The Coming Coup: Updating Michael Anton

Back in September, 2020, Michael Anton wrote one of his prescient articles. It’s one of those articles that, three years later, it’s worth going back for a reread:

The Coming Coup?

Democrats are laying the groundwork for revolution right in front of our eyes.

Anton saw the Deep State and Ruling Class coming together and openly planning a coup—Trump must be removed, come what may. Here’s the nub of it, but read the article for the details as he saw them at the time:

The first rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy. The second rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy.

So why are the Democrats—publicly—talking about the conspiracy?

Because they know that, for it to succeed, it must not look like a conspiracy. They need to plant the idea in the public mind, now, that their unlawful and illegitimate removal of President Trump from office will somehow be his fault.

Never mind the pesky detail that the president would refuse to leave only if he were convinced he legitimately won. Remember: Biden should not concede under any circumstances.

…

Remember that phrase from the Dem war game: “street fight.” In other words, a repeat of this summer, only much, much bigger. Crank the propaganda to ear-drum shattering decibels and fill the streets of every major city with “protesters.” Shut down the country and allow only one message to be heard: “Trump must go.”

I.e., what’s come to be known as a “color revolution,” the exact same playbook the American deep state runs in other countries whose leadership they don’t like and is currently running in Belarus. Oust a leader—even an elected one—through agitation and call it “democracy.”

The events of the last few months may be interpreted as an attempted color revolution that failed to gain enough steam, or as a trial run for the fall. Is the Trump Administration prepared?

Two years after the coup succeeded, Anton returned to the subject:

They Can't Let Him Back In

This, again, is another of those good for a reread articles. As before, just the nub:

The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again. In fact, they made this clear in 2020 ...

If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now.

And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway?

Trump's MAGA agenda wasn't radical by traditional Uniparty standards, and the country seemed to be doing well under his stewardship.

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. The old America—the one in which Republicans cared about the heartland and weren’t solely valets to corporate power, Democrats were pro-worker and anti-war, and Bill Clinton and The New York Times could advocate border security—is in the process of being replaced, if it hasn’t already been, by one in which there is only one acceptable opinion on not just these, but all other issues.

There's much, much more, foreseeing the J6 kangaroo courts, the lawfare against Trump, etc. Anton goes through Plans A-E--and then some. And finally he gets to Plan F.

Which leaves Plan F, which they have already sketched in broad outlines. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, but they have made clear that “under no circumstance” can Trump be allowed to take office again.

Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.

So, today, Roger Kimball conjures up the penultimate article, in the context of all the things that Anton foresaw actually happening. After a review of the lawfare, etc., and referencing Anton’s article, he answers the implicit question that Anton raised more circumspectly. And Kimball’s answer is a necessary one to keep in mind:

The real question was posed by Michael Anton in “They Can’t Let Him Back In,” a black-pilled essay he published in Compact last summer. “The people who really run the United States of America,” Anton wrote, “have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.”

Who are those people? Mostly Democrats, yes, but really, it’s a bipartisan, deep-state consensus, a uniparty assumption that Trump, being an existential threat to their continued existence must be kept from political power by any means necessary. Think the 2020 BLM riots were awful? They were, but they will seem like Lake Placid if Trump is reelected.

I put that down as a secondary reason to hope that Trump does win, but I understand that others disagree.

It is curious, as Anton also points out, that for all the fury directed at Trump the individual, the real target of deep state animus is not Trump himself but his supporters, his “base.” Trump was right when he said “they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.” Anton got to the nub of the issue when he observed that “Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are.”

I think that is worth bearing in mind.

They really, really hate us.