When historians describe how Nazi Germany became a dictatorship, they don’t start with the camps. They start with coordination — Gleichschaltung — the process by which every institution in Germany “aligned” itself with the will of the regime.
No orders had to be barked. People, fearing irrelevance or punishment and watching colleagues be purged, simply did what was expected. Courts, newspapers, universities, police — each coordinated.
Now, a century later, we are watching the American version unfold in real time.
Reuters just pulled the curtain back on a chilling plan inside Trump’s second administration: a coordinated effort among the FBI, the Justice Department, the IRS, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate, harass, and potentially prosecute liberal and Democratic-aligned organizations. Led by Stephen Miller — Trump’s ideological hatchet man — the goal isn’t simply revenge. It’s to discipline the American political landscape.
Read these excepts from Reuters by reporters Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Jeff Mason, Tim Reid and Ted Hesson:
Reuters spoke to three White House officials, four Department of Homeland Security officials and one Justice Department official to produce the first comprehensive account of how decisions are being made, forces deployed, and operations coordinated in the crackdown.
All of the administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations more freely.
Miller is deeply involved in reviewing government agencies’ investigations into the financial networks behind what the administration labels “domestic terror networks,” which include nonprofits and even educational institutions, a White House official said. The Trump administration has released some examples of what it alleges are incidents of left-wing violence, but it has provided little evidence of a coordinated effort.
“Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” the White House said in a statement to Reuters. Miller is taking a “hands-on” role in investigating the funding of nonprofits and educational institutions and is sharing recommendations from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Trump and other top advisers, the first White House official said.
The official said Miller is Trump’s chief adviser on the issue and is receiving regular updates from the joint terrorism task force - a coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism.
A DOJ official declined to elaborate on task force plans but said the FBI’s role includes analyzing financial networks for funding of activities involving violent crime.
Potential tools to defund or shut down these groups include IRS investigations to strip them of tax-exempt status; criminal probes by the Justice Department and FBI; surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies; the use of RICO statutes typically used for organized crime and financial investigations under anti-terror laws to identify donors and funders, according to people familiar with investigations and public statements by officials.
“We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
Investigating the groups’ funding and potentially stripping them of tax-exempt status could force some of them to close down, civil liberty groups say.
Trump last month also signed an executive order designating the anti-fascist movement antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, despite the group’s decentralized nature and lack of formal structure.
At an event with conservative commentators and influencers on Wednesday, Trump requested participants to name groups and funders they claim carry out violence, effectively crowdsourcing potential targets in real time. He then vowed to pursue these groups.
The White House also released a list of more than a dozen incidents dating back to 2016 that it alleged were perpetrated by antifa.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency will prosecute “those who participate in antifa’s criminal acts - including those who fund, supply, and enable these criminals to commit violence and destruction.”
Trump’s twin directives on domestic political violence have caused confusion; lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security are scrambling to figure out how to implement them legally, according to two DHS officials not authorized to speak publicly.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the agency was “fully and faithfully” implementing Trump’s directive.
Unlike with international terror groups, there is no legal mechanism to designate a U.S. group with no foreign ties a terrorist organization, legal experts told Reuters.
One of the two DHS officials said many intelligence analysts who used to work on domestic terrorism investigations have taken buyouts as part of Trump’s push to cut the size and cost of government, further complicating efforts to target left-wing groups.
Still, ICE in recent weeks directed some investigative agents to focus on domestic terrorism, two ICE officials said. One of the officials said it was part of a broader push to redirect resources to focus on domestic terrorism.
The push against domestic groups and their donors comes amid Trump’s attacks on law firms, universities and the media, and his deployment of National Guard troops to some Democratic-run cities.
Democrats and civil society watchdogs say the move is intended to silence opposition, in addition to seeking retribution against his perceived personal political enemies.
Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon presidential library, said Trump and Nixon were similar in their desire to punish political enemies and silence critics, but a pliant Republican-controlled Congress and a cabinet packed with loyalists are enabling Trump to go further.
“That’s why this particular moment is more dangerous for the rule of law in the United States than the 1970s were,” Naftali said.
The piece describes strategy meetings where Miller and senior aides mapped out how to weaponize the federal bureaucracy against “the left,” with tools ranging from RICO statutes to terrorism designations and tax-status revocations. The targets are not extremists or lawbreakers, but entire categories of civil-society groups — climate activists, labor organizations, media watchdogs, voting-rights nonprofits — all to be recast as enemies of the state.
That is what coordination looks like. And its coming for Indivisible, who it goes without saying is not a terrorist organization.
The bureaucracy falls in line
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the process began the same way. Within weeks, the Reichstag fire gave him the pretext to purge political opponents and deputize the police to act without judicial restraint. Within months, the civil service, courts, and press had “aligned.” No one held a gun to their heads. They simply did what was expected.
Trump, who must break a government that has been stable for over 100 years, has taken longer. His version has been messier — an insurgent movement trying to tame the machinery of the state. But the intent is identical: turn independent agencies into political enforcers. First came the purges — firing or sidelining career officials, replacing them with loyalists, rewriting civil-service rules to eliminate protections.
That’s the first stage of coordination: clearing out the obstacles.
Now, as Reuters reveals, comes the second: mobilization. The loyal agencies are to be trained on the enemy.
The Expansion of “Antifa”
Watch the rhetorical shift already underway. MAGA Republicans no longer talk about “Antifa” as a handful of black-clad protesters in Portland. The term now covers anyone who opposes Trump — Democrats, journalists, donors, unions, even churches that preach social justice. In their propaganda ecosystem, Antifa means us. Me. You. Us.
That’s coordination of language — a semantic weapon that prepares the ground for coordination of law enforcement. Once you redefine half the country as violent radicals, everything that follows can be framed as national security.
And just as in Germany, it’s happening before the crackdown. Gleichschaltung always starts with paperwork, not prisons.
From bureaucratic capture to political violence
The plan Miller is orchestrating is bureaucratic, not bombastic — and that’s what makes it dangerous. The FBI’s domestic-terror apparatus, the IRS’s auditing power, the Justice Department’s prosecutorial discretion — these are scalpel tools, not sledgehammers. In the wrong hands, they can quietly destroy opposition under a veneer of legality.
First coordination, then confrontation. Once the machinery is aimed, it only needs an excuse — a protest turned riot, a lone act of violence — to justify unleashing it.
In this video you see ICE, after kidnapping someone off the street, side swipes an innocent woman in a black car and then come after her with guns aimed.
Don’t forget, in MAGA speak, “they” killed Charlie Kirk. “They” is us. Its anyone who dares to call them out for abandoning constitutional conservatism for fascism. For pointing out that MAGA is a fascist movement led by White Christian Nationalists like Kirk who believe Black people with good jobs must have cheated a more qualified White person to get it and that women are born to serve men in the house with lots of babies. Unless they are Ericka Kirk, apparently.
In 1933, Hitler used the Reichstag fire. In 2025, Trump doesn’t need one. The narrative of an America under siege by “left-wing radicals” has already been written, repeated, and believed by millions. They are just waiting for an excuse.
The lesson of history
The most terrifying part of coordination was not that it happened under duress — it’s that it happened with applause. Millions of ordinary Germans convinced themselves they were protecting order, not dismantling freedom. Judges who thought they were preserving the courts. Bureaucrats who thought they were saving their jobs.
That’s what makes Gleichschaltung so effective — it turns authoritarianism into routine.
America is now in its tenth month of that process. Trump’s allies have learned from their failures in his first term: they will not wait to be obstructed. They are aligning the government in advance, ensuring that when Trump says “investigate my enemies,” the machinery is ready to move.
If you go to government websites right now this is what you see:
I know we can no longer be shocked but having this message on federal websites is INSANE and yes, it is a violation of the Hatch Act but again, we have no federal law enforcement of MAGA.
They are quite literally above federal law now.
This is what it looks like before democracy falls: not chaos, but paperwork.
Not tanks in the streets, but memos, meetings, and inter-agency “coordination.”
Which brings me to this Saturday, the 18th. Its all hands on deck for this weekend’s No Kings rally. Use the map of events to find the one you are going to and GO!
The only thing that can save us now is us. They will try to bait us into violence. Show them you are not afraid!
We must be sure to hold the moral high ground, but as the shooting of Kirk reveals, left and right there are a lot of well-armed crazies. They are banking on that.
We’re the last line of defense, and Eugene’s protest will be a prime target for federal goons who have been waiting for 3 decades to crack done on the North West’s anarchists who have been a massive thorn in the side for law enforcement decades since the WTO protests in the late 90s.
See you Saturday and PLEASE email me your protest pics!
Here’s mine, As always, you’re welcome to steal the design.
Rachel
--30--
Written by Rachel “The Doc” Bitecofer. Cross-posted from The Cycle on Substack.
Comments
