Take Names

There's no way to prevent Donald Trump's authoritarianism, but we can still hold the people responsible for American fascism accountable.

(Envato/ContrabandCamp)

When the U.S. Space and Rocket Center held its inaugural induction ceremony for the Space Camp Hall of Fame in 2007, the first choice was easy.

In 1950, the U.S. government relocated Dr. Wernher von Braun and his handpicked team of German scientists to tiny Huntsville, Ala., a town of fewer than 16,000 people. In less than a decade, the population quadrupled, transforming from a town where residents still used outhouses into the space exploration capital of the world. Not only did the German-born engineer come up with the idea for Space Camp, but he was also a crucial figure in the development of the U.S. space program. He teamed up with Walt Disney to inspire children across the country to become astronauts, and a 1956 documentary short, Man in Space, in which he was featured, earned an Academy Award nomination.

So when activists began planning sit-ins and demonstrations in the 1960s, Huntsville’s leaders decided that they “were not going to allow their boom to be jeopardized by a poor racial reputation.” Alabama’s pro-segregation governor, George Wallace, and the Klan were ready to attack the “communist” protesters like they did in Montgomery and Birmingham. But at the behest of NASA and von Braun, President Lyndon Johnson stepped in and kept Wallace away from the city.

Black Huntsvillians laughed when the New York Times called the superstar space advocate “one of the most outspoken spokesmen for racial moderation in the South.” They didn’t care that the city’s largest event center was named after some German dude. They knew why a celebrated rocket scientist’s past made Gov. Wallace look like Martin Luther King Jr. because they remembered.

Wernher von Braun was a Nazi.

Even though he was “involved in decision making about the use of slave labor,” officials extended U.S. citizenship to 120 members of von Braun’s team and moved them to a U.S. Army base. The public found out about Operation Paperclip—the not-so-secret government plan to recruit Nazi scientists—as early as 1946. But, after a brief uproar, even the most outraged Americans moved on. Apparently, in America, “never forget” doesn’t include Nazis who developed their expertise in concentration camps.

This is why America can’t have nice things.

As America enters another era of tyranny, many people are beginning to wonder how we let a benign tumor like Donald Trump metastasize into stage-four fascism. How did an inept, corrupt, unabashedly racist criminal become an untouchable authoritarian? The responsibility for this travesty cannot be solely attributed to the Constitution, nor does it rest squarely on the shoulders of the Supreme Court that gave him the power of invincibility. Even the legion of loyal MAGA acolytes who struggle with reading comprehension and long division are not solely at fault. When it comes to America’s most frequently recurring illness (fascism, racism or white backlash), we are simply victims of the same disease that fails most democracies.

White people don’t take names.

When I say “white people,” I don’t mean most white people or even the 55% of white voters who voted for Trump. There isn’t a single policy or program in American history that has existed despite the objections of white people. Even if white people didn’t explicitly support slavery, Jim Crow, the wealth gap, underfunded schools or police brutality, the vast majority didn’t do anything to oppose these atrocities. But white silence was not the biggest impediment to fixing these problems. Even when Black movements succeeded in getting individuals and institutions to adhere to the Constitution, this country has never displayed an interest in holding enslavers, segregationists, corporations, municipalities or government officials accountable.

To be fair, the willingness to forgive and forget is the American way. It’s why Christian conservatives who champion “family values” can vote for a married sexual assaulter who sleeps with porn stars and will proudly “grab ’em by the pussy.” It’s why “patriots” who want to make America great again don’t mind 12,652 pardons for Confederate traitors or 1,200 more for violent insurrectionists. It’s why people who are still furious about Hunter Biden’s hard drive and Hillary Clinton’s email server don’t mind Trump suppressing Jeffrey Epstein’s files.

While our penchant for amnesty is often characterized as “grace,” the predisposition for giving white people second chances is not just a character flaw, it kills Black people. Black Americans were twice as likely to die from COVID during Trump’s semi-authoritarian regime’s practice run, which saw the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans. Despite the fact that many of those deaths were preventable, white voters showed up at the polls in historic numbers to give Trump a second chance.

Among whites, Trump’s 46% approval rating is higher than Biden's (36%) and Obama’s (33%) at this point in their presidential terms. Then again, those are the same people who are willing to let bygones be bygones as Trump’s policies upend their lives. His tariffs and mass deportations have forced business owners to say “bye” to immigrant employees, customers and profits. Because of his Big Beautiful Bill of BS, the rural hospitals, health care and jobs that benefited poor whites are gone.

There is nothing happening in America that Black people didn’t predict. When the Heritage Foundation published a road map for a more tyrannical second Trump term, we explained how Project 2025 would destroy the government infrastructure. We told the world that white women benefit from DEI and offered sixth-grade social studies lessons on how tariffs work—all to no avail. While I am the last person who would say “I told you so,” it is important for the growing contingent of “Indivisible” Americans to remember:

We told y’all.

In fact, we even volunteered to take names. It was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who charged and convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is the reason why Trump has a mugshot. Ketanji Brown Jackson seems to be the only Supreme Court justice willing to check this administration. George Mason University President Gregory Washington is one of the few college leaders who has stood up to Trump’s anti-DEI measures while CBS, ABC, white shoe law firms and Ivy League institutions like Harvard, Brown and Columbia capitulated.

This concept does not just apply to Nazis, segregationists and MAGAminions (I know I said it three times). Remembering the names of their underlings and supporters might be more important. Even after Hitler tendered his resignation with a cyanide capsule and a bullet, the Nuremberg Trials prevented a Fourth Reich by holding Nazis accountable. Thousands of British Loyalists left after the American Revolution; those who stayed had their land and property confiscated.

But if you claim to love America and hate Black people, your attempts to destroy democracy will not be held against you.

If this country actually cared about “liberty and justice for all,” Confederate turncoats would have been imprisoned for treason after the Civil War. Then again, if Confederate traitor and war criminal Nathan Bedford Forrest had been held accountable for massacring Black soldiers at the Fort Pillow Massacre, he probably wouldn’t have become the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard. Had we not pardoned the people responsible for the bloodiest war in the history of this continent, this country might have avoided the Lost Cause movement and Jim Crow and sharecropping and Black codes and separate but equal and 34 race massacres.

Imagine how different this country would be if we actually took names.

What if we remembered the names of every lynch mob participant and published a list of everyone who served on all-white juries? When the Supreme Court decided that segregation was illegal, why didn’t we prosecute the politicians who enforced those unconstitutional rules? Is it too late to prosecute the parents who spat on Black children trying to integrate schools and the cops who sprayed our peaceful protesters with firehoses? Then again, if everyone who supported racial apartheid was considered a segregationist now, a segregationist tomorrow and a segregationist forever, we might not have a Republican Party.

Fortunately, this current administration gives us an opportunity to redeem ourselves.

Even if insurrection inciters like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are never censured for their support of an attempted coup, we should not forget the names of the people who participated in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. We should remember the names of the politicians, judges and billionaires who contributed to Donald Trump’s dictatorship. Even the MAGA grandpappies and economically anxious acolytes who enabled the rise of fascism should be held accountable.

We don’t have to put them in jail or resort to cruel or unusual acts like dispossessing them of their wraparound shades. But we should always remember who did this …

Because you love America.

Then again, if the heroes of the MAGA cinematic universe loved America, they would be fighting to preserve constitutional checks and balances and birthright citizenship as much as their right to own an AR-15. If they cared about freedom or democracy, they wouldn’t support gerrymandering, attacks on history or an administration that strong-arms universities. In reality, they are all liars, racists and traitors who never cared about liberty or justice for anyone.

If the people who claim they adore America actually read its Constitution, this country would not be in this predicament. Real “redeemers” would have prevented Redeemers leader Wade Hampton III from violently overturning the South Carolina 1876 gubernatorial election and the presidential election that same year. Had that happened, there would have been no Compromise of 1877 or Jim Crow. Without Jim Crow, there would have been no redlining, which means there would be no underfunded “Black” school district, which means the people who put “America first” wouldn’t have to oppose DEI or affirmative action.

The same 14th Amendment that guarantees birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection of the law “to any person within its jurisdiction,” contains another rarely mentioned clause.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

— Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution

If we actually followed the Constitution, Donald Trump would not be president.

And if America survives this dictatorship, there is only one way to prevent the apathetic majority from destroying the democracy Black people built again.

We must take names.

Holding them accountable is not just our duty; it is as close to a commandment as ever existed. If we did this, we wouldn’t have to worry about Confederates, Nazis or a fascist, racist, incompetent insurrectionist president.

Never again.