First, this piece is not meant to convince anyone that President Trump’s political movement is fascist. If you do not understand that Trump and his movement are fascist, you do not understand fascism. I am writing this in regards to a remarkable dissonance in liberal institutions that speaks to the abject failure of American liberalism to meaningfully respond to this moment.

Here’s my point: if this is fascism, it’s past time to act like it.

Liberalism (centrism in particular) is profoundly vulnerable to fascism, which exploits the notion that all parties should be heard and perspectives debated. Fascists do not concern themselves with truth, reality, contradiction or hypocrisy. They feed off liberalism’s conception of debate and bipartisanship by introducing a reactionary fantasy.

It gets worse. American liberalism heavily favors centrism, which, in its empty and valueless nature, may constitute a fatal flaw. This flaw is illustrated by the many thought leaders who have gone far beyond just taking seriously fascist ideas all the way to using their platform to advance their perspective and, in some cases, straightforwardly parrot their talking points in a futile attempt to locate a position that appeals to an imaginary “average American.”

If you are a liberal who cringed at my characterization of liberal institutions, I implore you to consider the following examples I’ve picked out of the bottomless pile.

The most obvious examples of this strange dissonance surround immigration. Kamala Harris, for instance, called Trump a “fascist” on the campaign trail while running on a “strong border” and calling his border wall, the core of his fascistic political project during his first campaign, a “good idea.”

The first bill passed during Trump’s second term was the Laken Riley Act, which stripped the undocumented of their right to habeas corpus, which is not only a fundamental human right, but arguably the very foundation of all liberal legal systems. Fifty-eight Democratic legislators (46 in the House, 12 in the Senate) voted for the bill.

During the recent protests against largely illegal and entirely morally reprehensible ICE detentions, 75 Democratic lawmakers joined Republicans to “express gratitude” for ICE (a two-decade-old department that is essentially acting as Trump’s Gestapo) and call for greater local and state collaboration.

Even supposedly progressive members of the party try to walk a centrist line by calling for a “bipartisan effort” to “strengthen the border.” All of this is based in pure delusion. There is no “migrant crime wave,” the country is not being “invaded,” President Biden did not “open the borders” (he was almost uniquely restrictive on immigration arguably to the point of violating the internationally recognized right to asylum. That’s another example), and the only “crisis at the border” is humanitarian.

Yet to say anything except “we need to strengthen the border” is treated in the majority of American liberal institutions as “naive” because it does not go far enough in capitulating to the utterly hallucinatory politics of a movement we all recognize as fascist.

So I have a question. Do you believe Trump is a fascist? If you do but you find yourself walking the “middle ground” on his core issues like immigration, LGBTQ rights and policing, it is past time to grow up and ask yourself some hard questions. How do you feel about those who wished to “compromise” with the Nazis’ ideas or condemned forms of resistance they found distasteful? Disgusted, I hope. So, I ask again, do you believe Trump is a fascist?

I have no time or space to attempt to dissuade liberals of centrist positions they may hold on Trump’s core issues. All I have to say is this: your apprehensions about immigrants, trans people, resistance or whatever else do not matter right now. In this moment, capitulation may well mean fascist dictatorship.

For our vulnerable populations, it may mean annihilation. Right now, defending them is all that matters. Stop doing Trump’s work for him.