If you’re from the U.S., you’ve always lived in a fascist country. And, strangely enough, that’s good news. But don’t take my word for it, take it from the people who are alive when people first started using that word.
In 1935, Langston Hughes said fascism for the Negro is not a new thing; it’s a familiar thing. And then he began describing the Jim Crow South, and he said that Black Americans did not need fascism explained to us because we were already living under it. Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Nazi scholars were studying the United States – our immigration laws, Jim Crow bans on interracial marriage – and using them as a model for the Nuremburg Laws. So history tells us something uncomfortable but important: What we’re seeing is not America acting like Nazi Germany, it’s America acting like America.
See, fascism is what happens when the oening class resorts to law and terror to stop democratic progress. Because real equality would cost them wealth and power. And that’s happened in America many times. It’s why the Klu Klax Klan rose after Emancipation. It’s why Jim Crow followed Reconstruction. It’s why America invested millions into militarizing the police after the Civil Rights movement; and why America is once again trying to protect wealth and power against the gains of the freedom movements of our time.
It’s fascism.
It’s not foreign.
It’s not new.
It’s just our turn to fight it.
And that’s good news because it means that we don’t have to start from scratch. It means that so many of the freedom movements in our history – civil rights, labor, Black power – were actually anti-fascist movements; which means we can look to our past victories and defeats for wisdom in today’s battles.
Also, if we accept this history we can stop retending that the problem started in 2015 [with the rise of Trump], and trace it all the way back to the founding of this country. And we’ll see that America doesn’t just need better leaders, it needs a better system based on better values.
So, do not despair. A new world is possible. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Related Off-site Links:
How Does ICE Compare to the Slave Patrols Back When America Was “Great”? – William Spivey (Level, January 9, 2026).
Slave Patrols by Another Name: Making America White Again – Rashaad Thomas (Amsterdam News, November 20, 2025).
Lawmaker Criticizes Trump’s ICE Tactics, Compares Them to Nazi Raids and Slave Patrols – Elaine Mallon (The National News Desk, January 16, 2026).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Maha D. Blackfeather’s Message to the American People: “We’re Finally Seeing the Truth”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Matthew Cooke: “Trump Exposed the Office of the Presidency”
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Why Minnesota?
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
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