Unflattering Photos of Fascists: Authoritarianism in Trump's America

Donald Trump is hated on the Left, but we owe him thanks for accomplishing what no other president has ever accomplished. He has brought into the bright light of day for the first time a quasi-fascist movement in the United States, the roiling ugliness known as the Amerikaner Trumpenvolk. One of the principle locations for quasi-fascist and fascist organizing in the United States in the last five years has been Portland, OR. Notably, local fascist and white nationalist groups have forged alliances with far right conservatives, members of the GOP, patriot militia members, Proud Boys, and extremist Christian groups like Patriot Prayer. When these clowns show up in public they mean to intimidate, they mean to spread violence, and they mean to recruit new members. They also make spectacles of themselves, which, thankfully, Jeff Schwilk is there to document. These candid, unflattering, moments captured by Schwilk allow us to gaze at these monsters not how they'd like us to see them, but in a pathetic light of their own making.

Thirty photos are paired with essays skewering these Trumpenvolk, adding up to an entertaining, unique, and powerful indictment of the hate groups and haters operating in the U.S. today.

Jeff Schwilk is a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest.

Christopher Ketcham is the author of This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West. Ketcham has been a freelance writer for more than 20 years and has published in Harper's, CounterPunch, National Geographic, Hustler, the New York Times, Pacific Standard, Sierra, Earth Island Journal, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Salon, and many other websites and newspapers large and small.

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker from Portland, OR. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It is and How to End It.

Tyler Anderson is a community activist fighting for climate and racial justice in Portland, OR.

Paul Street is an independent progressive policy researcher, award-winning journalist, historian, author, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois. Street is author, most recently, of They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy. He writes regularly for Truthdig and Counterpunch.