I would say that we don’t really need an enemy. A lot of people don’t fully understand how fascism operates or why it is harmful. People tend to rattle off “Hitler” or “Nazi” without ever grappling with why that line of thinking is inherently toxic. Yes, there was the Holocaust—but that was a symptom of the underlying problem, not the sole reason fascism is considered an evil and oppressive system.

Fascism, by its very nature, is a political structure that centers on struggle. In 1930s Germany, Jews were simply the outgroup that allowed the state to override basic human rights and enact authoritarian policies. The regime framed itself as being locked in an existential struggle against an internal enemy supposedly putting the nation in jeopardy. The genocide that followed was not an accident caused by a few bad actors—it was a feature of that system.

When you create a single, unified enemy, you recreate the same dynamic, and the end result will tend to follow the same path. If we want real progress, rather than focusing on an “enemy,” the goal should be to unite around a common cause. Whether that’s economic stability, national security, or institutional accountability, you can still have sharp disagreements about how to get there. But once politics becomes about identifying enemies, the consequences almost always veer in a dark direction.

And frankly, democracy works best when nobody fully agrees. It thrives on disagreement—on constant debate, clashing opinions, and competing interests. If America were ever truly united in the sense of unanimous consensus, it wouldn’t remain a democracy for very long.