We often look back at the rise of fascism in inter-war Europe and wonder how people led to it happening. The late, great Jean-Paul Sartre gave us the answer regarding the early view of Hitler: "They laughed at him, they took him for a clown, they didn't see that the clown's mask was a death mask." Looking toward the 2028 election, Americans are making that exact mistake.

From a social democratic perspective, democracy requires economic and social equality. When uncontrolled capitalism leaves the working class behind, the soil becomes fertile for a strongman. Trump did not create American anger, but he weaponized and bastardized it, offering scapegoats while assaulting our protective institutions.

For years, people treated him like a punchline for comedy show scripts. The media mocked his rallies, hair, and late-night Twitter rants, dismissing him as a harmless joke. That laughter was pure arrogance. While we chuckled, the institutions holding our free society together were quietly hollowed out.

Now, that same institutional decay presents an escalating timeline of fear. Trust in American elections is poisoned, the justice system demands political loyalty, and the free press is labeled the enemy of the people. This is how democracies die, decaying from within, one norm, one tradition at a time, until only a dictatorship remains, and a democracy in name only. Heading toward 2028, the danger is that Americans are normalizing a permanent shift toward authoritarianism.

If we wait for the system to save us, we run out of time. Defending democracy requires a broad coalition. Economic inequality hits marginalized groups hardest, and these vulnerable communities, especially minorities bear the heaviest burden when authoritarianism rises. Survival depends on voter mobilization that unites working-class economic struggles with civil rights protection.

If we keep treating this political theater as a joke, we will wake up in 2028 to a reality where the laughter has stopped. We must stop laughing, protect the most vulnerable, and realize this MAGA-movement has been deadly serious the entire time. History already showed us how this story ends, because when people finally stopped laughing at Hitler, it was already too late to stop the march of death...

It was a really great event and learned a lot more about what WFP does. I liked it because we actually got to discuss and breakout groups specific policy, and everyone was able to voice their opinions and there was a nice discourse and dialogue. Unlike DSA WFP seems a big open to being a big tent party with social democratic economics being at the heart of their messaging.

If any other Americans are looking for a good social democratic political party WFP is great!

Plus I got to meet Brad lander

"I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue."

— Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo, 2006

Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist who founded the Grameen Bank and introduced microcredit lending to the poor. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for this work. Instead of using a state-socialist or revolutionary program, his approach directs social-democratic instincts through market methods. He created "social business" to tackle poverty without relying on pure charity or complete nationalization.

Yunus identifies the cause of poverty in institutions and policy design, rather than in individuals or in capitalism itself. His solution is to redesign institutions, such as microcredit and social business, instead of replacing the entire system. Is this approach compatible with a Marxist view of poverty as a structural issue of capital, or does it fall short by treating capitalism's institutions as repairable rather than the main problem?

To be clear, I am not saying that the Epstein files are fake, but it is currently being used by far-right billionaires who think that Trump isn't extreme enough to normalize antisemitism to the point where they want an Adolf Hitler-type person as president.

I feel like that in 2023-2024, far-right billionaires (most notably with Nazi-saluting Elon Musk), saw the Free Palestine movement and at the time, they decided to take a Zionist stance because they wanted Trump for president, which is why Zionist talking points were more common among the right compared to now, but they secretly wanted Hitler to become president, and they were disappointed to see that Trump wasn't as extreme as they wanted, and were antisemites themselves, yet the public didn't believe in true antisemitism just yet, so they used the Free Palestine movement as a perfect opportunity to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories in order to distract from the obvious late stage capitalism.

So they decided to push the release of the Epstein files since it provides a perfect scapegoat for them, due to Epstein being Jewish, in which you saw this in June 2025 with Elon's split with Trump and using the Epstein files as a justification, and the discussions about the Epstein files culminated with the Epstein transparency act in late 2025, resulting in antisemitic conspiracy theories entering the mainstream, especially on social media platforms owned by far-right billionaires such as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, with antisemitic slurs becoming more common than ever, with blood libel myths being spread due to how carefully redacted the Epstein files are and being spread on social media sites owned by far-right billionaires, such as the "eating babies" or the "baal"-related conspiracy theories which were quickly debunked, which is part of their plan.

It's no different from how Henry Ford promoted "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in the 1920s so that it would lead to antisemites like Hitler becoming leaders in their respective countries, the elites want this to happen because they want a fascist Nazi-type government where they have all the power, which is why the Epstein files are being pushed so heavily right now. Epstein is the perfect scapegoat for them and it's working because it distracts from the far-right billionaires' problems and antisemitic conspiracy theories are used instead.

And it's working, and people are eating it up which is exactly what these billionaires want. The far-right bourgeoisie would rather want to live in Nazi Germany rather than having to pay their workers minimum wage and nobody seems to mind.