After Jan. 6, 2021, a cry went out from all the land of MAGA: “This is not America.” They claimed it was an aberration — but it was a live, real-time outbreak of a war against democracy. I would like to turn the tables on this delusional notion that their insurrection does not represent the United States.
Rodney Kennedy
Jan. 6 is best understood as an ongoing metaphor for the attempt to undo democracy. According to a recent PRRI Survey, four in ten Americans are susceptible to authoritarianism. Even more chilling, according to the latest Best Countries project from U.S. News, 57.4% of Americans agree with the following statement: “My country’s leader should have total, unchecked authority.”
The United States has been declining in freedom scores according to Freedom House. According to their 2021 Freedom in the World report, “around the world more countries had performed worse on various measures of freedom than had improved compared to any other point since 2005.” Democracy itself, Freedom House observed, had been rendered vulnerable. “The expansion of authoritarian rule, combined with fading and inconsistent presence of major democracies on the international stage, has had tangible effects on human life and security,” they concluded.
Anyone paying attention knows our democracy is in trouble. Specifically, I would like to explore three active attempts by the MAGA movement to subvert democracy: threats against the press, attempts to imprison political opponents, and promises to deport 11,000,000 immigrants.
A government of the people depends upon good information provided by a free press. The first sign of a threatened democracy by authoritarian leaders is an attack on the press. Both the technology leaders of Silicon Valley and nativist right evangelicals are attacking democracy on this front. MAGA has fallen in love with Viktor Orban, the populist authoritarian ruler of Hungary. And his first strategy for seizing control of Hungary was silencing the free press.
Orban manufactured the façade of a democracy to give legitimacy to his rule. He now controls 85 percent of the media in Hungary, creating an informational autocracy — a government-sanctioned propaganda machine — giving new and foreboding meaning to “spin.” He has rewarded loyal media coverage in the private media while shutting down dissenting media outlets. In 2021, Hungary ranked 92nd on the World Press Freedom Index, down from 56th in 2013.
An Orban-inspired model in the USA would see Fox News and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) dispensing Donald Trump’s ideas to the nation while the mainstream press is harassed, persecuted, and threatened with fines, lawsuits, and prison for reporters. Like Orban, Trump undermines freedom of the press at every opportunity, famously labeling them “the enemy of the people.”
Attempts at intimidating the press have already paid dividends for Trump. For instance, both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times didn’t endorse a candidate for president in the 2024 election. The Dallas Morning News refused to print a Doonesbury strip because it made fun of Trump and his “wokeness” rage. Self-censorship by newspapers as the darkness descends is a bad omen. ABC News even rolled over and settled a lawsuit he brought for $15 million.
He also filed a lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. Trump has filled a $1 billion lawsuit against CBS for supposedly biased editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, has threatened to get ABC’s license suspended for fact-checking his replies in his debate with Harris, and threatened a suit against Washington Post political reporter Bob Woodward, and a reiterated bid to sue the Pulitzer Peace Prize committee.
Trump has chosen attorney Brendan Carr, an anti-media advocate, to lead the Federal Communications Commission and election-denier Kari Lake to chair Voice of America. Elon Musk, the new co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has targeted NPR for elimination. Each passing day sees a declension of a free press and a free country.
Rhetorical scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller exposes the truth about the war on the press: “The problem with Trump is that doesn’t want a government accountable to the people through a critical press; he wants (and, to a large degree, has) a media that will repeat in a fawning way anything he wants said, that will defend him through any sophistries and casuistries and outright falsehoods necessary (how tall is he? how much does he weigh?).”
The MAGA war on the media portends a scorched earth attempt to silence the media, imprison journalists, and destroy the First Amendment. Congress, bending to Trump’s authoritarianism, has already defeated a bill guaranteeing reporters freedom from revealing their sources. Known as the PRESS Act, the bipartisan bill was blocked by Republican Senator from Arkansas Tom Cotton.
Insurrectionists outside the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP)
The second action requiring protest is the attempt to silence or imprison political opponents. During his time as the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin has systematically eliminated his enemies. The elimination of rivals, opponents, and persons considered a threat shows up wherever tyrants do business.
I have not found a more chilling parallel to Putin and Trump’s rage against alleged enemies than the story of Solomon. According to the official story, Solomon became king because he was so wise. According to the more truthful narrative in the text, his rule was secured by lies, deception, and violence. Solomon, having taken the crown, then secures his throne by sending Benaiah to kill Adonijah (Solomon’s brother), Joab (David’s general), and Shemei. This is how tyrants perform.
Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian FSB spy and Putin critic was killed in 2006 after drinking tea that had been poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. Boris Nemtsov, the former prime minister, was shot dead as he walked home across a Moscow bridge near the Kremlin. His alleged crimes: He had spoken out about Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and regularly taken part in opposition protests. Vladimir Kara-Murza, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed in April 2023 for 25 years, for comments critical of the Kremlin and the military operation in Ukraine.
Trump has demanded military tribunals against former President Barack Obama and former Representative Liz Chaney. He has agitated for indicting the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He reposted one of his followers post showing his political rivals in prison jumpsuits, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And House Republicans claim Ms. Cheney should face an FBI investigation for work she did for the congressional committee that examined Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election.
The American story is filled with pain and tragedy, but among the horrors we have perpetuated on one another, the brutal enslavement of Africans, the subjugation of African Americans during the Jim Crow and Lynching Era, and the near destruction of the Native American civilizations are without parallel.
Now, the incoming Trump administration has announced the plan of deporting 11,000,000 “illegal aliens.” At least 4.5 million are children. The new “border czar,” Tom Homan thinks separating them from their parents is no big deal. “As far as U.S. children — children, that’s going to be a difficult situation, because we’re not going to detain your U.S. citizen children, which means, you know, they’re going to be put in a halfway house,” Homan remarked.
Homan has also threatened Denver Mayor Mike Johnston after the Democratic leader promised to protect migrants in his city when Trump takes office and called on others to join him in protesting mass immigrant round-ups. “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he’s willing to go to jail,” Homan told Sean Hannity, adding “I’m willing to put him in jail.” In a separate interview, Homan told sanctuary city mayors to “get the hell out of the way” or be prosecuted.
Deportation of this scale is a form of dehumanization. When human beings are seen as expendable, as less than human, they can be enslaved, tortured, or deported — treated in ways in which we could not bring ourselves to treat those whom we regard as members of our own kind. And where are the voices of American Christians in this potential humanitarian disaster?
A groundswell of dissent must appear against this dehumanizing project. People who came to America seeking freedom should not be uniformly sent back to the hells they managed to escape. A biblical line in the sand should be drawn against deportation. “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33 – 34).
The deportation will be a potential death sentence for millions. This puts the Trump plan on a level with America’s previous crimes against humanity. All this while Trump plans to also come for the press and his political enemies. MAGA evangelicals have even indicated that university professors will be next. Lance Wallnau, for example, exclaimed, “The Universities are the hotbed of resistance. Time to make them a priority of reformation. For real!”
Pretending Jan. 6 was a one-off aberration and “not America” loses its slim grip on veracity as MAGA keeps telling us they want to destroy democracy. This is not America, but it threatens to become America. Only informed, determined citizens dedicated to freedom of the press, freedom of dissent, and staunch believers in equal opportunity for everyone can turn the tide.
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, is out now from Cascade Books.
