Once upon a time, the avatar of America’s vulgarity, cruelty, and greed failed up to the White House due to his whiteness, wealth, and celebrity. Despite being a disastrous President who was indicted for numerous crimes, Donald Trump was chosen by fate—or rightwing billionaires and Christian nationalists—to make America white again.
The only way to accomplish such a Pyrrhic victory was to abandon democratic norms, purge the government of patriots, and abuse the awesome power of the presidency. Trump removed critics, pardoned criminal lackeys, and unleashed armed, masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to terrorize Democrat-led cities. Hitler had his Gestapo, and Trump had his ICE.
The Department of Justice, led by Pam Bondi, was more interested in dehumanizing innocent Americans as “terrorists” than following up on Trump’s promise to release the Epstein files. FBI Director Kash Patel was more interested in kissing up to Charlie Kirk, a racist who saw Patel and his Indian American family as invaders, than in prosecuting money launderers, seditionists, and fraudsters.
Some Americans expressed shock and dismay, unable to fathom how Republicans, corporate media, and billionaires could become complicit in Trump’s self-declared march to an unconstitutional third term and threats to invoke the Insurrection Act. Like amnesiacs before them, they chose to forget Trump’s own words, where he said he’d be a dictator on “day one,” threatened to “terminate” the Constitution, and continuously envied the overreach of strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
The establishment and its loyal reeks told us not to take Trump “literally” or “seriously”—he was just joking. During the election, Trump walked away from Project 2025, a supervillain plot for minority rule that conservatives openly and publicly shared with the world. After being elected, Trump publicly embraced Project 2025 and its co-author, Russell Vought, a white Christian nationalist who gleefully gutted the government of qualified public servants during a federal shutdown.
Others suffered from a debilitating sickness known as a “failure of imagination,” in which rational people—who re-elected a convicted criminal that incited a violent insurrection the first time he lost—choose to escape uncomfortable truths by deluding themselves into thinking that fascist takeovers couldn’t possibly happen in the United States of America.
The old saying, “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold,” aptly describes the backsliding of democracies worldwide. Why celebrate the rule of law and pay lip service to freedom when the United States, the so-called champion of democracy, openly mocks and flouts such conventions with impunity? Authoritarian movements around the world began to take notice and march accordingly.
Even though Trump promised an end to the war in Gaza, Israel’s war criminals, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continued their genocidal campaign and brutal assault on Palestinians. After all, Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, couldn’t abandon their plans to create a “Riviera of the Middle East” on the bones and ashes of Palestinian civilians razed by Israel’s war machine.
In the occupied West Bank, Jewish supremacist fascists, with the full support and backing of the Israeli government, continued expanding their illegal settlements through the use of violence and intimidation.
In Ukraine, Putin continued his occupation and assault with the support of Trump, who managed to parrot pro-Russian propaganda when he wasn’t busy golfing, falling asleep during Cabinet meetings, or grifting with cryptocurrency. Because there were no consequences to his belligerence, Putin decided to sabre-rattle against Poland, deploying nearly two dozen drones that violated a NATO ally’s airspace.
Meanwhile, the rest of Europe saw the United States become economically weakened, internally divided, and globally isolated after embracing a rightwing nationalist agenda led by the world’s most incompetent, reckless men. Instead of acknowledging it as a cautionary tale, many European voters said, “Hold my beer,” and rushed toward conservative parties that were once considered fringe and extreme.
In the 2024 European elections, these movements grew in twenty-six of the twenty-seven E.U. countries, with Germany’s Alternative for Germany, the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, and France’s National Rally taking major leaps. Why let a little antisemitism, Islamophobia, and authoritarianism get in the way of making Europe white and Christian again?
Down south, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his allies in India found partners with the emerging flock of fascists in the United States, Israel, and Europe. MAGA was repurposed as “Make India Great Again” for Hindu supremacists who want to purge India of citizens they perceive as invaders, namely the country’s 200 million Muslims. In occupied Kashmir, Modi removed its semiautonomous status in 2019 and brutally cracked down on journalists and dissidents. After all, if Trump refers to the press as “the enemy of the people” and openly celebrates violence against them, why would America care if India, a major trading partner, does the same?
Unfortunately, Indian American MAGA supporters, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, forgot they aren’t white or Christian. As such, they were constantly reminded by Trump supporters that, despite their best efforts to be fascist, they would never enter Valhalla.
Thankfully, a resistance rose up, led by the people. Nearly seven million people declared, “No Kings!” and marched across fifty states in the largest single protest in American history. Economic boycotts resulted in the network ABC reinstating comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who was removed after Trump and the chair of the Federal Communications Commission publicly bullied and threatened local stations. Some Democratic leaders realized they could no longer bring a pencil to a knife fight and decided to play hardball by choosing to redistrict and gain seats before the 2026 midterm elections. New York City elected Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim American mayor, despite an avalanche of Islamophobia, billionaire money, and a smear campaign designed to destroy him.
Even though the fascists flocked and organized, they still didn’t have the numbers. Time would tell if the majority was able to flex and retaliate to reform their beleaguered democracy.