Jamie Kalven for the Chicago Tribune
October 12, 2025
Where is the line between “democracy” and “fascism”? Since President Donald Trump’s return to power nine months ago, that question has been posed again and again in response to the latest affront to human dignity, common sense and/or constitutional norms committed by his administration.
Arguably, however, this is the wrong question in that it assumes there is some precise threshold beyond which we cease to be free. Those who have experienced fascist takeovers elsewhere warn that if we insist on a definitive answer to that question, we will only belatedly realize that the walls have closed in around us. The danger is that we will drift — disoriented, unmoored, bewildered — into the iron cage of tyranny.
While there may be no red line from which to take our bearings, recent events have pulled back the curtain on the nature and trajectory of the Trump regime’s fascist project. In their haste to exploit the murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump and senior members of his team have revealed their contempt for fundamental First Amendment principles.
The president has ruminated about the possibility of making it a crime to criticize him. Multiple voices in the administration have demanded punishment for anyone who speaks of Kirk in less than reverential terms. Calling for a crusade against the forces of “evil” and “wickedness,” Trump’s chief of staff Stephen Miller has conjured a vast left-wing “domestic terror network.” Vice President JD Vance has said it is exemplified by the Nation magazine and the Open Society Institute founded by George Soros. (Full disclosure: I am a Nation contributor and have been an Open Society fellow. So if you are curious about the face of terrorism, according to the administration, I’m your guy.)
The “us versus them” logic of fascism is voracious. We have seen the category of “the enemy within” rapidly expand from MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members to the majority of the population that dissents from the MAGA-certified state ideology.
What has been revealed in recent weeks is ugly but deeply familiar. We have seen it before, and we have seen effective resistance to it. What is critical at this juncture is to be clear about the nature of the threat. Even with a supine Congress and compliant Supreme Court, it is unlikely the administration could effectively repeal the First Amendment by turning seditious libel (criticism of the government) and blasphemy into
crimes. Rather, it has adopted a transparent strategy of seeking to provoke civil disorder in order to justify crushing dissent.
Sixty years ago, my father Harry Kalven Jr., a constitutional scholar, coined the term “heckler’s veto” to describe a situation in which those hostile to a speaker’s message seek to suppress it by threatening disorder. If the police restore order by silencing the speaker, they give the heckler a veto over public discussion. Censorship is thus achieved by a circuitous process.
The context in which my father developed the heckler’s veto concept was the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s, when those engaged in nonviolent protests against segregation in the South were often met by hostile crowds. Local authorities would then use the threat of disorder as a rationale for suppressing the protests.
On several occasions during that era, the federal government, over the objections of Southern governors, deployed federal troops to protect those exercising their constitutional rights. Among the photographs that illuminate that moment, one is especially telling: the image of 6-year-old Ruby Bridges entering a previously all-white elementary school, accompanied by U.S. marshals, while hostile white people jeer and heckle.
Today, the federal government is the heckler. Its military interventions in Chicago and in other targeted cities do not seek to maintain order and protect the constitutional rights of the vulnerable. Rather, at the direction of the heckler-in-chief, they are designed to provoke disorder that can then be seized upon as a rationale for declaring a state of emergency and suppressing dissent.
This theater of cruelty — masked federal agents terrorizing migrant families and brazenly attacking protesters and journalists — is not a matter of misconduct by the officers involved. On the contrary, they are delivering the message the administration intends to send.
In this respect, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement television commercial seeking to recruit local officers that has recently been airing in Chicago is revealing. “You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city safe. But in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free,” the ad declares. “ Join ICE, and help us catch the worst of the worst.” The subtext is clear: Join us and be relieved of constitutional constraints and the nuisance of accountability. Enjoy impunity.
Over the last decade, the front line of civil rights activism has been the struggle for police accountability — for a more humane and equitable system of public safety. Similarly, declaring Chicago a sanctuary city is an expression of care for and solidarity with our neighbors. These civic aspirations are now under siege. In contrast to the federal interventions of the 1960s in support of those working to desegregate the Jim Crow South, we now confront a white supremacist regime seeking to undo the limited but real achievements of pluralism and tolerance.
While there is reason to hope that legal challenges to federal intervention and to ICE practices will ultimately prevail, it is important to recognize that we confront a rogue regime that has contempt for the rule of law and is in the process of building a massive paramilitary force answerable only to the president.
The terms of engagement are thus daunting. They are also clear. It is up to us all —elected officials, civil society, the press — to defend First Amendment freedoms by exercising them in the place where we live. Challenges abound: for protesters, to maintain nonviolent discipline; for public officials, to hold their ground in the face of economic retaliation; for police and military, to honor their oath to uphold the Constitution when given clearly unconstitutional orders; and for the press, to remainagile and work together to bear witness to events on the ground.
In meeting the moment, we can take heart from historian Hannah Arendt’s distinction between violence and power, which she saw as opposites. Power arises when people act together for a common purpose, as Chicagoans have been doing across the city by confronting ICE, providing legal and material aid to those targeted by the federal dragnet, and building networks for sharing information. Seen in isolation, these efforts may be small-scale and intensely local, but in the aggregate, they are building capacity for civil resistance. Violence, by contrast, is purely instrumental. It can destroy power but not create it. It is an expression of impotence. Only people acting in concert can generate power.
The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who was well acquainted with sectarian violence, said it best: “What looks the strongest has outlived its term. The future lies with what’s affirmed from under.”