The most memorable quote of the past week was contained in a letter written by a fired Department of Justice prosecutor, Maurine Comey, warning those left in the DOJ not to succumb to the rule of fear by Trump: "Fear is the tool of tyrants". Comey's contribution to the concept of Trump as a tyrant was that she condensed the concept that rule by fear is how tyrants control both opponents and their masses and stated it in those six memorable words. Maurene Comey's farewell after firing: 'Fear is the tool of a tyrant' - ABC News. The concept has deep roots from the Greeks to Machiavelli to 20th century dictators, and Trump often uses fear as a tool.
This is how Trump is using fear as a tool, like a tyrant. He mongers fear against his opponents and controls his supporting masses in many ways: fear of primaried, fear of prosecution, fear of losing federal funding, losing government contracts, fear with threats of being prosecuted with a crime by his Department of Justice without evidence of probable cause, fear of being called degrading names used to turn his MAGA base against someone he sees as a past, current, and using fear of active army displays of power to suppress demonstrations against him. Above all, he has promoted fear of brown migrants from south of the border because they are murderers and rapists," and we must remove them from us because they will "adulterate our blood" ...phrases well documented as uttered by Trump himself by many sources.
Trump's mongering fear of brown people has become the mantra that has fueled the approval of his MAGA base to violate human and civil rights and the due process clauses of the 4th and 14th amendments, to be cruel about the method of detaining and deporting them, whether or not they had a criminal record. The issue of ICE snatching anyone from the street or fields who looks "Mexican" or speaks Spanish or English with an accent has been temporarily halted by a federal judge and will eventually make it to the Trump-favoring Supreme Court.
The concept that tyrants rule by fear, per a brief Google AI search, goes back to ancient Greeks, Machiavelli. The Declaration of Independence called what the King was doing to the states was "tyrannical".Hannah Arendt noted that, unlike previous tyrannies that used terror against opponents, modern dictatorships used it to rule even the obedient masses. How King George III acted like a tyrant was spelled out in a 'bill of particulars' in the 1776 Declaration..
Fear is one half of the tool tyrants can use: the other half is favor...favorable treatment of sycophants, and loyalists, to the disadvantage of others. One example of that is Trump's appointments to his cabinet and his firing of Department of Justice employees who had anything to do with investigating Trump and the prosecution of those convicted for January 6, either by jury or by admission that they had committed a crime, attacking law enforcement or the equivalent in peacetime of
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