The American fascist, said Wallace, “is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.” But, the former vice president added, they are especially inclined toward propaganda. “With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

Wallace argued that American fascism could be “encountered on Wall Street.” He noted that, “Some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the Potomac” in Washington.

That willingness to call out his fellow business and political leaders, even fellow Democrats, distinguished Wallace from most other political figuires—in his time, and ours.

Wallace was a controversial vice president and an even more controversial presidential candidate in 1948. A onetime Republican who was drawn into the Democratic fold by FDR, Wallace was a man of deep Christian faith who studied the great religions of the world, an extraordinarily successful businessman who supported trade unions and recognized the value of government intervention on behalf of consumers, and a proud American who sought to avert the Cold War by advocating for diplomacy with the Soviet Union, when others refused to do so. He was accused of being too close to radicals, including the communist and socialist labor organizers, civil rights activists, and Hollywood writers US Senator Joe McCarthy would eventually target. His explicit advocacy for an end to “Jim Crow” segregation inspired death threats.

But, when it came to identifying and calling out the fascist threat abroad and at home, FDR’s vice president was acting as a political pragmatist who recognized a genuine danger and a necessary response. He used the term “Americanized fascism” to help people recognize that authoritarian tactics and threats were not merely a foreign concern. What Wallace wanted Americans to understand is that fascist thinking can adapt itself to different moments, and different countries. Indeed, he explained, American fascism “is an infectious disease, and we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension of invidious distinction.”

Wallace argued that it was not difficult to identify American fascists. “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution,” he wrote. “They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Eight decades after Wallace wrote his description of American fascism, the United States finds itself at a moment when there is a great battle for political power between Trump’s Republicans and Harris’s Democrats. It is appropriate in a such a moment for people of differing political persuasions to exercise caution when it comes to characterizing political rivals. But Trump with his talk of going after the “enemy within,” Vance with his racist lies, and Johnson with his pattern of amplifying divisive falsehoods, have crossed the lines about which Wallace warned.

They are leading a Republican Party that once defended civil liberties and free and fair elections in a direction Americans are well warned to avoid.

Democrats have begun to call out the threat, with varying degrees of boldness. After John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff, revealed Trump’s enthusiasm for “German generals” and said the former president meets “the general definition of fascist,” Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, announced, “Folks, the guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness — a former president of the United States and the candidate for president of the United States, says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler had.” Asked if she thinks Trump is a fascist, Harris replied, “Yes, I do.” And a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, conducted before Kelly spoke up, finds that 49 percent of Americans surveyed identified Trump as a fascist who fans the flames of hate.

But the debate must extend beyond a rigid focus on Trump, as Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) has explained. “Two of the hallmarks of a fascist political party are: One, they don’t accept the results of elections that don’t go their way. And, two, they embrace political violence,” Raskin said in a 2022 interview.

Echoing a President Biden’s ominous warning about the threat posed by MAGA Republican election denialism, Raskin decried “continuing attacks on our constitutional order from the outside by Donald Trump and his movement.”

Vance and Johnson have only moved the GOP in a more extreme direction over the past two years. That’s one of the reasons why Democrats need to be prepared to warn—as Wallace did more than 80 years ago—about “the danger of American fascism.” They need to recognize that Americans are hearing a lot about the word “fascism,” and about the threat that is poses. But they are not hearing enough about the Democratic alternative to that threat.

Wallace argued for pro-democracy politics—and a pro-democracy governance—writing:

It must develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outrun our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to speed up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

That’s a potent vision from 1944 for an anti-fascist politics that remains relevant to a 2024 presidential race where fascism is, once more, a looming threat.

The hour is late. The contest is close. But Americans are disinclined toward authoritarianism, as Harris recognized in her “closing argument” speech on Tuesday. Voters can be rallied to oppose the threat.

The pro-democracy majority has been too confident in the belief that it can’t happen here. Now, that majority must rise up and declare it won’t happen here.