The Unprecedented Fascism of the DoJ

Even in wartime, you're hard pressed to find comparable oppression of dissent

A regular complaint among Libertarian types is that Abraham Lincoln shut down papers and jailed editors in the Civil War. Well, kinda. He issued a war order aimed at stopping false military information or revealing military positions, plans, and so on. Some estimate there were about 14,000 jailed total in the four years of war, virtually all of them Confederates in border states and some Copperheads in the North who were publicly fomenting insurrection. Some newspapers and editors were shut down.

The Encyclopedia of the First Amendment agrees that virtually all of these were engaged in spreading military related information. After all, there was a war on and revealing positions got men killed.

Meanwhile, prior to the Civil War, in the South, over 4,000 editors had been jailed for simply publishing stories opposing slavery. Even Uncle Tom’s Cabin was banned and any postmaster who allowed it in was sacked.

Political scientist Richard Bensel, in Yankee Leviathan, compared over 140 specific points of freedom between the Union and the Confederacy, finding that when it came to confiscation, free speech, conscription, and a host of other areas, the Union was the freer of the two societies even excluding slavery!

After the war, a handful of military officers were tried, mostly for their connection to Andersonville Prison and other “war crimes” (a term that wasn’t invented yet). But here’s the thing. . . .

The President of the Confederate States of America—-an organization that killed hundreds of thousands of northern soldiers and terrorized non-Confederate civilians—-and that would be Jefferson Davis, served a whopping two years in jail. Before his assassination Lincoln urged charity and mercy for all, and showed it by not banning the DemoKKKRat Party that started the war and which had perpetuated slavery for at least 40 years longer than it might have survived without the DemoKKKrats’ support.

It’s one thing to jail people for spreading military information in wartime. One of the worst violators was Woodrow Wilson who jailed about 4,000 during World War One for just opposing the war. But at least he had the cover of war, and Constitutional historians agree that the First Amendment rights are greatly minimized in wartime.

But it’s quite another thing to raid people’s homes, jail hundreds on goofball charges where the vast majority of convictions are for “parading.” And it’s getting worse. The Department of InJustice is now going after virtually anyone associated with President Donald Trump, having failed time and again to find him guilty of any wrongdoing. Only Jesus had more false charges leveled against Him.

Indeed, I cannot find in peacetime, anywhere, anytime a comparable level of government fascist thuggery as we are presently witnessing. And what we see is only the surface. Realize most of what the Department of InJustice and its FascistBI are doing is to effect intimidation.

A massive Republican victory in the fall will tame “some” of this, but legislators as I have argued before—-even if they have the will—-have extremely limited tools to contain such totalitarian tendencies. Basically they can impeach (fruitless, as the Senate wont’ convict and remove) or they can de-fund. You know, the old “gubment shutdown.” I don’t care if the GOP picks up 40 seats (currently I’m saying 35) and nets two in the Senate for a meaningless majority there, you won’t have the MAGA votes anywhere to shut down the evil institutions abusing this nation.

It won’t even really begin to end until Donald Trump is returned to office, but it better be Trump 2.0 with a flame thrower and a Terminex van. Cuz the rot is phenomenally deep and the evil absolutely permeating the roots of the U.S. government.

Larry Schweikart

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