On April 22, the Enterprise reported on a “recent” trip by Donald Trump to Waco, Texas. (“Music to Trump’s ears: Whitewashing Jan. 6 riot with song,” Associated Press.)

The focus of the story was on a song he seems to have enjoyed while there which made light of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. But the writer of the story failed to mention the most important aspect of the visit, which was not the music but the time and location of the event: On April 19, 1993, Waco became the birthplace of today’s violent anti-government militia movement as federal authorities spearheaded by the FBI and the ATF attacked David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound at Mount Carmel after a two-month siege. By the end of the day the compound was in flames and 76 of Koresh’s followers (including over 20 children) were dead.

As Kevin Cook’s new book “Waco Rising” (2023) recounts in detail, the young Alex Jones, infamous founder of Infowars, was on the scene and in the ensuing few weeks blew the event into mythic proportions, denouncing Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clintons as “globalist” plotters from the “deep state” intent on disarming freedom-loving Americans. (Jones was photographed, still haranguing the crowds in these same terms, decades later at the capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.) Baseless fantasies such as these were spawned at that moment and continue to shape the far right’s narrative to this day.

Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City exactly two years later (on April 19, 1995) intentionally to mark the second anniversary of the Waco attack, was also on the scene there for a while at the time, hawking bumper stickers that read “A man with a gun is a citizen, a man without a gun is a subject.”

April 19 is thus the highest of high holy days for the extremist far right, and Waco is its holy city. That Donald Trump was in that place on or about that date just a few weeks ago signals unmistakably whose side he is on–the side of the right-wing zealots who want to bring the federal government to its knees. That millions of people ardently support his second run for the presidency (!) in light of (or worse, on the basis of) his contempt for our democratic institutions, fair elections, equal rights, a free press, and truth itself does not bode well for our nation’s future.

It is the right of the people, of course, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, “to alter or abolish” any form of government that they find unsatisfactory. But despite libertarian delusions to the contrary, we can’t live in a state of anarchy with no government at all. The question no one is asking (or answering!) then becomes: If you’re determined to destroy this government, what exactly do you propose to replace it with?

The possible options are surprisingly few, indeed, as history shows us, only three: 1) some form of monarchy (traditional or constitutional); 2) some form of democracy (direct or representative); and 3) some sort of authoritarianism (religious, secular, or military). Given our experience with King George III, monarchy can be ruled out; democracy is what our anti-government militias are determined to destroy, and so cannot be a replacement for itself. This leaves only option 3)–some form of authoritarianism, much of which is already in place.

By the process of elimination, this must be what the far right is aiming at. More precisely, it can accurately be called “fascism,” a word I use carefully because it is so carelessly thrown around these days by both left and right to label anybody one disagrees with. Objectively speaking, however, it has a number of specific characteristics as usefully outlined in Umberto Eco’s short essay “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” (2001). These include (to use Eco’s terms) irrationalism/distrust of the intellectual world, disagreement as treason, fear of difference, appeal to a frustrated middle class, obsession with a plot, life as permanent warfare, nationalistic populism, and corrupted language/”Newspeak” that “limit[s] the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

All this, Eco remarks, “can come back under the most innocent of disguises.” And his list gives us a template for understanding the significance of what is now “trending” in America, disguised as “freedom” and wrapped in the flag under the malign influence of Trump, DeSantis, and their enablers–the dismissal of scholarship as mere ‘indoctrination,” the breakdown of language (e.g., “patriot” now means “violent insurrectionist,” “conservative” means the Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban), the prevalence of Q-Anon and other conspiracy theories, the vicious suppression of our gay and trans citizens, the rollback of voting and reproductive rights, the banning of books, and the hollowing out of school curricula. All of Eco’s markers are easily visible every day in our current news. Further, he warns, “it is enough that [only] one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” Today it’s happening on multiple fronts right before our eyes.

I am writing these words on June 6, 2023. Seventy-nine years ago today, thousands of American troops participated in the largest amphibious assault in history in order to liberate Europe from Hitler’s fascist Festung Europa while their comrades rolled up Mussolini’s odious regime in Italy. My uncle served under General Patton; my father-in-law endured a savage Ardennes winter in the Battle of the Bulge as a machine gunner in the fabled 84th Division. They put their lives on the line to dispel fascism’s dark shadow from human civilization. Today, a mere eight decades later, fascism’s dark shadow has returned with a vengeance and is poised to engulf their own country. That we have allowed this to happen, that millions of us stand passively by and millions of others work enthusiastically on the shadow’s behalf, is a slap in the face to all those who suffered and died in an heroic effort to rid the world of this evil not so long ago. We should be ashamed.

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John Radigan lives in Saranac Lake.