Trump’s Playbook Comes from the Argentine Junta
The leaders claim that the country is under siege by dangerous leftists in the big cities as protests against the dire state of things in the nation grow. The leaders vow to crush the resistance to the regime whatever the cost. Armed men are sent out into the streets of the cities. They aren’t really soldiers or police; they certainly don’t identify themselves, and it’s unclear what their legal authority is. These men drive around in unmarked cars, abducting people. It isn’t clear where these prisoners are being taken or what happens to them. This is what is happening in Portland, Oregon right now. The Trump Administration’s strategy in Oregon — and soon, it appears, other cities —seems to have been taken straight out of the playbook of Latin American dictators during one of the region’s darkest periods. During the “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 80s, authoritarian leaders in Argentina pioneered the approach that Trump seems so eager to employ.
By the 1970s, Argentina, like many Latin American countries, had fallen under the control of authoritarians. Argentina had flirted with democracy from time to time, but its politics in the 1950s and 1960s had been dominated by Juan Peron, a populist with…
