Resisting Trump's authoritarian birthday spectacle
America kicked a king to the curb once; it's time we did it again
On June 14, Donald Trump plans to throw himself a massive military parade in Washington, D.C. More than 6,600 uniformed soldiers,150 military vehicles, 50 helicopters, and seven marching bands will take to the streets. Cost estimates range from $45 million to $100 million. You and I will pay for it.
He’s chosen to stage this display of might on his own birthday (which pointedly coincides with Flag Day and the 250th anniversary of the Army), thus turning what should be a celebration of our nation’s ideals and its world-class military into a “made-for-TV display of dominance”.
Critics note that this spectacle is “more befitting a dictator than an elected head of state”. It will be a pageantry of power drawn straight from the playbooks of history’s despots.
In response, a broad coalition of Americans is mobilizing a nationwide protest called “No Kings” on June 14 to reject Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. More than 100 of these demonstrations are already planned across all 50 states, transforming Trump’s flag-waving vanity project into a rallying point for democracy.
The message reverberating from city streets and town squares could not be clearer: In America, we don’t bow to kings.
A parade unfit for a Democracy
Trump’s plan to parade military equipment down Pennsylvania Avenue reads like a page from the authoritarian playbook. Military parades of this scale, especially timed to glorify a leader’s birthday, are a hallmark of dictatorships, not healthy republics.
We’ve seen it all before: authoritarian rulers from Mussolini to Kim Jong Un have used grandiose martial spectacles to project personal invincibility and stoke a cult of personality. Indeed, one organizer of the No Kings protest underscored that Trump “wants everybody to think that he is all-powerful … That he rules the world.”
But he is not all powerful, and America was founded in revolt against monarchy and tyranny. Trump’s bid to crown himself with borrowed military glory flies in the face of what this country claims to stand for.
As the No Kings coalition declares, “No thrones. No crowns. No kings.” We rejected the rule of one man in 1776, and we reject it still today.
The symbolism of the parade is in line with authoritarians throughout history, who have cloaked themselves in national symbols and armed might to legitimize their rule. The event is reminiscent of Louis XIV’s royal pageants or the military parades of nearly every fascist regime.
Trump’s appropriation of Flag Day for his own aggrandizement is a transparent attempt to conflate loyalty to our country with loyalty to him. Recall that Trump has openly admired strongmen and expressed envy of how dictators command obedience. He once praised North Korea’s Kim Jong Un’s displays, saying “He’s the head of a country and I mean, he is the strong head … Don’t let anyone think anything different,” and he infamously mused that perhaps the U.S. should have a “President for life” like China’s Xi Jinping. Flirtations with such ideas are no joke, they are warnings.
Trump seeks to cement a cult of personality as seen in authoritarian states where citizens must cheer their leader under threat of retribution. It is a vision utterly contrary to American democratic values.
Trump’s authoritarian ambitions laid bare
Trump’s broader ambitions have long been openly authoritarian. In office, he has relentlessly attacked democratic norms and institutions, underminied independent justice officials, disparaged the free press as “enemies of the people,” purged whistleblowers and those he deems insufficiently loyal, and famously attempted to overturn an election that he lost.
His agenda is an autocrat’s wish list:
weaponizing the military against domestic opponents
mass deportations
punishing critics, and
sweeping aside checks on his authority.
As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has argued, it’s not enough to call Trump merely “authoritarian”, “It is fascism”, plain and simple . Trumpism exhibits all the elements of fascism, from hyper-nationalism and the cult of the leader, to the scapegoating of minorities and disdain for democratic governance.
Reich and others warn that Trump is effectively following the playbook of modern autocrats, taking over his political party, spreading disinformation and fear of “enemies,” undermining rule of law, and paving the way for “full-blown fascism” cloaked in the veneer of democracy.
The planned June 14 parade is the crystallization of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. It is intended to dazzle and intimidate, to put tanks in the streets and give the impression of unassailable strength.
But as Ezra Levin of the liberal activism group Indivisible observes, “Real power is not in D.C. It’s distributed all across the country”. No matter how many soldiers march or how many flags he flies, Trump cannot crown himself king unless we the people consent to be his subjects, and judging by the groundswell of opposition preparing to meet his parade with peaceful protest, Americans do not consent, because We simply don’t do kings in America.
The toxic coalition of theocrats and billionaires
Author and activist Naomi Klein recently described the current far-right as trending towards “end-times fascism,” a dangerous alliance of religious nationalism, tech billionaires, and nihilistic profiteering off chaos. Trump now sits at the center of these forces.
He has positioned himself as a messianic figure for Christian nationalists who believe the U.S. is engaged in a holy battle who view him as God’s chosen instrument, wrapping toxic theology in the flag and conflating Trump’s victories with divine will.
Trump allies like Kristi Noem and Mike Huckabee explicitly fuse religious fundamentalism with nationalist politics, blurring the line between church and state. Under Trump, policy is filtered through a lens of religious extremism, whether it’s the crusade against reproductive rights or targeting marginalized groups under the guise of “religious freedom.”
At the same time, Trump’s movement enjoys backing from the full spectrum of Silicon Valley oligarchs and billionaire investors who share a dystopian vision for the future. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are emblematic of this.
As Klein notes, they are tech titans whose vision for humanity seems to be escapism and apocalypse rather than progress. Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and making humanity a “multi-planetary” species, all while gutting environmental regulations here on Earth.
Thiel, for his part, bankrolls right-wing causes and indulges in end-times conspiracies, notably musing that climate activist Greta Thunberg might be the ‘antichrist’.
These tech barons align with Trump’s agenda of deregulation, tax cuts, and nationalist posturing, as they plan escape pods and gilded bunkers to escape from the crises they accelerate.
Klein’s notion of “end-times fascism” captures how this far-right coalition has no positive future to offer, only offering escape into a grotesque reimagining of a mythologized past. As she writes, today’s far-right “lacks any credible vision for a hopeful future” and only offers supporters “remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others.”
This is Trump’s promise in a nutshell: a return to what Trump perceives as a golden age when certain privileged groups held unchallenged power, over oppressed “outsiders”.
The Flag Day parade – with its overt militarism and imperial nostalgia – is a theatrical rendering of that promise. This apocalyptic ideology can only lead to ruin. It rallies its base with visions of final battles and divine deliverance, while billionaires fortify themselves in luxury and leave the rest of us to face the flood.
Oligarchy and empire vs. the working class
Trump markets himself as a champion of the “forgotten” working class, but he has empowered the techno-oligarchy instead, at the expense of ordinary people.
Under Trump, the richest Americans and largest corporations receive staggering tax windfalls, widening the already gaping inequality in our society. Corporate lobbyists and cronies thrive in Washington, while workers’ wages stagnate and labor rights are under assault.
This is not incidental – it’s central to the authoritarian project. Fascism marches hand-in-hand with oligarchy, and nationalist zeal blinds people to how they’re being robbed.
As Reich and other economists point out, unchecked inequality and concentration of wealth are antithetical to democracy. We are witnessing a “headlong plunge into oligarchy, authoritarianism, and ultimately full-blown fascism,” if we do not confront the nexus of big money and bigotry that Trumpism represents.
Deepening U.S. imperialism abroad is directly connected to growing oligarchy at home. Trillions are spent on the military-industrial complex to project American might overseas – enriching defense contractors and feeding an ideology of endless war, even as our own communities suffer from lack of investment.
Journalist Abby Martin has noted that U.S. imperialism is not a “single issue” but the central thread that ties together our crises: endless wars, climate destruction, corporate domination, and the creep of fascism in America. The militarized mindset that glorifies tanks in the streets of D.C. also justifies bloated Pentagon budgets while our infrastructure crumbles and healthcare remains out of reach. Trump’s embrace of imperialist swagger is not about protecting working Americans; it’s about distracting them with nationalist theater while the ruling class raids the treasury. Every F-35 jet flyover in the parade is a reminder that public money is being burned on vanity and violence, not spent on schools, hospitals, or jobs.
Activists on the frontlines understand this connection. Veteran-turned-activist Greg Stoker has spoken about how the tools of empire – surveillance, repression, militarized police tactics – are now being used against Americans who dissent. The brutality America has exported abroad in the name of “freedom” can and does come home to undermine freedom here.
When heavily armed agents “disappear” protesters off our streets, when border-style barricades and checkpoints appear in our cities, we see how imperial practices boomerang back to erode our own civil liberties. Imperialism and fascism are born of the same poison: the belief that might makes right, and that a small elite has the right to rule by force. That is exactly what Trump’s birthday parade is all about, and what working people and all who love democracy must unite to oppose. This fight is not about left vs. right, but the many on the bottom vs. the few at the top, democracy vs. autocracy.
‘No Kings’ means power to the people
Faced with the rising tides of fascism and oligarchy, ordinary people are rising up in solidarity. The No Kings Day protests are grounded in a profound truth, that the power of the people is stronger than the people in power.
While Trump seeks to stage-manage the spectacle of top-down power in Washington, grassroots movements across the nation are asserting that real power existseverywhere else. From union halls to community centers, city plazas to town squares, an Americans movement is coming together to reject authoritarianism and affirm our shared democratic values.
This diverse coalition includes teachers and nurses, veterans and students, Black, brown, and white people of all faiths and backgrounds, united by the conviction that no one man can be allowed to dominate a free people. The flag doesn’t belong to Donald Trump and patriotism isn’t about slavish devotion to a leader. Patriotism is about love of country, and more importantly, each other. To truly love this country means that we must stand up when someone tries to trample the principles it was founded on.
Progressive thinkers and leaders have long prepared us for this moment of resistance. As Chomsky warns us, the Republican Party under Trump has been “marching” the world toward destruction, fueling climate catastrophe by denying science, while embracing proto-fascism at home.
We cannot divorce the battle for democracy from the battle for a livable planet, just as authoritarian rule and climate denial feed off each other, threatening our very survival.
Audre Lorde, the esteemed feminist poet, taught that “Your silence will not protect you.” In the face of creeping tyranny, staying silent or on the sidelines is not an option – silence is complicity, and it only emboldens the would-be kings. As Lorde implored, we must transform our silence into language and action. Speak out, protest, vote, organize; these are the tools every ordinary person has to dismantle the master’s house, to borrow her famous metaphor.
And so on June 14, and beyond, we speak and we act. The No Kings protest is not just a one-day event but a declaration of intent: we the people will not allow end-times fascists or would-be monarchs to steal our future. We will not be distracted by spectacle or parades; we will focus on building a just, equal, and sustainable society in which no leader is above the law and no person is beneath dignity. This op-ed, like the protests themselves, is a call to all working class people and concerned citizens who feel alarm at the rise of fascism and oligarchy.
You are not alone, and together, we are unstoppable.
As history shows, every empire and every despot can fall when people unite in common cause. Trump’s militaristic birthday parade may aim to show strength, but it is a sign of profound weakness, that of a leader who fears the power of the people and thus resorts to theater.
On Flag Day, let’s remember that the American flag is a symbol of revolutionary spirit and of a constitutional republic of the people and for the people. The flag will never be a personal standard for any aspiring tyrant. Let Trump have his tanks and flyovers; we’ll raise our voices and show our solidarity. In doing so, may we carry forward the legacy of those who fought kings and fascists before us.
No Kings in America! Not now, not ever.
If we stand together in defense of democracy, Trump’s authoritarian birthday parade will be remembered not as the dawn of a new tyranny, but as the last gasp of a defeated one.
We, the people, will have the final word – and it is this: No thrones. No crowns.
No kings.
No Kings Countdown
30 days: Colonists’ breakup letter to King George defines our rights
29 days: Tyranny masquerades as immigration reform
28 days: “No kings, just men.” Labor Party member’s TikTok video
27 days: The Boss says ‘You’re not the boss of me’
26 days: America is not a theocracy
23 days: Labor unions despise tyranny
22 days: Does Donald Trump even know it’s Memorial Day?
21 days: Labor Party members and thoughts about No Kings, Part 1 and Part 2
11 days): Trump fashions himself a king; we all know better
(Until June 14, the day of Donald Trump’s planned authoritarian military parade and (not coincidentally) nationwide protests against tyranny, The Labor Party plans to talk about how un-American it is to aspire to be a king. The Labor Party is built by and for working people. We fight for policies that put people over profits. Ours is a grassroots movement fighting for real change. Today’s post was written by one of our party members. For inquiries, contact Labor Party Media Secretary Neel Sawicky at media@votelabor.org.)