https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democracy-movement-to-defeat-trump-fascism

We Need a #Progressive #Democracy #Movement to Defeat #Fascism—Now!
THOM HARTMANN
Dec 16, 2023

..."People, not institutions, generally create and populate movements. And, as Joe Madison says, doing so requires effort, persistence, passion, evangelism, and, yes, sacrifice.

While #Democrats decry “the cult of Trump” and the media often ridicules Trump’s “personality cult,” the reality is that there’s never been a successful movement in history that didn’t have a charismatic leader. The movement may have preceded the leader, but the leader and his or her charisma is what makes it so potent.
...
Movement leaders — like true movements themselves — are disruptive. They lay down in the street, stand before lines of police, let themselves get beaten and arrested for a greater cause. They sacrifice.

The successful ones are almost always talented in the arts of mass communication, in public speaking, in organizing political and guerrilla theater.
...
Will a progressive democracy movement leader emerge to take on the growing forces of fascism represented by the Trump and Qanon cults — and the handful of third-party wannabee movement leaders — in America?

Are there people with talent and charisma willing to risk the fate of JFK and MLK to take head-on the armed militias and algorithm-fueled haters who’ve sworn their lives and allegiance to Trump and his ideal of a Christian-only white supremacist nation?

And, if one or more does, will the institutional Democratic Party treat them as a threat, the way they did Bernie and Howard Dean before him? Or will they recognize that the only way to defeat a movement like Trump now commands is with another movement of equal passion and fervor — and to get behind it, collaborate, and use its force and energy to change policy and politics, the way LBJ did when he saw that MLK would never give up?"...