America has always been fascist and also what's happening now IS worse than it has been post-Emancipation.
Typically I describe this as the "descent into overt fascism, as opposed to covert fascism" but that doesn't always get the point across and is honestly not all that precise.
So if you folks who DO have a good background in theory could understand that by "descent" I actually mean "getting way fucking worse all the time" so I can talk to ppl who don't know fascism, I'd appreciate it.