Even as the Trump regime appears poised to ultimately lose a number of cases revolving around instant visa revocations for anti-genocide foreign student protestors, Downmarket Mussolini's purse dog at State, Marco Rubio, is looking to expand the tactic to target Chinese foreign students; and the ominous context of this move suggests to me that we might be in for a bumpy ride if this really is going in the direction I think it's headed.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/china-us-revoke-visas-international-students

'This Will Hurt Us As Much As It Hurts Them': Trump Admin Says It Will Revoke Visas of Chinese Students

"The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it is working with the Department of Homeland Security to "aggressively revoke" visas that have been issued to Chinese students—sparking a rebuke from China's government and anxiety among Chinese students.

The Trump administration is endeavoring to revoke visas for students that hail from China, "including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," according to a short statement from the State Department. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong."

Even taken at face value, this policy shift is authoritarian, racist, and alarming. The power Rubio is attempting to exert here is about protecting American national security in the event of a crisis on par with an impeding war; it's not intended as a method for the Trump regime to get back at China for criticism over Downmarket Mussolini's unhinged trade policies. Even under the most benign interpretation of Rubio's actions here, this is still Trump repurposing the apparatus of the American state to prosecute his personal grievances.

Of course, we as observers who just watched the Pork Reich use this exact same process to justify kidnapping and attempting to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors as part of a larger authoritarian plot to use "fighting antisemitism" as a justification for installing a new McCarthyism, have no reason to assume the most benign scenario here. Are we to expect the US government to begin kidnapping Chinese students and shipping them to ICE private detention hellholes now? If that happens, how do you figure the Chinese government is going to feel about it? Regardless of what you think about Palestine and Hamas, they don't have nukes and international economic power; China does. Does anyone know what the phrase "critical fields," means in this context and does it bother you that it's so vague? Are we worried about Chinese students stealing our crappier AI technology or some bullshit? Does it seem rational to anyone who isn't a Sinophobe nazi to kick a hornet's nest like this one, because Trump had some feel bads about social media posts from Chinese officials?

While I wish I could stop there, in a Project Esther world every bit of repressive policy based on foreign relations and winger anticommunism is a possible vector for ideological policing and the elimination of what the nazis classify broadly as "the radical American left" - a group that includes Democrat politicians and apparently, the hosts of The View. The sleight of hand the regime is employing to conflate anti-Zinonism and opposition to a genocide with anti-Americanism and material support for our "enemies," can be just as easily applied to China and a very broad, Bircher definition of "communism." In fact, I'd argue decades of American anticommunist rhetoric would make that application even easier and more effective in the public discourse. If you take a look at what the folks behind the 1776 Commission, and Project 2025 define as "communism" there's an unreasonable argument that anyone advocating for racial, gender, or social equality is a communist. Ditto for folks advocating for regulations on capitalism, labor rights, or even the separation of church and state; the possibilities are pretty endless given what these folks call "communism." From there it's only a short little hop to "China is communism, therefore communism is China" and you've got a whole new application of Project Esther techniques to work with in your quest to crush all political opposition to the Trump regime.

Are these nazis really prepared to repurpose a global trade struggle with China to install a martial law-style police state? Who knows; but if you listen to guys like Stephen Miller talk for about five minutes, you'll realize why I think assuming they *don't* intend to go the full nine yards, is a very bad idea indeed.

While I think anyone still arguing that the Trump regime is not fundamentally fascist in nature is engaging in one form of motivated reasoning or another, I still believe it's important to remember that this particular fascist movement remains firmly grounded in American historical, ideological, and cultural experiences at its core. Indeed, almost every aspect of Downmarket Mussolini's fascist agenda and the methods by which the regime is attempting to conduct it, has an administrative precedent in US political history; although that precedent will almost always come from the most reactionary and objectively shameful activities our government has ever engaged in. You don't have to take my word for it: Trump regime minions on your TV and Justice Department lawyers in court openly admit as much regularly.

There can be no doubt that Trump minions like Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi, are cribbing from America's white supremacist, anti-labor, anti-civil rights history; with a particular focus on the Second Red Scare, the Nixon administration's war on Civil Rights activists and student protestors, and the Bush administration's War on Terror. This synthesis of reaction, oppression, and executive overreach has allowed the Trump regime to create what many identify as a "new form of McCarthyism" empowered by the legalist logic and nativist, white supremacist sentiments underpinning America's "counterterrorism" apparatus, mass surveillance systems, and the national security state; by freely applying the almost legally meaningless "terrorist" label to protestors, student activists, and undocumented migrants, this administration has sought to render the judiciary and even the entire US Constitution, irrelevant.

Of course, none of this is happening in a vacuum, and a fascist Trump regime seeking to enshrine an executive branch dictatorship is fully aware that civil society will eventually understand what they're doing, and fight back. To prevent this they need a skeleton key to enable the active suppression and criminalization of dissidents, opposition groups, and civil rights activists the fascist right broadly classifies as "the radical left." Unfortunately if recent work to connect the dots in the second Trump era are any indication, the regime has already found that key in legally conflating opposing a genocide, with supporting Hamas; and its doing so by design in yet another scheme brought to you by the architects of Project 2025. If the opening salvos of Trump's war on American civil society can be describes as a "new McCarthyism" then I think it's fair to say that the Heritage Foundation's "Project Esther" can be best understood as the Trump regime's "new COINTELPRO."

https://truthout.org/articles/project-esther-is-a-mccarthy-era-blueprint-for-crushing-the-american-left/

Project Esther Is a McCarthy-Era Blueprint for Crushing the American Left

"Mainstream coverage of Project Esther has largely framed the document as an effort to crush the pro-Palestinian movement. It’s important to emphasize, however, that the threat Project Esther poses to the left more broadly is not a byproduct — it’s part of the plan’s core design. The text lays bare the McCarthyist nature of this political moment and underscores the urgent need for the left to mount a multipronged, coalitional defense.

At the center of Project Esther’s crosshairs are the people and organizations it dubs the “Hamas Support Network,” or HSN, though there’s no evidence that the entities it’s targeting actually support Hamas, or that they are even organized in any sort of a network. The playbook proposes a slew of recommendations for dismantling this fictional network, including deporting international students, purging pro-Palestine faculty from educational institutions, defunding organizations, increasing criminalization and promoting social ostracization of people that speak out in support of Palestinian rights. “Within the United States, the HSN receives the indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal — the destruction of capitalism and democracy,” Project Esther claims."

Folks, after four months of watching the Trump regime pretend we're at war with a gang and opposing genocide is "materially supporting terrorism," I think we're past the point of pretending these guys aren't serious about the plans they wrote down and are clearly enacting now that Trump is president. Project Esther is the logical extension of every argument ghouls like Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, and Seb Gorka have been making on your TV for weeks. They want to use FARA and RICO Act prosecutions to dismantle every aspect of organized resistance to Trump's fascist agenda under the guise of fighting "terrorism," and they are being quite clear that they consider opposition to capitalism and the American state to be fair game under that rubric.