American politics took another dark turn this week. U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a full-frontal assault on democratic norms.
For years, Dr Martin Hirst has resisted officially designating Trump a fascist. The last two weeks have changed his mind.
FIRST, they came for the late-night talk hosts and I thought, “This isn’t funny anymore.”
Next, they came for the former head of the FBI and I thought, “Surely this can’t be serious.”
Then they came for the anti-fascists and I thought, “Fuck, that’s me!”
It was a bit of a shock just how quickly the American TV networks buckled to the threats from Trump and his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Parteigenosse, Brendan Carr. It was a relief that the whole drama around Jimmy Kimmel died down after his television colleagues backed him up.
But Trump hates the media when it mocks him or calls out his constant lying. He’s already sued The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and collected over US$30 million (AU$45.4 million) in shakedown money. There will be more attacks on journalists and the networks.
Already, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) are facing huge income cuts as federal funds are withdrawn. Several universities inside the Ivy League and out are also under threat of funding cuts as Trump ramps up his war on “woke”.
Following the Administration’s threats to seek revenge against its perceived domestic enemies, it wasn’t the least bit shocking that just a week ago, Trump sicced his woefully under-qualified attorney and former aide, Lindsey Halligan, on ex-FBI chief James Comey.
Halligan’s indictment is that Comey “lied” about some trivial shit. The legal consensus is that the charges will be dropped because Trump won’t want to be deposed and cross-examined on his wild exaggerations and wacky conspiracy theories about the stolen 2020 Election and Hillary Clinton’s servers.
While these incidents can be shrugged off as the demented lusts of a mad king, it’s hard –perhaps impossible – to ignore the assault on free speech now underway in AmeriKKKa.
Trump’s attacks are a direct assault on political activity itself. Speech is only effective when it leads to action, and the Trump Administration is moving to criminalise political speech activity that challenges its hegemony. Not only does Trump want to silence his critics, he wants to completely demobilise any political opposition to his, now undeniable, project to turn the USA into a fascist autocracy.
This is more than an attack on free speech; Donald Trump’s supporters have openly called for the arrest, beating and killing of left-wing and progressive activists.
The rot starts at the head. Trump himself called for “radical left” groups and individuals to be put in gaol and threatened to “find each and every one” of the supposed activists who he says, without a shred of evidence, contributed to the killing of right-wing influence-peddler Charlie Kirk.
Close Trump confidant and closet Nazi, Stephen Miller, called left-wing groups a “vast domestic terror movement”. Miller’s eulogy at the Charlie Kirk memorial grift-a-thon on 21 September was cribbed from a similar speech by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
Nazi-saluting Steve Bannon proclaimed Kirk a “casualty of war” and wants “mass arrests”, particularly of college and university students who stand up for Palestine. Trump seems happy to oblige.
Fox News waste valve Jesse Watters also used a war analogy, saying “they” (the Left, allegedly) “are at war with us”. By “us”, Watters means stupid White men like him. Again, no evidence has been presented for the war claim.
Alleged White supremacist and fascist-lover Elon Musk has promised even more violence if the Left won’t ‘leave us in peace’. He has labelled the Left as ‘the party of murder’.
Musk’s definition of “us” is the same one used by Jesse Watters and other fatuous Fox bobble-headed Faschistenknecht. Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh describes liberals and progressives as “demonic forces from the pit of Hell”.
Antifa is now the designated target
This is not just “free speech” by these authoritarian Abschaum and wannabe Braunhemden, it is incitement to action. It is a loud dog whistle to the MAGA base – Proud Boys and other fascist gangs – that they will soon be off the leash.
What’s particularly notable, and dripping with unintended irony, is the Trump Administration claiming that the “Left” wants to shut down freedom of speech while Miller and co simultaneously move to destroy the civil rights of anybody outside the increasingly unhinged and shrinking MAGA faithful.
The signs are clear. On 22 September, Trump declared “Antifa” a terrorist threat and a ‘militarist, anarchist enterprise’ in a wide-ranging executive order that authorises federal agencies to target anybody ‘claiming to act on behalf of Antifa’. Of course, this can be widely derided as a pointless exercise as Antifa is an idea – it simply means “anti-fascist” – but in the fevered puddle of warm snot that passes for the collective MAGA brain, Antifa is simply “them”.
A few days later, the broader shape of the Trump Administration’s attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association was revealed in another executive order known as ‘National Security Presidential memorandum/NSPM-7’. This is a postmodern re-run of 1950s anti-communist McCarthyism; this time targeting non-existent ‘radicalisation and violent intimidation’.
Of course, the actual events being hinted at here are lawful protests against the probably unconstitutional violent snatch-and-grab kidnappings carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agents in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and other large communities of colour.
NSPM-7 extends the crackdown on “Antifa” by explicitly calling anti-fascists “fascists” and portraying anti-I.C.E. activists as “domestic terrorists” waging war against AmeriKKKa’s “fundamental” liberties. NSPM-7 defines these liberties and values in the following terms: support for American capitalism and Christianity, along with traditional views on ‘family, religion and morality’.
According to the drafters of NSPM-7, the anti-fascists believe in the exact opposite values: ‘anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity.’ Apparently, the anti-Antifa also support ‘extremism on migration, race and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views’.
It’s worth recapping that ‘extremism on migration, race and gender’ translates into opposing Trump’s blatant racism against Latinos and African-Americans, standing up for the fair treatment of migrants, opposing genocide and not wanting to liquidate transexual people. Trump has – with Stephen Miller’s input, no doubt – unleashed the Joint Terrorism Task Force to seek and destroy Antifa in order to secure his version of AmeriKKKan values.
Two days after the NSPM-7 memorandum, Trump announced he would send “all necessary Troops” to Portland, Oregon, a city he described as “war-ravaged”, in order to protect the lawless I.C.E. snatch squads from outraged residents. This was a response to peaceful and determined protests by Portland locals against the actions of I.C.E. agents, whom Trump described as “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists”.
„Wir sind der Sturm“
Maybe I don’t need to remind IA readers that we should be worried by these developments. The stage is being carefully set for what is coming and Stephen Miller laid it out pretty explicitly in his 21 September address at the Kirk martyrdom ceremony. The similarities with Goebbels' infamous 1932 speech, ‘The storm is coming’, eulogising assassinated Nazi Horst Wessel are not coincidental. Even Snopes agrees.
Horst Wessel became a martyr to the Nazi cause and the hagiographic idolatry around Charlie Kirk has a distinct Third Reich tone.
In 1932, Goebbels said:
“People, rise up and storm, break loose!”
In 2025, Miller said:
“The storm whispers to the warrior that, ‘You cannot withstand my strength.’ And the warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’ Erika is the storm. We are the storm.”
The rhetorical devices and thematic currents in the speeches are almost identical: apocalyptic imagery, dehumanising opponents, a civilisation under siege from within, calls for mobilisation and revenge.
This is the ideological context surrounding Trump’s moves to outlaw any kind of dissent, particularly public protests. Under the terms of his recent executive orders, peaceful protests have become ‘organised violence’, ‘domestic terrorism’ and ‘violent intimidation’ aimed at ‘suppressing lawful political speech’. This is clearly a signal that repression is coming.
Trump’s words and actions are strong indicators of the fascist path that AmeriKKKa is now taking:
- portraying White nationalists like Charlie Kirk as a victim who should be “heiled” and a martyr to a racist cultural mythology;
- dehumanising the enemy — “Antifa” are the real fascists;
- the militarisation of civil society — sending troops into various cities, declaring protests domestic terrorism; and
- the expansion of surveillance and prosecutions on bogus charges.
We can no longer dismiss this as Trump’s derangement and narcissism; it is now U.S. government policy.
The question we must face is a simple one: What do we do about this frontal assault on basic democratic rights? The answer is not so simple, but it begins with a recognition that speech alone is not an effective weapon for the struggle ahead. We need action of our own: large protests, strikes, boycotts, occupations and mass civil disobedience.
We must be part of the resistance and the resistance must get organised.
Dr Martin Hirst is a journalist, author and academic. You can follow him on Twitter @ethicalmartini.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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