When I co-wrote a book on fascism with Dorian Lynskey last year, we had a moment of doubt. We had reached the inevitable point when we had to assess whether Donald Trump would classify as a fascist. The strongest case for the prosecution was Project 2025, a radical-right programme put out by former Trump appointees at the Heritage Foundation think-tank. 

We described what the document proposed. It would “give Trump direct control over the federal bureaucracy, roll back civil liberties, promote Christian nationalism and place illegal immigrants in internment camps prior to deportation”, we said. We looked at the sentence, exhaled and then checked in with each other. It seemed so extreme. So hysterical. What if we looked like fools? 

In fact, that sentence now looks comically understated. In his first 100 days Trump has gone far further than any of us believed. He may not have direct control over the federal bureaucracy, but it is entirely sublimated to his will. Congress shows no signs of standing up to him. He no longer even follows the rulings of the US Supreme Court. When the court upheld a federal judge’s order for the administration to try and return the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia recently, Trump simply ignored it.  

The attack on civil liberties has proceeded much more forcefully than we anticipated. Students like Rumeysa Ozturk have been confronted by masked men on the street and then bundled into unmarked cars.

Others, like Mahmoud Khalil, are taken by agents without a warrant. These are basically political prisoners, whose only crime is to write pro-Gaza articles or attend pro-Gaza protests. Both of them, along with many more, are being held in a Louisiana detention centre around 170 miles from New Orleans, making it hard for detainees to access legal advice or communication with family and supporters.  

These camps are for the lucky ones. The less fortunate are shipped off to the Cecot prison camp in El Salvador, opened by the dictator Nayib Bukele. This is ostensibly for foreign criminals, but the administration admits that it is not following due process, so it has no real idea of the record of the people it is sending there.  

During a recent visit to Washington, Trump instructed Bukele to build more camps and said he would send “homegrown” individuals in addition to foreign nationals. What he is proposing is the creation of a gulag network. Of course, Trump claims only criminals – “really bad people” – would be sent there. But we have seen how nebulous the administration’s definitions can be. Ozturk was branded a Hamas supporter, when she was simply a pro-Gaza PhD student. Khalil is said to have “adverse foreign policy consequence”. None of this is true. They’ll say whatever they need to say to imprison undesirables. 

Most authoritarian regimes start with criminals and then expand the category. The Nazis, for instance, first flooded their domestic concentration camps with Communists, but their second wave was targeted at “asocials”. This included criminals but was soon expanded to incorporate anyone the regime did not like: the homeless, alcoholics, sex workers, the list went on.  

When we wrote the book, we were careful to specify the two classic attributes of fascism which Trump did not have. Firstly, he was not a totalitarian. Twentieth-century fascists, particularly in Germany, wanted to control every aspect of the life of the citizen. They were trying to create the fascist New Man: hard, uniform, mindless, unquestioning and brutal. Trump is not a totalitarian in this respect.  

The second was imperialism. Twentieth-century fascists were expansionists. Mussolini invaded Abyssinia – modern Ethiopia – in 1935. Hitler invaded Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, Russia and countless others. At the point we wrote the book, Trump was not an imperialist. Indeed, he was in America’s isolationist tradition.  

This has now changed. He has threatened to invade Panama and take control over the Panama Canal. He has threatened to invade and occupy Greenland. He has insisted that Canada should be made the 51st State. He is a coloniser. 

Trump has moved much faster in his first 100 days than any of us predicted. The situation is far, far worse than we anticipated. Back in the first term, Trump-apologists would talk about “Trump derangement syndrome'” – liberals who were overcome with anxiety about Trump’s actions. In fact, precisely the opposite was true. The real derangement was to underestimate the scale of the danger Trump posed.  

Normalisation and complacency are the greatest threat. In the UK and around the world, we are still regularly startled and horrified by what we are seeing. And yet, in the US, you hear this deathly silence from Democrats, a pitiful muteness in the face of the authoritarian advance.

Other institutions willingly comply with his demands without even being forced to do so, out of cowardice, or greed, or basic moral failure. Columbia University caved in to the administration and allowed security officers to arrest its students in exchange for a restored $400 (£300) fund. Legal firms reached deals with Trump to avoid executive orders.  

Media outlets are submitting as well. On Sunday’s 60 Minutes programme, journalists paid tribute to their boss, executive producer Bill Owens, who had just resigned. “Our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger,” presenter Scott Pewlley said. “The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.” 

It’s a frightening sight. Once a regime can control the government, the media, the courts and the universities, they have effectively taken control of the social and constitutional architecture required to challenge authoritarian ideas. The Nazis called this gleichschaltung, or co-ordination. 

The only real opposition you can see is from judges trying to maintain the rule of law, a handful of civic institutions like Harvard who won’t do what they’re told, and, most importantly of all, the protestors. We have now seen them repeatedly take to the streets, sometimes in their millions. If there is any hope at all, it is with these people, who will not stand by and watch their democracy be dismantled, who will not stand idle while these thugs eradicate the rule of law and the rights of the individual. Who remind us all of America’s better nature.