Folksy and homespun, Long and Coughlin pulled on the earlier populist movement to decry Wall Street fat-cats and to preach a gospel of redistributing wealth during the Great Depression. But they offered weak medicine for stark inequality, and both used their public platforms to magnify their own power and fame. Long and Coughlin revealed how fascism utilizes the spectacle of rallies and media, projecting a charisma that can enchant a mass of followers. (And by the late 1930s, Coughlin’s economic critiques had morphed into open anti-Semitism, another fascist tenet.) Fears that their movements might merge into a political juggernaut ended when Long was assassinated and Coughlin faded into obscurity.

4. McCarthyism defined the Cold War culture of mid-twentieth century America. Led by Senator Joe McCarthy, but much larger than its figurehead, McCarthyism became a witch-hunt for Communists and subversives of all kinds. A pervasive fear filtered down into the lives of ordinary citizens, scared they might be named, then shunned and fired. Under an alibi of rooting out American “Reds,” the House Un-American Activities Committee issued subpoenas and encouraged informants to turn on friends and colleagues. The FBI launched an invasive counterintelligence program that trampled civil liberties. Hollywood instituted a blacklist. For paranoid McCarthyites, conspiracies mushroomed everywhere, spawned by their fear that Communist operatives were hiding in plain sight, plotting to bring down the nation. Anyone who went against the grain became suspect. McCarthyism merits our attention for another reason than the government’s intense suppression and surveillance of citizens. Such rabid Red-hunting is also central to fascism, whose right-wing reactionaries always seek to destroy opposition from the radical Left. (If you’ve seen the VICE News report from Charlottesville, this explains why those fascist protesters keep blaming “commies.”)

5. When the AIDS crisis began killing thousands during the 1980s, some queer activists charged the U.S. government with genocide because in the face of this public health catastrophe — which would destroy a queer generation — U.S. officials said and did virtually nothing. The plague was met with a fatal silence. (Reagan refused even to mention AIDS in public until 1987.) Deemed outsiders, with their deaths either ignored or cheered, these activists accused the Reagan administration and the Christian right of fascism. (The Christian right depicted gays and lesbians as a threat to the nation’s health, biologically and morally, who required quarantine and elimination.) Fighting for visibility and resources, queer activists re-appropriated the pink triangle that Nazis had forced gay people to wear on their striped uniforms in extermination camps. That symbol marked the influential “Silence = Death” campaign. Drawing explicit parallels in his first play, A Bright Room Called Day, Tony Kushner juxtaposes the rise of Hitler’s regime with the Reagan years. Fascism always polices gender and sexuality in its worship of male virility and patriarchy, often with lethal ends, as these activists knew. In 1989, ACT-UP’s founder, Larry Kramer, wrote, “I have come reluctantly to believe that genocide is occurring: that we are witnessing — or not witnessing — the systematic, planned annihilation of some by others with the avowed purpose of eradicating an undesirable portion of the population.”

Ultimately, the best defense against fascism is a good offense. To prevent or defeat it, we have to do more than protect our norms and rights — stand up to racism and bigotry when you see it, and don’t be afraid to talk with each other about how to address today’s profound economic inequality, both nationally and globally. Work on that front may be even more important, because often it’s economic desperation that drives people toward the false promises of fascism. “O, let America be America again—,” as Langston Hughes prayed. “The land that never has been yet— / And yet must be—the land where every man is free.” A passion for that vision will help prevent others from falling under fascism’s spell.

Related: Fascism, Explained

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