On September 24, 2025, the political climate in the United States took a sharp and contentious turn, with President Donald Trump labeling the antifa movement a "domestic terrorist organization." This move, as reported by PBS NewsHour, comes in the wake of the high-profile killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college campus event—an incident that has since become a lightning rod for debates about extremism, free speech, and the very health of American democracy.
However, the legal reality is more complicated than the rhetoric suggests. As PBS NewsHour noted, no such designation as "domestic terrorist organization" exists under U.S. law. The man accused of shooting Kirk, for instance, has no publicly known link to the antifa movement. Yet, the president’s declaration has amplified existing tensions, with many observers warning that the rhetoric may be less about legal precision and more about political scapegoating.
Luke Baumgartner, an expert interviewed by PBS NewsHour, described the labeling of antifa as a "political scapegoat," suggesting that such moves serve to falsely place the blame for broader societal violence on a single group. This tactic, Baumgartner argued, distracts from the complex and multifaceted nature of political violence in the U.S., where definitions and attributions often shift depending on the political winds.
The aftermath of Kirk’s death has only deepened the polarization. According to The Guardian, President Trump used an Oval Office address to directly blame "radical left political violence" for the killing. This narrative, quickly picked up by supporters, has fueled a wave of online and offline reprisals. A website was rapidly established to dox individuals believed to have "celebrated" Kirk’s assassination or even those who made comments deemed insufficiently orthodox about his legacy. Names, phone numbers, home addresses, and workplaces were posted publicly, accompanied by threats and, in some cases, acts of violence.
Social media has been no less forgiving. A thread on X (formerly Twitter) has celebrated the firing of dozens of people—journalists, teachers, hamburger cooks, and even Secret Service agents—over comments about Kirk’s death. The vice president, JD Vance, has gone so far as to encourage citizens to report negative comments about Kirk, a move that Yale professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley called “a real signal saying, ‘We’re going to police your speech at every level.’” Stanley characterized it as part of a “terror campaign against ordinary citizens’ speech.”
Stanley, who made headlines earlier this year for leaving the United States and relocating to Toronto, sees these developments as part of a much broader and more troubling trend. Speaking to The Guardian, he drew direct parallels between the current U.S. environment and historical fascist events such as Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire. “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes,” he reflected, invoking a quote often misattributed to Mark Twain. Stanley sees elements of both historical events in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing—the tumult exploited to expand the targets of hostility, first from immigrants and minorities, and now to political opponents.
Stanley’s warnings are not limited to the United States. He argues that the global rise of far-right movements is accelerating, with the U.S. merely further down the path than other countries. “The far right is everywhere,” he told The Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.” He noted that fascism often begins with attacks on immigrants and national minorities, but quickly moves to target political opponents. The militarization of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he argued, has echoes of the Sturmabteilung, Ernst Röhm’s feared brownshirts in Nazi Germany.
Australia, Stanley warned, is not immune to these trends. He pointed to the country’s history, including the White Australia policy that lasted until the 1970s, its displacement of Indigenous peoples, and its “performatively vicious” treatment of asylum seekers. Fierce “anti-woke” rhetoric and attacks on universities, he said, are signs of ideological preconditions that should be familiar to Australians. While Australia’s robust public institutions, compulsory voting, and recent election of a center-left government may provide some insulation, Stanley cautioned that fascism often cloaks itself in the language and institutions of democracy.
“Fascism conceals its anti-democratic nature by representing itself as the general will of the people, where ‘the people’ are the dominant racial or religious group,” Stanley explained. “It will say ‘the majority of people want this’, but that’s not the core idea of democracy. The core idea of democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is a system based on freedom and equality.”
Stanley also emphasized that democracy and fascism are not binary conditions but exist on a spectrum. “Yes, the United States is quite fascist now. It’s much less of a democracy. But, officially, at least, the United States is a democracy living under an emergency. And this emergency allows the government to scoop people up into unmarked vans; perhaps you can stay indefinitely as a democracy under emergency?”
The consequences of America’s political trajectory are not confined to its own borders. As Stanley pointed out, when the world’s most powerful military and dominant global superpower slides toward authoritarianism, the ripple effects are felt everywhere. “It normalises and legitimates fascist movements everywhere,” he said. “So you’re going to see more of that dynamic, I suspect. All the remaining democratic countries are going to face surging anti-democratic, ultranationalist movements.”
Australia, which has long depended on the U.S. for defense and security, now faces a more uncertain future. The so-called “international rules-based order,” often invoked by Australian policymakers, may be more accurately described as a U.S.-led system that is now showing its cracks. Trump’s second administration has treated allies with what Stanley described as “contempt,” making clear that the old certainties of the postwar alliance are no longer reliable.
Undoing fascism, Stanley warned, is “very, very hard.” Democracy, he insisted, is not the natural default. “We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, there are no more democracies, or very few. Democracy wasn’t a thing for a long time: we had monarchies and we had empires, and other forms of government, but we’re now in a situation where India, Russia, the United States and China are not democratic countries. So you have to ask: what will remain?”
As the United States grapples with its own divisions and the world watches anxiously, the lessons of history loom large. The choices made in moments of crisis, Stanley suggests, will shape not just the fate of one nation, but the very future of democracy itself.
