Emily Lake, your counter-arguments and snarky quips are shallow and arbitrary — they don’t engage with the actual evidence being discussed. They read more like gaslighting than reasoning.
ACTUAL enacted fascist laws and rules in place.
Why bother with that, when you can simply designate your political opposition terrorists,
Examples? Which political party has been designated as a terrorist organization? Which politicians have been designated as terrorists?
Fascism doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual process — a
sliding spectrum of escalation. You don’t wake up one morning with a dictatorship; it happens through a series of increasingly normalized steps. As
Gospel already pointed out, the rhetoric comes first. Trump identifies targets rhetorically, then mobilizes supporters to harass or attack them, and eventually uses state power or legal pressure. The key pattern is escalation — in both
scope and
intensity — against broader categories of opposition.
Your question artificially narrows the focus to “politicians,” but “political opposition” is far broader. It includes journalists, judges, military officials, career civil servants, NGOs, and ordinary citizens who stand in the way of Trump’s ambitions. This isn’t hypothetical — it’s observable.
Many officials who could act as institutional checks on him have been purged, had security clearances revoked, or been targeted by false accusations. Former FBI Director
James Comey is an obvious example — publicly accused, investigated, and vilified after refusing political loyalty. Figures like
Chris Christie face continual public smears that serve as warning shots to others. Trump’s system tests obedience, punishes dissent, and rewards submission — classic features of authoritarian consolidation.
Trump also sought to invoke the
Insurrection Act, which would have allowed military use against civilians without state request — a clear violation of democratic norms and the
Posse Comitatus Act. His rhetoric toward political leaders like the
mayor of Chicago and the
governor of Illinois, calling their governance “illegal,” fits into this same escalation pattern: delegitimize opponents rhetorically, then criminalize them legally.
Meanwhile, Trump’s
national security directives increasingly use vague, sweeping language. He’s labeled ideological enemies like
George Soros and his affiliated organizations as threats to the nation — another hallmark of creeping fascism, where the line between dissent and treason blurs. Declaring
Antifa a “terrorist organization” is part of this same pattern. Whether or not one supports Antifa’s tactics, the move itself expands executive power to treat political opposition as a national security threat.
Invocation of the Insurrection Act is looming and more groups and individuals will be labeled, whether it is by the term terrorist or insurrectionist or traitor is irrelevant as they are functionally equivalent under the umbrella of the fascist momentum.
send the military to terrorize enemy territory and let ‘em sue, while SCROTUS sits on its ass playing with itself.
What are you even talking about?
If anyone gets in trouble for say, burning down a judge’s house,
Arson is punishable by law, and ought to be.
breaking and entering the Capitol to impede a government function or anything like that … just PARDON!
Oh tnoes! The horror! A president *gasp* pardoned someone, that's never been done before! Obviously that's fascism in action... so yeah, every president in living memory is clearly a fascist!
Would you also dismiss Hitler’s early legal maneuvers as “just enacting laws?” I’m not comparing Trump directly to Hitler, but your argument ignores
context. You’re treating all pardons as equal when they’re clearly not. The
January 6th pardons and promised future ones involve people who acted — or were prepared to act — as his personal enforcers during an attempted coup d’état.
These weren’t ordinary political allies or corrupt associates; they were participants in a violent attempt to overturn an election. Trump publicly told groups like the
Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” and they did — waiting for his signal. That’s not “business as usual” in presidential pardons. It’s the use of state clemency to protect one’s own paramilitary wing.
Even if other presidents have abused the pardon power, none have used it to reward participants in their
own coup attempt. That alone marks a qualitative shift toward authoritarianism.
Failed coups followed by electoral comebacks are
often the turning point toward fascism — history gives us multiple examples, from
Mussolini’s 1922 march on Rome to
Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, which he later reframed as patriotic martyrdom. Yes, his own Day of Love. Trump’s playbook mirrors that trajectory: delegitimize elections, glorify violence, punish dissent, and purge institutions that resist him.
Fascism doesn’t require a swastika or formal declaration — only a leader who replaces rule of law with loyalty, and citizens willing to excuse it one step at a time.