MAGA politicians and members of their movement split a friggin’ gut leading up to the impending “No Kings” mass demonstrations proposed and organized in over 2,500 sites throughout the United States. These protests are in response to the draconian policies and actions undertaken during the past 10-month period of President Trump’s second regime.
Like all good little brown-shirted propagandists marching in lockstep with their orange-faced leader, their hysterical outbursts included Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson’s misrepresentation: “They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall.” He continued by saying, “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the, you know, the Antifa people, they’re all coming out.”
Majority Whip Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN) added, “This is about one thing and one thing alone—to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold a hate America rally in DC next week.” While several other MAGAites echoed similar sentiments, it is no mere coincidence they repeated their talking points of representing the demonstrators as “far left” members of “Antifa” who are all “terrorists” who “hate America.”
Trump, in a transparently unconstitutional move, issued an executive decree outlawing “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. Let us remember that Antifa is not an organization. It has no leaders. It holds no meetings. It exacts no dues and holds no funds. Essentially, “Antifa,” as defined as a “terrorist” organization, is a construction of the MAGA movement to create an enemy—an “other” against which they define themselves.
Even before his first election as president in 2016, Trump’s strategy has always been to divide people into separate warring camps. Though I doubt whether he has ever heard of the Medieval diplomat, philosopher, and historian Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), and I am quite certain that Trump has never read Machiavelli’s book *The Prince*, he certainly learned Machiavelli’s strategy of “divide and conquer.”
The term “othering” was coined by Nathaniel Mackey as an action verb—something people do to turn “the other” from a noun to a verb. This “othering” thus demonizes and minoritizes the “other,” which does not necessarily refer to numerical status but, rather, indicates a social ranking within a socially constructed hierarchy. And we have seen this playbook used by demagogues many times before.
“Antifa” as a movement comprises anyone who opposes fascism anywhere in the world and anyone acting to prevent a fascist takeover of previously or currently democratic nations. To personalize the topic, my father and uncles and all the brave people who fought the Germans, Italians, and Japanese in the Second World War were fighting against the fascist conquest of the world. They did so because they loved their country.
A fascist regime murdered most of my maternal grandfather’s family in Poland and many of my maternal grandmother’s family in Hungary. And yes, I have spent all of my adolescence and adult life as an anti-fascist organizer, though I would rather place it in positive terms as being a “pro-democracy” or “ProDem” activist.
Those of us who have taken part in any of the tens of thousands of protest demonstrations under Trump’s presidency (and elsewhere at other times in the United States) are exercising our First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom “of redress of grievances.” And yes, we do so because we love our country and the promise it holds.
We are working to get the United States government back on a democratic footing by opposing the escalating militarization of our cities, the rounding up of peaceful people—whether citizens or immigrants—the taking away of vital services from the least among us, and the unwarranted cutting of governmental departments of civil service workers.
We also oppose the massive tax breaks and incentives to the billionaire class, as well as the overt and unapologetic promotion of patriarchal heteronationalist white Christian supremacist policies that are undermining our democratic principles.
While we certainly are not “terrorists,” we are, in fact, fighting against fascism in the United States and around the world.
While President Trump apparently has been working to bring about peace and to reunite families in the Middle East, not-so-paradoxically, he has declared war on the United States of America and continues to separate families.
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, in its use of language and through its anti-democratic policy initiatives, have essentially given permission to the extremists from the far right to enter the current mainstream of the Republican Party.
Politico published several selections from a group chat featuring a faction of the Young Republicans organization utilizing overtly disgusting and, yes, fascist language. The thousands of private messages they discovered expose young Republican leaders—many who are in their late 20s and into their 30s—joking about killing people in gas chambers and jesting about slavery and rape.
The Telegram chats (numbering approximately 2,900 pages) that Politico found span more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont.
A sample of quotes from these deplorables includes:
– “Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
– “I’m ready to watch people burn now.”
– “We gotta pretend that we like them. ‘Hey, come on in. Take a nice shower and relax.’ Boom, they’re dead.”
– “When do we start bullying dude? Are you going to do whatever it takes? When do we bring that side out?”
– “He also hates the Jews.”
– “It was rape. Epic.”
– “They love the watermelon people.”
– “And everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the gas chamber.”
– “Also… we are officially under consideration for a Trump endorsement.”
– “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball.”
– “I’m going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man.”
– “We only want true believers.”
– “Great. I love Hitler.”
– “Yoooooooo. This girl is fully r—d.”
The citations to “monkeys” and “the watermelon people” are references to Black people. They praised Republicans who support the institution of slavery, and they discussed raping their enemies and driving them to suicide.
Americans have a long history of nonviolent civil disobedience. People who engage in civil disobedience should—and most do—understand the risks involved.
As a long-time political organizer from the 1960s onward, as an anti-war, LGBTQ, anti-racism, social justice activist, I have studied the philosophies and strategies of civil disobedience theorists, and of the abolitionist, suffrage, and first- through third-wave feminists, union workers, civil rights, and other progressive movements.
For example, in the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Gay Liberation Front, and later in ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), we conducted highly visible demonstrations, often involving acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in which we on occasion placed ourselves at risk for arrest and even injury.
ACT UP New York, as an early example, staged a “sit-in” on Wall Street in 1987 during rush hour to protest price gouging by pharmaceutical companies for its antiviral drugs. Our purpose was not to “make nice.” It was, rather, to make people uncomfortable and angry.
We wanted to cause inconvenience by waking people up to realities around us. We challenged not only the status quo, but the complacency and, yes, the collusion of the so-called “bystanders” who would rather not have been inconvenienced by having to face the injustices surrounding them.
In our AIDS activism, we not only challenged traditional means of scientific knowledge dissemination, but more importantly, we questioned the very mechanisms by which scientists conducted research, and, therefore, we helped redefine the very meanings of “science.”
The legislative tactics used then and now by the federal government (and by an increasing number of states) to discourage nonviolent peaceful protest have had—and will continue to have—the opposite effect, as they empower increasing numbers of people to stand up to the multiplying injustices of the Trumpian age.
So, yes, these are perilous times. Often, I feel like a partisan in Nazi-occupied Poland. Rather than carrying loaded rifles, my comrades and I are armed with our ideas and our ideals in our attempt to rid ourselves of the evil around us.
And no, this is not hyperbole, for we in the United States stand at an existential moment in our history.
Joining together with remarkable, dedicated, and steadfast friends in acts of civil disobedience has continually made real for me Margaret Mead’s insightful and stirring statement:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/is-right-everyone-at-the-no-kings-protests-are-and-thats-a-great-thing/