National news media refuse to call the Trump administration what it is. So, let’s be clear: This is a fascist regime. Under authoritarian leadership. President Donald Trump and his allies are pulling moves from the Nazi Party’s playbook.

Control media messaging and intimidate outlets who publicly challenge the administration, check. Eliminate cultural programming that uplifts nonwhite voices and perspectives, check. Threaten to invade or outright attack sovereign states to expand the empire, check.

The most striking parallel is what’s happened to Venezuelan immigrants. Planes crammed with detained nonwhite people were transported to El Salvador — against a (conservative) judge’s orders. During the Holocaust, Nazis crammed Jewish people into cattle cars and shipped them to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.

I urge readers to watch clips of those Venezuelan men’s heads forcibly shaved, then watch footage of Jewish people’s heads forcibly shaved before being gassed to death. The people are different, but the systemic dehumanization and violence are the same.

White supremacy and imperialism have America in a death grip and must be defeated. I refuse to fall in line, despite relentless fear-mongering. Falling in line means complicity. I will resist.

Skyler Lambert

Greenfield