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The O. Zone: Trump is stoking racial unrest in order to impose martial law
Trump is sending in the troops, and, on June 8, this is just the beginning.
Forget the fact he’s spending $45 million for an unprecedented peacetime military parade in D.C. to celebrate the birthday of both the U.S. Army (250) and his own too-old and too-addled ass (79) on June 14 (please call for “No Kings” that day and reject his authoritarian excess).
What’s far more alarming is the second step in Trump’s Project 2025 plan to declare martial law across the United States by fanning the flames of unrest through executive mass-deportation overreach, roiling and ripping apart peaceful working-class communities across the U.S.
The next step will be Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act at the behest of his chief fascism advisor, Stephen Miller. Now Trump’s scandal-plagued defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is threatening to send active-duty U.S. Marines into L.A. over the objections of the governor.
Trump is trying to incite insurrection in order to take away all of our civil rights. That was his plan all along, dating back to his scuttling of a bipartisan immigration reform and border security bill he told his stooges in Congress to scrub in order to keep using it as a political ploy. Just as Republicans rejected meaningful bipartisan immigration and border security reform in 2013.
Deadly dictators need an enemy in order to impose their will on their own citizens. For Hitler is was the Jews. For Benjamin Netanyahu it is Hamas. For Trump it is Latino people who have come here to build their lives, work, and contribute enormously to our communities and culture. Trump has personally and financially benefited from the immigrants he’s now persecuting.
It is possible, indeed, imperative, to support a nation and its democracy-loving people, such as Israel, while simultaneously reviling its elected leader, Netanyahu, who dodges responsibility for his government’s intelligence and military failures on Oct. 7 and continues to stoke the brutal winds of “war” in Gaza in order to stay in power, killing tens of thousands in the process.
We have to stand up to hate and terror everywhere, including what Trump is doing to people from L.A. to Eagle County. Trump is fomenting war in the streets, and we are all reaping the whirlwind from Boulder to D.C. He has promised to end conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza on day one but in fact is stoking repression, brutality and outright autocracy – from planning to evict 1 million people from Gaza to build beach resorts to belittling the Jewish leader of Ukraine fighting for democracy in the face of a Russian invasion targeting civilians.
Trump, using Islamophobia as a cudgel to attack universities and peace protestors, has a long, ugly history of antisemitism. The last 10 years of Trumpism have seen unprecedented levels of antisemitism in the United States, and it’s no coincidence levels of hate have risen steadily under a racist, anti-democratic convicted felon who has managed to politicize virtually every tragedy.
It was a Jewish Trump supporter on the Aurora City Council who managed to spew some of the most vile hatred following last Sunday’s horrible attack in Boulder by an expired-visa-holding Egyptian man on a group of peaceful, pro-Israel marchers on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. Her inflammatory words aimed at Colorado’s elected leaders who happen to also be Jewish won’t be repeated here, but she was obviously trying to incite hatred by demonizing Democrats.
One of the targets of her hatred was Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, whose family history traces back to the horrors of the Holocaust. Bennet has been one of Volodymyr Zelensky’s biggest supporters as Ukraine battles back waves of Russian terror designed to tear down democracy and terrorize civilians. Bennet, not coincidentally, was a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight that passed immigration and border security reform in 2013 – only to see Republicans in the House torpedo it for political reasons. They clearly want border insecurity.
Some conservative members of the Jewish community in Colorado and across the country have backed Trump’s brand of antisemitism for the sake of political expediency and to advance an economic agenda that lifts billionaires while keeping the middle and lower classes down. That has caused rifts even over on the state’s Western Slope.
But Bennet, who is running for governor next year, has been consistent in his support for pluralistic democracy, commonsense immigration reform, public safety measures such as border security, gun laws including background checks that prevented Boulder from being much worse, and an overall tamping down of divisive and dangerous racial and religious enmity in the U.S.
One of the least-reported aspects of the Boulder terror attack is how the state’s universal background checks for gun purchases prevented the Egyptian attacker from buying a gun in Colorado Springs last year. Instead of bolstering Colorado’s gun laws and pushing to make them the law of the land, Trump and his lawless administration want to continue to flood our streets with weapons in order to further terrorize our citizenry and strip away basic freedoms.
Here’s a Colorado Ceasefire press release from June 5:
Colorado Ceasefire issued this statement on reports that Boulder terrorism suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman attempted to purchase a handgun in late 2024. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has confirmed that Soliman attempted to purchase the weapon in Colorado Springs on Nov. 22, 2024. The purchase was denied after his application was processed through the CBI InstaCheck system, which relied on information from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). While specific reasons for the denial were not shared, it has been widely reported that it was due to Soliman’s immigration status. Legal immigrants are permitted to purchase firearms in the United States. However, they may be denied this right based on their criminal history.
The statement follows:
“Colorado Ceasefire extends our deepest sympathies to the victims of this attack as well as the larger Boulder community. There is no question that this heartbreaking act of terror could have been much deadlier if the suspect had possessed a gun. We are thankful to say that because of Colorado’s common-sense universal background check system, he did not.
“We wish to thank the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for maintaining our state’s InstaCheck system, which performed exactly as was intended when the legislation creating it was passed in 2013. Colorado Ceasefire was a major supporter of HB13-1229, which requires universal background checks for firearm purchases. We encourage citizens in the 32 states still lacking universal background check laws to demand that their representatives work for their safety by enacting such legislation.
“We also feel we would be remiss if we did not point out that the Federal system Colorado’s InstaCheck works with—the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)—has been a target of the gun lobby since its inception. As a part of its assault on common-sense gun laws, the Trump Administration is reported to be considering doing away with NICS. In fact, FBI Director Kash Patel pointedly refused to say during his confirmation hearings whether the NICS background check system was constitutional.
“The majority of Americans—including the majority of American gun owners—support common sense gun laws, and background checks keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is simple common sense. We encourage Americans of all political backgrounds to let the Trump Administration know that the safety of our families and communities should be more important than letting the gun lobby enrich itself further by freely selling guns to people who shouldn’t have them.”
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.
David O. Williams
