Donald Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles. He sent them to Washington, D.C., and he will send them to Chicago. On Sept. 3, President Donald Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to New Orleans, Louisiana. At what cost to the American people do his escapades end?

In his 1995 essay Ur-Fascism (Fourteen Ways of Looking At A Blackshirt), Umberto Eco outlined his 14 properties of general fascism. They were: 

• The cult of tradition
• The rejection of modernism
• The cult of action for action’s sake
• Disagreement is treason
• Fear of difference
• Appeal to a frustrated middle class
• Obsession with a plot
• Enemies are too strong and too weak at the same time
• Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy
• Contempt for the weak
• Everybody is educated to become a hero
• Machismo
• Selective populism
• Newspeak 

Eco was a Italian boy when fascism swept across Europe. He grew up with Mussolini’s dictatorship. He experienced what generations of Americans died fighting: the spread of fascism into Western thought. American songs were written denouncing fascists; people rejoiced in the fact that America could never descend so low.

Those principles have spread across America like ailments recently, and no one has tried to remedy them. I can find many parallels with these sentiments and the America I grew up in. Eco warned of politics where disagreement becomes treason and fear of difference drives policy. Fascism promotes easier answers to American problems by attacking others. Trump echoes these same traits when he targets multicultural cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans.

How do we defeat these patterns? It does not take a fool to notice the hold that technology and information companies have on us. Meta, X, TikTok, you name the social media platform; they will mine and sell your data for profit. Our collective intellectualism has been robbed by people much richer than us and sold to people much more powerful than us to keep stoking the fires of division and discord in America. Be better than your algorithm. 

Trump will keep distracting from the skeletons the American public can clearly see in his closet by attacking Latino, Black, women, and queer people. Los Angeles, Washington D.C, Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans are all similar due to their importance as multi-cultural cities. The National Guard and ICE have been acting as Trump Gestapos in their missions to rid America of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Memphis, Oakland, and St. Louis will be next. Trump will go into every city he wants to, because he won’t listen to a judicial ruling on his actions. The deployment of the National Guard into Los Angeles has already been deemed a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of military forces for domestic law enforcement. However, National Guard troops remain in Los Angeles. 

I have too much pride in the concept of America to want to acknowledge that the leader of it is a fascist dictator. However, it’s hard not to do so whenever emphasis has been removed from any scientific and educational intelligence in this country, as well as the frequent use of our country’s military for Trump’s political agenda. To love America is to resist its descent into fascism. It means questioning propaganda, loving our neighbors, and refusing to let fear justify repression. It is up to the American people to prove that America’s commitment to freedom and diversity is stronger than Trump’s agenda.