American disorder
When a radical performance artist has command of an army
Donald Trump’s troop deployment in LA could yet backfire
In the 1960s the Yippies had a theory about how to transform America.
The system, they thought, was rotten, and the best way to show it was to create a spectacle for TV.
They scattered dollar bills in the New York Stock Exchange and held a mass meeting to levitate the Pentagon.
Some also thought that if armed police or soldiers attacked protesters, Americans would realise they were living in a fascist state and revolt.
It backfired: the silent majority saw these stunts and voted for Richard Nixon.
The Yippies had got on the wrong side of a fundamental political divide: who stands for order?
By sending troops into Los Angeles, President Donald Trump is trying to show that he does.
His opponents, who include the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, believe he is provoking disorder.
Who wins this argument matters for America’s second-largest city and the country.
Mr Trump has just established a formula for conflict.
If it works for him, he will surely try it again.
All of America’s big cities have large populations of undocumented or illegal migrants.
Almost all of them are run by Democrats.
Mr Trump is betting that the cycle of protest, violence and repression benefits him and makes his opponents look extreme.
America’s partisan divide is not news.
But people who loathe each other online can mostly put politics aside in person.
For all the hostility between the parties, the ballot box and the courts continue to mediate their differences.
The confrontation in downtown Los Angeles threatens to be different.
Unlike the battles Mr Trump is having with universities or law firms, this involves actual troops.
Regardless of who provokes violence, it could escalate and spread.
One side in America is cheering him on.
For this bit of America, LA and other big cities are places where internal enemies lurk and invaders wave the flags of foreign countries.
Rather than repel these alien enemies, the story goes, Democratic mayors and governors harbour them, preventing the government from keeping Americans safe.
Democrats not only allow the rules to be broken but reward the rule-breakers with legal protection and benefits.
In this they disrespect the president and the people who gave him a mandate, as well as serving police and soldiers.
Mr Trump should give Chicago and New York the same treatment.
For the other side, what’s happening offends against America’s fundamental values.
It asserts that the government in Washington, which once called out the National Guard to protect civil rights against the wishes of racist governors, is now about to use troops to suppress civil rights and to kick out brown people.
Yes, undocumented migrants who commit serious crimes should be deported.
But the government is going after law-abiding, hard-working immigrants.
The president is a hypocrite who celebrates the violent protest carried out in his name on January 6th 2021.
He prefers one-man rule to the separation of powers.
And he wants troops on American streets to become a common sight: look at the parade of military hardware he has planned for his birthday on June 14th.
This is all alarmingly reminiscent of the 1960s, and not just because that was the last time an American president deployed the National Guard over the objections of a governor.
Fortunately—so far, at least—there are differences.
One is scale.
When the Watts neighbourhood of LA saw riots in 1965, 34 people were killed and 1,000 arrested.
In this week’s protests some cars were burned and fireworks were launched at officers, but violence was limited and the protests were well marshalled by police.
Ms Bass, who is on the side of order too, has wisely declared a curfew. A few hundred people have been arrested.
Thankfully, nobody has yet been killed.
Another difference concerns the soldiers.
When the National Guard was deployed in the 1960s, America was at war and some protesters sympathised with the enemy.
The decade that gave birth to the Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King’s dream ended with four students shot dead by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio.
In 2025, by contrast, civil-military relations are on a different footing.
Most soldiers do not want to be on the streets facing down other Americans.
When New York’s subways were policed recently by soldiers in camouflage, at the request of the governor, nobody saw it as a harbinger of fascism.
A last difference is that sending troops to LA, aptly given the city’s most famous industry, is about performance and spectacle rather than a real need to enforce order.
Mr Trump implicitly acknowledged this in the way he federalised the California National Guard, setting rules that allow troops to protect federal property but not to get involved in crowd control or immigration enforcement.
For Mr Trump, the attraction of sending in the Marines is that he can say: “Send in the Marines!”
It lets him do what he likes best: horrify liberals, look tough and dominate the news.
This produces pictures of soldiers facing people wrapped in Mexican flags, with flames in the foreground and smoke in the background.
Elon Musk and the Epstein files are already ancient history.
What could be better?
Yet what serves Mr Trump is dangerous for America.
The president is a kind of reactionary Yippie and his reckless actions seem designed to provoke his opponents.
Although army commanders want to stay away from politics, Mr Trump held a rally at Fort Bragg on June 10th, where he whipped the troops into a MAGA fervour.
It is easy to see how—in LA or the other cities where protests are planned this weekend—a confrontation could descend into further disorder or lethal violence.
Mr Newsom struck the right note in his address, also on June 10th.
Accusing Mr Trump of choosing “theatrics over public safety”, he encouraged peaceful protest but warned: “Criminal behaviour will not be tolerated.
Full stop.”
The most powerful message has come from protesters who laid flowers before National Guard troops.
The hope is that they are conjuring a vision of the country which both Americas can still believe in.
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