To the world's democratic nations, the United States has long represented a beacon of liberty and democratic ideals. However, a sinister tide is rising that threatens to extinguish that guiding light from within. The forces of fascism and authoritarian rule are coalescing in a perfect storm, personified by the reactionary demagoguery of Donald Trump and his "America First" movement's open hostility toward pluralistic governance.
ALSO READ: Opinion: Electing Donald Trump could lead to demise of American democracy
The parallels to history's darkest chapters are impossible to ignore. Fascist regimes have always initiated their reigns through the same brutish overtures– mainstreaming political violence, undermining institutional integrity, scapegoating minorities, and strongarming a captive media environment to monopolise the flow of information.
We are already witnessing Trump's mordant flirtations with these time-honoured fascist tactics. His refusal to unequivocally condemn groups like the Proud Boys vigilante network can be viewed as nothing less than a tacit endorsement of their role as partisan enforcers. This precipitated the very real intimidation of election officials through a torrent of threats and harassment during the 2020 election cycle.
ALSO READ: US primaries: It’s Trump’s party, you can cry if you want to
Should future electoral outcomes prove similarly contentious, as they seem prepared to be, there are legitimate fears that Trump's emboldened private militias could deploy en masse to bully poll workers and mass voter suppression efforts in key swing territories. Left unrestrained, this normalisation of political violence provides all the combustible ingredients for a breakdown of the electoral process and peaceful transfer of power.
In the event of such a constitutional Armageddon, Trump and his allies have crafted the authoritarian game plan through their "Schedule F" reclassification order and the "Project 2025" agenda. Their ambitions are brazenly clear– gut the civil service, neutralise governmental checks and balances, and install a new hyper-loyalist bureaucracy to rubber stamp the regime's ukase edicts.
As history's despots have demonstrated time and again, establishing police state control over the population is a natural prerequisite. Trump has already laid the rhetorical groundwork by manufacturing xenophobic narratives around immigration to justify the prospective militarisation of law enforcement and detention of millions.
ALSO READ: Trump's hog-tied Biden video lays bare danger signs and troubling subtext of his rhetoric
Equally ominous are his vows to weaponise the Justice Department into a personal Praetorian Guard tasked with enacting his capricious vendettas against political adversaries. Such an implacable politicisation of prosecutorial powers strikes at the very heart of democratic order and establishes the legal framework for criminalising dissent.
Completing this terrifying tableau is Trump's outright embrace of state media control through menacing attacks on the free press and open discourse.
As despotic autocrats have always understood well, full authoritarianism can never solidify absent an obliging media environment that suppresses objective truth and converts the masses into captive audiences for state propaganda. Trump is following a formula that has worked before, to the detriment of the world. American media have proven to be not just inept, but coward, regularly bending to Trump pressure or attacks.
The resurgence of authoritarian fascism has always begun at the fringes as a pernicious undercurrent, slowly metastasising through the body politic until it achieves critical mass and sweeps aside the old order in a climactic spasm.
Should Trump and his MAGA ideological adherents regain the White House and executive power, we could be witnessing the death throes of American democracy giving way to a new dark age – not just for the United States itself, but for the world that has looked to its democratic principles as a moral lodestar for generations.
The apparatchiks overseeing this Praetorian insurrection may initially attempt to cloak it in the drapery of chauvinistic populism. But the terrifying endgame is clear – the subjugation of a once-proud nation under an authoritarian personality cult demanding absolute fealty to the self-anointed leader.
ALSO READ: Reichstag Fire in DC: Can American democracy disintegrate?
The alarm bells are ringing, and the world can no longer avert its gaze from the precipice now coming into view for American democracy. Action to defend democratic institutions and reject the creep of fascist precepts has proven spineless. With only seven months left to election day, there is short time before this existential line is crossed and the damage becomes irrevocable.
