*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

If any American is unsure of what kind of government is running the country, it is no longer ridiculous rhetoric to say the country is under a fascist Republican regime with an authoritarian strongman/dictator driving the agenda. For those who may have only heard the word “fascism” but have no clue what it means, you’re all idiots who didn’t pay attention in junior or senior high school history classes. Fascism is what Trump was selling throughout the presidential campaign and is implementing now according to the dictionary definition.

Fascists believe democracy is obsolete, and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state with a dictator as necessary to its survival. Fascism also rejects the idea that violence is negative and views political violence against one’s enemies at home as the only means to achieve national unity and rejuvenation. America is under a fascist regime.

As history shows, fascist regimes also severely punish dissent, reject the concept of universal freedoms, free and fair elections, and demand strict loyalty and compliance without question. As notorious fascist dictator Benito Mussolini said, “Italy wants peace and quiet, work and calm. I will give these things with love if possible and with force if necessary.”

Just substitute “Italy” with “America” and the quote could have come from lying fascist Trump. Part of Mussolini’s tactics, like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, was stomping out dissent whether it was an “unflattering media” or peaceable assembly to air grievance (protests); something the American fascists will severely punish.

As of Wednesday, there were 10 Republican states introducing legislation to criminalize peaceful protests despite the 1st Amendment’s guarantee that all Americans have the right to “peaceably assemble to express their grievances.” Not only are those kinds of laws unconstitutional, they are precisely fascist as in the exact same laws were enacted in Nazi Germany, Iraq und Hussein, Communist East Germany, the former Soviet Union and every other fascist dictatorship in the modern era.

The fascists in the. White House also laid down some Nazi censorship on scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that forbids the scientists from releasing any empirical data on the fate of the globe due to rising temperatures. All scientific research results will have to go through a Trump-appointed censor who will decide if the empirical data comports with the Trump-Koch oil industry agenda. It is no stretch to claim beforehand that any Trump appointee will be an oil industry puppet. If any American needs proof the “science censors” will not be oil advocates just reflect on oil industry puppet who Trump appointed to “run” the EPA – right into obscurity.

In North Dakota, a Republican-proposed law allows motorists to legally run over people they think are protestors with legal impunity if they claim it was an accident. It is another fascist move by another fascist Republican that will not indulge or tolerate facts or opinions contrary to the fascists running the government. In the case of running over Native Americans protesting destructive pipelines, it is no stretch to believe the oil industry will put out a bounty on protestors; something Republicans may even proffer as an incentive.

All of these atrocities are, although seemingly isolated to the officials running the fascist cabal, spreading across the country among Trump’s fascist supporters. For example, in Pennsylvania this week a restaurant owner and Trump supporter ejected an African American college basketball player and his party and told them, “Trump’s president now so I can say what I want. You niggers need to get out. I own three restaurants and I don’t need you niggers’ money.” The young athlete and his party were in the midst of enjoying their dinner when the restaurant owner took note that they were not white and invoked “the Trump” prior to acting like it was 1950. This reference to “Trump’s president now” is being heard more often and it always accompanies some kind of bigoted remark.

In public libraries across the nation, the Trump-incited Islamophobia emboldened fascist religious bigots to scrawl obscenities and deface any publicly-owned library book about or referring to Islam. Using obscenities, drawing Nazi swastikas, racial slurs and all manner of other obscene comments only began after the Trump lost the popular vote only to become the fascist now occupying the White House.

On Saturday during the tremendous Women’s March, this author heard a group of white trash Trump supporters complaining about “that damn Constitution” people think gives them a right to protest. They were furious that Trump didn’t make an “executive law” at the inauguration letting real Americans “mow those communists” (protestors) down and give them an “American dose of lead poisoning;” a reference to shooting them en masse.

Trump’s threat to send in “the feds” to take care of violence in Chicago was, as Hrafnkell Haraldsson orders on immigration fundamentally “nationalize” all state, county and local police as an “immigration special force” to hunt down “suspected” undocumented immigrants. One of Trump’s orders even targets so-called “sanctuary cities” for pecuniary punishment because they are “sanctuary cities” and cling to the idea that American exceptionalism was always about open borders and embracing immigrants.

All of these Trump-Republican tactics are naked fascism and nothing else. Add to the above mentioned Hitler-like tactics Trump’s assault on the press, and the warning(s) “they’re going to pay a big price” for reporting the factual truth. and there is little left to conclude that despite a 239 year-old Constitution mandating America as a representative democracy, Donald J. Trump and his Republican facilitators are establishing an honest-to-dog fascist regime in what is rapidly becoming a third-rate banana republic; or what Trump contends is making America great.

  1st Amendment, censorship, Fascism, immigration, peaceful protests, press freedom, subvert dissent, trump