Plenty of ink has been spilled over the last decade on the question of whether President Donald Trump is a fascist or not. Shane Burley, a journalist and author who covers the far right, says it doesn’t particularly matter. 

“The question of whether or not Donald Trump is a fascist is sometimes a red herring,” Burley said. “Instead, I think it’s more important to look at what this [has] in line with fascism… and overwhelmingly, this is the closest to traditional fascism that the US government has ever come.”

That includes Trump’s first term as president, which culminated in his impeachment following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Since Trump re-entered the White House four months ago, his administration has taken a number of steps that have alarmed experts on fascism and the far-right: detaining students for political speech, deporting American citizens, ignoring orders from judges, threatening to end habeas corpus, and attempting to end birthright citizenship. 

The question, as Trump’s presidency continues, is how far the administration is willing to go in its effort to curb democracy and what people who oppose Trump should do about it. 

Burley said that, thus far, the response to Trump—especially compared to 2016, when people protested in the streets of cities like Portland following the election and mobilized during events like the Women’s March—has been muted. Given the pace at which Trump is dismantling the infrastructure of the federal government and targeting vulnerable populations, that’s alarming. 

“What makes sense in these moments is as large [of a ] mass movement as humanly possible, in every sector of society,” Burley said. 

Burley provided several recent examples of instances in which such a mass mobilization against a threat to democracy has paid dividends: One of those examples was in South Korea last year, where the country’s president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and was swiftly impeached and removed from office following a nationwide protest movement. 

Another example Burley noted was the uprising against a Benjamin Netanyahu-led plan to weaken the independence of the Israeli judiciary two years ago. The Israeli Supreme Court struck down the offending judicial reform law last year. 

“You have to stop the function of government,” Burley said. “There's no other choice. This is not particularly radical in any way, the Civil Rights Movement did this kind of thing, the labor movement did this in the early part of the 20th century—you have to make these things ungovernable to a degree.”

Burley posited several related reasons for why this has not happened so far: the American left’s relative lack of memory and organization, distrust between the left and liberals exacerbated in the last two years over the genocide in Gaza, and the Democratic Party’s reticence to take on the system.

Nevertheless, there could come a point that something Trump does or some other circumstance sparks a popular uprising. Matthew Ellis, a media historian and theorist at Portland State University, said it may be tied to the economy. 

“Ultimately, you can kind of do whatever you want at this or that policy [level]… but when you fuck with the economy too much, it’s just not going to work,” Ellis said.  

Ellis pointed to the administration’s tariff policy as one potential fuse for a much broader dissatisfaction with the state of the economic system. But that is still an uncertain possibility, especially when a number of people, particularly in cities like Portland, feel the situation with the Trump administration is urgent. 

“People are scared of… realizing that the Democratic Party or institutions they thought would help at the level of mass politics are clearly revealing themselves to be, for many reasons, unable to do anything about this,” Ellis said. “And then the question of what then one individual does do is also overwhelming.” 

Nevertheless, Ellis said the question of what individual people can do to oppose the Trump administration is relatively straightforward: organize not as individuals, but as part of a “social whole.” 

“Everybody can have great ideas and a lot of energy, but if you don’t put it somewhere, that’s all it is,” he said. 

Ellis mentioned the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as one institution with significant organizing capacity, alongside labor unions, neighborhood groups, and other political institutions that are separate from both the Democratic Party and the nonprofit world. 

“There is a problem of American individualism as seeing solutions to problems in individual terms,” Burley said. “I can speak out, I can be public, I can be loud—those things don’t do it. Coming together with people to create collective force, that does it. It does it every time.”

In the city of Portland, meanwhile, the threat posed by the federal government is a constant concern. 

“The federal government context is something that everyone at the city is aware of,” Portland Councilor Sameer Kanal said. “It shapes how we view our budget and certainty around it due to federal grants and state funding, as well as policy choice around things we have on things like equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and the First Amendment.”

But in addition to navigating potential attacks from the administration and staying committed to diversity and equity programs, Kanal said there are more proactive steps the city can take to aid the resistance to authoritarianism. 

“I think recommitting to the First Amendment is a core place that we can start,” he said. 

Kanal said that freedom of speech has been “under threat” in Portland for a number of years, with police at times violently suppressing peaceful protests, as well as students and faculty facing repercussions for opposing elements of US foreign policy. Surveillance of protests and data collection on protestors is also a significant concern.  

Kanal noted that in Salem, state legislators are pushing Senate Bill 238, which would allow any law enforcement agency in the state to use drones without a warrant—a step the ACLU has warned could result in massive civil rights violations. Kanal also wants to curb the use of city planes to surveil protests as part of a broader effort to bolster police accountability.

The issues around policing, which have animated civil rights activists in the city for years, underline how many of the conditions that fueled the rise of right-wing authoritarianism existed for years prior to Trump’s ascent. The textbook to beat back the far-right, in Burley’s estimation, has a similarly long history. 

“While this is a new situation, it’s a super old story,” Burley said. “It’s not a secret: rich people have more money—but we have more people, and we have to get enough of them together to make their money irrelevant. That’s going to be the story every single time.” 

Since Trump’s election last year, Portlanders have launched or helped maintain smaller scale efforts to stymie the administration and its allies: picketing Tesla and building mutual aid networks to aid immigrants under threat. 

Kanal, who said he’s looking both to the new popular front that defeated the far-right in the French parliamentary elections last year and to the steadfastness of the Palestinian and Ukrainian people for inspiration, emphasized the importance of expanding organizing efforts—urging people to be present with each other, in person, and continue to build a popular movement. 

“We’ve got people who’ve been in this space trying to fight for our rights and our freedoms for decades, and we’ve got people who are brand new—this is their first time,” Kanal said. “We need all of those people out in the street… and pushing on the different levers you have as a community member.”