This is America’s most perilous hour since the Civil War—the precipice where democracy yields to dictatorship, or generals reclaim their oath to the Constitution.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
On September 30, 2025, in a cavernous
auditorium at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, President Donald Trump
stood before approximately 800 senior officers from the Army, Navy, and Air
Force—generals, admirals, and their top enlisted advisors, hastily
summoned from bases around the globe. What began as a purported address on
military readiness devolved into a rambling, political rally-style harangue,
laced with authoritarian directives that blurred the line between
commander-in-chief and cult leader.
The speech—portions of which major
American news networks declined to air live due to their inflammatory
nature—Trump issued what can only be described as an operational order. “We
should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for Military
National Guard, but military . . . we’re going into Chicago very soon.” He
singled out Chicago
as the first target, framing it not as a routine exercise but as a pre-emptive
strike against an “enemy from within,” with the Illinois governor cast as a
domestic foe obstructing federal will. The room, packed with uniformed brass,
erupted into a chilling applause of consent in a space meant for apolitical
strategy, not partisan theater.
This was no mere off-the-cuff remark. Embedded in Trump’s rambling diatribe were explicit shifts in rules of engagement for the military—“They spit, we hit. Is that okay?” he queried the commanders, eliciting nods and claps. He followed with, “From now on . . . you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do,” greenlighting federal officers to unleash unrestrained force against perceived threats. Referencing a recent executive order, Trump boasted of a “quick reaction force” already primed to “quell civil disturbances,” reorienting the military’s core mission from foreign defense to domestic pacification. In addition, he invoked historical precedents—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush—claiming they all wielded the armed forces for “domestic order and peace,” conveniently omitting the Insurrection Act’s stringent thresholds or congressional oversight for military deployment on domestic soil. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News personality turned political enforcer, reinforced Trump’s message with edicts on grooming, fitness, and promotions. “No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression . . . We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards,” said Hegseth. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” he declared. “No more beardos,” implying that those who didn’t agree with the edict should “do the honorable thing and resign.”
This Quantico spectacle marks the culmination of a trajectory that has propelled the United States into full-fledged fascism. Fascism, as historians define it, thrives on ultranationalism, a cult of personality around a strongman leader, suppression of dissent, erosion of democratic institutions, and the militarization of civil society against imagined internal enemies. Trump’s directive to the military flouts the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars the president from using active-duty troops to enforce domestic laws or police the citizenry absent explicit congressional or constitutional exception, and the Insurrection Act of 1807, which permits such deployment only in cases of genuine civil insurrection or collapsed state authority—conditions unmet in Chicago or any American city at this time. Just weeks prior to Trump’s speech today, a federal judge ruled Trump’s earlier deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles amid immigration protests violated Posse Comitatus, deeming it a “willful” overreach to enforce federal law through military coercion. Yet here was Trump, doubling down, testing the military’s fealty in a room where silence might signal resistance, but where applause betrayed complicity.
To grasp the increasing fascist conformity under Trump, one must trace its roots through his first presidency (2017-2021) and the nine months since his January 20, 2025, inauguration. From the outset, Trump has embodied the fascist archetype—a narcissistic leader who demands absolute loyalty, vilifies the press as “enemies of the people,” and fetishizes violence against minorities and dissenters. In 2016, he mused about using the military to seize Iraq’s oil and praised Vladimir Putin’s “strongman” tactics. Once in office, he pardoned war criminal Joe Arpaio, who racially profiled Latinos, and deployed federal agents to Portland in 2020 without state consent, gassing peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators—a preview of the “hit back” ethos highlighted in his Quantico speech. His January 6, 2021, incitement of the Capitol riot, where he urged supporters to “fight like hell,” was a fascist dress rehearsal—a mob storming the heart of US democracy to overturn an election, fuelled by lies of a “stolen” vote.
Following his first presidential term Trump’s fascist impulses metastasized. He refused to concede the 2020 election, pressuring officials like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes, and floated fantasies about running for a third-term in defiance of the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit. In 2024, he dined with neo-Nazis at Mar-a-Lago and retweeted white supremacist content, normalizing ethnonationalism. His “dictator on day one” quip to Fox News in December 2023—meant as a jest about border closures—revealed his disdain for checks and balances, a sentiment echoed in his 2025 inaugural address where he vowed to “root out the enemy within.”
Since January 2025, the slide has accelerated into outright fascist consolidation. Trump has weaponized Project 2025, authored by the Heritage Foundation, a blueprint for executive overreach, purging over a dozen inspectors general in violation of bipartisan oversight laws and installing loyalists like Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget to impound congressional funds—a dictatorial sidestep of Article I spending authority under the US Constitution. Executive orders have also dismantled transgender healthcare, militarized the Mexican border with drone strikes on migrants, and targeted “woke” education by withholding federal school funds unless curricula exalt America’s “patriotic” history. In February, he posted an AI-generated image of himself crowned as king, captioned “Long live the king!”—a monarchist taunt that scholars decried as fascist cosplay. By March, Le Monde likened the early weeks of his second administration to 1930s Germany, citing warm calls to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Vice-President J.D. Vance’s Munich speech which fractured NATO alliances.
Furthermore, Trump’s assault on media and judiciary mirrors Mussolini’s playbook. He has sued CNN and MSNBC for “defamation,” threatened the broadcast licences of TV networks for critical coverage, and packed courts with Project 2025 acolytes who dismiss challenges to his power grabs. In May, Rolling Stone cataloged his “fascist actions” which include, mass deportations via private militia contractors, evisceration of civil rights laws, and rhetoric dehumanizing immigrants as “vermin” invading the homeland. By June, he federalized National Guard units in Washington DC, without invoking the Insurrection Act, to patrol streets amid fabricated “crime waves,” a move the. In August, Trump mused that “many people are saying” Americans crave a dictator to “stop crime,” normalizing his power lust while deploying troops to Baltimore under dubious pretenses. September’s Antifa executive order labeled the antifascist movement a “domestic terrorist organization”—a non-existent legal category—paving the way for FBI crackdowns on dissenters, from environmentalists to Black Lives Matter activists.
These are not aberrations but indicators of the fascist agenda Trump has always pursued--a unitary executive unbound by law, sustained by a MAGA cult that cheers his every excess. As Jason Stanley notes in “How Fascism Works,” Trump’s ethnonationalism—railing against “invasions” by the “other”—foments hierarchies where the grievances of the white majority trump everything. Polls show his base—of which over 50% are Republicans—now favors fewer checks on his power, a radical inversion of the small-government conservatism for which Republicans have been known. Even Joe Rogan, once an endorser, recanted lamenting Trump’s “fascist policies.”
The Quantico order is the Rubicon crossed. By reorienting the military inward—”defending the homeland” against “invasion from within”—Trump inverts its constitutional role, creating a praetorian guard for his regime. This violates Posse Comitatus’s red lines, as Judge Charles Breyer affirmed in the LA ruling—no insurrection, no exhausted civil options, just political theater. The Insurrection Act demands proof of state incapacity but Trump offers none, only talking points that feed his MAGA base.
Now, the generals he spoke to face their ultimate test. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they must refuse unlawful orders in light of the fact that their oath binds them to the US Constitution, not the office of the president. Will they obey and build a quick reaction military force for urban pacification that masks suppression as Trump demands? Or will they defy the order (as they should) citing law and demanding congressional review? Hegseth’s loyalty litmus—resign or conform—pressures them, but silence in the face of illegal orders is complicity. They are the final bulwark against the complete destruction of American democracy.
Scholars like Steven Levitsky warn of “hybrid regimes” like Turkey’s, where democracy lingers in name but fascism rules in deed. To prevent such a scenario from occurring in the US, over 400 intellectuals, including 31 Nobel laureates, echoed this in June’s anti-fascist manifesto, renewing 1925’s cry against Mussolini. Al Gore likened Trump to Hitler in April, with authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat seeing Mussolini’s echo in his “bring the war home” rhetoric.
This is America’s most perilous hour since the Civil War—the precipice where democracy yields to dictatorship, or generals reclaim their oath. If they falter, the MAGA cult’s grip on the levers of the US government will tighten, and we will witness American cities as battlegrounds, dissent as treason, and Trump’s rule as eternal. But if the generals resist—leaking orders, testifying to Congress, fracturing the chain of command—history will bend back towards liberty and they will be vindicated for what could be called treason in Trump’s world. Once the applause from Quantico fades the choice of whether or not to follow Trump’s orders or defy him will signal if the US as we know it has come to an end.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
This was no mere off-the-cuff remark. Embedded in Trump’s rambling diatribe were explicit shifts in rules of engagement for the military—“They spit, we hit. Is that okay?” he queried the commanders, eliciting nods and claps. He followed with, “From now on . . . you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do,” greenlighting federal officers to unleash unrestrained force against perceived threats. Referencing a recent executive order, Trump boasted of a “quick reaction force” already primed to “quell civil disturbances,” reorienting the military’s core mission from foreign defense to domestic pacification. In addition, he invoked historical precedents—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush—claiming they all wielded the armed forces for “domestic order and peace,” conveniently omitting the Insurrection Act’s stringent thresholds or congressional oversight for military deployment on domestic soil. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News personality turned political enforcer, reinforced Trump’s message with edicts on grooming, fitness, and promotions. “No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression . . . We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards,” said Hegseth. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” he declared. “No more beardos,” implying that those who didn’t agree with the edict should “do the honorable thing and resign.”
This Quantico spectacle marks the culmination of a trajectory that has propelled the United States into full-fledged fascism. Fascism, as historians define it, thrives on ultranationalism, a cult of personality around a strongman leader, suppression of dissent, erosion of democratic institutions, and the militarization of civil society against imagined internal enemies. Trump’s directive to the military flouts the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars the president from using active-duty troops to enforce domestic laws or police the citizenry absent explicit congressional or constitutional exception, and the Insurrection Act of 1807, which permits such deployment only in cases of genuine civil insurrection or collapsed state authority—conditions unmet in Chicago or any American city at this time. Just weeks prior to Trump’s speech today, a federal judge ruled Trump’s earlier deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles amid immigration protests violated Posse Comitatus, deeming it a “willful” overreach to enforce federal law through military coercion. Yet here was Trump, doubling down, testing the military’s fealty in a room where silence might signal resistance, but where applause betrayed complicity.
To grasp the increasing fascist conformity under Trump, one must trace its roots through his first presidency (2017-2021) and the nine months since his January 20, 2025, inauguration. From the outset, Trump has embodied the fascist archetype—a narcissistic leader who demands absolute loyalty, vilifies the press as “enemies of the people,” and fetishizes violence against minorities and dissenters. In 2016, he mused about using the military to seize Iraq’s oil and praised Vladimir Putin’s “strongman” tactics. Once in office, he pardoned war criminal Joe Arpaio, who racially profiled Latinos, and deployed federal agents to Portland in 2020 without state consent, gassing peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators—a preview of the “hit back” ethos highlighted in his Quantico speech. His January 6, 2021, incitement of the Capitol riot, where he urged supporters to “fight like hell,” was a fascist dress rehearsal—a mob storming the heart of US democracy to overturn an election, fuelled by lies of a “stolen” vote.
Following his first presidential term Trump’s fascist impulses metastasized. He refused to concede the 2020 election, pressuring officials like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes, and floated fantasies about running for a third-term in defiance of the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit. In 2024, he dined with neo-Nazis at Mar-a-Lago and retweeted white supremacist content, normalizing ethnonationalism. His “dictator on day one” quip to Fox News in December 2023—meant as a jest about border closures—revealed his disdain for checks and balances, a sentiment echoed in his 2025 inaugural address where he vowed to “root out the enemy within.”
Since January 2025, the slide has accelerated into outright fascist consolidation. Trump has weaponized Project 2025, authored by the Heritage Foundation, a blueprint for executive overreach, purging over a dozen inspectors general in violation of bipartisan oversight laws and installing loyalists like Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget to impound congressional funds—a dictatorial sidestep of Article I spending authority under the US Constitution. Executive orders have also dismantled transgender healthcare, militarized the Mexican border with drone strikes on migrants, and targeted “woke” education by withholding federal school funds unless curricula exalt America’s “patriotic” history. In February, he posted an AI-generated image of himself crowned as king, captioned “Long live the king!”—a monarchist taunt that scholars decried as fascist cosplay. By March, Le Monde likened the early weeks of his second administration to 1930s Germany, citing warm calls to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Vice-President J.D. Vance’s Munich speech which fractured NATO alliances.
Furthermore, Trump’s assault on media and judiciary mirrors Mussolini’s playbook. He has sued CNN and MSNBC for “defamation,” threatened the broadcast licences of TV networks for critical coverage, and packed courts with Project 2025 acolytes who dismiss challenges to his power grabs. In May, Rolling Stone cataloged his “fascist actions” which include, mass deportations via private militia contractors, evisceration of civil rights laws, and rhetoric dehumanizing immigrants as “vermin” invading the homeland. By June, he federalized National Guard units in Washington DC, without invoking the Insurrection Act, to patrol streets amid fabricated “crime waves,” a move the. In August, Trump mused that “many people are saying” Americans crave a dictator to “stop crime,” normalizing his power lust while deploying troops to Baltimore under dubious pretenses. September’s Antifa executive order labeled the antifascist movement a “domestic terrorist organization”—a non-existent legal category—paving the way for FBI crackdowns on dissenters, from environmentalists to Black Lives Matter activists.
These are not aberrations but indicators of the fascist agenda Trump has always pursued--a unitary executive unbound by law, sustained by a MAGA cult that cheers his every excess. As Jason Stanley notes in “How Fascism Works,” Trump’s ethnonationalism—railing against “invasions” by the “other”—foments hierarchies where the grievances of the white majority trump everything. Polls show his base—of which over 50% are Republicans—now favors fewer checks on his power, a radical inversion of the small-government conservatism for which Republicans have been known. Even Joe Rogan, once an endorser, recanted lamenting Trump’s “fascist policies.”
The Quantico order is the Rubicon crossed. By reorienting the military inward—”defending the homeland” against “invasion from within”—Trump inverts its constitutional role, creating a praetorian guard for his regime. This violates Posse Comitatus’s red lines, as Judge Charles Breyer affirmed in the LA ruling—no insurrection, no exhausted civil options, just political theater. The Insurrection Act demands proof of state incapacity but Trump offers none, only talking points that feed his MAGA base.
Now, the generals he spoke to face their ultimate test. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they must refuse unlawful orders in light of the fact that their oath binds them to the US Constitution, not the office of the president. Will they obey and build a quick reaction military force for urban pacification that masks suppression as Trump demands? Or will they defy the order (as they should) citing law and demanding congressional review? Hegseth’s loyalty litmus—resign or conform—pressures them, but silence in the face of illegal orders is complicity. They are the final bulwark against the complete destruction of American democracy.
Scholars like Steven Levitsky warn of “hybrid regimes” like Turkey’s, where democracy lingers in name but fascism rules in deed. To prevent such a scenario from occurring in the US, over 400 intellectuals, including 31 Nobel laureates, echoed this in June’s anti-fascist manifesto, renewing 1925’s cry against Mussolini. Al Gore likened Trump to Hitler in April, with authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat seeing Mussolini’s echo in his “bring the war home” rhetoric.
This is America’s most perilous hour since the Civil War—the precipice where democracy yields to dictatorship, or generals reclaim their oath. If they falter, the MAGA cult’s grip on the levers of the US government will tighten, and we will witness American cities as battlegrounds, dissent as treason, and Trump’s rule as eternal. But if the generals resist—leaking orders, testifying to Congress, fracturing the chain of command—history will bend back towards liberty and they will be vindicated for what could be called treason in Trump’s world. Once the applause from Quantico fades the choice of whether or not to follow Trump’s orders or defy him will signal if the US as we know it has come to an end.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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