More people voted in 2024 than ever before in human history. Approximately two billion people globally were eligible to vote, and vote they did. However, around the world, the trend of democratic backsliding continued, with many liberal incumbent candidates losing votes. As a society, we are regressing, and we can never improve our situation unless we take on progressive policy.

This growing trend is fundamentally related to fascism, but the two are still distinct issues. To paraphrase Robert Paxton’s thesis in his book “The Anatomy of Fascism,” fascism is the politics of emotion, making it fundamentally different from other ideologies such as liberalism or conservatism, which are based on logical principles and ideals. Fascism makes reasonable people unreasonable, logical people illogical, and tolerant people hateful. Fascism arises during times of political instability and historically has been pushed forward by conservative elites in an attempt to save themselves. There is an inherent othering of minorities under fascism, which is not unique to fascism but certainly an important part of all authoritarian regimes.

"Fascism makes reasonable people unreasonable, logical people illogical, and tolerant people hateful."

But although fascism excludes some groups of people, it also puts others in the limelight. “You matter,” fascism says. “You are important, and you must be a patriotic part of our perfect community. But some people want to take our beautiful community away from us.” Now, the final blow: “All of these people hate your way of life and want to destroy it. Therefore, we must destroy them first.” People want to feel like they matter. People want to be a part of the group, a part of the righteous force fighting against evil. Fascism promises that, and more.

There are many characteristics of fascism in President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump is a conservative elite, and his campaign is supported by many others who share the same background. The mainstream Republican party has become a cult of personality centered around Trump; to them, what he says is law. Criticism is forbidden, and only the most fanatic advocates will be supported. How did this happen? Trump is supported by like-minded upper-class conservatives who wish to protect their place in the world. And he certainly helped the upper class in return — through tax cuts, pardons, rolling back environmental and worker protections — all letting them increase their bottom line by that much more.

The groups targeted by Trump are too many to name, but for an extremely pertinent example, just look to his rhetoric on immigration, and his classification of a specific group of people as an “other,” then pushing policies for their deportation and detention. Somehow even more blatantly than this, one can simply look at his treatment of women. Rape, sexual assault, and prostitution charges follow him, and recordings of his lascivious and obscene tendencies abound. Given all of this, we then have to ask why we allowed this to happen. How could we, as the people who should hold freedom and equality above all else, who live in a nation founded on those ideals to escape the rule of a tyrannical king, elect a candidate who doesn’t even pretend to follow our ideals?

To understand this phenomenon, we must examine why someone would support policies which hurt them, candidates who hate them, and parties which oppress them. The answer? When they think that the policies will actually support them, that the candidates care for them, and that the party loves them. Through the narrative of othering, conspiracy theorists claim that immigrants are taking your jobs, that Jews control the weather with space lasers, or that deep-state elites are eating babies. It is easier for most people to believe the right when it gives people the supposed cause of their problems, before telling them that only they can fix them. But the supposed causes are never the real causes, and the right doesn’t try to fix the problems anyways.

So where does this leave us? What can we do to fight the rising tide of injustice? We, as students, cannot do all that much. However, this doesn’t mean that we cannot do anything. We can be informed: know what is happening in the world and know what policies actually mean and what their effects will be. The second thing that we can do is call out injustice, to notice the hatred and bigotry in the world and speak out against it. It is not enough to simply be against fascism. Many people were against the Nazi party in Germany, yet it still came to power. We, as the next generation, must take it upon ourselves to preserve the mantle of democracy and equality and must endeavor to push those ideals forward. If we simply stand by and do nothing in the face of tyrants, we are surely lost.