Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”

President Trump has declared that he will designate the decentralized anti-fascist movement known as “antifa” as a terrorist organization. This moves comes as conservatives continue to blame left-wing groups and ideas for creating the conditions that led to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination earlier this month.

The Trump administration is “using this as a catch-all to go against the broader left and anyone who speaks out against fascism right now, while at the same time giving continued unchecked authority to the FBI to ignore the rise of right-wing violence,” says Will Potter, a writer who focuses on attacks on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. “The intention is to capitalize on this to crack down on their opponents and to consolidate authoritarian power.”

Potter’s latest book is Little Red Barns, an investigation into the state repression of those who attempt to expose the harms of the factory farming industry. This repression, says Potter, employs “mechanisms to criminalize journalism and label civil disobedience as terrorism through [the state’s] crackdown on citizen journalists, environmentalists, and animal welfare activists.”

This past Wednesday, Potter was a guest on Democracy Now! It's a very insightful and timely interview

This is really a historic turning point and a radical escalation in the war on dissent and the war on protest. It’s not about antifa, because antifa is not an organization. I think what Trump is very clearly signaling here is he’s using this as a catch-all to go against the broader left and anyone who speaks out against fascism right now, while at the same time giving continued unchecked authority to the FBI to ignore the rise of right-wing violence.

[Fascists] deflect and misdirect. They use opportunities like [the assassination of Charlie Kirk] to rewrite the narrative and then shift and blame their opposition and usher in, frankly, calls for violence and crackdowns. And I think we need to remember that even though there’s no evidence linking Charlie Kirk’s shooters to antifa or any other left organization, they’re going to proceed recklessly anyway. The intention is to capitalize on this to crack down on their opponents and to consolidate authoritarian power.

– Will Potter
September 24, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Little Red Barns: Author Will Potter on How Industrial Animal Agriculture Breeds Authoritarianism – Democracy Now! (September 24, 2025).
From Censorship to Fascism to Extermination: An Interview with Will Potter Ed Nawotka (Publishers Weekly, July 7, 2025).
Trump’s War on America – Chris Hedges (The Chris Hedges Report, September 28, 2025).
“Deeply Un-American”: Trump Tells Generals to Use U.S. Cities as Military “Training Grounds” – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, September 30, 2025).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”