Nine months into Trump’s second presidential term fascism is no longer
an imagined threat, it is real and it poses a legitimate threat to American
democracy.
By Fareed Khan
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
These were not routine off-year elections. They were political earthquakes. Turnout in New York City shattered records not seen since 1969, with more than two million ballots cast. The common denominator in every decisive victory was American president Donald Trump—though his name appeared on no ballot. Voters, especially in diverse urban and suburban strongholds, sent an unmistakable message—we reject the cruelty, the racism, and the authoritarian drift that has defined his second term.
Yet the question remains, searing and urgent. How did the United States—a nation that once styled itself as a “beacon of democracy”—become a country that is now embracing fascism, an ideology that more than 400,000 American military personnel died fighting in World War Two? The answer is not a mystery. It is the oldest story that the US has never told with honesty. The most powerful nation in the history of the world was not founded on freedom. It was founded on stolen land, cleared by indigenous genocide, and built by African slaves, who were broken by force. Everything else is decoration.
Let’s start at the beginning. Long before the first enslaved Africans arrived in North America, European settlers embraced the doctrine that the indigenous people of what became the United State were an inferior race. “Our nation was born in genocide,” Martin Luther King Jr. observed in 1963, “when it embraced the doctrine that the Indian . . . was an inferior race.” The Declaration of Independence itself denounces “the merciless Indian Savages,” codifying racial hierarchy in the nation’s founding text. Settlers did not merely conquer Native Americans as they expanded into the interior of the continent, they exterminated them with the help of the US government. By 1900, the pre-Columbian Indigenous population in the contiguous US had plummeted by 96%, from millions to fewer than 250,000. The survivors were herded onto reservations—America’s first concentration camps—with their movements and every aspect of their lives controlled by the government.
Slavery followed the same logic. The US Constitution’s three-fifths clause, its fugitive slave provision, and its extension of the slave trade enshrined white supremacy into the nation’s legal DNA. When the Confederacy lost the Civil War, no one thought that it would win the peace. Reconstruction’s promise of multiracial democracy was drowned in blood with 2,000 Black people lynched in the decade after the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox. Black Codes morphed into Jim Crow laws, and the Supreme Court blessed the concept of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The monuments to the Civil War and Confederate generals told the story. They were not erected in the years immediately after 1865 to mourn the fallen. They rose in the first two decades of the 20th Century and then again, in subsequent decades and between 1954 and 1968, precisely when the white supremacist elites and the racist infrastructure they had built felt threatened. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected more than 400 statues, each one a warning that Black advancement in the US will be met with terror. When Brown v. Board of Education struck down school segregation in 1954, legislatures in the US south answered with massive resistance and a fresh wave of Confederate memorials. The message was the same—this is white man’s country and Black Americans shouldn’t expect to be part of top tiers of society or expect to achieve the “American dream.”
The truth is that the racist foundation of American society never crumbled after the Civil War. They remained intact and those who benefitted from it adapted. The racists became sheriffs, mayors, governors and senators, and the logic of white supremacy changed shape but never lost its grip. Mass incarceration of Blacks replaced slavery on plantations. The war on drugs replaced the Ku Klux Klan’s targeting of Black people. And economic policies and local ordinances that kept Black Americans from achieving their full potential, replaced Jim Crow laws. The result has been that by 2025, the United States imprisons more people than any nation in history, who are disproportionately Black and racialized.
Enter Donald Trump into the political arena in 2015. He did not invent American fascism or racism, but he did use the foundations that had been laid by others to advance his agenda. And he was unapologetic about saying the unspeakable out loud. When he began his presidential campaign he called Mexican immigrants “rapists”. In 2017 he equated neo-Nazis with counter-protesters, saying there were “good people” on both sides during the white supremacist Charlottesville protests. In 2024 he vowed “retribution” against political enemies if he became president, even suggesting he would use the military. His former chief of staff, John Kelly—a former Marine four-star general—called out Trump’s policies as fascist during the 2024 presidential campaign, saying that he would rule like a fascist if re-elected. Thirteen other former Trump officials signed an open letter backing Kelley’s criticism of Trump.
Nine months into Trump’s second presidential term fascism is no longer an imagined threat, it is real and it poses a legitimate threat to American democracy. In his first 100 days, Trump invoked emergency powers to impose tariffs on every nation on earth, citing “fentanyl” and “trade deficits” as pretexts. Average taxes on imports soared to 18 percent—higher than any time since the Great Depression. Car prices jumped $4,700 overnight; grocery staples followed. Economists warned of a “fiscal folly” that would shrink GDP by 1.3 percent and cost the average American household $1,200 annually. Yet the administration celebrates the billions flowing into federal coffers, money that will likely be used to fund suppression of constitutional rights and civil liberties.
Speaking of suppression, it’s already spreading across the US in the form of crackdowns on illegal immigrants and anti-genocide protesters. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have become Trump’s Gestapo, disappearing hundreds of undocumented immigrants and legal protesters, sending some to a jungle jail in El Salvador, while threatening to deport others for their Palestinian activism to nations like Rwanda. Trump has also threatened to strip birthright citizenship by fiat and has declared transgender identities “invalid.” Additionally, billions in federal funding has been withheld from universities that refuse to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from their curriculum, and banned-word lists have circulated in government agencies, with threats of firing if they are included in government websites and documents. The Justice Department has also deployed election monitors to Democratic Party strongholds, citing unproven election fraud.
This is textbook fascism. A cult of the leader, a mythology of national humiliation, a promise of rebirth through violence and purity. Trump’s rhetoric—threats to annex Canada, seize Greenland, retake the Panama Canal, suspend the Constitution—echoes Benito Mussolini’s imperial fantasies. Trump’s allies speak openly of a third presidential term in violation of the 22nd amendment, martial law, and the suspension of elections. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump’s favour that presidents enjoy broad criminal immunity for actions taken in office, has emboldened him further.
Yet Tuesday’s elections prove the rot is not total. In city halls and statehouses, the victories show that a multiracial, multi-faith coalition of people from all socio-economic backgrounds can push back against fascist elements in the US. Mamdani quoted American socialist Eugene Debs in his victory speech. Spanberger pledged to shield Virginia from federal overreach. Sherrill vowed to “solve problems, not manage them.” While Hashmi promised leadership that “lifts people up.”
These victories are not the end, they are the beginning of new movement, because fascism advances when good people normalize the unthinkable. Germany did not fall to the Nazis in a single night. It fell in a thousand small surrenders over a period of years, and the US stands at the same precipice now. To prevent what happened to German from taking hold in the US, Americans must follow Germany’s post-World War Two example. It must enshrine in public memory the racist and genocidal history of the US, and implement laws that make it unrepeatable. It must criminalize racist and fascist symbols like the Confederate flag, which must be banned from public spaces. The true history of American history must be taught in every classroom. In addition, the debt owed to Indigenous nations and descendants of the enslaved must be paid, because reparations are key to healing the national soul.
The voters in the 2025 off-year election have shown the path. They looked into the abyss and said, “Not here. Not now. Not ever.” The question is whether a majority of Americans are willing to follow, or whether they will let the euphoria of a decisive victory fade and then go back to business as usual. American must realize that they are running out of time as the fascist menace grows, but Tuesday proved that change is possible.
The future of the US is in the hands of those who are willing to do as Mamdani and his followers did, and push back against the establishment. They have already told them their time is over, and it’s time for a new generation of progressives and social democrats to lead the way. If America is to be saved from those who have brought the country to the precipice those who rallied to support progressive and left wing candidates like Mamdani need to organize and launch a national movement led by people like the new mayor of New York City and others who share his vision of what could be achieved if they commit to political change.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
On
November 4, 2025, America delivered a thunderous rebuke to Donald Trump’s
second presidency. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani—a 34-year-old Ugandan-born,
South Asian, Muslim democratic socialist—shattered a political dynasty by
defeating former governor and primary challenger Andrew Cuomo to become the
city’s first Muslim mayor. Across
the Hudson River, New Jersey voters elected Democratic Congressional
Representative Mikie Sherrill governor by a double-digit margin, extending
Democratic control of the governor’s mansion for an unprecedented third
consecutive term. In Virginia, former Representative Abigail Spanberger became
the state’s first female governor, while state Senator Ghazala Hashmi won the
lieutenant governor’s race, becoming the first Muslim woman elected to
statewide office anywhere in the United States.
These were not routine off-year elections. They were political earthquakes. Turnout in New York City shattered records not seen since 1969, with more than two million ballots cast. The common denominator in every decisive victory was American president Donald Trump—though his name appeared on no ballot. Voters, especially in diverse urban and suburban strongholds, sent an unmistakable message—we reject the cruelty, the racism, and the authoritarian drift that has defined his second term.
Yet the question remains, searing and urgent. How did the United States—a nation that once styled itself as a “beacon of democracy”—become a country that is now embracing fascism, an ideology that more than 400,000 American military personnel died fighting in World War Two? The answer is not a mystery. It is the oldest story that the US has never told with honesty. The most powerful nation in the history of the world was not founded on freedom. It was founded on stolen land, cleared by indigenous genocide, and built by African slaves, who were broken by force. Everything else is decoration.
Let’s start at the beginning. Long before the first enslaved Africans arrived in North America, European settlers embraced the doctrine that the indigenous people of what became the United State were an inferior race. “Our nation was born in genocide,” Martin Luther King Jr. observed in 1963, “when it embraced the doctrine that the Indian . . . was an inferior race.” The Declaration of Independence itself denounces “the merciless Indian Savages,” codifying racial hierarchy in the nation’s founding text. Settlers did not merely conquer Native Americans as they expanded into the interior of the continent, they exterminated them with the help of the US government. By 1900, the pre-Columbian Indigenous population in the contiguous US had plummeted by 96%, from millions to fewer than 250,000. The survivors were herded onto reservations—America’s first concentration camps—with their movements and every aspect of their lives controlled by the government.
Slavery followed the same logic. The US Constitution’s three-fifths clause, its fugitive slave provision, and its extension of the slave trade enshrined white supremacy into the nation’s legal DNA. When the Confederacy lost the Civil War, no one thought that it would win the peace. Reconstruction’s promise of multiracial democracy was drowned in blood with 2,000 Black people lynched in the decade after the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox. Black Codes morphed into Jim Crow laws, and the Supreme Court blessed the concept of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The monuments to the Civil War and Confederate generals told the story. They were not erected in the years immediately after 1865 to mourn the fallen. They rose in the first two decades of the 20th Century and then again, in subsequent decades and between 1954 and 1968, precisely when the white supremacist elites and the racist infrastructure they had built felt threatened. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected more than 400 statues, each one a warning that Black advancement in the US will be met with terror. When Brown v. Board of Education struck down school segregation in 1954, legislatures in the US south answered with massive resistance and a fresh wave of Confederate memorials. The message was the same—this is white man’s country and Black Americans shouldn’t expect to be part of top tiers of society or expect to achieve the “American dream.”
The truth is that the racist foundation of American society never crumbled after the Civil War. They remained intact and those who benefitted from it adapted. The racists became sheriffs, mayors, governors and senators, and the logic of white supremacy changed shape but never lost its grip. Mass incarceration of Blacks replaced slavery on plantations. The war on drugs replaced the Ku Klux Klan’s targeting of Black people. And economic policies and local ordinances that kept Black Americans from achieving their full potential, replaced Jim Crow laws. The result has been that by 2025, the United States imprisons more people than any nation in history, who are disproportionately Black and racialized.
Enter Donald Trump into the political arena in 2015. He did not invent American fascism or racism, but he did use the foundations that had been laid by others to advance his agenda. And he was unapologetic about saying the unspeakable out loud. When he began his presidential campaign he called Mexican immigrants “rapists”. In 2017 he equated neo-Nazis with counter-protesters, saying there were “good people” on both sides during the white supremacist Charlottesville protests. In 2024 he vowed “retribution” against political enemies if he became president, even suggesting he would use the military. His former chief of staff, John Kelly—a former Marine four-star general—called out Trump’s policies as fascist during the 2024 presidential campaign, saying that he would rule like a fascist if re-elected. Thirteen other former Trump officials signed an open letter backing Kelley’s criticism of Trump.
Nine months into Trump’s second presidential term fascism is no longer an imagined threat, it is real and it poses a legitimate threat to American democracy. In his first 100 days, Trump invoked emergency powers to impose tariffs on every nation on earth, citing “fentanyl” and “trade deficits” as pretexts. Average taxes on imports soared to 18 percent—higher than any time since the Great Depression. Car prices jumped $4,700 overnight; grocery staples followed. Economists warned of a “fiscal folly” that would shrink GDP by 1.3 percent and cost the average American household $1,200 annually. Yet the administration celebrates the billions flowing into federal coffers, money that will likely be used to fund suppression of constitutional rights and civil liberties.
Speaking of suppression, it’s already spreading across the US in the form of crackdowns on illegal immigrants and anti-genocide protesters. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have become Trump’s Gestapo, disappearing hundreds of undocumented immigrants and legal protesters, sending some to a jungle jail in El Salvador, while threatening to deport others for their Palestinian activism to nations like Rwanda. Trump has also threatened to strip birthright citizenship by fiat and has declared transgender identities “invalid.” Additionally, billions in federal funding has been withheld from universities that refuse to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from their curriculum, and banned-word lists have circulated in government agencies, with threats of firing if they are included in government websites and documents. The Justice Department has also deployed election monitors to Democratic Party strongholds, citing unproven election fraud.
This is textbook fascism. A cult of the leader, a mythology of national humiliation, a promise of rebirth through violence and purity. Trump’s rhetoric—threats to annex Canada, seize Greenland, retake the Panama Canal, suspend the Constitution—echoes Benito Mussolini’s imperial fantasies. Trump’s allies speak openly of a third presidential term in violation of the 22nd amendment, martial law, and the suspension of elections. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump’s favour that presidents enjoy broad criminal immunity for actions taken in office, has emboldened him further.
Yet Tuesday’s elections prove the rot is not total. In city halls and statehouses, the victories show that a multiracial, multi-faith coalition of people from all socio-economic backgrounds can push back against fascist elements in the US. Mamdani quoted American socialist Eugene Debs in his victory speech. Spanberger pledged to shield Virginia from federal overreach. Sherrill vowed to “solve problems, not manage them.” While Hashmi promised leadership that “lifts people up.”
These victories are not the end, they are the beginning of new movement, because fascism advances when good people normalize the unthinkable. Germany did not fall to the Nazis in a single night. It fell in a thousand small surrenders over a period of years, and the US stands at the same precipice now. To prevent what happened to German from taking hold in the US, Americans must follow Germany’s post-World War Two example. It must enshrine in public memory the racist and genocidal history of the US, and implement laws that make it unrepeatable. It must criminalize racist and fascist symbols like the Confederate flag, which must be banned from public spaces. The true history of American history must be taught in every classroom. In addition, the debt owed to Indigenous nations and descendants of the enslaved must be paid, because reparations are key to healing the national soul.
The voters in the 2025 off-year election have shown the path. They looked into the abyss and said, “Not here. Not now. Not ever.” The question is whether a majority of Americans are willing to follow, or whether they will let the euphoria of a decisive victory fade and then go back to business as usual. American must realize that they are running out of time as the fascist menace grows, but Tuesday proved that change is possible.
The future of the US is in the hands of those who are willing to do as Mamdani and his followers did, and push back against the establishment. They have already told them their time is over, and it’s time for a new generation of progressives and social democrats to lead the way. If America is to be saved from those who have brought the country to the precipice those who rallied to support progressive and left wing candidates like Mamdani need to organize and launch a national movement led by people like the new mayor of New York City and others who share his vision of what could be achieved if they commit to political change.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
