Amid State Abductions, Trump’s Fascism Is No Longer Creeping — It’s Here

On March 26, 2025, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen and doctoral student at Tufts University, was walking through Somerville, Massachusetts, on her way to join friends and break her Ramadan fast. As shown in a surveillance video, she was suddenly surrounded by five individuals in plain clothes, their faces concealed by masks. They did not identify themselves. They simply grabbed her, claiming they were the police, as if rehearsing a scene from a fascist past. She begged to call someone. They refused. They took her phone, seized her knapsack, handcuffed her on the street and threw her into an unmarked SUV. She vanished — only to reappear in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Louisiana.

This was not “law enforcement.” It was a political kidnapping, an act of state terror. It mirrored, in form and intent, the very tactics the Gestapo used to silence dissent, disappear the “undesirables,” and spread fear through calculated, extrajudicial violence in Nazi Germany. Only after public outrage and press scrutiny did the Department of Homeland Security issue a statement, accusing Öztürk of having “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization,” and stating that her student visa had been revoked.

Rümeysa Öztürk’s only “crime” was protesting Israel’s brutal war on Gaza: She had helped to coauthor a March 2024 op-ed in The Tufts Daily titled “Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions.” The op-ed urged Tufts to “meaningfully engage with and actualize” resolutions passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate, which had passed three resolutions demanding that the university “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

ICE’s violation of her right to free speech should send a chill down the spine of anyone who believes in democracy. No charges were filed. No due process offered. No hearing. Just disappearance and denunciation. She was accused without evidence of supporting Hamas and told she didn’t belong in the country. That was enough.

Öztürk’s abduction is particularly shocking since she was not even a prominent activist on campus: Her participation in the op-ed about the Tufts Community Union Senate appears to be her most substantive visible engagement in political activism.

But as reporter Nia Prater documents in Intelligencer, “The editorial was enough for Ozturk to be highlighted by Canary Mission, a website dedicated to calling out people and organizations it accuses of taking part in antisemitic or anti-Israel behavior by compiling and publishing detailed dossiers on them.”

This covertly funded organization exposes and publishes information on individuals and groups critical of Israeli actions against Palestinians. As James Bamford explains in The Nation, Canary Mission is “a massive blacklisting and doxxing operation directed from Israel that targets students and professors critical of Israeli policies.” It acts to slander, embarrass and humiliate its targets, damaging their reputations and often jeopardizing their future careers. Once a fringe entity, Canary Mission now plays a pivotal role in targeting campus activists under the Trump administration, contributing to their arrests. Mahmoud Khalil, Badar Khan Suri and Rümeysa Öztürk, have all been profiled and arrested after Canary Mission has targeted them.

The “state of disappearance” is alive and well in Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist U.S. As the Trump administration unfolds, students protesting in support of Palestinian rights are labeled as terrorists and either abducted or told by ICE to turn themselves in.

These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a growing campaign to criminalize dissent, especially when it challenges U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes. The tactics are all too familiar: sweeping allegations, guilt by association, ideological profiling and ceaseless accusation without evidence. We are witnessing the normalization of political repression, as the logic of the surveillance state merges with a culture of fear to dismantle political opposition. This attack on free speech is part of a broader assault — one that seeks to expand mass deportation and use it as a pretext to build new detention centers, reconvert old prisons and fortify the carceral state.

New York Review author Julia Preston has argued that Trump is waging a systemic assault “on every aspect of the of the immigration system,” which she refers to as “a nationwide enforcement regime to carry out a purge of millions of immigrants, whether or not they have any criminal history.” She does not go far enough. Rather than an “enforcement regime,” I would argue that Trump is engaging in a form of domestic terrorism — a far more chilling policy. In this instance, I am referring to a notion of domestic terrorism marked by a complete disdain for due process, the law and moral responsibility. This is a policy and practice which utilizes a state-sanctioned politics of disappearance and irreversible exclusion — an open assault on justice and humanity, terrifying in its criminality and intent.

Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan recently described some people swept up in immigration raids as “collateral arrests.” The term is casually deployed, but it’s politically lethal. Homan claimed without evidence that “the majority” of those arrested were violent criminals. In this context, the “collaterals” — those picked up without any charges or convictions — are treated as necessary damage. Their lives, freedom and political rights are also rendered expendable. This indifference to the distinction of those who are “criminals” and “innocent” reveals that public safety is not the point; the real purpose is ideological and racial cleansing, aimed mostly at foreign nationals.

This breezy invocation of “collateral arrests” which has morphed into “collateral damage” isn’t just irresponsible; it’s a direct line to some of history’s worst moments. At the Nuremberg trials following World War II, Nazi leaders were held accountable for genocide and the legal machinery that enabled mass arrests, the denial of due process and the erasure of rights. The Nazis cloaked terror in the language of bureaucracy, using terms like “protective custody” and “public order” to veil the annihilation of dissent. They spoke of “collateral damage” to dehumanize the innocent, wrapping brutality in the cold logic of administration — just as they reduced Jews to “units” and political prisoners to “elements.” Under such a regime, people were not arrested for crimes, but for their associations, their resistance, their refusal to submit. Guilt was irrelevant. What the system demanded was not justice, but obedience.

That legacy is now reappearing in the U.S., where ICE, Homeland Security, the FBI, and various other police forces are converging to create a climate of fear. A recent case illustrates the stakes. Hundreds of young men were deported to El Salvador, supposedly for gang affiliations. But many of them had no such ties, and some were seemingly targeted because they had tattoos. They were swept up, silenced and disappeared into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, one of the world’s most dangerous prisons. This isn’t about public safety — it’s political scapegoating.

The same logic is now being wielded against students who protest Israel’s war on Gaza and challenge the complicity of universities and the U.S. government in fueling the genocide of Palestinians. The list of students targeted and threatened with deportation for exercising their free speech continues to grow, as does the number of colleges accused of failing to confront antisemitism — an accusation that serves as a blunt instrument to silence any critique of the Israeli state. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” strategy has become a stark emblem of this escalating crackdown, where dissent is not only punished but also labeled as a threat to be eradicated.

One of the most alarming instances of state repression involves Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. resident and Palestinian rights advocate with a degree from Columbia University. His case serves as a terrifying example of the nightmare we are facing. After publicly condemning the mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza, Khalil was forcibly detained by U.S. authorities. ICE agents stormed his apartment, seizing him without warning and whisking him away in an unmarked vehicle, where he vanished from the public eye. Khalil had committed no crime; his only offense was his outspoken opposition to the violence inflicted by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank. In an instant, his rights were stripped away and his safety was endangered in an attempt to silence him. Khalil’s ordeal, alongside the countless others being detained in similar fashion — whether in their homes, universities or on the streets — underscores the ideologically cleansing, growing crackdown on dissent, the rise of authoritarianism and the violent tactics employed by those in power to silence opposition.

The erosion of political freedom in the United States is no longer subtle — it is accelerating in full view, often with the proud endorsement of public officials. Rubio, for example, has openly celebrated the revocation of hundreds of student visas in retaliation for pro-Palestinian protests. When asked about the crackdown, he responded with chilling ease: “Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.” Among those targeted was Rümeysa Öztürk. Rubio boasted, “We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States … if you come into the U.S. as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.” His words carry more than disdain — they echo the language of authoritarianism, where dissent becomes criminal, and citizenship a conditional privilege. As Ishaan Tharoor reported in The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security claimed — without providing evidence or addressing video footage of Öztürk’s arrest — that “supporting terrorists is grounds for visa termination.” In this climate, protest is rebranded as terrorism, critique as criminality, and the foundational right to speak out is replaced with the threat of expulsion.

Anyone in the U.S. can now be abducted, denied due process, placed in an immigration jail far from the scene of the arrest, or put on a plane and sent to El Salvador to one of the most notorious prisons in the world. This isn’t simply enforcement of immigration law; it is a direct attack on the right to protest, on the freedom to dissent against U.S. foreign policy, and part of a larger war against immigrants and people of color.

Trump’s recent executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, purportedly aimed at purging “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian and other cultural institutions, echoes the Nazi regime’s obsession with controlling education and culture to advance authoritarianism. Trump’s order mandates the removal of exhibits and programs from Smithsonian museums that he deems to promote “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology.” The order also directs Vice President J.D. Vance to oversee the elimination of such content and to work with Congress to ensure that future funding for the Smithsonian’s museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo do not support exhibits or programs that purportedly “degrade shared American values [and] divide Americans based on race.”

By targeting institutions that uphold knowledge, memory and critical thought, the order seeks to silence independent voices, censor critical historical narratives and erase cultural dissent. It mirrors Hitler’s campaign to purify public life of ideologies deemed threatening to the state, and especially his attack on what he called “degenerate” art — works that did not align with Nazi ideals of Aryan purity and nationalism. In 1937, the Nazi Party organized the infamous “Degenerate Art Exhibition” in Munich, where modern art and avant-garde works were vilified as subversive, immoral and un-German. This campaign sought to erase a range of cultural voices and artistic expressions that opposed Nazi ideology. Trump’s order could be seen as a contemporary echo of that authoritarian desire to mold public culture and mass consciousness, with the Smithsonian modeling a new battleground for ideological control in the service of an authoritarian culture and politics.

Let’s not pretend these are isolated events. This is a targeted effort to chill protest and punish people for challenging an updated colonialism and fascist politics. One particularly dangerous attack is the attempt by the Trump administration to turn universities, long considered sanctuaries for critical thought, into surveillance zones where students must weigh the risks of speaking out, of exercising their right to free speech in an effort to make power accountable. The message is clear: If you oppose genocide, if you speak for the voiceless, you may be labeled a terrorist sympathizer, investigated, detained or removed. It is important to remember that the Nazis used vague national security threats to arrest “non-criminal” civilians and label them enemies of the Reich. The Trump administration invokes “support for Hamas” as a pretext for arrest or deportation, even when no evidence or legal process proves it.

The parallels to the past are not rhetorical flourishes — they are real. The Nazis criminalized the most basic forms of civic engagement: leafleting. Demonstrating. Meeting in public. Students who resisted were imprisoned or executed. For instance, Sophie Scholl and members of the White Rose movement were arrested by the Nazis for speaking the truth in a time of lies. These students and intellectuals distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime’s atrocities, particularly the persecution of Jews and the brutality of the war. They called for nonviolent resistance to Hitler’s government. For that, they were sentenced to death and executed by beheading.

Jason Stanley, the renowned philosopher who is leaving the U.S. for Canada due to the growing authoritarianism under the Trump administration, critiques mainstream institutions for their failure to resist the rise of fascism. He observes that the corporate media, law firms and universities are all complicit in this retreat. Associated Press was banned from White House briefings, and the mainstream media did nothing. Columbia grovels in the face of attack, while other colleges keep their heads down. Johns Hopkins tells its faculty to “not intervene” in case ICE arrives on its campus. A coordinated response is desperately needed, but instead, institutions have chosen silence or appeasement. The far right isn’t seeking debate — it’s executing a strategy. There is no reasonable conversation left, only a relentless attack on our institutions, justified by the sanctimonious rhetoric of “standing up to wokeness.” Stanley’s criticism of complicit institutions is a powerful reminder that in times of authoritarianism, silence and compliance from those who could resist only pave the way for further erosion of democratic norms.

A right-wing turn is unfolding in the United States — one driven by Trump’s fascist agenda, which seeks to unravel the legacies of the New Deal, the Great Society and the democratizing movements of the ‘60s. With methodical precision, Trump’s team is dismantling the federal institutions that safeguard our social safety nets, monitor corruption, generate tax revenue for the common good, enforce vital regulations, and protect democratic institutions like the media and higher education. This deliberate assault on the very pillars of U.S. democracy is not merely a shift toward authoritarianism — it is the full emergence of fascist politics taking root in the nation’s soil. Yet, despite its unmistakable presence, many liberals and the mainstream media continue to fail in recognizing this stark reality. What we are witnessing is not a creeping threat, but a fascist movement already here, demanding to be acknowledged and confronted.

Fascism is no longer in the shadows in the U.S., with its foundations and mobilizing passions becoming more obvious each day under the Trump presidency. When a government targets students and protesters as enemies of the state, when it detains without evidence and deports without trial, it is not safeguarding freedom — it is preparing for its elimination. This is how democracy is hollowed out: not with a bang, but through the casual normalization of repression. When we accept the language of “collateral damage,” we accept the dehumanization of our fellow citizens.

It is impossible to remain silent in the face of the state abandoning the law and crushing dissent, as it expands a lethal politics of disposability and extermination, with unrestrained violence now evident in the U.S., where support for the horrific war on Gaza seems to have come home. As Noura Erakat brilliantly writes: “In order to resist fascism, we have to fight it on two fronts of U.S. state violence: at home and abroad.” If we’ve learned anything from the last century, it is this: repression begins with the few and ends with the many. Today, it is a student at Columbia University, Tufts, and a number of other colleges and universities. Tomorrow, it could be any of us. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt insightfully argue, this is how democracies die. Now is the time to resist — not only for those directly targeted right now, but also for the future of a democratic culture that refuses to trade justice for fear, or conscience for complicity.

For in the end, the fight for a substantive and radical democracy is not just a battle for the rights of the few, but for the freedom, equality and justice of the many. It is a call to resist authoritarianism individually and collectively, to stand firm when fear and repression try to silence us, and to rise in defiance when cruelty transforms into malignant legality, making the law synonymous with lawlessness. The echoes of history are obvious — almost deafening, and if we do not heed them, the ideals and practices of democracy — however fragile — will surrender to the unimaginable cruelty that threatens to engulf us.