The United States is moving toward a uniquely American form of fascism, fueled by expanding executive power, unrestrained federal law enforcement, and a political culture increasingly indifferent to law and evidence, assess journalist Patrick Lawrence.
In a new essay published in full by ScheerPost, Lawrence focuses on a series of fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, arguing that these incidents reveal a deeper transformation of the U.S. state. ICE, he writes, now functions as “a paramilitary force of the sort commonly associated with distant dictatorships,” operating with effective immunity from civilian accountability.
Lawrence points to official government claims that unarmed civilians killed by ICE were “domestic terrorists,” despite video evidence to the contrary, as proof that “evidence, law, and reason itself do not matter anymore.” Quoting a recent New York Times report, he describes Minneapolis as having become “a theater of power,” where violence is used not merely to enforce policy but to intimidate the public.
The essay draws heavily on Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, which imagined an American dictatorship arising through patriotic rhetoric and popular consent. Lawrence argues that Lewis’s fictional demagogue, Buzz Windrip, now appears “uncannily prescient,” noting parallels with contemporary appeals to nationalism, executive rule by emergency, and the suppression of dissent.
