Fascism in America Didn’t Start with Trump — It’s Been Decades in the Making

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump era did not emerge out of thin air. As the University of Gothenburg’s Varieties of Democracy Institute warned in March 2026, the rapid dismantling of American democracy is “unprecedented” — but the groundwork for this erosion was laid long before Trump took office.

A recent analysis from Public Books, titled Fascism’s Building Blocks: A US Infrastructure Decades in the Making, exposes how four major legislative acts passed 30 to 40 years ago have created the tools used today to crush dissent, target immigrants, and erode civil society. These laws — the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), and Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) — form the backbone of what the authors call “emergent fascism.”

This emergent fascism is characterized by the state’s use of immigration law to divide people into “us” versus “them,” a tactic that fuels xenophobia and justifies state violence. The Department of Homeland Security’s arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, using provisions that label political speech as grounds for removal due to “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” is just one example of how these laws are weaponized.

At home, the Trump administration’s assault on the pillars of civil society — media, education, legal institutions, public health, and nonprofits — has been relentless. Violent occupations of cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, mass deportations, and the transformation of warehouses into detention centers show the brutal enforcement side of this infrastructure. Tech giants like Palantir have embedded themselves in this system, blurring the line between corporate interests and state violence.

This infrastructure didn’t arise overnight. It’s rooted in settler colonialism and capitalist elites’ efforts to maintain power by criminalizing marginalized communities — Indigenous, Black, transgender, and immigrant populations — and turning their very existence into “problems” to be solved through policing, detention, and deportation.

The Public Books series challenges the misleading narrative that the Trump administration’s abuses are “unprecedented” by showing how these policies are the logical outcome of decades of legislative groundwork. Recognizing this continuity is crucial for activists and organizers fighting to reclaim democracy and human rights.

We cannot fight what we do not understand. The fight against authoritarianism and fascism in America requires exposing these building blocks — and dismantling them, piece by piece.