The word “fascism” is a frightening one, bringing to mind images of Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II. One dictionary definition describes it as “a populist political philosophy … that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
In Poland and many other countries, the Nazis infamously cordoned off sections of cities, known as “ghettos” or “Jewish residential quarters,” where Jews were held in horrific conditions, food was rationed, and forced labor was compulsory. In Warsaw alone, almost 500,000 Jews and Romanis were crammed into a confined space and subjected to German police and SS (i.e., the Nazi paramilitary, or “Schutzstaffel”) control before their deportation to concentration and extermination camps.
Although the U.S. federal government now has upwards of 65,000 people in detention camps – over 70% of whom, including children, have no criminal record, and thousands of whose names have been wiped from federal databases – the notion that the Trump administration could one day round up, confine to concentration camps, and even kill disfavored citizens remains unfathomable. Fascist? America? Not possible.
But the Nazis did not just use ghettos to impose fascist control. In places like occupied Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, they also did it by operation of law.