by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer
Given the realities of the past three years of the Biden Administration, this article expands on the thesis we have made in these pages that the American presidential election of 2024 will be the most important since 1860. That is not hyperbole, but a recognition of the grave conditions the American people face—these are matters of life and death for the country. Like in 1860, the election on November 5, 2024, will determine the course of history and whether or not the United States survives as a constitutional republic. While the deep roots of this crisis have been many decades in the making, the immediate causes are found in the Biden administration’s unconstitutional, illegal, reckless, and revolutionary actions against President Trump, his advisors, the leaders and supporters of the Make America Great Again movement—and ultimately the American people.
At root, this radical neo-Marxist revolution started under the Obama administration with the declaration to “fundamentally transform” America and has continued under the Biden administration, which has implemented and executed the tenets of that revolution across all aspects of the United States, our government and against the citizenry. This has taken many forms, but the most important has been, and continues to be, the permanent weaponization of government against political opponents to cause their defeat, to decapitate their political movement, and to coerce and demoralize their members and supporters so that there is no challenge to their power. The tactics employed against President Trump have been specifically designed by the totalitarian left to interfere in this presidential election by consuming his time and draining resources away from his campaign in this critically important election year. The raids, indictments, trials, and gag orders against a former president—and leading 2024 presidential candidate—demonstrate that these neo-Marxist totalitarians will violate the constitutional rights of the most prominent political figure in American politics in this century. The direct and stark implication is that if this can happen to Trump, then it can happen to all Americans.
This decapitation strategy also includes some of Trump’s major advisors. The imprisonment of former Trump official Peter Navarro and perhaps of Trump advisor Steve Bannon is an attempt to deny the Make America Great Again Movement the leadership it has chosen. Their imprisonment sends a powerful message to others about what will happen to anyone who opposes the state. The continued persecution, culminating in the arrest of Trump’s legal advisor, John Eastman, is the same tactic to ensure that lawyers who work with the movement pay a significant price, including their own legal difficulties and personal liberty. These actions are the first strike in the neo-Marxist left’s campaign of “lawfare” to disarm all political opponents, starting with former President Trump and to deter any challenge to the parameters of the election and its aftermath, regardless of political party. The agenda being used by the neo-Marxist left is raw political muscle flexing to intimidate anyone who would assist Trump’s campaign and to demoralize his base. In addition, the de facto “open border” policy of the Biden Administration has opened the door for the entry of 10-15 million illegal aliens, which is today destabilizing the United States and will permanently change American politics, society, and culture and solidify the neo-Marxist revolution so that it cannot be reversed.
Importantly, the lawlessness of the Biden administration also extends into global politics and the fateful consequences are as profound as the domestic assault against constitutional rights. The Biden administration is responsible for the deaths and displacement of millions of people, from the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan to the failure to deter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the planned deployment of NATO military forces to Ukraine. This deployment will ensure that NATO forces, most importantly U.S. forces, fight the Russian military, which will introduce the likelihood of deliberate or inadvertent escalation to an open, high-intensity conventional conflict with a nuclear power. Once conflict starts, there is little possibility of a swift resolution and a high likelihood of American bodies returning from another foreign war promoted by the Biden regime. Likewise, the introduction of US/NATO forces into Ukraine is unlikely to stay confined within the conventional realm—nuclear war will become a distinct possibility. No responsible American statecraft would have brought the country to such a perilous position with such tremendous risks; only statecraft driven by neo-Marxist ideology would conduct such actions.
This is important because a resulting World War III will be as horrific as its predecessors and will ultimately result in victory for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)-led People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC will sit on the sidelines while NATO and Russia destroy each other, thereby ensuring the CCP is the dominant great power in World War III’s wake and the brutal end of American freedom and liberty for its citizens.
The consequences of the election of 2024 are profound. The abuses of power by the federal government have continued to grow and if allowed to retain power, they will only worsen. We have argued that the United States is already on a path to totalitarianism, which has greatly worsened under Biden and will gain total control should a Democratic candidate win on Election Day.
So for the soccer mom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or St. Cloud, Minnesota, who does not like Trump because of his demeanor and “mean tweets,” she will find that she will lose her country and her constitutional rights if Biden or—again, should Biden be replaced—the Democrat presidential candidate is elected. She will also find that her sons and daughters will likely be called into uniform through a draft and sent off to the Ukraine to die so that Tony Blinken can play his guitar in Kyiv like he did this past week, where he obscenely sang a song from an anti-American Neil Young, “Rockin’ in the Free World.” She may also not be the first to be sent to an American GULAG, but she soon will be on the list.
Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous remark is increasingly salient for Americans. He said, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then them came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Likewise, the Silicon Valley billionaires who think that they will flee to their boltholes in Portugal or New Zealand will find that there is no escape from the consequences of a totalitarian United States.
Once the cultural, political, moral, and legal safeguards to prevent totalitarianism are gone and the country is very close to this position, the police state will arrive very quickly as dissent is crushed. Like a bolt out of the blue, Americans will find that their freedom of movement will be constrained by an American version of the CCP’s “social credit system,” which monitors every facet of a person’s life. The words “America, the land of the free and home of the brave” will become as dead as life on the moon.
The American people are in a critical position in this epochal year. If this presidential election is to be free and fair, then the country will have to choose a clear and unambiguous path of renaissance of America as a constitutional republic, one that has rekindled “the Spirit of 1776” among the people. Alternatively, this election could witness America’s end and a descent into tyranny from which there will be no return. Sinclair Lewis’ dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here got the result right, even if it was mistaken in the ideological origin of the threat. Tyranny can happen in the United States and the country is well down that road. 2024 is the last chance to change direction and end the Obama-Biden anti-American revolution.
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James Fanell is a government fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, a retired captain in the U.S. Navy and a former director of intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Bradley A. Thayer is a Founding Member of the Committee on Present Danger China and the coauthor with Lianchao Han of Understanding the China Threat.
