Trump has drawn his line in the sand. Not with legislation or diplomacy, but with threats, the lifeblood of every fascist before him. Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey, and Beyoncé are not merely political opponents in his eyes; they are enemies of the state. What began as mockery has mutated into menace. With each press conference, he inches closer to a form of governance that history books warned us about. And in doing so, he reveals the blueprint he intends to follow: that of Mussolini, that of Franco, that of Hitler.

The fascist archetype is not subtle. It is a man, always a man, whose insecurities metastasize into persecution, who mistakes applause for consent, who rides to power on the back of grievance and governs by threat. Trump is not mimicking fascism out of ignorance. He is echoing it with admiration.

When Trump called for the prosecution of President Obama, he crossed the Rubicon. He wasn’t referencing law. He was invoking revenge. No matter the baselessness of the claim, no matter the logistical impossibility of charging a former president with treason for honoring the electoral process, Trump knew what he was doing. He was constructing an enemy out of the most revered Black man in American history and by extension, signaling that no one is beyond his wrath.

This is not a man who governs by principle. This is a man who rules by vendetta.

I. The Fascist Echo Chamber: Historical Parallels to a Modern Menace

The playbook is old, worn, and stained with blood.

Adolf Hitler used the Reichstag fire to purge communists and consolidate power. Trump, in turn, has used January 6 not as a moment of national shame, but as a spark for persecution. He claims to honor the Constitution while promising to weaponize the Department of Justice against celebrities, civil rights leaders, and his political rivals.

Benito Mussolini turned popular entertainers into propaganda tools or threats to be neutralized. Trump sees Beyoncé and Oprah not as artists or citizens, but as adversaries to be silenced through legal force. By reducing Black cultural icons to targets, he reproduces the race-fueled tactics of past tyrants who feared any symbol of emancipation or joy among the oppressed.

Francisco Franco outlawed dissent and painted artists and intellectuals as subversive agents. So does Trump, casting Kamala Harris as a conspirator in imaginary crimes, casting shade on any voice that dares rise in criticism.

And like all fascists, Trump believes himself to be the embodiment of the nation. Any critique is therefore treason. Any refusal is sabotage.

II. The Wound that Devours the Republic

Trump is not driven by ideology, but by a gaping, bottomless need for validation. Beneath the bravado lies the unhealed wound of an unloved child, a boy who craved paternal affection and was met instead with derision. That boy never left. He grew into a man whose every action screams for applause, for obedience, for adoration. And when he is denied it, he lashes out.

This is the clearest and most present danger of them all: Trump is not merely ambitious. He is desperate. He is a man so consumed by the abyss of his own emotional hollowness that he would rather torch the Constitution than risk a moment of irrelevance.

A stable nation cannot coexist with an unstable despot. Trump is not content with a second term. He desires an eternal one. He is not interested in protecting institutions. He wants to possess them. This is how tyrannies begin. Not with great ideas, but with small, broken men who mistake cruelty for control.

And America, in her fatigue, has grown complacent. We forget that empires fall not only to invasion, but to rot from within. Trump is that rot. He spreads. He infects. He devours.

III. The Danger of Familiarity: When Threats Become the Norm

America has become desensitized. The threat of authoritarianism has worn a clown’s face for so long that we no longer hear the jackboots behind the laughter. But Trump’s threats are not rhetorical. They are functional. Every utterance lays the foundation for a more compliant bureaucracy, a more submissive court, a more frightened populace.

The Department of Justice has already shown signs of fracture. The GOP, now a personality cult, nods along like the Politburo of a banana republic. State legislatures, already hostile to dissent, have begun adopting his rhetoric.

History reminds us: fascism does not arrive with a scream. It arrives with repetition. It arrives when people stop noticing that every Tuesday includes a new enemy, a new witch trial, a new scapegoat. Trump does not need tanks in the street. He only needs Americans to keep scrolling past headlines that should inspire revolt.

IV. The Moral Duty of New England: A Call to Secession

We in New England must see the writing not on the wall, but on the Constitution itself. It is ink-stained by tyranny.

Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine share more than just geography. We share a moral lineage. The abolitionist firebrand, the academic dissenter, the protester in the rain, these are our ancestors and our legacy. We did not forge our values in the crucible of obedience but in rebellion.

So let us rebel again. Peacefully, legally, but with the full force of our moral conviction.

Secession is not a tantrum. It is a lifeboat. The union, in its current form, is not a bond of shared ideals but a hostage negotiation. If we remain tethered to an America that criminalizes protest, canonizes white grievance, and turns the DOJ into Trump’s personal army, we are not citizens. We are accomplices.

The Constitution guarantees us no protection from a president who declares himself above it.

V. The Mechanics of Breaking Free

Let us abandon the romanticism of union at all costs. The cost is now visible. It is democracy. It is dignity. It is the future of our children.

New England has the infrastructure, the academic institutions, the economic capacity, and the moral resolve to survive independently.

This is not unprecedented. The Articles of Confederation, flawed as they were, prove that regional governance is possible. If Texas can flirt with secession while undermining democracy, New England can explore it while preserving it.

VI. The Trumpian Theocracy: Why We Can No Longer Share a Country

Trumpism is not merely a political philosophy. It is a theocracy of whiteness, of vengeance, of masculine fragility masquerading as strength. It does not cohabitate. It consumes. To remain tethered to Trump’s America is to become footnotes in a history written by fascists.

When Oprah becomes a legal target and Beyoncé is accused of crimes for daring to endorse, we should not laugh. We should prepare. For every tyrant who rises with laughter ends with fire.

Secession is not cowardice. It is moral clarity.

New England must rise as it always has. Not in violence, but in virtue. Not in rage, but in refusal.

Let them have their Trump. We will have our future.

This post was taken with the author’s permission from JillyBean Monet’s Substack. To view her other posts, please click here: https://jillybeanmonet.substack.com/archive?sort=new