You Must Protect Anyone Chased by the Fascists
"We have to define the politics of opposition."
FBI agents are patrolling the streets of Washington D.C. The National Guard has been mobilized via text message. The president has seized control of the city’s police. The nation’s capital is becoming a laboratory for the president’s vision for U.S. cities. We are witnessing authoritarian consolidation—not the rise or threat of fascism, but its enactment. Many people are understandably voicing alarm. In fact, it’s clear that alarm is all some people have to offer, including Democratic leaders.
On Bluesky, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff posted, “Don't look away. Don't stay silent. If you do, don't be surprised if it's your city next.” While this rhetoric seems to acknowledge the severity of the moment, that’s about all it does. Coming from a sitting senator in the alleged opposition party, it’s insulting. Trump is seizing upon the nation’s capital, and this is what the Democrats have to offer? Rather than enacting or even outlining their own plan to resist Trump, Schiff tells us to watch what’s happening and talk about it. If we don’t, he warns, we could be next. However, watching and talking will not insulate any of us from the spread of Trump’s authoritarian violence. The only service Schiff provides here is a reminder that waiting for “someone” with institutional power to “do something” in our defense is not an option. There is no plan. The Democrats are not coming to save us. If we want to get through this, and protect as many people as we can, we are going to have to do more than watch and talk.
“He’s Doing This Because He Can”
Trump’s D.C. takeover was preceded by an incident in which former DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine was allegedly beaten up by two teenagers. Last week, Trump posted a photo of the bloodied 19-year-old on social media and threatened to take “federal control of the city and run this city how it should be run.” Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington D.C. is a crime ridden hellscape, despite a dramatic reduction in reports of violent crime in the area in recent years. The young people accused of attacking “Big Balls” are both 15 years old, a detail the administration is using to bolster its arguments that Washington D.C. is at the mercy of juvenile offenders who the president argues should be charged as adults.
Washington D.C.’s peculiar legal status has left the city vulnerable to a power grab like this one. Washington D.C. is not a state, or part of a state, which empowers the federal government to make decisions a governor would normally make, like whether or not to deploy the National Guard. While D.C. has its own mayor and city council, federal authority looms large over the city’s budgets, legislative actions, and legal process. By law, the president can use an emergency declaration to temporarily take control of the city’s police. “He’s doing this because he can,” Charles Allen, a member of the Washington D.C. Council told the New York Times. “He has the ability to place the military on our streets. He has the ability to take over our police.”
There is currently a trial underway to determine whether Trump violated the law by deploying National Guard troops in California against the wishes of local officials, and without just cause. In Washington D.C., Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has cast doubt on challenging Trump’s actions in court, telling reporters, “What I would point you to is the Home Rule Charter that gives the president the ability to determine the conditions of an emergency. We could contest that, but the authority is pretty broad.”
Trump has previously dispatched federal agents and National Guard troops on the streets of Washington D.C. during the George Floyd protests in 2020. During the protests, the administration dispatched helicopters to forcibly disperse demonstrators with low altitude manuevers—a move typically seen in combat zones.
Some have compared the dramatic presentation of the alleged beating of “Big Balls” to the Reichstag Fire of 1933 in Nazi Germany. During that incident, the Reichstag building, where the German legislature convened, was set ablaze. While a Dutch communist was blamed for the fire, convicted, and executed, many believe the Nazis orchestrated the fire themselves as an excuse to further consolidate power. In the wake of the fire, the Nazi government sowed panic, revoked civil liberties, and used emergency decrees to further consolidate dictatorial power.
Some have characterized the “Big Balls” beating as a clown car version of the Reichstag fire—an absurd spectacle playing out on what one X user called the “dumbest fucking timeline.” Podcaster Robert Evans pushed back on the implication that the original incident was somehow less absurd, arguing, “we need to teach the 1930s properly so that people know the Reichstag Fire was exactly this stupid.”
It appears that Trump is using propaganda about violent crime and Washington D.C.’s legal vulnerabilities to create a test-run for his larger national vision: the takeover of major cities. The nation’s 25 biggest metro areas account for about 50% of U.S. economic production, totaling more than $11 trillion. Over half of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. are led by Democrats. Trump has often disparaged cities run by Democrats with language that resembles his propaganda about Washington D.C., falsely describing cities like New York and Chicago as filthy and overrun with crime. When speaking with reporters about his takeover of D.C., Trump has stated, “It’s a natural instinct as a real estate person.” The president compared his plans to “fix” the nation’s capital to his tacky, gold-trimmed redecoration of the White House. “I like fixing things up,” he said.
Trump recently stated that during the federal takeover, D.C. police will be allowed to do "whatever the hell they want." He has also falsely claimed that, "Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people."
Black and brown people, trans people, people with mental health struggles, and unhoused people are always at a greater risk of police violence. Between 2013 and 2017, Black individuals made up 47% of D.C.’s population but accounted for 86% of all arrestees—meaning Black people were arrested approximately 10 times more often than white residents. The biases and conditions that make some communities more vulnerable to police violence will be expressed more freely and with greater impunity as Trump further consolidates power.
Trump also stated this week that the “homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY." He claimed that unhoused people would be given “places to stay,” but added that those places would be “FAR from the Capital." The president has previously backed policies that would place unhoused people in government-run camps.
While people already living in the margins are clearly in the crosshairs, and must be protected, we should also take the long view. Given the financial instability that Trump’s policies have sown—with an AI tech bubble more or less propping up the economy—more and more of us will experience the kind of economic precarity that could result in homelessness. As institutions are gutted, catastrophes abound, and public services are defunded, an ever-growing number of people will have no formal, functional place within the economy. That means any one of us could wind up among the hunted. Under fascism, the social disposal of surplus people will be celebrated by those in power. Our capture and disappearance from society will be celebrated.
The Politics of Opposition
Some have clung to crime statistics as they argue against Trump’s mobilization of the FBI and the National Guard. While it is important to name Trump’s lies, we must also remember that a real surge in crime would not excuse acts of authoritarian consolidation. We must be wary of logics that suggest Trump’s authoritarian maneuvers might be reasonable, if he were more accurately describing conditions on the ground. We are living under fascism and authoritarianism—not under the ascent or threat of such politics, but under a government captured by these forces—and that means any and all power grabs by the president must be resisted. Arguing about data, which Trump has shown every willingness to manipulate and seize control of, can’t be our bottom line.
We must assess who is most imperiled by Trump’s actions and edicts, orient ourselves in opposition to those attacks, and decide how we will oppose them. Then, we must act. The shape of defense will vary—neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, and state by state. In some areas, working with local officials will make sense. In others, local officials will support the president’s agenda and help him target vulnerable people—as we have seen with the construction of a concentration camp for migrants in Florida. However, regardless of where we are located, there are similarities in the targeting of human beings under the fascist agenda. Trans people, immigrants, Black people, people with mental health struggles, and unhoused people are primary targets in Trump’s rhetoric. People seeking to exercise reproductive and bodily autonomy are also targets. We must note that criminalization is the common thread that weaves these attacks together.
While officials in some Democratically led areas are fighting Trump’s deportation agenda, we must acknowledge that trans people, Black and brown people, mentally ill people and unhoused people are vulnerable to police violence and other systemic abuse in every city and state in the U.S. Community defense is not a red vs. blue equation. It’s about whether or not we are willing to allow anyone to be scapegoated and abused. Antifascist politics require us to refuse the dehumanization and destruction of people who are dubbed “the problem” in a system that manufactures inequality and all of the suffering it entails.
This is why we must be cautious about making crime data central to any argument against Trump’s aggression. It’s also why the Democrats are wholly ill-equipped to oppose Trump. Gavin Newsom is so eager to displace unhoused people that he has taken up the task with his own hands. Democratic city governments have planned and constructed Cop Cities. Austerity policies in blue cities have shuttered schools and medical services while ramping up policing—a process Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes as “organized abandonment”—propelling the very conditions that leave people more vulnerable to policing and disposal through the criminal system. The Democrats have no agenda to undo any of this, so what can they say when those politics receive a Nazi steroid infusion and democratic guardrails collapse? Apparently, nothing useful.
We have to define the politics of opposition. Those politics must center our shared humanity and our refusal to sacrifice our neighbors and our fellow human beings. I believe that many people understand this, even if they don’t know how to name it—which is why politicians like Newsom and Pete Buttigieg have taken hits for throwing trans people under the bus. We won’t defeat fascism by sacrificing scapegoats, and plenty of people know that in their bones.
While the enormity of this moment may be overwhelming, it is not unique. Across history, people living under fascistic conditions have found ways to resist while caring for and defending one another. There are stories we can learn from—stories from the Jim Crow era in the U.S., from inside the prison system, and from people who have lived under dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the world.
During the German occupation of Denmark, for example, a teenager named Arne Sejr created a flyer called “Ten Commandments for Danes.” At first, Sejr produced 25 copies for influential people in his small town. Soon, the document had made its way across the country, and became a template for Danish resistance. A number of the commandments don’t translate well to our current situation, given that Denmark was being occupied by a foreign force, while we are living under consolidating authoritarianism here in our own country. However, one of the edicts on Sejr’s list applies perfectly to this moment: "You shall protect anyone chased by the [fascists]."
If you want to fight for what’s right in this moment, and forge politics that exist in opposition to what Trump represents, you must protect anyone chased by the fascists. If you are struggling to fathom or reckon with what’s happening, begin here: who can you help protect, and how? How can you support trans people who are under threat? Is there an ICE watch training you can sign up for? How can you support criminalized people, particularly those being targeted on the basis of race, mental health, gender, or housing status? As this authoritarian government further consolidates power and seizes ever more infrastructure, we must create our own infrastructure. More groups trained to observe, document, and potentially disrupt the work of cops and federal agents will be needed. We will also need more organized court support and material aid for targeted groups. We must be collaborative in our efforts, across groups, organizations, and unions—and establish red lines that will trigger larger, more coordinated responses.
We must remember that, no matter what happens, the fascists are the enemy, and that only fascists are responsible for their violence. Whether crime is up, or a protester threw something, or someone entered the U.S. illegally—our enemies don’t care if any of these things are true when they pursue their violence, and we must be equally uncompromising about whether any human being should have their fate decided by a fascist, authoritarian government.
This is no time to simply watch and talk. We have to protect one another. So, let’s take a deep breath and think about what that looks like.
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