What we're witnessing is U.S. fascism

In a post last week on Democracy Americana, Thomas Zimmer reminds us that, on September 25, Trump

"released a presidential memo – an instrument quite similar to a presidential executive order – on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” It was entirely geared towards laying the groundwork for the type of comprehensive crackdown on the “Left” the Trumpists had been demanding since the murder of Charlie Kirk: The memo instructed the entire machinery of the federal government to employ an incredibly expansive definition of “domestic terrorism” to go after any organization or individual associated with leftist “anti-fascism.”"

This memo

"open[s] the door for virtually anyone in the United States – certainly anyone who is critical of Trump – to be harassed by the state as a domestic terrorist. If you believe that sounds hyperbolic, please read the memo yourself. ...my first reaction is that it is a breathtakingly authoritarian document. The only purpose it serves is to create a flexible instrument that could be used against anyone the regime deems an enemy. It employs a definition of “domestic terrorism” that is entirely directed against the bizarre phantasma of “the Left” as it exists in the feverish mind of someone like Stephen Miller – even going so far as to explicitly declare all “activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism’” as likely to be terroristic. Meanwhile, the memo widens the definition so much – including “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” – that it becomes difficult to identify what act of resistance or disobedience the state couldn’t persecute as “domestic terrorism.”"

Will Bunch reminds us today in the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Why we can’t allow Trump to ban that other f-word," October 5, 2025):

"The president, Vice President JD Vance, and their minions have seized on the actions of a few young, lone-wolf assassins to issue blanket condemnations seeking to vilify and, in essence, ban free speech that accurately describes America’s downward spiral into autocracy."

It matters.

"This isn’t some arcane dispute over language. The Trump regime is desperate to control the words of America’s political conversation because they want to normalize what they are doing right now, which is pursuing a rapid race to demolish democratic norms and institutions. Vance’s goal in his North Carolina speech is really to lump the most outrageous comments online with the bulk of legitimate dissent about the outrages that are happening right now from Chicago to the Caribbean."

They can try.

"It’s horrific that militarized cops are firing projectiles at working journalists, or that a reporter covering ICE raids in Atlanta can be arrested and deported to El Salvador. But they haven’t worked their way down to schlubby white boomer columnists — not yet — so I’m going to use the might of this keyboard until they take it away.

Words still not only matter, but have incredible power. What we are witnessing is American fascism. I am an anti-fascist."

Zachary B. Wolf, CNN, Oct 11:

“If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in a campaign video.

But less than nine months into his second term, he was explaining his administration’s stance this this way:

“We took the freedom of speech away,” he said at a White House event Wednesday [October 8] as he tried to explain his call to put people who burn the American flag behind bars for years despite a very clear Supreme Court decision that lists flag burning as free speech.

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— David Bier (@davidjbier.bsky.social) October 8, 2025 at 10:51 AM