bank accounts of many individuals in the U.S., to control the internet, to impose some type of censorship over the press.
This, of course, depends on the type of declaration of emergency that is declared and the different laws that declaration of emergency that are going to be categorized, and then are going to be triggered by the emergency. There are around 140 to 150 different statutes that, in case of an emergency, can be automatically triggered, and that provide the President with enhanced authority. Now, the issue here is that there’s no law that defines what constitutes an emergency. So it’s up to the president to discretionarily declare one, just like Trump the either when, for example, he declare an emergency regarding immigration in order to construct and to have the funds to build the wall in the border with Mexico.
There is even some disputed Supreme Court decision cases when there is a limited judicial review on the power of the president in declaring an emergency. So, there it will be perhaps up to Congress, also up to the Supreme Court, to intervene in order to limit the powers of the presidency during an emergency. But it’s really tough. There are not many precedents. Normally they take their time to actually be enacted.
Sam Goldman 28:18
If you’re relying on the Supreme Court that Trump played a large role in stacking to be the guardrail, I think that’s really flimsy, just given who those people are and what they’ve already done. I think that what you’ve pointed to, it’s like: Well, okay, if he could do those things, who could stop him? If he’s able to declare an emergency, shutdown all of those things, get rid of agencies that he either doesn’t like, like the EPA, or wants to transform, like the Department of Justice, are there ways to stop that?
Emmanuel Guerisoli 28:56
He could actually do that without even the declaring emergency. When he wants to get or eliminate the EPA, he can do it without even doing that. He could disband the FBI. Of course, it will be difficult because once you build a bureaucracy, it’s very difficult to dismantle one, but it’s something that legally could be done. It depends also what type of Congress we have — Congress would normally intervene. What will happen is that in the case of emergencies, Congress could declare that the emergency — and in fact, Congress tried to do this when Trump declared the emergency on the border with Mexico — what Congress did was to pass a law declaring this emergency void; declaring the emergency not to exist anymore or to never have existed. Trump vetoed it.
Then it goes back to Congress and then Congress needs to override the veto with a two thirds majority — that’s very difficult to happen. The Supreme Court tends to declare, or tends to by jurisprudence to say that emergencies are a political matter and thus vested within the executive power. This doesn’t mean that the President can do or the executive power could do whatever they want during emergency. It will be up to Congress and will be up to the judiciary to limit Trump. But again, this will depend on the composition of Congress and their political ideology of many of the members of the judiciary, both at the court of appeals level and in the Supreme Court.
Sam Goldman 30:23
Everyone remembers Trump telling the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by. Besides the mechanisms that you just described, I was hoping we could talk a little bit about the possibility of the risk of far right militias being legitimated as paramilitary organizations if Trump or someone else that was a fascist was to re-seize the White House.
Emmanuel Guerisoli 30:49
Unfortunately, it’s amazing that the U.S. has a long history, even to colonial times, regarding militias. This is very ingrained in not only U.S. history, but in U.S. culture. Of course, it is very much related to a settler colonial logic against Native Americans to assert property rights and to protect also certain communities from raids from different tribes; but mostly to also legitimate the expansion of those communities. Then, many of the militias also started in order to apprehend fugitive slaves that were trying to escape from the South to the North. Of course, then militias, like the KKK that tried to re impose a type of racial order or racial hierarchy, eventually Jim Crow, post-reconstruction in the U.S.
But the existence of militias is very ingrained in the type of frontier border culture, not only in the U.S., but in the U.S. case it’s quite amazing that — I don’t know how many militias are in the U.S., around 300 or something like that — they’re legal — they are not prohibited by US law, unless of course, some of them could be designated a foreign terrorist organization. But clearly none of the militias, particularly favorite ones will be at any point; the Supreme Court has actually declared that it can exist legally. But I digress here.
The issue is historically, for example, the Border Patrol that emerged in the 1920s in the U.S., actually was instituted by the federal government by recruiting the Texas Rangers that were a paramilitary still?, a paramilitary organization that was patrolling and protecting the U.S. border from rates coming from Mexico — in that moment, Mexico was under a Civil War, and particularly they were protecting against so called Mexican bandits like Pancho Villa and others. At that moment, during the 20s and 30s, is when the U.S. starts to create these federal type of police organizations like the FBI and the Border Patrol, and they actually recruit from paramilitary organizations.
In the case of Trump, what’s striking is the Trump has used paramilitary organizations, or clearly, he has legitimated them, but also has used them for political goals: First in the Mexican border against the southwest border by legitimating. What the Minutemen and others have done in protecting the U.S. borders from irregular migrants, particularly from traffickers. But then, Trump, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests — and not only Trump, also different U.S. governors and others — legitimated the role of right militias and vigilantes in protecting private property from looters and rioters. The Kenosha case is a paradigmatic one in 2020.
Then we get to the presidential debate where Trump says: Okay, Proud Boys stand back and stand by. What’s incredible is that there, a normal person would have said: No, I’m not the leader of this disgusting organization, or I’m not the leader of this organization. He, of course, doesn’t say he’s the leader, but he kind of like gives an order. He just acts like: Okay, I will tell them to not do anything. But eventually, many of them go on January 6th, and they tried to — it clearly is an insurrection — and they believe that Trump was trying to orchestrate a coup d’etat. Perhaps not the most well organized one — they gained experience now — and what’s striking is that clearly, it seemed that it was not a coup, but that’s another matter. But it’s amazing that this is still disputed.
There are precedents when the federal government has recruited, has formed even, new type of security agencies or police agencies from paramilitary organizations. It will not surprise me either if Trump loses, or in a second Trump presidency, that he will use the support of far right militias or paramilitary organizations. For example, either protecting against the U.S. border with Mexico, or to support ICE in deportation or rounding up of migrants in sanctuary cities, particularly if he doesn’t want to federalize the National Guard, or if the National Guard or the Armed Forces refuse, or are reticent to follow his orders, He can use paramilitary or far right organizations to do something like that. It has happened even in other countries, but in the 30s and 20s, in Germany and Italy, even in Chile, in Argentina, but it would be the national police were actually paramilitary organizations that were whitewashed into the National Police. It’s something that has happened in the past. Today it will happen in a different way, not the same way, but there are precedents and it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
Sam Goldman 35:51
Is there anything that you think people should be aware of, from maybe other historical examples from other countries in terms of if Trump loses the possibility of utilizing the militias and not just militias, but the armed mob that he commands, the people who, like the Proud Boys, for instance. Thinking about that debate, when that happened, they immediately made jackets saying: standing by. They knew that the message sent to them was: Be ready. Then they were. The fact that that time they weren’t successful isn’t actually what’s essential here, it’s that there is a force — I don’t want to speculate on size or abilities — that is gunning for a go to be that retribution or whatever, whether it’s going after perceived political enemies or whatever they might be asked to do.
Is there any insight of what we should look at? I think, before the election, we saw in Brazil, for example, a good example of the intimidation efforts that rabid Bolsonaro supporters intimidating or blocking areas to get to voting. So I think that that’s a possibility here — we already saw reports at some ballot drop boxes of Oath Keepers displaying their weaponry. What should we be thinking about? And are there lessons from other places?
Emmanuel Guerisoli 37:15
Well, clearly, this country has too many guns — not the only one, but it’s kind of like an exception within liberal democratic or constitutional democracies I think that we are going to see, perhaps, images of far right militias, armed men, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, or whomever protecting voting booth in different states. I think we’re going to see those images, and perhaps, of them following the ballot boxes [suppressing laughter] somewhere. I mean, that is already intimidating, at least is for me, for some, maybe it’s not, but for me, it’s quite intimidating, and I think that we’re going to see also more targeted intimidation in certain states.
Let’s be honest, the election is going to be decided in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Those are going to be the states that are going to matter and are going to eventually be the ones where we’re going to see those types of events. But if Trump loses — of course, I hope that he does lose, but — I am concerned that we may actually see a renewed far right terrorist movement. They will try to do perhaps what we’re not able to do in 2020. We might even see Trump legitimating those attacks and even, not only supporting them, but perhaps even undirectly directing them to commit attacks against senators or representatives or other officials.
The idea there, perhaps, is to create chaos. It’s quite striking, because why they might be actually forced to declare a state of emergency and to enact insurrection, or move armed forces against internal enemies, and in a way that will actually legitimize the view of many in the country that Biden is a dictator, and that is like revealing now, the true authoritarian face of Biden and Democrats. That will be, perhaps, a scenario that not many are talking about, but it’s one that I dread. Of course, I also dread Trump presidency, but that is one that there’s a lot of uncertainties there. I think that we also have to remember that far right militias — these are not blooping, hipsters that have funny ideas, these are people that are trained, many of them are U.S. veterans, many of them are active duty U.S. soldiers, or in police forces across the country. So they’re not only armed, they are also very well trained.
They’re a minority compared to U.S. armed forces and the federal security forces like the FBI or the U.S. Marshal, but they have a lot of sympathizers within particularly security agencies. It sounds like a dystopian thing, like something brought from the Turner Diaries or something like that, that I’m mentioning these type of scenarios, but it’s something that could pan out that way. Again, we don’t know how the election will turn out, it might be very close. The closer it is, particularly if Trump loses, the most dangerous risk there is of something like this happening, because for them, it will be, again, it’s the second time. Again, we are losing by fraud, the deep state or whatever.
Sam Goldman 40:17
And I think all of these scenarios… I’ve done some work with people thinking through things, and all of them are fraught. There’s not one where you’re like: This is how it works out. Every possible scenario, there is multiple levels of contention, and I think the scariest, honestly, to me is that he wins outright and there’s no struggle, no nothing. Those in power are like: Yes, this is how democracy works, and end up just handing it over without any struggle.
So that is my biggest fear, but I think all your fears, teasing it through is important, because if people don’t confront what we really face, and the fact that this isn’t a joke, this isn’t just some clowns, they can be clowns, and they can be super dangerous. That’s a terrible segue, but I was hoping as we close out the conversation, if there was anything more from the history of fascist takeovers, or wannabe fascist takeovers in Latin America, or in Europe, or anywhere else that you want to speak about, that you think are relevant to January 2025, or even that you think are relevant to like this election period, for people to know about.
Emmanuel Guerisoli 41:38
In popular culture, there is this idea that both Hitler and Mussolini were elected democratically to lead their respective countries. This is not the case — in neither of them. Mussolini tried to orchestrate a coup against the Kingdom of Italy. He succeeded in the way that the king of Italy asked him to form a government, and then eventually, between two to three years refurbished the entire the Italian state, completely destroyed the rule of law, and founded a fastest Italian and state. But there was not an election.
The election that actually happened in, I want to say 1923, it was an election that was, first of all, there was a lot of fraud, but also, as you mentioned, before, there was a lot of intimidation; there were fascist groups, not allowing people to vote, or violently suppressing the vote. And the same thing happened in Nazi Germany, Hitler was again, invited to form government by the President, Hindenburg. At that moment, in ’33, there was a huge level of internal violence between communists and Nazis. In both cases, in Italy and Germany, the conservatives thought: We can control these people. And the conservatives actually also welcomed them because it was a way for them to go against the socialists or the communists, and even the liberals.
In the case of Nazi Germany, what eventually happened was that there was the Reichstag fire at the Parliament of the German government that was blamed on a communist, and that gave Hitler the opportunity to declare a state of emergency, and from their own constitute a Nazi state with no rule of law, and banning all political parties, and we know what happened later. But again, he didn’t win any election. In fact, even at the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, with a state of emergency, with civil liberties already suppressed, and even the freedom of speech and freedom of the press suppressed because of the state of emergency, even in 1933, there is an election, and the Nazis do not win — they have a majority, they win most vote, but they do not win the majority.
Also, many people didn’t vote because many were already detained, many were intimidated, and many were completely violently suppressed from going to vote. The idea that, like you said: Okay, this democracy, well, it’s not really… historically wasn’t democracy, because then later orchestrated a dictatorship. In the case of Trump, yes, procedurally, legally 2016 was a democratic vote, because of the Electoral College — if it will be an actual vote by the majority of American citizens, he lost. And in 2020, he lost both, the popular and the electoral vote.
In the case of 2024, I think that if he wins, he will not win the popular vote — at least I hope he doesn’t — but if he wins only once because of the electoral vote, because again, Arizona or Nevada or Pennsylvania, give him the majority in the electoral college. So perhaps a good opportunity for the future to change that system. It will be a mess to do it, but I think that’s something for people to know, is that if these people win, if Trump wins, it’s through violence, it’s not through a democratic movement; it’s through violence, through intimidation, through a lot of fear, and particularly — he will not be the only politician to do this — through a lot of lies.
This is something that Federico Finchelstein talks a lot about, fascist lies. Fascit lies matter a lot. We know what happened in 2016 or 15, when this guy tried to storm the place where the Pizza Gate was happening, because he actually believed this. And on January 6th, many people actually legitimately believed Trump and company that he had actually won the election. I’m not justifying what they did, of course, but again, if they win is not because of the ideas, although some people actually believe them, but it’s because of intimidation, fear of violence and lies.
Sam Goldman 45:38
I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise, your perspective, your time with us. We’re gonna link to the “Day one dictatorship: on the law in a fascist America” that is in the June issue of The New Republic. If people want to read more from you, connect with your work, where do you want to direct people to go?
Emmanuel Guerisoli 46:03
I normally post everything I write, or I try to write on Twitter, @EmmaGuerisoli, nd they can go to the New School website, look for me, and they have there many of my readings and courses and interests and stuff like that.
Sam Goldman 46:16
Thank you so much, and Emmanuel. Next, my conversation with Francisco Goldman:
I’m honored to welcome on novelist and journalist Francisco Goldman to discuss his essay: From Texas to Massachusetts: On the border in a fascist America, which is featured in the New Republic, What would American fascism look like issue. Francisco’s most recent novel, ‘Monkey Boy’ was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and I just want to welcome Francisco. Thank you. Thanks for coming on.
Francisco Goldman 46:49
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor.
Sam Goldman 46:52
Let’s start with: What are the plans that Trump has announced already for immigration in his second term? If he were to be back in power, what does he hope?
Francisco Goldman 47:08
You could go through a whole list of plans from things that we heard from before in the last administration, like cancel DACA, make it impossible to apply for asylum, close the border, eliminate birthright citizenship, make the so called Muslim ban — expand that to include, I think he said people from Gaza. To me, personally, the thing that I think has frightened people the most, and the one that goes most of the heart of this — is this really possible? — is Trump just being rhetorical and trying to attract attention, or does he mean this? — and that’s an important thing to touch on — is that he says he is going to deport up to 20 million people; that every single undocumented immigrant in this country, some of them have been here, 20, 30 years, even longer, working, paying taxes, living in American neighborhoods, in American cities and American rural areas all over the country — he’s going to round them all up and deport them all.
Anybody who’s curious about this should find on Google, the Charlie Kirk podcast with Stephen Miller, his [Trump’s] immigration guru, where he really lays out these plans. They talk about creating a vast militarized infrastructure down on the border of vast warehouses, air strips, everything that you would need to just collect people, and immigrants would lose, for instance, their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches, ICE agents, maybe he would even put out the National Guard, use the army, everything seems possible. How are you going to round up 20 million people? They’ll be able to go right into houses and take whole families, transport them down to these vast warehouses.
The way I pictured them is sort of enormous Amazon warehouses, or huge Ikea stores or something that look more like airplane hangars, and just stuff all those people in there so that thy’ll be out of sight, out of mind, and without due process, send them back to the countries they fled — in many cases, countries they barely remember anymore. They’ll be sent with families, because people won’t always have people to leave children behind with, essentially back to countries they don’t even know anymore. Send people back to places that they fled because their lives were directly threatened, say by gangs or narco cartels — families that have been shown in the past, when people have been deported, having fled those very circumstances, they’ll go back to places where the cartels, for example, in Mexico, or the gangs in Central America and cartels in Mexico City had directly threatened them and their families, and when they get sent back, they are in fact killed. They have long memories. It’s inconceivable that this could actually happen.
On his podcast, Stephen Miller uses the most extraordinary language. He says that this will be an American, United States achievement on the order of building the Panama Canal. That’s what he actually compares it to, which is really crazy — a warlike action against civilians in this country to cause that much suffering, so massive, so cruel, to compare that to a gigantic feat of engineering is extraordinary. And then you just have to hear the way he talks. This man incarnates in the 21st century, ridiculously mundane way, the banality of evil like nobody you’ve ever heard in that [mocking his tone] thin little insipid voice he has, he literally says: [continuing in Miller’s tone] This will be so wonderful, it will be so joyous, people will be so happy. He claims white Americans will be so happy to see all these people deported, which of course, isn’t true.
No, these people are the neighbors of all of us. They live with us, work with us. Whether they’re people who are employed alongside us in businesses or study alongside our children in schools, or take care of our children, in some cases. they’re just massively interwoven into daily American life. The idea that all Americans are gonna think [mocking Miller again] it’s so wonderful, so joyous, [normal tone resumes] to see them all rounded up and deported in this massive, Nazi like way — that’s the only thing you can really compare it to — it’s really similar, the plan, put them into warehouses, camps, and deport them in many cases, to their deaths. It’s pretty appalling.
Now, is it just a rhetorical ploy? I’ve been reading in the newspaper every day, Trump always means what he says. He is an authoritarian and he said he wanted to do a Muslim ban and up to 2016, he did. He said he wanted to build a wall, he did. He said he wanted to stop asylum by 2020, they effectively had — people couldn’t apply for asylum in a de facto way on the border anymore. It seems likely that it’s very possible it’s not just a rhetorical ploy. He really thinks that would be his Panama Canal or his moonshot or his Normandy invasion. It’s completely lunatic and vile. You just have to think what would happen to U.S. standing in the world?
Sam Goldman 52:09
One of the things that you had said, that I think is on people’s minds a lot, is this notion that: Oh, it’s what he wants, or: Oh, it’s what he says, but it’s just not possible. It couldn’t happen, or he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see it through. I think that it’s worth reflecting on how much he already changed what was normative and what was possible in his first term, where those things that people thought: Oh, you couldn’t mobilize that you couldn’t utilize this in this fashion. He went and was able to undermine and challenge immigration policy and asylum in his first term. I think there’s this political amnesia.
Francisco Goldman 53:00
It is a political amnesia, and also, if you talk to people who — the lawyer Heather Axford, I speak to in my piece — who understand immigration law and what actually happened, they learned slowly how to work the system. Attorney Generals can do a lot of damage, like Attorney General Sessions overturned a lot of most important principles of asylum law. But it was just personal decisions of theirs that when the Biden administration got back in, they were able to reinstate, so we didn’t see the complete consequences of if they had managed to codify these things as law. What human rights lawyers know now is that they have all that stuff ready to go.
The minute Trump gets back in, because they have a Supreme Court supreme court that’s on their side — many of the courts are on their side — they may very well control the legislature, they’ll have no problem codifying these things as laws. Saying that you are no longer allowed to apply for asylum because you’re fleeing narcotic cartels or gangs; you are no longer allowed to apply for asylum just because there’s a death threat hanging over your whole family, those things will become U.S. law, and so make it very hard — very long, slow, years long process to overturn those if we ever even get a chance to do that again.
So they are ready. We remember how incredibly shocked the American conscience was, not everybody’s, but such a great many, huge percentage of Americans, were shocked by child separation; by separating families at the borders, in many cases into the Biden administration, they hadn’t managed to track down and reunite those families; children torn away from their parents and locked up, the parents might be in the detention center in Alabama and the kids might have been sent to one in Arizona and they lose track of where they were, aside from just the trauma, this caused the families. That was finally somewhat restrained because the courts stepped in and there were so many legal challenges, but when Trump gets back in, and these people, they are ready to do that again and codify it and make it the law, and the courts now, because they’re so stocked with people that they put in there, and especially the Supreme Court, it’s much harder to say what will happen.
The other one that was like Trump wanted to do was he asked if he could militarize the border and have soldiers shoot at the legs of migrants approaching the walls. Migrants approaching, basically just to ask for asylum, and he wanted to just shoot at their legs? If he were to give an executive order, saying that armed border security authorities are now allowed to do that, would any court overturn it? And DACA take DACA, when people want to feel incredibly gloomy about what’s been done in immigration policy over the last, I don’t know how many years, they can look at DACA as at least one thing that gave us some sense of like fairness and security to young immigrants who were brought here, [not] by their own volition but because their parents were, in most cases in Central America, fleeing the Central American wars that we were sponsoring.
I have a friend who is still here in Mexico who was brought to United States when he was one year old. And he was 32, I think, already raising a family. working as an IT specialist, though still undocumented, but a kind of genius IT person, who just because of a fender bender, in one of those Republican Long Island towns, where a very anti immigrant police officer immediately called ICE on him over a little fender bender on an icy suburban road, after he had dropped his children off at school, they took him right to the police station, and deported him to Guatemala. He wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to his family.
He got to Guatemala, and because Hurricane Mitch had completely destroyed the archival offices in the part of the country where he’d been born, there was just no way for them to give him a record of his birth. He was terrified. The gangs in Guatemala immediately picked up on him as a vulnerable person who they could try to either threaten and try to bring him in and make him a member of the gang. He fled to Mexico. He tried to cross back one time, and he was attacked. He was left for dead in the border. People found him unconscious in the desert, Border Patrol people took him shipped him right back into Mexico. This is a person who was brought to United States, when he was one year old, did not speak a word of Spanish. He was brought just by his mother. This is the kind of thing that can happen. It’s terrifying.
Sam Goldman 57:34
It’s horrifying, and that’s one example. Then you you multiply that to a scale that really is… its depravity.
Francisco Goldman 57:43
Did you hear what Trump said after he got out of the courtroom today? Here he has this moment, all the TV cameras are on him, he’s just been convicted from 34 felonies, and what does he start to rave about? He starts to say that the country is filling up with what he calls “illegal” immigrants who have been let out of prisons and mental institutions, he says; insane people are flooding into the country. Tthis incredible kind of blasphemy. You just can’t believe anybody would stand up there and say anything so crazy and so ugly. Imagine that you are a hard working immigrant family, mother and father, you make the mistake of turning on the news at home at night, you’re there your children, and you’re migrants, whether you’re undocumented or not, and there’s this former, maybe future president of the country, talking about people like you that way. What do you say your children? It’s just beyond vile, it’s just so evil.
Sam Goldman 58:40
It’s beyond vile, and it’s incredibly dangerous because there’s people that hang on every word, and completely divorced from reality, and believe what they’re being told. That is incredibly dangerous.
Francisco Goldman 58:56
And you know, what happens if you demonize people in that way? If you dehumanize people in such an ugly way, and basically, completely deform the image of these human beings in the minds of other people who, perhaps don’t even really live around — you create this fantasy demons in their mind and strip these people of human qualities, what kind of violence are you inviting against them? History’s taught us what happens when you do that. Obviously, Americans are so ahistorical, they get told that all the time, but just look through the 20th century, where we had plenty of governments and fascist dictators who presided over these kinds of campaigns of hatred and violence, which either caused genocides or mass movements, mass imprisonment of people and all kinds of suffering, which is the kind of thing he’s calling for, and how did they all end? Every one of them destroyed their own country, and ended up either in prison or dead themselves or completely dishonored, or history’s biggest, most despised, to use a word Trump likes to use to denigrate people: losers.
He’s trying to convince people that he’s doing something good for the United States by following in the footsteps of these kinds of authoritarian or fascist or dictatorial figures that we grew up understanding represented evil. How’s he doing this? How’s he appealing to so many people? It’s so sad. It’s really troubling, because this is not the United States, any of us, for all its troubles for all its historical problems, this is not the country any of us ever thought we were growing up in, where appeals like that could be made. I’m just so haunted by it. It just really troubles me all the time.
Sam Goldman 1:00:27
It’s extremely haunting. Trump and Stephen Miller have been whipping up their fascist base against immigrants. One of the things that we’ve talked a lot about is that the attacks on immigrants really are a linchpin and battering ram, for this whole fascist movement, really a vehicle to do away with civil and democratic rights over all, if they’re able to receive and consolidate power. If there was anything else that you think people need to be aware of, in terms of what Trump and Miller have been saying, in terms of brainwashing their followers to believe — you mentioned what Trump said in terms of just after the verdict about what he said about immigrants.
Francisco Goldman 1:01:34
When you have Stephen Miller saying: [mocking tone] It’s gonna be so wonderful and people are gonna be so to joyous, they’re completely disguising and misleading, just hiding the damage this is good to do to the very people, they claim to be making life better for. The damage is going to do to the economy is just going to be incredible. It’s not just because the Congressional Budget Office and so forth, said that so much of the robustness of our economy and the projected robustness of the economy, 7, 10, 20 years down the road, depends on immigrant work — anybody who has their eyes open can see how it works in the communities they live in, especially if they work in big cities or rural working class everywhere.
I used in my piece, the example of New Bedford, Massachusetts, because my novel is set there, and so I spent a lot of time there. It’s the most historically rich community and New England I think, within the whole United States. That’s where Moby Dick begins, of course, it’s where Frederick Douglass came to live after he escaped from the South. At one point the richest city in all of the United States of America because of the whaling industry and then textiles. Now it’s fell into a kind of post industrial economic ruin, but it’s starting to revive now, and especially remains the number one fishing port in the United States. No commercial fishing port is more important or brings in more money than New Bedford. All of you who eat seafood, you’re often, if it’s not imported — but even, sometimes, if it is imported, it’s been processed in New Bedford. And you look at how that business works, it would not work without immigrant labor.
Sam Goldman 1:03:08
On most issues, most presidents advanced their program, through advocacy and working with the legislature to implement new laws. But on immigration, the executive branch has almost absolute power. And Trump, based on both what we experienced last time, and in all the planning and work that both Agenda 47 and Project 2025 have outlined, Trump doesn’t wait. As we move to close out the conversation, I was just hoping you could remind us what mechanisms you see Trump being able to use unilaterally to change policies on day one, if he’s given the opportunity to do so.
Francisco Goldman 1:03:55
He’s already said he’s going to be a dictator on day one. Among the things he’s going to do on day one as a dictator is, in fact, reinstate the Muslim ban and expand the Muslim ban. He’s going to say that any foreign student who participates in a pro-Palestine protest on a college campus will immediately be deported. He’s gonna do that on day one. He’s probably gonna, day one, do an executive order, if he can, to say that birthright citizenship should be cancelled. He’s gonna revoke DACA, which immediately, hundreds of thousands of young migrants who’ve never known any other home are suddenly going to find themselves undocumented and without the protection of the law. He’s gonna revoke, instantly, all the other immigration laws that have provided temporary protections to migrants from certain countries, like from Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador and other places. He’s gonna instantly in many cases, people who’ve been here for decades, under those, he’s gonna revoke those.
His Attorney General is going to instantly [do] a lot of these regulations that we were talking about earlier that are ready to be codified into immigration law by the government itself, they don’t have to go, I believe, through the legislature. which will instantly earn the right to asylum. And he’s going to announce that he’s going to militarize aspects of the society, get rid of Fourth Amendment protections, whether it’s through expanding ICE, whether he’s gonna use the military or whether he’s gonna find ways to employ police forces to round up migrants and begin work on what’s going to be his own great achievement comparable to Panama Canal, the moon landing, or whatever, which is going to be to deport 20 million undocumented migrants. I think he can do all of that pretty much from day one, and that’s what he’s promising, that’s what he’s running on. And he’s going to buttress up that, he’s gonna prepare us nonstop. He’s already doing it, with just a relentless bombardment of really despicable, racist, xenophobic, monstrously inhuman, dehumanizing of good, hard working people.
Sam Goldman 1:05:56
Well, Francisco, I want to thank you so much for joining me, for sharing your insights and perspectives and time, and we’re going to link to your essay in the show notes. If people want to read more from you, connect with your work, should they find you on the site formerly known as Twitter? Or somewhere else? Where do you want to direct people to?
Francisco Goldman 1:06:21
Twitter, I basically used to help my friends in Guatemala on political things because in a lot of those countries, like Guatemala, Twitter is a journalistic information tool that it isn’t here. I really hate Twitter, but I know it’s useful in Guatemala. But for my own personal stuff, Instagram, FranciscoGoldman, you could find me on Facebook even, or you can, buy my books: ‘Monkey Boy’ on Amazon, ‘Say Her Name’ — a good independent bookstore, especially, maybe they’ll have it. Sam, it’s been such a pleasure. Happy I got to talk about this.
Sam Goldman 1:06:54
Wonderful meeting you.
Francisco Goldman 1:06:56
Thank you.
Sam Goldman 1:06:56
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