Photograph Source: SWinxy – CC BY 4.0

Introduction

The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil is not an isolated event—it is a chilling testament to the authoritarian turn in the United States, where dissent is met not with debate but with brute force, and the machinery of state terror moves with ruthless precision. In his own words, Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, an activist for Palestinian freedom, and a permanent U.S. resident, was seized by ICE agents without warning—handcuffed, dragged from his apartment lobby, shoved into an unmarked black car, and disappeared. In minutes, his rights were violated and his body made vulnerable and disposable. Khalil instantly became another casualty in the Trump administration’s escalating war against those who refuse to kneel before its politics of white supremacy, settler-colonial violence, ominous threats, and unchecked lawlessness. His disappearance is both a precedent and a warning—a stark reminder that in regimes built on repression, silence is coerced, and resistance is a crime.

What happened to Khalil echoes through history, from the Gestapo’s pursuit of political dissidents to the “Dirty Wars” of Latin America, where students, intellectuals, and activists were labeled as terrorists and made to vanish without a trace. The equating of dissent with terrorism is a central feature of authoritarian regimes. The end point of which is the torture chamber, prisons, concentration camps, and the death of any vestige of human rights, civil liberties, and democracy. Today, those same logics of power are being reanimated under the guise of national security, as Trump’s government systematically dismantles the right to protest, the sanctity of citizenship, and the democratic ideals that once stood as a bulwark against tyranny.

To understand Khalil’s abduction is to confront the broader assault on dissent in an era where the state wields the power to disappear those who refuse to conform or be complicit. The illegal abduction of Khalil is not only about the attack on free speech, but also about the gutting of historical memory, civic literacy, and the institutions that provide a culture of critique that creates informed citizens. The state terrorism on display in Khalil’s case is not just about one student, one protest, or one administration—it is about the fate of democracy itself. The question now is not whether we recognize these warning signs, but whether we act before it is too late.

The Nightmare Returns

Trump’s return to the White House has unleashed a full-scale assault on civil liberties, democratic institutions, and the very possibility of holding power accountable. No longer constrained by those who once sought to temper his worst impulses, Trump now governs with open contempt for the rule of law, emboldened by a movement that thrives on cruelty, grievance, and unrelenting violence. His language has always been a weapon—honed by fear, sharpened by menace, and wielded to incite violence against immigrants, Black Americans, and anyone who dares to challenge his rule.

For years, the mainstream press dismissed Trump’s rhetoric as nothing more than bluster—an act designed for entertainment or spectacularized provocation rather than a genuine call to power. His declaration of wanting to be a “dictator for a day” and a subsequent quote, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” were met with little more than a shrug, treated with barely a flicker of concern. Many assumed his fascist threats were nothing but empty theatrics, comforted by the belief that handlers and legal restraints would keep him in check. But that illusion has now been shattered.

As his second presidency unfolds, the machinery of authoritarianism is no longer emerging—it is fully operational. The punishing state now stands boldly, criminalizing dissent, weaponizing the justice system, dismantling public and higher education, abducting individuals, embracing corruption, and executing mass deportations with a cold, calculating efficiency that evokes some of America’s darkest historical chapters. This legacy echoes in the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920, when thousands of leftists, anarchists, and immigrants were arrested without cause, often enduring brutal treatment. The Red Scare, especially during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, marked another grim chapter, as government-sanctioned witch hunts destroyed lives and careers on the flimsiest of accusations. In the wake of the Vietnam War, opposition to the conflict was labeled un-American, culminating in the tragic deaths of students at Kent State. More recently, the Bush administration’s War on Terror after 9/11 extended this grim tradition, with mass surveillance, indefinite detention, and the widespread abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay—all justified in the name of national security.

From the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism to the abuses of the Bush era, these events form a brutal continuum, each rooted in the criminalization of dissent and the targeting of marginalized communities. They expose the long-standing tradition of the state using its powers of repression to quash opposition and enforce ideological orthodoxy. Trump has not only laid bare this dark legacy of state violence and the war on dissent, he has also modernized it, appropriating tactics honed during the “Dirty Wars” in Argentina, the deadly repression of students under Pinochet in Chile, and the Gestapo-like methods employed by Nazi Germany in service of racial cleansing and the politics of disposability. In doing so, he has reinvigorated a dangerous historical playbook, turning it into a weapon against those who dare to resist and those who support the notion of universal citizenship.

History Matters

History—and the dangerous memories it carries—matters because it exposes the lingering shadows of authoritarianism, offering warnings essential to recognizing and resisting its return in new forms. As Paul Gilroy reminds us, “Those horrors are always much closer to us than we like to imagine. Preventing their recurrence requires keeping them in mind.” Fascism today is not a replica of the past, but its mobilizing passions remain dangerously familiar. Primo Levi’sprescient warning echoes in our time: “Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.”

Under Trump, the treatment of dissenters does not mirror exactly what we saw under Hitler, Pinochet, or the Argentine dictatorship, but it bears what Martin Wolf has called........

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