America has voted to embrace fascism. Canada must prepare for the worst.

We are not prepared for the storm that is coming.

Meet the new Führer. | Copyright Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Donald Trump is the winner of the 2024 United States Presidential Election. He will return to power on January 20^th, 2025, just four years after the January 6^th coup attempt in which his supporters attempted to violently overthrow the United States government and block the peaceful transition of power to the winner, Joe Biden.

Trump staged his Beer Hall Putsch, took a short exile at Mar-a-Lago, and then returned to political power with the support of the mass public. He has won a large majority of the electoral college, and there is no dispute to the democratic legitimacy of his victory.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon, but this did not bother his supporters. Donald Trump was found liable by the courts for the rape of E. Jean Carroll, yet this still did not bother his supporters. He was a known close associate and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, but not even this would bother his supporters.

When Nazis marched with swastikas and torches in Virginia in 2017, and chanted that “Jews will not replace us”, Donald Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” During the televised debate this campaign against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump spread vicious blood libels about Haitian immigrants killing and eating pets. In neither of these cases were his supporters bothered by Donald Trump’s blatant racism.

Donald Trump said this very month that his fellow Republican Liz Cheney should have “nine barrels shooting at her,” stating “let’s see how she feels about it, when the guns are trained on her face.” This blatant call to violence against one of his political opponents not only didn’t bother his supporters, it elicited cheers from his crowd.

The morning after his victory on election day, he already had a plan for mass deportations of immigrants on “Day One”, regardless of legal status. He has a plan for a nationwide abortion ban, to strip away no-fault divorce from women, and to erase all legal protections for the rights of queer Americans.

All of this was public knowledge, all of this was well-understood and explained. His supporters were not bothered by this because they liked this. They like it when he’s racist and sexist and homophobic and transphobic. They like it when Trump hates people, and they like it when he hurts people.

Most of all, they like that he gives them permission to openly indulge in their own bigotry. He’s the strongman who never apologies and forces his will on everyone; he is everything a fascist wishes they could become, so the fascists willingly sublimate their own identities in service of the identity he constructs for them.

Fascists do not want to live in a democracy; they want a king they can worship as a god, who must always be obeyed and never be questioned, no matter how heinous the command. In Donald Trump, America’s fascists have finally found their golden calf, and the American people gleefully follow that calf into apostasy.

This is the unfortunate reality: A significantly large portion of the population is sympathetic to fascism, and will provide it support. From your co-workers and neighbours to your friends and family, all of them are willing to cheerfully support politicians who promise to hurt you.

Your loved ones will treat you, in their head, like one of the “good ones”, which means they establish a sense of cognitive dissonance. They believe that the fascists will only hurt the “bad ones”, and because you are a “good one”, you will not be hurt. In America, tens of millions of people are ready and willing to embrace the promises of fascism.

With Donald Trump’s fascist allies set to gain control of not merely the Presidency, but also the House of Representatives and the Senate, there will be no limitations on his ability to pass legislation to these ends. With a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Donald Trump will be fully insulated against any legal challenges to his laws.

After all, it is that Supreme Court majority which invented a false doctrine of “Presidential immunity” for the sole purpose of allowing Donald Trump to exist above the law. It is that Supreme Court which now claims any President is legally immune from prosecution for “official acts”, including the murder of their political rivals.

Let’s repeat that one more time: The Supreme Court of the United States ruled, without any basis in written law, that a sitting President can murder their political rivals. We cannot shy away from calling fascism exactly what it is, even if we’re afraid that the fascists will target us with their violence.

Canada needs a harsh reality check in the face of this geopolitical realignment. When Trump implemented his immigration policies in his first term, it caused a notable increase in asylum claimants at the Canadian border. But the broad-sweeping policies which Trump seeks to implement in his second term would cause a monsoon flood of refugees from a wider variety of personal circumstances.

Think about this logically: The Trump government plans to persecute women, ethnic minorities, and queer people on a nationwide basis. None of these people will have an ability to escape this persecution by simply moving from one state to another state. Their only options will be to go north to Canada, or south to Mexico.

It is a natural conclusion that, just like in Trump’s first term, we will see an increase in border crossings by asylum claimants. And to be quite frank, the concept of political refugees from America is far from an uncommon scenario in Canadian history.

During the Vietnam War, the CBC estimates that anywhere between 50,000 and 125,000 Americans fled north to Canada to escape the military draft. While many returned after the end of the war, census records show that about half of the dodgers remained permanently. They integrated into the fabric of Canadian society, but only after Canada had a reckoning with their growing presence.

A second term of Donald Trump’s presidency, taken at Trump’s word, would trigger a massive migrant crisis. Canada will struggle to accommodate this tidal wave of refugees, and it will dwarf any such numbers from previous eras.

The potential for a migrant crisis in Canada, however, is merely a side effect of Project 2025’s bigoted insanity. What should be much more terrifying to all of us up north, is what Trump and his surrogates have explicitly said about doing to Canada.

It was only a year ago when Tucker Carlson was calling for America to “liberate” Canada through the use of force, an outrageous statement which Canada’s Conservatives refused to condemn.

Carlson may no longer have a space on Fox News, but his highly successful podcast and his close proximity to Donald Trump give him influence over American discourse. And that influence has resulted in repeated assertions across right-wing media that Canada is under an authoritarian regime, assertions intended to manufacture consent for American interference in Canada’s domestic affairs.

Now, Donald Trump rambles about using Canada like a “very large faucet”, and redirecting “millions of gallons of water” into the United States. In essence, raiding Canada for our freshwater reserves, whether we’d like it or not. Such a statement may seem absurd from Trump, but he has a talent for normalizing the absurd and the dangerous.

A fascist despot has taken control of America’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches, removing all checks and balances upon his power. His fascist movement has willing supporters and collaborators here in Canada. And finally, he and his surrogates have made plain that they have designs upon Canada.

We should not expect the next federal election to go without American interference. More specifically, we should expect that Donald Trump will use American assets to provide assistance to Canada’s Conservatives, as part of his alliance with Stephen Harper’s IDU. And more generally, we have no choice but to expect that these fascists will see our borders and our sovereignty as a challenge to their ambition.

We must rapidly adjust our perception of global affairs in the New Twenties. The United States is no longer our ally, and the United States is no longer our friend. At this moment in time, the United States is now Germany in 1932, and Canada has the terrible misfortune of being Poland.

Trump’s fascists will cannibalize American society more rapidly than any of us could imagine, and then they will turn their attentions outward to their neighbours. Canada is at great risk, and the Americans know very well that Canada has no serious military deterrent to protect our independence.

I don’t know what Canada can do in the short two months we have before Donald Trump assumes power. But we have to figure out something, and we need to do it fast.

Because the storms of fascism are coming for us, and we are not prepared.