After the events of the past few days it is clear that Donald Trump’s vision for America will not be restrained by Theresa May. On Friday they talked and held hands. Hours later Trump ushered in his fascistic, so-called Muslim travel ban with a stroke of his executive pen.

Neither does hope for the future lie with the more critical Angela Merkel, nor so-called moderate Republicans, nor indeed the US Democratic establishment. If Trumpism is to fail in its mission to remake the United States in its own image, it will require an extraordinary movement of popular resistance both at home and abroad.

The beginnings offer grounds for optimism. The Women’s March that followed the inauguration represents perhaps the biggest ever protest by Americans, eclipsing even those against the Vietnam War. There are few precedents for spontaneous protests on the scale of those of the past weekend against the executive order banning people in seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US – airports, including JFK in New York, were filled with demonstrators. Here in Britain – positioned by our government as Trump’s closest ally – more than a million people have demanded that May scrap Trump’s proposed state visit, and there are street protests against the travel ban. All this, just days after Trump’s assumption of power.

But the emerging Stop Trump movement needs to understand what it is up against. America’s democracy faces an unprecedented threat. The new president seeks to remodel American society and block opposition. His flagrant lies about millions of fraudulent votes in last year’s presidential election undoubtedly reflect the insecurity of an authoritarian demagogue who lost the popular vote.

But Trump has proved ingenious at deploying bluster and bravado to frame the terms of debate. He wants to rig the US electoral system against his opponents. This process has already started, with the purging of Democratic supporters from voting rolls last year, inflating Trump’s popular vote-defying win. He gained nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton: in a fair election this gap would have been even greater.

It is difficult to imagine a more nondescript building than the makeshift bungalow I visited recently in a suburban street in North Carolina. But at the headquarters of Democracy North Carolina, 25 miles from the state capital, Raleigh, there are vital clues to what is going on, and how activists might respond. Jen Jones, the organisation’s communications director and a long-standing civil rights activist, says that voter registration initiatives in North Carolina over recent years, as well as the pushback against them, provide “a blueprint for the years ahead”.

A woman wears an ‘I voted early’ sticker as she watches Barack Obama speak at a rally in North Carolina in November 2016. ‘Trump wants to rig the US electoral system against his opponents.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The state swung narrowly behind Barack Obama in 2008, partly because of groups including Democracy, which worked to expand the state’s electorate. North Carolina introduced early voting, allowed voters to register on the same day as elections, and unveiled pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Another registration programme – Souls to the Polls – attempted to enrol churchgoers. “We connected to the different churches and faiths in the state,” explains Democracy’s 30-year-old campaign director, Marcus Bass.

This expansion of the electorate meant more African Americans and younger North Carolinians could vote. This was bad news for the Republican party, but rather than attempting to win over, say, African Americans, younger voters or residents born outside the state, Republicans decided to try to stop them voting. The so-called “monster law” of 2013 reduced early voting, abolished same-day registration and pre-registration, introduced voter ID requirements and allowed greater scope for voters to be challenged at polling stations. The overwhelming targets were Democratic-leaning voters. About 1.2 million local voters are said to have been affected.

The law was struck down, but Republicans innovated around that and on election day in November were able to celebrate the fall in African-American turnout. “North Carolina Obama coalition crumbling,” crowed one press release. “As a share of early voters, African Americans are down 6.0% and Caucasians are up 4.2%.” When a Democrat won the race to be the state’s governor, local Republicans legislated to reduce his powers.

The temptation to dismiss Trump as an absurd buffoon persists; and with each appearance he feeds it. But this is a dangerous mistake. Consider the precedents – Hungary, for example – where opposition is not banned outright but has been delegitimised. Trump has created the fiction of widespread voter fraud to justify further voter suppression.

American progressives are horrified by what is happening in their country, but they are also emboldened. They cite two reasons: the legacy of Bernie Sanders’ nomination campaign, and the anti-Trump Women’s March in Washington. Charles Lechner, who helped establish People for Bernie during the Democratic nomination race, says: “In every community you had people who came together to support Bernie: those relationships now exist; before they didn’t.”

Now that people are taking to the streets against the Muslim ban on both sides of the Atlantic, the potential of these networks is clear. Trump’s policies can be delegitimised at home, forcing him on the defensive; abroad, governments seeking to give his regime cover may find themselves besieged by their own people.

A renewed determination was also in evidence in Chicago last week: as snow fell, fast-food and airport workers protested at Trump’s nominee for labour secretary, Andy Puzder – a poverty-wage-paying restaurant tycoon. “No pay! No way! Andy Puzder not today!” they chanted.

“He doesn’t care about the workers,” said 18-year-old McDonald’s worker Elisabeth, the “Fight for $15” banners reflecting in her glasses. But did she have hope in Trump’s America? “Of course! Absolutely. If there’s enough people who join up with the same mindset, then we can achieve anything.”

Both resilience and courage will be needed in the coming weeks and months. Trump is a unique danger, and as events in North Carolina remind us, neutralising the democratic opposition will be critical to his construction of an authoritarian, nationalist state.