*Critics branded as traitors, accountability treated as weakness, and armed power rallied around Donald Trump— welcome to the American Fascist Regime. *
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s supporters beat me, tased me and threatened to kill me because I was standing between them and what they wanted: keeping their guy in power after he lost an election.
That was my introduction to how far these people would go for him.
Lose an election? Fuck the election. Cops standing in your way? Fuck the cops. The Constitution says your time is up? Fuck the Constitution.
Trump comes first.
Since then, I’ve watched that movement become more openly fascist. When Trump got back into office, I watched him put the government to work protecting the people who helped him and punishing the people who stood in his way.
Pardon the people who attacked us. Go after the people who investigated him. Fire the watchdogs. Target the lawyers. Tell the public that anybody demanding accountability is out to destroy the country.
Every time he got away with something, he pushed further.
Then I watched Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” speech last week, and I thought: there it fucking is.
The whole thing, on one stage, with one cohesive look and sound. And that idea stuck with me in the days since.
The eagle overhead. The banners. The military audience. The performance of strength from a guy who apparently thinks having to answer questions is an unbearable burden.
And underneath all that, the message: Trump protects you. His critics are your enemies. The people checking your power are weakening you.
Hegseth called critical war coverage “treason.” He took shots at oversight and assured the audience that Trump had their backs. You can watch him say it yourself.
Look at that comparison image. I see why people recognize the fascist aesthetic. Then listen to the speech. The words make the resemblance a lot harder to brush off.
For years, this movement has thrown its bullshit at us a piece at a time. Another threat. Another lie. Another person fired for doing their job. Another explanation for why Trump should never face a consequence.
But in typical Trump fashion, it was disorganized. One big fuckin’ multi-year weave that all pointed in the same direction, but aside from MAGA hats and the branding from Trump’s first term, hadn’t really
Hegseth’s State of the Force speech brought it together. He gave it the Americanized fascist aesthetic. A brand look, feel, and message that tells everybody where they belong: in lockstep behind Trump, or else.
MAGA was the first movement. That movement has evolved into something new, spawned from the United States Government and Military, not a stolen phrase from a bygone era — a stolen form of dictatorship from one of the most violent and evil eras in the history of humanity.
An American Fascist Enterprise built around one man’s power—and his right to punish anybody who challenges it.
Pete Hegseth, that loyal asshole, is standing there selling it as patriotism.
So I think it’s high time we take stock. Let’s look at the fascist parallels from history, and how it was Americanized in the modern era. Let’s look at the fuckin’ journey we’ve been on, starting from the day I was almost killed, all the way to the State of The Fascist Force.
January 6th was an attempt to keep a defeated president in power. The violence had a purpose. I was one of the cops standing in its way.
A failed attempt to seize power can become the foundation for what comes next. Hitler’s attempted coup in Munich in 1923 failed. Afterward, he pursued power through elections and political maneuvering. The failed coup didn’t make his movement democratic. The Holocaust Memorial Museum documents that progression.
Trump’s movement took its own American path. He lost, refused to accept it, and his supporters attacked Congress. Then he returned through an election that he suddenly didn’t say was rigged cause guess fuckin’ what: this time, he liked the outcome.
Winning in 2024 did not erase what he tried to do after losing in 2020.
If you accept the result only when you win, you don’t believe in democracy. You believe you’re entitled to power.
I shouldn’t have to explain that to people who keep calling themselves constitutional conservatives.
On his first day back in office, Trump granted sweeping clemency to January 6 defendants, including people convicted of assaulting police officers. AP documented the pardons and commutations.
Those cases involved evidence, guilty pleas and verdicts. Trump swept away the consequences.
What’s the lesson for the next person considering violence on his behalf?
He’ll take care of you.
Fascist movements have used political violence to intimidate opponents and undermine democratic institutions. After Hitler took office, Nazi paramilitary violence escalated with state protection. That relationship between political power and organized violence is well documented.
Trump’s pardons create their own dangerous bargain: commit violence for the leader, and the leader can protect you from accountability.
I spent my career arresting people. I got attacked defending Congress. Then the president rewarded people convicted of attacking cops.
Spare me another fucking lecture about “backing the blue.”
Protecting the attackers also requires changing the story.
The people who tried to stop the transfer of power become patriots. Their prosecutions become persecution. Trump becomes the guy who saved them. His White House now promotes that version of January 6. Read the administration’s own account.
And people like me become a problem because we remember what actually happened.
Fascist propaganda builds a story in which the leader embodies the nation and his enemies are responsible for its suffering. Nazi propaganda made that identification central to its message. The Holocaust Memorial Museum explains how it served the regime.
You don’t have to convince everybody. You have to give your supporters permission to disregard anything that might make them question their loyalty.
The video. The evidence. The convictions. The cops telling you what happened.
I was there. I know who was beating whom.
No White House webpage gets to change that.
Then look at what happens to the investigators.
Under Kash Patel, the FBI has fired employees connected to past Trump investigations and other work the administration objects to. AP documented those firings.
What does that tell the people still working there?
Before you follow the evidence, think about whose name might come up.
The Nazis consolidated power partly by purging Jews and political opponents from the civil service. Racial persecution was central to that policy, alongside removing people the regime considered politically unreliable. The 1933 civil-service law helped dismantle democratic government.
The institutional warning is clear: when keeping your job depends on loyalty to the ruler, public service becomes service to him.
An investigator’s job cannot depend on whether the person being investigated likes the investigation.
That’s basic shit. And this administration keeps treating it like an outrageous demand.
Trump fired inspectors general across federal agencies—the watchdogs responsible for investigating misconduct, waste and abuse. AP reported the removal of roughly 17 inspectors general.
His administration also used executive orders to target law firms, including firms associated with attorneys who had investigated him. Firms challenged those orders in court. AP reported on the retaliation and the lawsuits.
Watchdogs and lawyers can make powerful people answer for what they’ve done. That makes them targets.
Historical fascist regimes subordinated legal institutions to political power. Under Nazi rule, purges and political control helped turn the legal system into an instrument of persecution. The historical record shows how that happened.
Our courts and independent lawyers are still fighting these actions. That matters. Their resistance is one reason this government has limits it would rather do without.
Then Hegseth gets up and sneers at lawyers and “weaponized IG policies.”
Of course he resents oversight. Oversight asks whether you did something wrong.
If you’re entrusted with public power and that question pisses you off, you’re exactly the person who needs somebody asking it.
Look at the administration’s treatment of immigrants.
In 2025, it sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran prison despite a protection against his removal there. The government acknowledged the error. The Supreme Court required it to facilitate his return. Administration officials nevertheless argued that April that they had no basis to bring him back. AP documented that response.
The government made a serious error affecting somebody’s freedom. Its first obligation was to correct it.
Instead, the public got arguments for why it shouldn’t have to.
I was a cop. “We think he’s dangerous” doesn’t relieve you of your obligation to follow the law.
Fascist movements build loyalty by identifying populations supposedly threatening the nation. Nazi ideology placed antisemitism and racial exclusion at the center of that process. The regime defined national belonging through the people it excluded.
That history should make us alert to a government encouraging people to stop caring about the rights of a targeted population.
You get told the people being harmed deserve it. Asking for evidence becomes sympathy for the enemy. Cruelty becomes proof of strength.
And the government gets more room to abuse its power.
In June 2025, Trump federalized National Guard personnel amid protests against immigration enforcement, authorizing protection of federal personnel and property where protests were occurring or expected. His memorandum describes the deployment authority.
Consider that alongside the other actions: protection for his violent supporters, retaliation against investigators, attacks on oversight, and military power brought into conflicts with the public.
The direction matters.
Fascist consolidation brings institutions into line with the leader’s political project. The Nazis called their process Gleichschaltung—coordination of institutions under their rule. The Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that process.
That is why a defense secretary’s message deserves serious scrutiny.
He is speaking to people who carry out orders with consequences far beyond a political rally.
Who does he tell them to trust? Who does he teach them to resent? What does he suggest they owe the president personally?
Now come back to Hegseth.
The imagery presents strength, unity and national purpose. His words identify the people supposedly threatening all three.
Critical coverage becomes treason. Oversight becomes an attack. Trump becomes the protector.
That is what organizes the spectacle. The aesthetics and the ideology reinforce each other.
There’s a reason personal loyalty in a military context should set off alarms. In 1934, Germany’s military oath was changed to require obedience to Hitler personally. An earlier oath had been to the constitution. The historical change is documented here.
American service members still swear a constitutional oath. Hegseth’s speech did not change it.
But listen to the loyalty he is cultivating: Trump has your back, the critics are betraying you, and the people imposing restraints are the problem.
The oath requires service members to uphold obligations that exist regardless of what a president wants. Hegseth’s message encourages them to see the president as their champion and scrutiny of his government as an attack on them.
That is a dangerous fucking thing to cultivate in people entrusted with military force.
I’m calling this the American Fascist Regime because these actions form a pattern, and plenty of scholars are saying the same thing.
The election denial. The violence. The rewards. The rewritten history. The retaliation. The attacks on legal protections. The demand that armed institutions identify themselves with the leader.
Hegseth’s speech, whatever you think about that clown, crystallized that pattern into a public identity. The administration’s increasingly fascist conduct now had a stage, an aesthetic and an unapologetic message delivered from the top of the military chain of command.
This is where we are now, and that speech served as the rollout for the American Fascist Movement, an evolution of the Make America Great Again movement, and if you think I’m overstating it, read this op-ed again.
Look at the parallels. Look at what they have been doing up to this point, then look at the imagery, and look at all the things I didn’t even cover in this op-ed, and think again.
