The fall of the “land of the free” marches on. In Trump’s decision to militarily occupy Washington, D.C., we can see the state that the American fascist desires: one where hyper-lethal and unaccountable force is brought down constantly on college students, well-off liberals, and most importantly, black and brown communities, all of which have been made into objects of hatred in the course of Fascism’s rise. As much as this invasion may be an attempt to distract from Trump’s increasingly obvious connection to Epstein’s pedophile network and the mounting damage from their tariffs, for the average bloodthirsty foot-soldier of American Fascism, their dream is being forced on the 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia, all of whom have no legitimate avenue to affect the national political system. The District’s own local liberals have also, unsurprisingly, turned to complete collaboration; unsurprising, as Mayor Muriel Bowser has been as staunch a supporter of the MPD as anyone in the Trump Administration. Even if they were interested in pushing back on this blatant act of self-occupation, the liberal politics of the Democratic party have proven themselves insufficient to confront even this pre-showing of what the Fascists hope to bring about everywhere in the years to come.

D.C.’s residents have always been particularly vulnerable to the tides of America’s national politics. Not a state, nor even a territory along the edges of America’s colonial fringes, the District of Columbia has historically been what is known as a “chocolate city”-so named due to being a city with a majority Black population. With the growth of the federal government’s administrative bodies, D.C. grew substantially as a city, adding a large class of better-off administrative workers who segregated themselves from the Black communities. The existence of this more politically empowered group meant the federal government could no longer completely neglect the administration of the city, bringing about a measure of independent rule for the District, which cemented its status as the boogeymen of the nascent Fascist movement: a city with both a large Black population, the center of the liberal administrative state, and one they could easily (if not always truthfully) cast as an example of “urban decay” led by their liberal opponents. Other Republican-led states have joined in on their federal partners and pledged their own National Guard units to provide more bodies for the occupation, adding salt to the wound of D.C.’s political powerlessness. Time and again, Republicans in Congress have not hesitated to use the District’s governance to score political points, by manipulating its laws, further limiting its ability to spend its own revenues, and so on. In some ways, this turn of events is not new nor surprising to the disenfranchised residents of the District, whose American citizenship has always been lesser; in the same way as the citizens of America’s overseas territories.

The events of the past month should also not surprise those familiar with the tactics of the Fascist movement in America. Violent occupation under the label of “policing” is one of the main ways in which the bourgeois politicians of Fascism deliver unto their supporters some measure of arousing satisfaction in seeing the excessive violence of the state unleashed upon the scapegoated people they see as lesser than them. Although this satisfaction is the goal held by the racially motivated foot-soldiers of American Fascism, for the uber-wealthy drivers of that movement, these actions serve an even higher purpose. Just as the deliberate impacts of their nationalist tariffs and further deep cuts to public services are starting to be felt, the forceful occupation of D.C. and the subsequent abuses inflicted upon the city’s population are an authoritarian circus which helps shield themselves from the fallout of their self-enriching policies. But though this may distract their base from turning on their leash-holders, we as Socialists must reach those affected by both instances of violence. The rural communities whose “local” hospitals will be shuttered by the loss of Medicaid payments will have their lives ruined as much as those urban communities whose people are detained on no more pretext than being a Black man carrying a heavy bag. Everywhere, the Fascist violence, whether direct or indirect, leaves working-class communities hurting in order to fuel the enrichment of the Capitalist elite. Socialism should be the driving aim of those sincere in their desires to see these hurts remedied.

And it is important for a Socialist message to help spur reaction to these Fascist crimes, for what has the liberal response been to such events? Utterly contemptible-the Democrats in Congress have said nothing and done less, while the Democratic mayor of D.C. at least had the dignity of giving a defensive press conference before absconding for the comforts of Martha’s Vineyard, but a month afterwards, her Big Beautiful Coordination Center (what a name!) shows just how willing the arch-Democratic mayor is to push back against this Fascist occupation. The liberal half of the singular bourgeois party has failed to be the opposition party they have never truly wanted to be. Opposing the Fascist agenda in any meaningful capacity would mean opposing the Capitalist interests that finance them as well. The Democratic party’s true function as a vehicle to gather financial contributions and absorb working-class outrage means such an active role would be suicidal, and that mass of professional election-losers knows it. Only organizations from the communities of the District, themselves largely mobilized around seeking electoral representation, seem to form any sort of active opposition to this occupation, though of course with their goals being what they are, such organizations keep themselves from any goals and means by which to meaningfully stymie this occupation.

What the Fascists reveal in this moment of triumph is the utter nonsense of their beliefs. The freedom they proclaim is on full display in the District of Columbia-the bourgeois freedom to control, oppress, and intimidate. Armed military forces are unleashed on the menaces of Doordash drivers and $5-foot-long-throwers, showing not strength but the rawest terror of any resistance to their America. They still remain oh-so-slightly restrained by the forms of Capitalist democracy, but in the absence of concerted opposition from the liberal Democrats, only a Socialist opposition holds a chance of protecting our communities from their creeping authoritarianism.