“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free,
but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The scope of the pandemic, the number of deaths and those infected with the Covid-19, the spatial distancing and the massive loss of jobs, all induce great fear and uncertainty. Trump’s profound inability to understand science, facts, and medical research, has intensified current social, economic and political concerns.

In this coronavirus crisis, as he has done since he emerged as a candidate, Trump is making sure that he has a loud visible following. His faithful foot soldiers are a scary bunch of vigilante who are brazenly breaking the rules of curbing the spread of the virus. They come to public spaces with Trump signs and hats carrying guns using Nazi trope. These includes a held up sign reading: “Arbeit Macht Frei” a Nazi chillingly deceptive phrase that means “work sets you free,” which was posted at the gates of death camps. They bring posters of hanging opponents, “Hang Fauci Hang Gates, Open Up All Our States” (Bill Gates). Confederate flags, swastika facemasks, recall previous terrifying street violence like the Charlottesville march with its sea of swastikas.

Trump never condemned. He called the Charlottesville White Supremacists “good people” and tweeted on the latest displays of vigilante anti-science protests, “Great people!” “People can’t get enough of this.”

Street mob behavior, encouraged by Trump, raises the specter of Hitler, Nazis, fascism, and swastikas, the same ones that Hitler flooded Germany with, and it invites comparisons. We propose that those who use Nazi trope deliberately provoke similarities with the intention to terrify/insist/hope that America is ready for a Nazi-like age of fascism.

We acknowledge that fascism is a notoriously slippery concept, prone to myriad definitions. Since Trump emerged on the scene as a political monstrosity, there have been numerous discussions of whether Trump is a fascist, or represents a fascist trend in American culture and politics. And even more heated questions are comparisons of Trump with the career of Adolf Hitler. Any use of the Hitler analogy must avoid hyperbole. Trump has not (as of yet) engaged in systematic genocide. He has not (as of yet) systematically arrested or murdered his political opponents. There will, very likely, be a presidential election this November, one that he might well lose.

Yet we insist that it would be a mistake not to consider Trump in terms of a comparison to fascism and Hitler. In his 12 years as chancellor of Germany, Hitler killed millions of people. In the 13 years preceding 1933, he was a political rabble-rouser who systematically destroyed German democracy. How Hitler did it, who were his supporters, invite examining the scope of Trump’s political support.

Trump’s gun-toting Nazis and racists are the most obvious expression of the fascist sentiments in our country; and we should never forget that there is a complex relation between the street vigilantes and the millions who voted for Trump and support him, those who would never think of participating in such overt acts of racism.  Just as was the case for the Nazis, the street terrorizers would have never accomplished their goals if not backed by industrialists, small-time industrialists, people who, let’s say, just “didn’t care” for Jews rather than violently hating them, and those indifferent to politics.  Trump’s “base” as well draws from both groups.

The United States has a stronger democratic foundation than Weimar Germany had; yet our political institutions are being tested as they have not been since the Civil War. Trump as we have seen, has employed many of the characteristic tactics of fascism; heated incitements to violence; lying consistently about his enemies, inventing stories freely, changing them daily; attacking the press and the government assuming his critics are illegitimate.

So we confront the question, what is American fascism? From the 1930s on, many wondered about whether there was an American fascism, and what shape it would take, and how similar or different it would be from its European cousins. In the early 1940s there was considerable interest in whether an American fascism would emerge after the war. In 1946—the same year, we would note, that Donald Trump was born—the African American religious thinker, Howard Thurman, published an essay, “The Fascist Masquerade” in which he predicted that an American fascism would be rooted in exaggerated nationalism and a narrow evangelical Christianity. It would use the hatred of African Americans, Jews, and other racial minorities to stir the emotions of its white followers. It would lie consistently about its origins, its methods, and its ideology, and would of course lie about being fascist. It would have extensive ties to big business, which would use fascism to manipulate the masses.

All of this has come to fruition under Trump. For those who say the possibility of Trump creating a fascist America is far-fetched, we would only say this. He has increased the likelihood of a breakdown in American democracy. Trump so far has lacked the proper catalyst,  despite the fact that the Republican Party, over many years, has chipped away at the institutional protections against fascism, and still democracy exists. But we only have to see his terrible combination of malevolence and incompetence in the coronavirus crisis to see what he is capable of, and the depths to which he will sink. If it was not clear before, in his latest brazen firings of several IG people, Trump let us know that there is nothing he will not do to remain in office, he will stop at nothing.

Now is precisely the moment that we the people must do whatever we can to support American institutions of democracy. We must band together to stand up and speak up, to vote in local and state primaries for candidates who will be guardians of democracy and we must get the vote out in November to get Trump out. We must not allow Trump to make the transition from rhetorical fascism to the actual article. Facing this crucial moment, let’s recall Dr. Martin Luther King, “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”