The 'Threat to Democracy' Is Over

It's time to admit that the fascism we feared is already here.

Envato/ContrabandCamp

What is the opposite of America?

Is autocracy an apt antonym for democracy, or will we eventually become a dictatorship? Totalitarianism or oligarchy? These are just a few of the quasi-synonymous terms that scholars, journalists and politicians have used to describe the void at the bottom of the slippery slope of a collapsed constitutional republic America is careening toward.

Even if one doesn’t subscribe to the narrative that Donald Trump is dismantling this 248-year-old experiment in self-governance, the question should not be dismissed. It’s possible that the current political climate is just a phase the country is going through. Still, it should have a name. What do we call it?

The answer is “fascism.”

Although the word is frequently employed by melodramatic pundits and sober-minded critics, fascism is loosely described as “a political movement that embraces far-right nationalism and the forceful suppression of any opposition, all overseen by an authoritarian government.” Merriam-Webster offers a more precise definition:

“Fascism: a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Perhaps the best definition comes from 92-year-old Robert O. Paxton — perhaps the world’s greatest fascism expert. Twenty years ago, the Columbia University social sciences professor penned The Anatomy of Fascism. In the book — which the New York Times called “so fair, so thorough and, in the end, so convincing that it may well become the most authoritative” book on the subject — Paxton avoided the urge to reduce a complex political ideology to a pocket-sized definition fit for glossaries and articles like this. But in the last chapter of the book, he capitulated to the intellectual necessity.

One million years from now, if an intellectually curious 16th-grader at the Musk-Bezos Institute of Caucasian Science asked its artificially intelligent, virtual reality, CRT-free social studies instructor to describe the American government from Jan. 20, 2025 until the moment I typed these words, it will cite page 217 of Robert Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism:

The moment has come to give fascism a usable short handle, even though we know that it encompasses its subject no better than a snapshot encompasses a person.

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

America fits the description.

This is not what America is becoming, nor is it one of many possible outcomes that lies in this nation’s uncertain future. Whether your understanding of fascism comes from partisan hyperbole, “America’s most trusted authority on the English language” or the “foremost expert on fascism” who wrote the definitive book during a life that spans two fascist regimes, it is impossible to deny that the definitions provided by linguists, scholars and laymen are describing the current political climate.

The fascism we feared is here.

We are beset on all sides by a populist political movement that is “preoccupied with community decline, humiliation and victimhood.” The erosion of “Western values” is the foundation on which the entire “Make America Great Again” movement rests. It’s why New York Times chief white grievance correspondent Ross Douthat laments the loss of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It’s why Trump leverages humiliation as a political weapon — whether it’s referring to a sitting U.S. senator as “Pocahontas” during an official address or publicly chastizing a fellow president for not showing enough gratitude. The Rumpelstiltskin of fascism spins white victimhood into political gold by using DEI, immigration or even counting votes as a straw man.

The current administration seized power because of a “mass-based party of committed nationalist militants” (Proud Boys, insurrectionists, Christian nationalists) “working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites.” (What’s more elite than a “grand old party,” the three richest men on Earth and 57% of white America?) There is no question that this government has “abandon[ed] democratic liberties and pursu[ed] with redemptive violence” by threatening to shoot, deport, arrest and label protesters as “domestic terrorists.”

Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court justices relieved him of any ethical and legal restraints. Mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship are perfect examples of “internal cleansing.” The attempts to colonize Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal reflect his “goals…for external expansion.”

One doesn’t need a dictionary to know that Trump “exalts race above nation.” Under the guise of an executive order against DEI, he attacked civil rights. While he hasn’t issued a single presidential decree to address well-documented racial disparities, he’s fulfilling his promise to address the “anti-white feeling in his country.” Instead of using a democratically elected legislature controlled by his party, he is allowing an unelected billionaire to deploy a legion of stormtroopers. Elon Musk doesn’t have an official government title and DOGE is not an official federal agency; they are just “associated with a centralized autocratic government.” The administration has weaponized tariffs, renamed geographical landmarks, punished journalists and stripped away government funding from states that resist his anti-trans agenda — all to ensure “severe economic and social regimentation…by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Based on every single metric, we are already in the throes of fascism.

During most discussions of fascism, I usually note that there is little need to look outside the borders of this country to theorize how America would decline into fascism. After all, I am among the first generation of Black Americans who did not live under fascist rule. Plessy v. Ferguson — the Supreme Court case that codified a “system with some combination of fascist values and governing structures” — came four decades after America officially decided that Black people were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

However, if one needs a more Caucasian example, we need only remember that Hitler and Mussolini both used racism, propaganda and nationalism to manipulate their countries’ democratic process. Mussolini was prime minister of Italy for more than two years before he declared himself Il Duce (“the leader” or dictator). Hitler waited a year before he gave himself the title of Fuhrer. Do we have to wait for Trump to follow in the footsteps of his fascist OGs before acknowledging the truth that is staring us in the face?

In fact, it might be more challenging to prove that America is not in the throes of fascism. Is there a definition or description that exists that objectively exonerates the current administration from allegations of fascism? Can you name a single one of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights that this two-month-old administration has not violated? Can you conjure a counterargument to the professional fascism labeler’s opinion that labeling Trump as a fascist “now seems not just acceptable but necessary?”

Paxton said that four years ago.

I’m not even sure what more it would take to convince people of these facts. Would Trump have to repeatedly cast himself as a monarch, a dictator and a strongman? Would he have to say, “I alone can fix it”? What if he kept bringing up a third term? Who would you rather believe — facts or your lying president?

Just before he defines the term, Paxton devotes an entire chapter of his book to answering the question: Is fascism still possible? His answer was not just concise, it was chilling in its accuracy.

“An authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well.”

If there is a better, more definitive encapsulation of the second Trump Reich administration, I’d like to hear it.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that everyone should just give up and let Trump have his way. However, the first step to winning any fight is acknowledging one’s opponent and what it will take to defeat them. And when it comes to this administration, it’s too late to prevent them from turning the government into a piggybank for his MAGA monarchy. Defeating him means defeating someone with unchecked authority who has every lever of the most violently powerful empire in the history of the world at his disposal.

But, whatever America was, it does not exist anymore. He has absolute control of a less perfect Union that cannot be saved. It can only be restored. As fragile and flawed as it was, I’d much rather live in a factory-refurbished democracy than a fascist ethno-theocracy.

If you don’t believe me, ask my grandmama.

Still, the question remains: What is the opposite of America?

“This.”