classic Jamelle Bouie unfortunately. 50% thoughtful and well-sourced takes, 50% completely not understanding the way capital and imperialism functions on the human psyche.
robotic psychopaths who will mindlessly listen to whoever is in charge
this is the core of the actual take he has. it is the argument "only robotic psychopaths would follow (to me) obviously fascist orders, and most national guardsmen are not robotic psychopaths, therefore they will not follow fascist orders." and he's just wrong about that first premise, that you have to basically be an insane person to follow directly and confrontationally violent orders. that's a nice thought, but there's basically infinite historical evidence to the contrary. he's essentially positing an opposite position to the "clean Wehrmacht" fascist myth that is a "psycopath Wehrmacht" liberal myth. every single german soldier that did psychopathic and inhuman things to targeted minority groups was ideologically unemotional about it. this is of course wrong, most atrocities are committed by people who largely are not diagnosible cases of antisocial personality disorders.
in fact, Jamelle is proven wrong by the current genocide of Palestinians that is occurring right now. the israeli genocide force consists of conscripts, and at this point also includes national guardsmen. arguably there were some israelis who for whatever selfish or noble reasons chose not to participate in the genocide: they're either in prison (very few) or they simply left the country. by his own definition, that genocide is being committed by "normal" people who are just following orders.
i know it's not their bag really, but i hope china knows that doing a color revolution in amerikkka would be very funny