Ask Ethan: Has the USA become a fascist nation in 2025? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | May, 2025

Fascism was a powerful, evil force in the 20th century, notably in Italy, Germany, and Spain. Is the USA repeating history here in 2025?

The landscape of the entire world has changed dramatically over the last few months. Longstanding agreements and allies have been abandoned, traditional protections for marginalized groups have been replaced by active persecutions, and tremendous numbers of civil servants have been removed from their positions. Government-funded science, once the pre-eminent achievement of the United States, is rapidly being dismantled. Instead of focusing on investing in building new, cutting-edge facilities, the government has instead enacted catastrophic funding cuts to University research, and has defunded and fired workers from large numbers of federal agencies, including the US Forest Service, NOAA, the Department of Education, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, as well as NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health.

Just a few weeks ago, I noted that these moves displayed many eerie parallels to…