The Most Terrifying Day for the Survival of America Yet: Fascism Is Here

Trump is pressing the pedal to the metal on his previously slow-moving coup.

On September 30, 2025 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was deliberately attacked by Donald Trump and his sycophants.

When I wrote a draft of this essay on Sunday, the title was “Ten(+) Days that Shook America” and the subtitle was “We have seen the past, and it doesn’t work.” That title and subtitle are modifications of statements by American leftists after visiting Russia during and after the Bolshevik Revolution. They come, respectively, from the title of John Reed’s firsthand account of witnessing the October Revolution in November 1917 [sic.], Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), and Lincoln Steffens’ oft-repeated assessment of Soviet Russia, “I have seen the future and it works,” after his 1919 visit to the new Soviet Russia.

The full-frontal fascist takeover of the United States has accelerated so much in the two days since that a new title and subtitle and many revisions and updates are necessary. The headlong rush into fascism is getting worse — much worse — by the hour.

I’ll go deeper into why this 9/30 has been the most terrifying day for the United States at least since 9/11 … and potentially much more terrifying. For now, I’ll just give a brief summary of what happened on this horrifying day and then go back to what I wrote on Sunday, with a few modifications.

Early that day, self-described Secretary of WAR Pete Hegseth told the top U.S. generals and admirals he had summoned from around the world to a meeting in Virginia that he wants “ruthless” people in his military, not “dudes in dresses.”

The only dude in a dress in the US military I am aware of was Corporal Maxwell Klinger. Maybe Whiskey Pete saw an episode of M*A*S*H one night while drunk and thought it was real?

The former Faux News weekend host went on to lecture the actual military leaders on how he would not tolerate “fat generals,” beards, and long hair in his military. He denounced female and nonwhite members of the American military. Whiskey Pete promised “fire and brimstone,” “violence” and more.

Trump showed up late, seeking to quench his thirst for applause and approval for a moment. He didn’t get it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he remarked. in a shaky voice. At one point, he said, “If you want to applaud, you applaud.” The military leaders did not want.

But the worst of it was that Trump then told the top military leaders of the United States that he wants to use “American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and spoke of needing U.S. military might to combat what he called ‘the invasion from within.’”

That would be unconstitutional, illegal, unprecedented, and literally anti-American.

What does he mean by “the invasion from within”? Last Thursday, as the media were distracted by the pending arrest of former FBI Director James Comey on Trumped-Up charges, the emerging dictator signed a National Security Directive, “NSPM-7,” designating essentially anyone who does not go along with him as someone likely to engage in “radical left violence.”

Categories include: “extremism on migration“ (apparently meaning opposing armed, masked men without identification grabbing people off the streets because of their complexions or accents), “extremism on race” (which seems in his definition to mean opposing racial discrimination), “anti-Christianity“ (which means supporting the actual teachings of Jesus instead of those of the Jesus Thieves who want to transform the United States into Gilead and disregard the central tenets of the message of Jesus), or “support for the overthrow of the United States Government“ (which means opposing the January 6 insurrectionists’ attempt to overthrow the government and keep Trump in power after he had been voted out).

Combine these definitions of left-wing terror with the plan to have the US military deploy on American soil against the “enemy within” and you have a completely fascist government.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left wing terrorism,” Reichsführer SS Stephen Miller declared.

Now back to the originally planned essay.

The 10+ Days Leading Up to Today

“Soviet Russia was a revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan,” Steffens said. Life was terrible at the time, he acknowledged, but he agreed with the assessment of Walter W. Pettit, an intelligence officer also on the trip, that it was “a temporary condition of evil, which is made tolerable by hope and a plan.”

Compare what Trump said when he announced his tariffs in February:

“This will be the Golden Age of America! Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe (and maybe not!). But we will make America great again, and it will all be worth the price that must be paid. We are a country that is now being run with common sense — and the results will be spectacular!!!”

Fascism is no longer a specter of the possible future in the United States. It is here. Right now.

---

---

Breaking News of Breaking America

Over the past ten days-plus, the headlong rush into complete authoritarianism by Trump, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and others has been staggering in its speed and scope. “Breaking News” alerts from the New York Times clog our phones at an accelerating pace, announcing news of the breaking of the American Experiment in democracy and freedom.

I am, of course, well aware that Jefferson and many others who signed the Declaration of Independence were enslavers, but the vision set forth in the Preamble was and is the most revolutionary one in history, and over the last two-and-a-half centuries, the United States, between periods of backsliding, has made considerable progress towards reaching that goal. That has been especially the case since the mid-1960s.

Now it is all being destroyed before our eyes. There are so many examples that I will not attempt to list them all. Here are a few in the current month:

Instituting, as I discussed in my last essay, something vastly more dangerous than cancel culture: Cancel Government. The assertion that the government, now equated not with the three co-equal branches established in the Constitution, but with an all-powerful Führer, can stop people from saying whatever they want within broad bounds of public safety, is fatal to democracy. Trump lost the round with Jimmy Kimmel because of an immense outcry from the public, but don’t think for a second that the plans to silence anyone who says something that hurts the feelings of Big Brother have ended. Trump has made plain he wants all dissent quashed.

That effort to silence opponents of Dear Leader came following the murder of Charlie Kirk, a terrible event that no notable Democrat approved, much less “celebrated,” but the Trump Regime and its propaganda mouthpieces—the Regime’s version’s of Joseph Goebbels, including Fox News and many other rightwing purveyors of disinformation on television and podcasts, ceaselessly told their followers was an example of “Democrat violence.” In the world of fact, right-wing extremists have been the principal perpetrators of violence for many years.

Goebbels‘ official title, “Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda,” so well fits what Trump, Miller, and the rightwing media are doing. The “enlightenment” they spread is totally false propaganda intended to divide and promote hate. Kirk himself was a spreader of hate and division, but the current government and its tools are trying to force everyone to worship him.

Everyone Who Supports Democracy Is ‘Antifa’

As is their M.O., Trump and h sycophants are shamelessly lying their asses off about Democrats as enemies of America, parts of secretive anti-American cabals intent on spreading violence, and so forth. They say Antifa is a nefarious, well-organized conspiracy group plotting violence against law-abiding Americans.

On Earth One (the real world), Antifa simply means anyone who is “antifascist“ and is not an organization at all. All patriotic, freedom-loving Americans should be antifa. Here are a few Antifa folks: Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, all of your ancestors who fought Hitler in World War II, every patriotic American, me, and, I hope, you.

Think about it. If you are not antifa, you are profa — pro-fascist. Are you? Trump and those around him are Profa.

It Can Happen Here — and It Already Has

Over recent days, Trump and his henchmen and -women have further riled up their marks by brazenly lying about Democrats as the enemies of America. Trump is openly instructing his attorney general to arrest his political opponents for the crime of not liking him enough. Any federal prosecutors who decline to engage in this lawless activity are dismissed. This is flat-out authoritarianism. The arrest of James Comey on essentially no basis is terrifying, especially considering that without Comey’s mishandling — twice — of the “But Hillary’s Emails” non-issue, Trump would never have become president.

Any American is now subject to arrest and imprisonment on the whim of a madman. Or worse. When Trump ordered American military forces “to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat” off the Venezuelan coast, asserting that they were “terrorists,” he was not only breaking international law, but indicating that he has the right to designate anyone a “terrorist” and have them killed without any legal process. Combine this with his incessant accusations that Democrats, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and anyone else who might pop into his warped mind are terrorists and the possibility of any American citizen who rubs him the wrong way being rubbed out Mafia style by our own military becomes all-too real. A draft bill to legalize such killings is circulating in the White House and Congress.

But there’s more. Trump has sent troops to Portland, Oregon. He is talking about sending troops to more and more cities. The likelihood is that he plans to have troops at polling places in Democratic areas on Election Day next year. Combined with the outrageous gerrymandering he is demanding in Republican states and other tactics — his friend, Vladimir Putin, told him at their Alaska meeting to stop mail-in voting — Republicans might be able to hold control of Congress no matter how unpopular their policies are with voters.

Miller and others are calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to give a legal fig leaf to cover his use of the American military against the American people.

All of this while Trump is showing ever more signs of complete derangement. Consider his totally unhinged announcement last Monday of the false reports on Tylenol and his unhinged rant at the United Nations the next morning. How could anyone watching these two, uh … performances … want him to be in a position of power or representing the United States to the world?

We Have Seen the Past, and It Does not Work

All Americans need to understand that Trump and his supporters no longer represent a potential danger of bringing about an American dictatorship. They are doing it right now.

In Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, Putin’s Russia, and many other places, what Trump and his gang of thugs are doing has led to disaster.

We have seen the past and it does not work. We must stop it. Now.

Robert S. McElvaine is Emeritus Professor of History at Millsaps College and the author of eleven books, including Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History. He writes a column on Substack, Musings & Amusings. Read the original column here.