‘Fascism and Authoritarianism’: Prominent Democrats Gird Americans for the New Trump Era
Elizabeth Warren and AOC warn the nation what lies ahead
Donald Trump soon will be president, once again, and prominent Democrats have begun preparing Americans for what lies in the future.
Trump easily won both the Electoral College and popular vote Tuesday, paving the way for him to begin enacting the authoritarian and far-right agenda that he promised during the campaign.
Democrats are warning that there will be tough times ahead, but that they also will be willing to fight.
Sen Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are two of the Democrats telling Americans what to expect once Trump once again is president.
What is coming will be bleak, according to Warren, who herself ran for president four years ago.
“I will not ask you to look for any silver linings. I will not ask you to feel anything but grief right now,” she said. “Donald Trump won the election, and the consequences will be real and devastating.
“But I am reminding myself, and you, that in the road ahead, there will still be opportunities to fight back,” Warren added. “I can’t tell you that we will win all of those fights. I can’t tell you that we will win most — or even any — of them.
“But when we arrive at each of those moments, we will face a choice to give up or press forward. The far right wants us to feel powerless,” she said. “Extremists are counting on apathy, cynicism, heartbreak, or all of the above, as their rocket fuel.
“They are counting on us to point fingers at each other, and to lose trust in our ability to ever, ever make change. I absolutely refuse to give them that satisfaction,” Warren said. “We will continue to fight for each other.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s thoughts were not much more optimistic.
“I’m not here to sugarcoat what we all are about to collectively experience, but I think that what we can do to prepare is build community,” she said on one of her Instagram live events. “We do not have a choice. We don’t have a choice. Our choice is to build. Our choice is to continue to fight. Our choice is to win. Our choice is to have each other.
“We are about to enter a political period that will have consequences for the rest of our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We cannot give up. We now find ourselves in a time in history that has precedent, and we find ourselves, I believe, in a time where there are, let’s say, peers in history of mass movements of people that mobilize to protect one another in times of fascism and authoritarianism. And this is the era that we are poised to enter.
“Donald Trump has talked about turning the military on U.S. citizens that he deems his domestic political enemies. Authoritarians and people that he affiliates closely with and strongmen abroad in regimes like that, it is not uncommon to jail political dissidents or legislative opponents. This is the world that we very realistically may be entering,” she said. “And the way that we do everything that we can to prevent this is by building a very strong social fabric and social infrastructure.”
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