What's Happening Around Us

What do you call a government that strips away rights, undermines its own institutions, and seeks to silence those who refuse to conform to its narrow views? What do you call leaders who promise salvation while sowing fear, scapegoating the vulnerable, and consolidating power for themselves and their allies? To put it plainly, it is fascism and an authoritarian takeover unlike anything we’ve seen so far in America. We have reached the point where each of us must decide: will we see reality for what it is or allow apathy and self-delusion to lull us into compliance?

What we are witnessing today is the rapid dismantling of the federal government, the central aim of Project 2025. In its place, people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Russ Vought and countless others are working to replace our vibrant, multicultural democracy with a regime dominated by the confluence of white nationalists, deadly technology and surveillance, and the possibility of things even more sinister. This is not merely about politics as usual; it is the merging of state power with immense private capital and technological control with the sole aim of a lasting control over the American people for generations to come. Companies like Palantir (which already provide surveillance infrastructure to governments worldwide) embody the rise of technofascism, a fusion of authoritarian politics and advanced data-driven policing and surveillance. In this arrangement, billionaires (of both American political parties) and nationalist ideologues form an alliance: one supplies the tools of mass surveillance and control, the other wields them to subjugate anyone who does not share their ethnicity, religion, or vision of America.

Does this sound familiar?

It should.

We have seen this playbook before, countless times across the globe. Many nations have faced their own brush with fascism. Leaders have risen, insisting they alone knew which religion was “best,” which foreigners were dangerous, how the economy should be “saved,” and how to freeze a world changing too quickly for their liking. The most infamous examples, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, are almost a century old and their fanatical ambitions plunged much of the globe into war. In Latin America, Augusto Pinochet’s Chile showed how military and corporate elites could crush democracy in the name of “order”. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has hollowed out democratic institutions while stoking fear of migrants and rewriting history. (Donald Trump has praised Orban and met him on numerous occasions, a troubling occurrence that is not limited to Orban.) In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro fused authoritarian politics with conspiracy, disinformation, and evangelical zealotry to bring Brazil’s democracy almost to the brink of collapse. (Yet again, here is another authoritarian figure that we see Donald Trump praising and meeting. It should be noted that Brazil, it’s people, and its institutions held Bolsonaro accountable for his actions, and he was recently found guilty and sentenced for his plot to rob the people of Brazil of their right to self-governance. Donald Trump has found almost the exact opposite level of accountability here in America, so far.) Regardless of where it has taken place, again and again, the story repeats: the machinery of the state, the weight of capital, and the poison of nationalism converging to try to suffocate democracy.

Although collective memory seems to grow shorter with every generation, we cannot forget: many people alive today have already lived under the terror of fascism. Others are still living it. Although the path ahead will be daunting and an uphill climb, we have a blueprint for how we can respond and what should be done to combat the fascism that is already deeply rooted here in America.

Before we can fight against what is happening here, we must name it honestly in order to be able to understand it and push back against it. What are its components? What language does it use? What are its intent and purpose? I am no scholar, but I will do my best to explain clearly and accessibly what I see happening very clearly around us. Along the way, I will reference authors and thinkers who have shaped my understanding of these dangers. My hope is that you will not only see more clearly but also feel compelled to seek out their writings and use them as road maps for your own understanding and resistance against the pushing tide.

If it has not become abundantly clear, Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large are working swiftly to dismantle the federal government and its institutions: the Department of Education, the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), Medicaid, Medicare, and countless other programs that provide life-saving resources and opportunities to the American people. (Although Trump specifically gets the well-deserved ire of many, it should be noted that this entire Project 2025 is the work of the entire Republican Party, who are in lock step with the President to achieve the same end goals. That’s why the Republican-majority Congress, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, have provided no pushback. It is why Russ Vought, one of the main architects of Project 2025 leads the OMB and in recent days has made it a point to grovel shit about funding he is pulling from American cities he apparently has some mis-held beef with. This is all as their constituents lose access to healthcare, as grocery prices rise, job number revisions show drastic layoffs, and inflation continues to creep up.)

Meanwhile, ICE has run rampant through U.S. cities over the past eight months, acting like masked vigilantes as they round up both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. Under Trump’s direction, aided by Stephen Miller and others, the machinery of enforcement has become a well-funded weapon designed to sow division, chaos, and fear among the American people.

As I mentioned earlier, this struggle is not new, however. Writers and thinkers have long given us the language to understand it and confront it. People the world over have given us blueprints on how to turn the tide against it and improve the future that exists beyond this moment. One of the most powerful writers to give us language about what is happening around us is the late Toni Morrison. In The Source of Self-Regard, in her essay Racism and Fascism, she warns:

“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another. Something, perhaps, like this:

1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power, and because it works.
4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit, or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.
5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.
6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for, and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy – especially its males and absolutely its children.
9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions: a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press; a little pseudo-success; the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.
10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.”

Again, I ask; does this sound familiar?

Morrison’s insight is crucial here. Rarely does fascism arrive fully formed; it advances step by step, normalizing each act until resistance seems too costly or too late. (Although in this unique case Project 2025 laid bare and plain what steps would be taken if power were given again to the MAGA “conservative” movement.) Fascism begins with the identification of internal enemies. Those enemies are then isolated, demonized, and stigmatized in public discourse. From there, laws criminalize them, institutions marginalize them, and, ultimately, holding arenas and systems of violence are created to contain or destroy them. Already we are seeing what Trump 2.0 is doing to demonize, harm, and round up immigrants in masse, whether they be following appropriate legal channels or not. We are also seeing the identification and demonization of those in media & entertainment who are using their platforms to speak against this demonization and dangerous teeter into fascism. We are seeing American citizens detained and sometimes held for days or longer with no due process or seemingly any real recourse. The American military now actively patrols several American cities, as if this were some normal run of the mill thing.

Morrison provides further insight that I believe is worth sharing here; insight that shows us why the demonization process that takes place as fascism tries to find its footing is usually centered around a core racism to push its message. Again in The Source of Self-Regard, in the essay Racism & Fascism, Toni Morrison says this:

“…racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own health: fear, denial, and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the will to fight.

                The forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems are not to be found in one political party or another, or in one or another wing of any single political party… Conservative, moderate, liberal; right left, hard left, far right; religious, secular, socialist – we must not be blindsided by these Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola labels because the genius of fascism is that any political structure can host the virus and virtually any developed country can become a suitable home. Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing – marketing for power.”

Let us take a look at our current surroundings: for the past eight months, ICE has ramped up raids across the country and has rounded up primarily non-offending immigrants (recently some 300 or so South Korean immigrants here on appropriate visas who were helping us to build new factories and directly invest in America were swept up in one of the largest ICE operations to date) and news corporations like ABC & Paramount Global and others have paid millions in settlements in frivolous lawsuits to appease President Trump for FCC merger approvals (in just the past few weeks a 2^nd late night host has been taken off the air for literally airing a clip of President Trump flippantly moving to talking about his new ballroom after being asked about the death of Charlie Kirk.) We are literally seeing the rules being re-written and re-deployed in real time as the news media and American institutions play along with the new rules of the game. As Morrison points out, labels eventually do not matter and are not necessary when compliance with fascism takes root. Decisions are being made even by those who voted against Donald Trump in the previous election to remain in favor and not affect their bottom line. We in fact have a triplet sibling pair, with capitalism towing behind its siblings: racism and fascism. In order to defeat fascism, we must address both the racism and capitalism that help hold up its evil head.

Morrison teaches us that racism is not an incidental feature of fascism but its foundation. Racism supplies the logic and justification for authoritarianism, providing ready-made scapegoats to unite the fearful and disoriented. It is the oldest and most effective tool of fascist control, because it divides the working class against itself and ensures that solidarity never forms across lines of racial or economic difference. Racism transforms neighbors into enemies, workers into competitors, and fellow citizens into threats. It convinces some that their safety and prosperity depend on the exclusion or destruction of others. This is why fascism so often cloaks itself in racial purity, in nationalist myths, in the glorification of a past where “others” were kept in their place. (I could & will link specific YouTube clips of Donald Trump specifically talking about the past as a heyday of the “best days of America.” I mean, the slogan “Make America Great Again” literally is a reference to a bygone heyday of American “power” that white nationalists feel they have lost.)

In this way, racism is not just a symptom of fascism but its pinnacle. It is both the justification and enforcement mechanism. Without racism, fascism cannot fully function, because it loses the central narrative that explains why repression is necessary. Racism provides the scaffolding for fascism’s lies, allowing authoritarian leaders to cast violence as protection, oppression as order, and exclusion as patriotism. Morrison helps us see that to confront fascism we must confront racism directly. To ignore or minimize it is to misunderstand the very heart of the authoritarian project.

If it is not clear by Toni’s list, this incremental process is exactly what we are witnessing today. (I’d wager that what we are experiencing is not an incremental process, but a fast-moving glacier colliding with our only remaining survivable ship. Where typically authoritarian regimes take approximately 18-22 months to gain full control, I believe we have a much shorter period to push back against this before the odds become highly against us all.)  Project 2025 frames its vision as a restoration of “order” and “freedom,” but in practice it simply is identifying enemies: immigrants, trans and queer people, educators, journalists and entertainers, and anyone else who would speak the truth about what is happening. It proposes and has already started to strip these identified “enemies” of dignity, rights, and their voice to speak. Donald Trump and his collaborators are already beginning the process of isolating them through laws that criminalize their existence, through the utilization of governmental powers to silence dissenting narratives, through surveillance systems designed by companies like Palantir, and through media narratives (from a compliant media environment) that paint these constructed enemies as threats to the nation. They demonize dissent, calling protesters “terrorists” and equating diversity programs with “indoctrination.” And they are heavily expanding the carceral state through ICE raids, increased aggressive policing (and the deployment of the military in US cities), and newly built detention centers. Eventually this will turn entire communities into holding arenas and the remaining population of America fearful of speaking out against such horrors.

The danger today is not only in Trump’s rhetoric, or in the Republican Party’s legislative agenda, but in how quickly these incremental steps are being normalized in public life. When racism is tolerated as just another political opinion (Again, rather than provide my own thoughts on the matter, I will link specific YouTube clips from Charlie Kirk and an amazing article by Ta-Nehisi Coates), when slurs and scapegoating are excused as “just words,” we are already on the path Morrison warned us against.

Morrison also helps us see another key point: fascism cannot tolerate independent truth-telling. One of its most persistent enemies has always been a free and independent press. Journalism that exposes lies, corruption, and abuse makes it harder for fascism to embed itself. For this reason, the media is almost always among the first targets: discredited, intimidated, censored, or destroyed outright.

Yet in the United States, our media has not consistently recognized its role as a defender of truth against authoritarianism. Instead, far too often, mainstream outlets have parroted the language and logic of the State, repeating Donald Trump’s words verbatim, amplifying his conspiracies, and normalizing his authoritarian tactics under the guise of “balance” or “both sides.” In chasing ratings or clinging to the illusion of neutrality, our press has too often failed to interrogate the deeper structure of Project 2025 and the white nationalist agenda it serves.

This is not simply a matter of poor coverage; it is a dangerous abdication of responsibility. When journalists repeat lies without challenge, when headlines flatten fascist power grabs into “partisan disputes,” they become part of the very slow marching steps Morrison warned us about. They transform propaganda into acceptable discourse. They make the outrageous seem ordinary. In doing so, they weaken the public’s capacity to recognize danger until it has already taken root.

Today, one of the most chilling manifestations of that framework is the convergence of authoritarian ideology with technology and surveillance: techno-fascism.

At its core, techno-fascism represents a power alliance where state authority meets unchecked private capital and technology. Think of figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and companies such as Palantir. These people and platforms/companies do not just shape policy; they create the infrastructure of control: mass surveillance, predictive policing, and data-driven exclusion. Their tools are not hypothetical but are being actively deployed against us in real-time.

Alligator Alcatraz, recently opened in the Florida Everglades, stands as a stark, physical exemplification of a “holding arena.” Built on a remote airstrip within the Big Cypress National Preserve, it can hold up to 2,000 people, and current projections suggest capacity could reach 5,000. Constructed in July 2025 under the direction of Florida’s state leadership and supported politically by Trump and Ron DeSantis, this tented camp has become a symbol of dehumanizing detention. Lawsuits point out that it was built without environmental reviews and have highlighted reports of unsanitary and dangerous conditions, including detaining minors among adult populations and easy flooding conditions in a flood and hurricane prone area. Despite judicial orders to wind it down, federal appeals courts have allowed it to remain operational. (Another glaring example of the abdication of duty of co-equal branches of government to appropriate govern.)

Meanwhile, ICE has reached historically unprecedented levels of detention. As of late July 2025, almost 60,000 people were held in ICE detention centers, many without criminal convictions. A few weeks later, data from late August 2025 confirmed the number rose to above  61,000 detainees, including 70 percent with no criminal convictions. In late June 2025, ICE booked nearly 927 individuals per day who had no criminal convictions—an astonishing rate compared with prior administrations. Researchers at Syracuse University note that this high of over 60,000 detainees represents the highest detainment point in ICE’s history. These numbers are not just statistics. They show a system built for temporary, regulated detention has become capable of mass internment.

What is more chilling is how tech-enabled systems facilitate this. Palantir's surveillance software enables tracking, profiling, and deportation enforcement with far greater precision and scale than before. The involvement of tech figures underscores how this regime is co-engineered by private capital with authoritarian implications.

Fascism itself is also self-defeating. When the State rounds up immigrants, it inflicts damage on itself. Farms lose workers, food production falters, harvests go unpicked. The very communities that consume the produce see prices rise as supply drops. The economy suffers alongside the oppressed. In Georgia, the recent ICE raid at a Hyundai battery plant construction site resulted in the detention of 475 individuals, more than 300 of them South Korean nationals. Many of them were hired to install specialized machinery or train others, work vital to the plant’s operations that now cannot easily be replaced with. This raid not only disrupted the project timeline but has made companies and foreign nations question U.S. reliability and fairness in labor policy. We have become the ouroboros, the snake eating itself. (An apt analogy for the “Don’t Tread On Me” crew.) President Trump even offered those South Koreans the option to stay if they chose to, signaling the contradictions of a regime that says it values order and productivity even while its policies dismantle both. Workers hesitant to show up for vital jobs undermine the businesses that depend on them. Yet the ideology driving these policies refuses to recognize that destruction of livelihoods also destroys our collective strength, harming communities, economies, and global partnerships. (I haven’t gotten to the tariffs yet. That it an entirely different conversation directly rooted in the “self-defeating” column.)

Before we can move to a solution, we have to ask ourselves, why have we seen such a rise in fascism in the United States, and why has the public grown less informed and more vulnerable to manipulation? Part of the answer lies in a political culture that has steadily rewarded ignorance rather than punishing it. Andy Borowitz, in his book Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, traces this decline across three stages: ridicule, acceptance, and celebration. He shows how politicians once mocked for ignorance slowly became normalized, and eventually ignorance itself became a political asset. Figures who could not answer basic questions about history, science, or policy were no longer disqualified from leadership. Instead, their lack of knowledge was reframed as “authenticity” or “relatability.” We, the people, have become a large part of the problem.

The result has become our own vicious cycle. Leaders who are proudly uninformed cannot produce coherent and knowledgeable policies, leaving space for demagogues to fill the vacuum with fear and resentment. The public, seeing ignorance elevated as a virtue, becomes less expectant of substance and more willing to accept slogans in place of solutions. This cultural shift has eroded the very foundation of democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry to hold leaders accountable. A society that treats knowledge as elitism and ignorance as strength paves the way for fascism to take root incredibly easily.

Borowitz’s work reveals a deadly serious truth: the rise of fascism in America is not only the product of authoritarian ambition. It is also the product of a culture that has allowed ignorance to flourish and to masquerade as common sense. Without reversing that cultural tide, the fight against authoritarianism will remain difficult.

If fascism builds itself step by step, then resistance must be just as deliberate. The antidote cannot be half-hearted. It requires sustained, layered effort that begins with the individual and extends outward to institutions and culture.

First and key, we must recognize that passivity is complicity. Morrison’s warning about incremental steps is a reminder that each silence, each shrug, each failure to challenge lies becomes another brick laid in the structure of repression. Combating fascism means refusing normalization. It means calling things what they are, even when doing so is uncomfortable or unpopular or even perilous. If we do it together, the danger is collectively abated and spread out. Language matters. Truth matters. To resist, each of us must reclaim the courage to speak plainly.

Second, we must turn informed awareness into collective action. Fascism thrives when people feel isolated, powerless, or convinced that nothing can be done. The opposite is true: solidarity has always been fascism’s greatest weakness. Communities can build local defense networks, mutual aid projects, and coalitions that cut across lines of race, class, religion, and gender. Where fascism divides, resistance unites. In the workplace, in unions, in neighborhood councils, in schools, ordinary people can exercise power when they act together.

Third, the battle must be waged at the level of institutions and governance. This means defending public education, libraries, independent media, and democratic processes from erosion. It also means reforming (or abolishing) institutions that have already been corrupted, such as policing and immigration enforcement, complicit media organizations, to strip them of authoritarian power. History teaches us that fascism collapses when its instruments of control are weakened or delegitimized. Protecting voting rights, ensuring transparency in government contracts (I’m staring at you Trump with your non-existent blind trust that every other President entered into and having your kids “running the business”), and regulating surveillance technologies are not side issues; they are front-line battles for democracy itself.

Finally, we must reclaim a culture that values knowledge over ignorance. As Andy Borowitz points out, when ignorance is celebrated, fascism finds fertile ground. Combating this requires more than policy; it requires cultural renewal. We must insist that education, science, art, and critical thought are not elitist luxuries but the very foundation of freedom. A society that teaches its people to think clearly and ask hard questions is one far less vulnerable to authoritarian manipulation.

Fascism is not inevitable. It is powerful and can be scary, but it is also fragile, because it relies on lies, fear, and division; all things we can overcome if we really try. Each time we reject those tools, each time we organize across the lines it tries to harden, each time we insist on truth, justice, and solidarity, we chip away at its foundation. Resistance is not only possible; it is necessary. And it must be waged with as much clarity and persistence as the forces that seek to undo democracy.

The story of fascism is not only written in history books. It is being written in our own time, on our own soil, in our own communities. The names and technologies may be new, but the tactics are not. Identify an enemy. Isolate them. Dehumanize them. Criminalize them. Build the holding arenas. Pretend it is all for order, or safety, or tradition. These steps are familiar because humanity has seen them too many times before.

We stand now at a point of decision here in America, where we have relatively enjoyed a sense of calm and progression that many of the world have not known. Each generation is tested, and this is our test. The question is not whether fascism is rising — it already has and is firmly here. The question is whether we will confront it or surrender to it. Apathy is surrender. Silence is surrender. Hoping it will pass is surrender.

What lies ahead is uncertain, but a burdensome path no less. But what is certain is that fascism cannot survive without our cooperation. It cannot thrive unless we choose not to notice, not to speak, not to resist. Democracy, in contrast, demands more of us: to notice, to speak, to resist, and to act.

So, what does that action look like? It begins close to home. Talk with your neighbors. Support your coworkers. Join or build organizations that defend human rights and democracy. Refuse to let racist jokes, slurs, or lies pass unchallenged. Protect the vulnerable when they are targeted, whether in the streets, in classrooms, or in workplaces. Small acts of solidarity accumulate, creating strength where fascism hopes to find weakness.

It also means engaging in the public sphere. Vote, yes — but do not mistake voting for the whole of democracy. Attend local meetings. Defend libraries. Support independent journalism. Demand accountability from those in office. Protest when laws and policies strip people of their rights. Boycott businesses that fund authoritarian movements, and support those that uphold justice. Build networks of mutual aid so that when the State withholds care, communities are not left to starve.

And lastly, it means holding on to imagination and joy. Fascism thrives on despair, convincing people that no alternative is possible. But alternatives do exist — and they are built when people dare to believe in them and work toward them together. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the struggles for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights all remind us: victories come when ordinary people refuse to be silent and refuse to let their joy be stamped out.

The future of this country, and the promise of democracy itself, depends on whether we can see clearly, name honestly, and act decisively against the forces in front of us. The work will not be easy. But the work is necessary, and it belongs to all of us. So, let’s each begin to do our part.