Yoon Suk Yeol tried it.

The increasingly unpopular South Korean president, still reeling from his party’s losses in the spring elections, attempted last week to become a dictator, issuing an emergency declaration of martial law, which would have banned political protest and subjected the press and their reports to government approval.

None of that came to pass, because the would-be dictator failed spectacularly, likely worsening his already precarious situation.

I’m hardly the only person, surely, who wondered whether Yoon’s attempted coup would be a preview of what Donald Trump may do as soon as late January after he is inaugurated — and whether Americans resisting Trump can have the same success as the South Koreans.

Yes and no to both. Yes first, because the once and future president wanted to do exactly this during his first term in the White House. Reports emerged about a year ago stating that Trump would “potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.” Retired Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s first term, recounted in two different books of how Trump wanted to “beat the fuck out” of people protesting against racism — and of his concerns that Trump hoped to use the U.S. military to stay in office.  

As we know, on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump sparked a deadly siege of fervent — and heavily armed — civilian supporters on the U.S. Capitol using, in essence, the only troops he had left.

But what about this January, after we inaugurate Trump once again? 

This is where Trump’s experience will likely differ from Yoon’s. Already impeached twice with no meaningful consequences, his reelection appears to have indefinitely stalled his sentencing for 34 felonies — to say nothing of being tried in court for instigating a deadly, seditious riot. Should the insurrectionist president invoke the Insurrection Act and use our own military to quell resistance to his power, I would not expect his Republican acolytes to stand in his way. Their calm, dishonorable, and vile submission to him would continue.

Whether or not sycophants like Kash Patel do end up running the FBI and other governmental law enforcement agencies, Trump will be the commander in chief. This time, he lacks the same filters and bulwarks. Milley, who once earnestly told Congress that “I want to understand White rage,” won’t be there. Who or what will stop him?

Congress could have, and perhaps they still can. Joseph Nunn, a Brennan Center counsel focusing on the domestic activities of our military, warned more than a year ago that the Insurrection Act needed revision. 

Here at The Emancipator, we’re in the midst of exploring the kakistocracy Trump is building with his “creep Cabinet” choices. “From undermining trust in vaccines to dismantling DEI initiatives to enforcing harsh immigration policies, if appointed, President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees could pose significant risks to marginalized communities,” Eden Harris writes in a new analysis (Look for that this week.)

We’ve noted how Republicans are already in motion on Capitol Hill. The Dismantle DEI Act will move to a full vote in the House of Representatives after passing along party lines in the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Nov.20. The bill’s text ignores the existence of systemic racism and would outlaw workplace diversity training and hiring practices in the public sector — affecting millions of government employees and contractors working for the federal government. Supporters claim the bill would put an end to racial discrimination, but many, including the Legal Defense Fund, say this bill is a “thinly-veiled attempt to turn the federal government into an engine of social and economic segregation.”

There are now reports that Trump may replace Defense Secretary pick and fellow cretin Pete Hegseth with arguably the worst governor in the United States. Perhaps we should be happy that he isn’t nominated to run the Department of Education. Jonathan Feingold reported for us recently on how the way Gov. Ron DeSantis co-opts the rhetoric of racism and antisemitism in Florida higher education provides a blueprint for Trump’s ongoing efforts to criminalize history inconvenient to his power.

That is the key to all of this, of course. When he tried becoming a dictator in South Korea last week, Yoon used grandiose language targeting his opposition party — also named the Democratic Party, natch. He alleged his opponents were “plundering the freedom and happiness of our people.” The only emergency, apparently, was the perceived threat to his own position. 

A big reason why South Koreans mobilized as quickly and as effectively as they did, is because they’ve experienced dictatorship before. They have legal provisions guarding against the unilateral declaration of martial law that we here in the U.S. do not. I wonder if that is because we always think, “it can’t happen here,” and tend to only build bulwarks after the storm. 

We seem to prefer, in this country, to wait to do the right thing until after the worst happens, or at least until someone else does it first. We’ve now seen the latter, in South Korea. They’ve only been free of authoritarian rule since 1987. Their memories are fresh, but ours should be, as well. As much as the U.S. has ever been a true democracy, that began in the ’60s when we criminalized racial discrimination.

Americans can back those in the world resisting tyranny without feeling as though we need them to show us how to do it. We’ve had heroes who fought Jim Crow, and some are still with us. It’s a different world, but this is a familiar challenge. As we wonder how to resist, we may find that we have everything we need.

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