On Self-Coups and Hypocrisy
I heard if you coup yourself too often, you can go blind (and lose your democracy)
Rant! is taking a vacation. I’ll be back in September with plenty of new content and…Vespers!
In the meantime, catch up on past Rants and my Foreign Influence Operations course.
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
It’s time we all become acquainted with the term “self-coup.” Like a coup d’etat, a self-coup aims to usurp the constitutional order, but in a self-coup, a leader who came to power by legal means aims to remain in power through illegal means.
Thanks to Jack Smith’s detailed indictment of Donald Trump, we can now read what an attempted self-coup looks like, step by step.
I feel like the indictment has been covered ad nauseum by every news outlet in the world. “News” outlets (with sarcastic quotes), like anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, are asking about Hunter Biden’s corruption. (Quick aside here: the conspiracy about Biden corruption in Ukraine was launched by a Russian agent through Rudy Giuliani, who is co-conspirator 1 in this most recent indictment of Trump, and allegations that the Bidens are doing corruption with China were launched by Guy Luft, who himself was an agent for China. Keep up the good work, Murdoch employees!)
Here are the key points from the indictment:
Despite having lost, Trump was determined to stay in power.
To do so, he lied repeatedly to create chaos, foment anger and violence, and decrease public trust in the administration of the election.
Politicians lie all the time and Trump had a right to lie and to contest the election, through legal means.
Instead, he pursued unlawful means to discount legitimate votes and subvert the election results.
Even if he truly believed he had won, he still did criminal acts.
I highly recommend reading the entire indictment. But here, I will touch on only a few major points.
Trump wanted violence.
We were lucky the violence on January 6 was limited.
As laid out in the indictment, Trump and his co-conspirators wanted violence. When warned that their attempt to overturn the election would lead to protests, co-conspirator 4 (likely Jeff Clark) responded, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
As outlined here, the Oath Keepers, which launched an organized attack on the Capitol on January 6, were waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, planning to then act as a military on the ground on behalf of Trump.
Trump had hoped to use the Insurrection Act earlier in his presidency, in fact, including during protests, suggesting the military shoot protesters. However, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley repeatedly pushed back. Milley didn’t even give in when Trump relented and suggested just shooting protesters in the leg. What a woke general.
When foreign influence techniques are used by our own leaders
Manipulating the information space in order to push one’s own agenda.
Destroying the very notion of truth in order to create apathy among the people and decrease trust in public institutions.
Fomenting violence and fear to influence others to remove themselves from public discourse.
These are just some of the themes I discuss in my Foreign Influence Operations course, which also looks at how such tactics help break down democracy and usher in authoritarianism.
One of the reasons I focus on “Foreign” in my course is to remove political bias and highlight the techniques bad actors use to increase their own power. Most of the examples I have written about focus on autocratic regimes aiming to destabilize democracies because democracy anywhere is a threat to autocrats everywhere.
The point of the course is to explain what these bad actors are doing, free from politics, so we can inoculate ourselves against it. But it is also to show the nature of regimes that do these types of actions and to make clear: we don’t want to be like them. These are not regimes we want to emulate.
And yet, here was Rudy Giuliani saying, “We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories,” becoming the incarnation of the Firehose of Falsehood we so often discuss in the realm of information operations. Like Russian propagandists who throw out dozens of absurd narratives to explain an event that is easily understood with evidence and logic, the idea is to pollute the information space.
And there was Trump, repeating the lies and calling for violence, while almost every member of his party stood back and stood by, waiting to see if they could ride it out and maintain their own position of power.
I’ve written in the past about the dangerous game Republicans are playing in disingenuously choosing partisanship over truth (and they know the truth). It leads nowhere good.
We are past the point where we can claim these are just political differences. This is not Democrat versus Republican. This is Democracy versus Authoritarianism.
Trump tried to overturn a legitimate and fair election. He tried to deny people the right to have their votes count. He used fraud and deceit and threat of violence to do so. This is authoritarian behavior, and anyone who condones it is supporting authoritarianism.
The number of political leaders who have come out in support of Trump—after this indictment is there for them to read, after we all witnessed with our own eyes his assault on democracy—is astounding and scary. This is behavior we see in authoritarian states: loyalty to the leader at all costs for fear of losing position and power. Anyone who believes Trump’s self-coup is forgivable or insignificant should never hold office again. And neither should Trump. The slide to authoritarianism is slow and gradual, until it's not and democracy goes over the cliff.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading\
CHINA
Italy intends to leave China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Politico)
2 US Navy sailors arrested for allegedly spying for China (ABC News)
AFRICA
Niger Coup: Here’s What to Know (NY Times)
UNITED STATES
National Security Implications of Trump’s Superseding Indictment: A Damage Assessment 2.0 (Just Security)
Star Hunter Biden Witness Refuted Every GOP Talking Point (The New Republic)
THE WORLD
Ocean Temperatures Are Hotter Than Ever. What Does It Mean for Earth? (NY Times)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
