With the US elections just over three weeks away, recent appearances by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have highlighted the thoroughly right-wing character of the election campaigns of both parties.
On Friday, in service of his fascist extra-legal campaign to subvert the election results should he lose, Trump campaigned in Aurora, Colorado. The suburb of Denver is the third-largest city in the state, with some 400,000 people, and as been subjected to months of anti-immigrant attacks by Trump.
Mirroring his attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he has falsely accused of “eating pets,” Trump has repeatedly claimed that Venezuelan gangs have taken over Aurora and are extorting local native born residents. This claim is based entirely on a viral video that was promoted by an out-of-state landlord company, CBZ Management, which local residents and city council officials have accused of neglecting property and refusing to pick up trash at apartment complexes it claims to manage.
The truth has not stopped Trump and the Republicans from using attacks on immigrants to sow doubt in the election and lay the framework for a police-state dictatorship. Prior to Friday’s rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, Trump’s official X/Twitter account posted a campaign video targeting immigrants and blaming Harris for overseeing the “invasion.”
Trump captioned the video, in all capital letters, “America is being invaded-End the occupation, Liberate America!”
Trump’s call to “liberate America,” is not just campaign rhetoric, but a signal to Trump’s militia supporters. Following the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020, workers, including in auto plants in Michigan, walked off the job to protect themselves and their families from the deadly virus, which has killed over 1.4 million Americans in less than five years.
On April 17, 2020, Trump tweeted a call to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and other swing-states that had implemented minor mitigation measures. 13 days later after Trump’s tweet, far-right militia elements, armed with AR-15 semi-auto rifles, descended on the capitol in Lansing.
In his speech in Aurora Friday, Trump reiterated his demand for his fascist followers to “liberate” the country. “They call it occupied America. We are being occupied by a criminal force. We are in an occupied state.”
Trump said that “November 5, 2024 will be liberation day in America. Liberation day.”
As Trump was speaking, he was flanked by American flags, mugshots that purported to show “migrant criminals” and signs that read “Deport Illegals NOW” and “END Migrant Crime.”
Highlighting the neo-Nazi character of Trump’s campaign, he was introduced by Stephen Miller, his fascistic advisor. Pointing to the photos around him, Miller said, “Look at all these photos around me. Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want in your city?”
“You have the right to want a country that is of, by and for Americans and only Americans,” Miller said.
In his 80-minute speech, Trump characterized immigrants as “animals” and “scum” who were “coming in sick with highly infectious diseases.” He reiterated his call to ban all sanctuary cities, carry out the largest deportation operation in history and also called for the death penalty for any immigrant that “kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.”
Placing a target on children throughout the entire city, Trump claimed that in Aurora “3,000 migrant children” were taking up places “in your schools and at your expense,” denying opportunities “for your kids.”
Appealing to antisemites and fascists, Trump added: “They are taking care of these people before they are taking care of our children.” If elected, Trump promised to put “American taxpayers, workers” and “communities first” while “communists, Marxists and fascists” will “always be last.”
Trump also repeated a proposal to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 “to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American Soil.”
The reactionary legislation has previously been invoked during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. In the latter two imperialist wars, the law was used to imprison German, Austro-Hungarian, Japanese and Italian immigrants solely based on their ancestry.
While Trump is provocatively campaigning in cities where he has promised to carry out mass deportations, the Harris campaign has yet to visit Aurora or Springfield to defend immigrants against Trump’s fascist agitation.
Instead, in a friendly “town hall” conducted by Univision in Las Vegas, Nevada on Thursday, Harris repeated her support for the $20 billion border security bill that contains no “pathway to citizenship” for Dreamers- immigrants brought to the US as children.
Instead, Harris touted the fact that the bill included funds to hire “1,500 more border agents” and was co-written by “one of the most conservative members of the Senate.”
Later on in the town hall, Harris spoke of the out-sized support she has garnered from Republicans who view Trump as too unreliable on questions of foreign policy and too unstable to manage social and class tensions domestically. Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement and support of “200 Republicans who worked with and for both President Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, including Liz Cheney, the former Congresswoman, and her father, the former Vice President, Dick Cheney, who is supporting me.”
Harris continued: “Former members, esteemed members including generals of the national security community. I have the endorsement and support of Alberto Gonzales, most recently, who of course was attorney general.”
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, then George W. Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales spearheaded the creation of the US governments’ pseudo-legal rationale to justify torture, preemptive war and indefinite detention of enemies of US imperialism, without charge or access to legal counsel. Gonzales ordered the creation of the infamous “torture memo,” written by current University of California, Berkeley professor John Yoo which allowed the president to permit torture and not face prosecution during “war time” trampling over US and international law.