Published in the Florida Times Union, May 9, 2021.

by Parvez Ahmed

About a year ago, I received the devastating news about my Mom’s terminal cancer. As she took her last breaths, I could not visit her in Kolkata, India. The first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic was underway. Global travel had come to a virtual standstill and India, like the rest of the world, was in the midst of lockdowns and quarantines. A year later, while the pandemic here at home is beginning to wane, in India it has metastasized into a carnage. The US State Department has urged Americans to not travel to India and a travel ban from India has now been instituted for non-US citizens. Once again, I am forced to cancel my summer travel plans to visit family in India.

Almost every Indian American I talk to knows someone, either a member of their extended family or someone from their circle of friends, who have been personally impacted by this new wave in India. The 7-day average of daily COVID-19 cases is over 400,000, not only the highest in the world today but also a number not seen anywhere in the past year. The 7-day daily average of deaths is over 3,000. As alarming as these numbers are, experts on the ground contend that the official daily new cases and deaths in India are a severe undercount.

In one of many examples, a crematorium in the capital New Delhi that receive 10 bodies a day during normal times, is now receiving over 100. Graveyards are running out of space too. If that is not dystopian enough, consider the daily “normal” scene of patients entering hospitals with their own oxygen cylinders in tow. Family members pumping someone’s chest as they gasp for air in a car parked outside the hospital as a scramble for bed ensues are not scenes from a M. Night Shyamalan movie.  As patients gasp for air, Indian social media is replete with people pleading for hospital beds or oxygen cylinders.

How did things turn so grave? The tale should be familiar to most Americans. It starts with a national leader in denial and engaging in wishful thinking. Recall on February 26, 2020, then US President Donald Trump boasting, “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” Almost a year later, on January 22, 2021, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted that atmanirbhar Bharat (a self-reliant India) has beaten back the pandemic. India’s ruling political party, Modi’s BJP, hailed the “visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi” that has made India “victorious nation in the fight against COVID.”

This new wave in India was partly driven by a more transmissible variant but mostly due to Modi government’s negligence. Not only did Modi, much like Trump, engage in large political rallies during a pandemic, he also pandered to the religious establishment by allowing a major Hindu festival, which attracts millions, to go forward. With mask wearing nary in sight, the results were predictable. Cases exploded and the Indian health system collapsed. The Prime Minister who was prematurely boasting of a self-reliant India is now receiving generous donations from many countries, with the United States being a major benefactor. The Biden administration, rightfully understanding that the pandemic cannot be controlled if a major nation like India is on fire, is sending vaccines, large-scale oxygen generation units and N95 masks.

The generosity of the American people will undoubtedly be appreciated by my family, friends and untold millions. However, the challenge in India remains one of sane governance. Modi and his allies seem more worried about critical social media posts and editorials in foreign newspapers than about the plight of people gasping for air. Just as Trump made states fight for COVID-19 test kits, Modi has left the states in India to fend for themselves in securing supplies of vaccines. Even as a practicing physician, my father cannot secure a vaccine for himself much less his family. Following threats from “powerful people” the CEO of Serum Institute, India’s leading vaccine manufacturer, has fled to London.

Growing up in India, I have lived through many social traumas. But through it all, I have always found my family and friends resilient even in the face of overwhelming odds. But now I sense resignation and a foreboding of disaster. They feel powerless in the face of this incalculable tragedy. Dealing with this fatalism has only made matters worse for the Indian diaspora in America.

Parvez Ahmed was born in India and is professor of finance and director of diversity and inclusion at the Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida.

Published in the Florida Times Union, Feb 7, 2021.

by Parvez Ahmed

When terrorists claiming to act in the name of my faith attacked the homeland on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims in America were not only targeted for surveillance, they were also repeatedly asked to condemn terrorism even when the only thing they shared with the terrorists was their religion. Frenzied protests were mounted when a group of Muslims wanted to build a spiritual community center not far from the World Trade Towers.

At a personal level, I recall with pain, my own saga going through the process of being confirmed as a Human Rights Commissioner for the city of Jacksonville. City Council members grilled me on “Islamic” terrorism and cared little about my views on human rights. During the confirmation hearing one Republican council member went as far as asking me to pray to “my God” before voting against me.

Despite having no material connections to any terrorists, many Muslims were hounded by the media, their loyalty questioned in public and frequently discriminated at work. The frenzy reached its peak when candidate Donald J. Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. and followed up with his first executive action to essentially criminalize my faith by enacting a travel ban from several Muslim majority countries. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld a watered-down version of this discriminatory policy. Post 9-11 realities, from government-sanctioned detentions at airports to privately ginned up “protests” by hate groups, have left a deep scar in ways unimaginable. All this in the name of national security.

Fast forward to the Capitol attacks on Jan. 6. The rioters, far from being an impromptu flash mob, were incited by repeated assertions of a big lie that the presidential election was stolen. They planned in plain view to storm the Capitol. They wanted to kill or kidnap the next two in the line of succession to the President – Trump’s own Vice President and the Democratic Speaker of the House. A report released in October 2020 concluded that white supremacist groups pose a grave danger to the nation. And yet no one is asking all elected Republican officials to put out clear statements of condemnations. No one is demanding that Republican voters explain why their side is aiding and abetting terrorism. No security agency is engaged in surveillance of Republicans.

Despite my trauma of being harassed and surveilled, I am not advocating for its reciprocation. I am weary of additional intrusive laws against domestic terrorism that could lead to stereotyping and when the inevitable abuses happen, Black and Brown communities will be its primary victims. However, it is hard to miss the contrast in the treatment of Muslims versus Republicans, both Americans.

That White perpetrators of terrorism are being treated differently than Black or Brown perpetrators, is no accident of history. This is the outcome of our caste-based system so graphically and eloquently outlined in Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller “Caste – The Origins of Our Discontents.”

The long arc of American history is not just the rosy stories we tell ourselves about the triumphs of justice but the stories we hate to admit – the perpetuation of our caste-based society where “a fixed and embedded ranking of human value” is based on, “the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits.”

If not the presumed superiority, what explains the hypocrisy in the way terrorism committed by Muslims is distinguished from terrorism committed by Whites who responded to the incitement of a Republican President? It appears that once again as a society we are failing to hold White supremacy accountable for its sordid history of violence and sedition.

Parvez Ahmed is Director for Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Finance at UNF’s Coggin College of Business. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of UNF or the Coggin College of Business.
 
You can read more about the author here.

Follow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/parvezahmed

Published in the Florida Times Union, Aug 9, 2020.

by Parvez Ahmed

To mitigate the health and economic impact of COVID-19, besides a national testing and contact tracing program, President Donald Trump had to do three things: mandate masks nationwide, institute a near nationwide extended lockdown and provide stimulus money to cover the economic hole created by the lockdown.

If he did all this in March and April, the country would be returning to a semblance of normality by now, as much of Europe is beginning to do.

Instead, we are in the middle of the worst public health crisis since the H1N1 flu pandemic of 1918, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929-33 and the worst civil unrest since the Civil Rights Movement of 1954-68.

That all three crises have converged is not coincidental.

The U.S. is 4.2 percent of the world’s population but accounts for nearly 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases and deaths. Over the past two weeks, the U.S. has been averaging nearly nine times the number of cases and deaths than in the European Union.

Although EU’s gross domestic product shrank more, due to widespread and strict lockdowns, it did not suffer higher unemployment because of a well-implemented stimulus program. The U.S. spent 13 percent of its GDP on stimulus spending while the EU is spending about 4 percent. The EU got more for its sacrifices because they realized that what is good for the public’s health is also good for their pocketbook.

Following the death of George Floyd, our ongoing quest for racial justice erupted into an unprecedented national movement partly because the public is tired of an inept and divisive administration.

As the initial COVID-19 victims turned out to be disproportionately Black and Brown in mostly Blue states, the Trump administration’s response was unmistakably political. A new report in Vanity Fair suggests that in the early days of the pandemic the Trump administration had crafted a national response plan. But the plan never came to fruition because the White House determined that the virus was going to be limited to primarily Blue states, which would “benefit” Trump as he pinned the failures on Democratic governors.

Only in the last couple weeks, as the pandemic spiked in several  Republican-led states, has the crisis begun to resonate with Trump, according to a report in The Washington Post. And yet there still is no sign of a nationwide mask mandate or targeted shutdowns. As Trump and his supporters clamor for opening schools, there is no desire to learn from the experiences of other countries. Israel, for example, reopened schools on May 17 after reporting 10 new cases on that day. Several weeks later, daily cases are once again in the thousands and several schools were shut down again.

An unprecedented 8 in 10 Americans believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. The president, despite a grudging nod toward the efficacy of masks, still by-and-large refuses to wear one in public. Through tweets and golf trips, he demonstrates how little he cares about the lives and livelihood of ordinary Americans.

This callousness is a factor in the outrage that drove an estimated 15 million and 26 million people to engage in mostly peaceful demonstrations for Black Lives Matter —  the largest and the most diverse gathering of Americans ever engaged in direct action.

The specter of unnamed and unmarked federal security forces pointing guns and firing tear gas at unarmed protestors should make all of us fearful that our democracy could be slipping out of our hands.

Trump’s recent flirtation with postponing the November election drew a sharp rebuke from Steven Calabresi, a staunch ally and co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society. After describing Trump’s tweet as “fascistic,” he called for a second impeachment inquiry.

Congressman John Lewis in an opinion column published on the day of his funeral poignantly reminded us, “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. … I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe.”

Solving the unprecedented confluence of three major crises will require many John Lewis’ creating a lot of good trouble.

Parvez Ahmed is Director for Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Finance at UNF’s Coggin College of Business. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of UNF or the Coggin College of Business.

President Trump’s contention that members of the so called “The Squad”, who are all women of color, with three of them born in the US and the fourth a naturalized citizen, should go back to where they came from is nothing new in the history of America’s racist past. People perceived as being different from the dominant political majority in this country – white, heterosexual and male, have heard such epithet hurled at them many times. What is new and unprecedented is that such language came from the White House, the premier seat of American power and the face of America to the world.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission telling anyone to go back to where they came from is illegal. In other words, if any employer said this to their employee they could be fined and sued. If an employee said it to another they could be fired. But the President of the US said and defended it. In the House, 187 of his fellow Republicans failed to muster the courage to condemn their leader, further deepening America’s racial divides. American racism has moved from the shadows, where it was relegated to post-1960s to back in the open. What a stunning reversal of history.

After Trump’s racist tweets much of punditry focused on the brilliance of Trump’s strategy to use race as reelection tool. But this is not 2016. What worked earlier is unlikely to work again. The 2018 elections were proof that despite Trump’s attempt to play up the fear of migrant “caravans” about to invade us across the southern border, Americans overwhelming choose his opposition by record margins. A new USA Today/ Ipsos poll taken after the Trump tweets show that by a 65 to 18 margin Americans agree that Trump’s tweets were indeed racist. By a margin of 59 to 30 they agree that those tweets were un-American and by a margin of 68-20 they agree they were offensive. Even Republicans by a margin of 45 to 34 agree that Trump’s tweets were racist.

We have reached an important crossroads in our liberal democracy. Our Pledge of Allegiance “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” rings hollow when the person and the office entrusted to uphold it subverts it in the most ugliest of manner. The vision of America as an immigrant nation is being challenged in ways not seen since the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent. American democracy is in serious trouble. And only we can fix it.

Massive civic education programs that inspire the younger generation to discard cynicism and choose engagement will be a good start. A populist push for making voting more accessible should be a priority. Marrying direct action resistance with thoughtful engagement is a must. Reconciliation and resistance must not represent polar choices. But rather we must demonstrate a new paradigm for intersectionality. Resistance to a Trump administration must be married with an effective strategy of reconciliation with Trump voters. America remains the Promised Land even with a dangerous demagogue at its helm. We must still believe that the moral arc of the universe will bend towards justice. The road ahead got a lot tougher. But it is not an unfamiliar road. We have been on that road many times and each time we overcame often at a significant cost. Why should this time be different?

From #MeToo to #BlackLivesMatter to #NoMuslimBan to #CloseTheCamps, ordinary Americans are mobilized to organize and resist. No more standing idly by as powerful men harass women. No more looking the other way when black boys are gunned down by police officers. No more silence when children are caged and tortured in our name and with our tax dollars. It is time that each one of us take stock and ask what it means to be an American or more importantly who counts as being American. If we cannot disagree without undermining each other’s Americanness, then America as an idea may already be lost.

American elites talk a lot about peace. But what they really love are wars. The media elites covering President Trump’s recent speech on Afghanistan were praiseworthy of Trump’s sober tone even though, in reality, the speech heralded open-ended war. No troop levels were announced. No timeline was provided.

No one knows the cost in blood and treasure. But that did not stop the pursuit of a quixotic idea that the U.S. will kill its way out of the problem of terrorism in Afghanistan.

The Cost of Wars Project at Brown University estimates that since 9-11, America’s war efforts in Afghanistan total $2 trillion. Adding war spending in Iraq and Pakistan to the equation puts the total at $5 trillion, nearly 25 percent of U.S. GDP in 2016. The total death toll in Afghanistan is estimated at over 111,000. More than 2,300 American soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice.

While more than 42,000 Taliban and other militants have been killed, over 35,000 Taliban fighters still remain in action. By some estimates, there are more Taliban militants today than at the start of the U.S. war efforts about 16 years ago. And, despite years of heavy American footprint in Afghanistan, the Taliban today control 37 percent of the country.

So, Trump’s logic is what could not be achieved with over 100,000 U.S. troops, can now be achieved with a few thousand more troops beyond the 8,500 still stationed there?

In his speech, the Commander-in-Chief said, “We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.” What about the more than 40,000 we killed so far? Why did that not end terrorism? He went on to assert that his new approach will be, “the integration of all instruments of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—toward a successful outcome.”

Did the previous two presidents not try something similar? In fact, many points of Trump’s speech closely resembled Obama’s 2009 speech on Afghanistan.

Besides the fact that 12 million fewer people watched Trump’s speech compared to that of Obama’s speech eight years ago, perhaps the biggest departure was Trump’s strident language about Pakistan. Trump correctly diagnosed that a large number of terrorist organizations are active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He called it, “the highest concentration in any region anywhere in the world.”

Why then does his Muslim-ban (euphemistically called the travel-ban) not include Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Pakistan’s long history of flirting with terrorist organizations is indeed a problem but U.S. troops also use Pakistan as an entry point into Afghanistan. Without Pakistan’s cooperation, the “new” Afghanistan strategy will be just as successful as the past ones, which is to say not very. Asking Pakistan to, “demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order and to peace,” may get a few applause lines across the border in India but will not make the people of Pakistan endear to American efforts.

It is noteworthy that Pakistanis have sacrificed their lives standing up to Taliban and the myriad of other extremists that have tormented their region.

Pakistan’s love-hate relationship with extremists is rooted in its own regional struggle with neighboring India. Previous administrations have always tried to be nuanced about this delicate power struggle between two nuclear armed nations. Abandoning this strategic patience seems like a dangerous turn towards more militarism in an already volatile region.

Moreover, how can Trump bring diplomatic pressure to bear while at the same time leaving key positions in the State Department unfilled and cutting State Department budget at the same time?

The Trump speech has left many unanswered questions. Trump vowed that, “from now on, victory will have a clear definition.” But he never defined what victory will actually look like. As long as America’s war efforts remain shouldered by a disproportionately small group of volunteers and as long as politicians keep selling that we can fight our existential war without asking American’s for any sacrifice in treasure (taxes), militarism will continue to drain our blood and treasure without bringing us closer to any meaningful resolution.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2017/08/trumps-speech-afghanistan-pakistan-signals-unending-war/

President Trump’s uncharacteristically monotonic speech to a gathering of Muslim leaders in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, went off without any gaffes, to the great satisfaction of his advisers. Trump’s speech was similar to that of President Obama in Cairo, eight years ago. Both Trump and Obama, acknowledged the obvious commonality of the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and rhetorically extended an olive branch to Muslims by paying respects to their faith of Islam. Trump also acknowledged that Muslims are the primary victims of terrorism, a point made by Obama too, which however, Trump and his supporters till date had taken great pains in avoiding.

But can one speech erase the litany of anti-Muslim statements? In 2011, Trump not only peddled birtherism but also insinuated that Obama was born Muslim. He then went on to spuriously assert that, “if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.” Trump also famously said, “I think Islam hates us.” The pinnacle of Trump’s anti-Muslim sentiments shone through in 2015, when he said, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” This statement is at the core of several court challenges on Trump’s travel ban of people from several Muslim majority countries.

Although commentators noted the similarities between Trump’s and Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world, Trump’s speech has generally been panned by Muslim activists. While Obama spoke to students at the historic Al Azhar University in Cairo, Trump addressed mostly kings and despots in Riyadh. Terrorism in the name of Islam emanates from disaffected youth. Stoking the egos of the very leaders that have robbed these young people of their dreams cannot be seriously taken as a new path forward. If Trump wanted to make amends on his harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, then why not outreach to Muslims at home first? Trump appeared comfortable with the notion that Islam is a foreign religion with a glorious past. He seems uncomfortable accepting the reality that Islam is American, with a future intertwined with that of America.

Both Trump and his host, King Salman incorrectly alluded that Saudi Arabia is the heart of Islam. The geographical locations of the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah does not make Saudi Arabia Islam’s Vatican. To the contrary, Saudi Arabia exports a puritanical, Wahhabi, version of Islam, which forms the core teachings of many radical Muslim groups. While all Wahhabis are not terrorists, most Muslim terrorists have found ideological comity with them. The Saudi government may not be directly financing terrorist groups, but it is hard to imagine that an absolute monarchy, which tightly regulates all aspect of social life, is unaware of the money spigots sustaining Wahhabism at home and abroad. Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam is unrepresentative of the broader Muslim world and the export of this brand has been destabilizing many moderate nations.

Trump’s bellicose rhetoric towards Iran perhaps heralds a new era of Middle East conflict. While lecturing Muslims about unity, Trump and his Saudi hosts ignored the reality that Shias are as much part of Islam as Sunnis. Not having Iran, the largest Shia country, at the table where American relationship with the Muslim world is being discussed, is an omission with ominous foreboding. Peace in the Middle East will require a grand détente, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In both cases, the U.S. will have to be perceived as an honest broker. Trump’s bear hug of the Saudis sent the wrong signal of America cheerleading for Sunni Arabs against Shia Persians. In addition, Trump’s willful disregard for Saudi Arabia’s complicity in the Yemeni humanitarian disaster undermined any perceived olive branch to Muslims.

Trump’s Saudi visit was much hypocritical ado about nothing. Many commentators failed to note that the four important words missing from Trump’s speech were – democracy, freedom and human rights. Securing a deal to sell more arms to a region already awash in arms is not a new turn for diplomacy. The arms deal may secure a few American jobs but those jobs will be built on the graves of more innocent souls, which in turn will fuel more radicalism, continuing a vicious cycle of reprisals and death in the Middle East.

Donald Trump’s speech in Arizona about his signature issue of immigration terrified me. Of particular concern was the perception that anyone who is not in Trump’s image, will be objects of his ire. In a Trump presidency, I have three strikes against me – immigrant, Muslim and brown-skinned.

Trump’s slogan of making America great again sounds fascistic because by any objective measure America is not in serious decline. Yet he has been able to persuade many that people who do not fit the profile of the majority pose an existential threat to America. Noted CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria views Trump as a bullshit artist who is so oblivious about the world that he fails to recognize reality, even when it is obvious. This shows up in his lack of understanding about immigrants and their struggles.

In his Arizona speech, besides the dark picture he painted of immigrants, Trump advocated returning immigration levels to “historical norms,” a term he left undefined. This sounded like dog-whistle for returning America to the pre-1965 days when immigration was mostly limited to white Europeans. His speech gave the impression that America is awash with immigrants when in reality the number of legal immigrants to America has remained at about one million per year over the past two decades. The foreign born population in the U.S. now stands at only 13 percent, posing no threat to the native born majority.

In addition, the number of undocumented immigrants has decreased to around 11 million from its peak of 12.2 million in 2007. Net migration, the difference between people coming and leaving, from Mexico is now close to zero. By reasonable estimates, it is impossible to make the assertion that crime rates from undocumented immigrants are more than those from native born Americans. Trump’s statement that, “Illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year” was rated “Mostly False” by the fact-checking website PolitiFact.

Trump also played on the fears of refugees, some of the most vulnerable people on earth. Since 9-11, America has resettled 784,000 refugees, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Only three have been arrested for planning terrorist activity and only one of them for plotting to harm the homeland. As a so called “law and order” candidate Trump is silent about the many deaths resulting from police brutality or from mass shootings by people other than Muslims.

Trump also shows little reverence and understanding for the U.S. Constitution. Trump advocated the closure of mosques, because “some bad things are happening.” He was oblivious of the fact that the First Amendment protects religious liberty of all Americans. In his Arizona speech Trump advocated “extreme vetting” of visitors to the U.S., not just on understandable security grounds but on inexplicable ideological grounds. He called out “radical Islam” as one example requiring “extreme vetting.” How does one spot “radical Islam” at the border? How does a border agent determine which visitor is telling the truth about their true ideological beliefs?

Trump also lacks understanding of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Trump not only wants to reinstitute the torturous practice of water boarding but he also advocates killing family members of suspected terrorists. Trump’s blanket ban on all people from “terrorist countries” is possibly unconstitutional because the definition of “terrorist countries” is vague and if any such definition only singles out Muslim majority countries, it could be viewed by a court as a thinly veiled guise for discriminating against Muslims. When Trump railed against a judge and proclaimed him unfit because of his Mexican heritage, he not only exhibited racial animus but also ignorance about the separation of powers idea in the U.S. Constitution.

There is no telling who Trump will target next. It’s bad enough that as a narcissist, he has Quixotic ideas about his own capabilities. But it is worse that as a demagogue he peddles falsehoods that threaten vulnerable communities. Trump scares me, not because any of his crazy ideas are practically feasible. My real fear is that his brand of bullshitting and nativism will become an indelible part of the American political and social landscape.

I am not alone. Famed journalist Carl Bernstein called Trump a neo-fascist pointing out, “I think the word neo is crucial because it means new and it’s a peculiarly American kind of fascism.” While there are important historical divergences between Trump and Hitler, the parallels in their policy choices and their extolling of authoritarianism ought to be concerning enough to venture where political discourse seldom should go. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, which provides risk assessment and business intelligence to corporations around the world, recently ranked Trump presidency as a top 10 risk facing the world. They cited three major concerns – disruption to the world economy, political chaos in the U.S., and heightened security threat to America and American interests around the world.

Trump being fascistic was based on my understanding of the broad strokes of history. Authoritarian leaders inevitably bring chaos all the while promising utopian fixes. While the U.S. is not the dominant world power it once was, mostly due to the inevitable rise of other countries, it still remains a nation with formidable hard and soft power. Perhaps one of the best places to look will be U.N.’s Human Development Index (HDI) that measures, “richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy.” In 2015, the U.S. ranked #8. Countries outranking America are those whom Bernie Sanders hold out as models, such as Norway and Switzerland, and whom Trump dismisses as socialists. From 1990 to 2015, America’s HDI score improved by 6.5 percent, despite encountering several economic recessions along the way.

The area where U.S. performs worst is something that Trump never talks about – income inequality. After taking taxes into account, U.S. has the second highest level of income inequality, behind only Chile. According to a report from Pew Research, “U.S. tax and spending policy does relatively little, compared with its peers in the developed world, to reduce inequality.” Trump’s supporter are ostensibly angry because of economic sufferings, but the most important factor behind that suffering is virtually non-existent in Trump’s platitude of making America great again. The headline from Fortune magazine says it all, “Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Would Make the Rich Richer, Uncle Sam Poorer.” Debt will explode as the government takes-in less revenue. The economic populism that is supposedly behind Trump’s rise is mostly smokes and mirrors.

So what is fueling his rise? A study by Vox.com showed that people who favor conformity and are wary of outsiders correlate well with Trump supporters. Social scientists call such people authoritarians. Trump supporters may not view him as a dictator but his aggressive tone and polices resonate with their fears and anxieties. Trump’s odious views do not necessarily rise to fascism unless coupled with Trump’s incitement of violence. When he threatens to punch protestors or alludes to riots if the Republican Party does not coronate him, he is using the playbook of bullies. And when his supporters beat up Mexicans and Muslims, his threat is not protected free speech but akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.

If you are not a Mexican, you may not be impacted by Trump’s characterization of Mexican immigrants as “rapists”. But those who are Mexican or perceived to be Mexican are already facing violent backlash at schools. If you are not Muslim, you may not care about imposing a ban of undefined length on all Muslims entering the U.S. But for those with family, social, and business ties to one-fifth of humanity, such ideas represent a clear and present danger. If you care not about international laws and treaties, you may turn a blind eye to Trump advocating torture and illegal killings of civilians. But those American service women and men, whose safety depends upon reciprocity, are undoubtedly at risk if Trump indeed follows through on his bluster. Recently when asked about his foreign policy advisors, Trump said he talks to himself. In other words, his is a cult of personality not a movement of ideas. If this is not fascistic, tell me what is?

Nationalism, condescension towards human rights, use of scapegoats for a unifying cause, sexism, threats to free journalism, subordinating all other concerns for national security, fetish for police power, are some of the common traits of fascism. Trump check marks on all of them, albeit in a modern American context. Trump has already disrupted social cohesion. Imagine how he may react when he feels the power of having his finger on the nuclear button. It is never too late to oppose fascists and there is no shame in switching sides to stand up to bullies.