The election of 2016 was divisive, negative, and troubling. Donald Trump’s campaign energized white nationalists who saw him as an avatar of their grievances and their anxiety over the country’s demographic changes. Within days of Donald Trump winning his first presidency, neonazi leaders like Richard Spencer were holding rallies with their arms raised in the fascist salute, screaming “Hail Trump! Hail Victory!”

This surging white nationalist movement, linked to a series of racist terror attacks and an increase in hate crime, represents a threat to inclusive democracy and the real possibility of fascism taking root once again, as it had in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

In response to this threat the modern incarnation of the White Rose Resistance coalesced, a new century resistance to fight new century nazis.

By 2017 white nationalist rallies were openly held, including the infamous “Unite the Right” rally in August of that year in Charlottesville, Virginia. Unlike smaller rallies held prior to Trump’s election, the white nationalists now felt so emboldened they didn’t bother covering their faces.

Heather Heyer was killed when white nationalist James Alex Fields plowed his car into the crowd of counter-protesters, injuring several others. Fields, whose former teacher said was fascinated by Nazism and Hitler, was charged with Heyer’s murder along with 30 federal hate crimes.

Web hosting company GoDaddy expelled neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer after it ran an article denigrating Heyer.

Donald Trump’s reaction to these events – the violent rally and Heather’s murder by a nazi – was to declare there were “very fine people on both sides” and expressed sympathy for the white nationalists.

At the same time as Trump was praising nazis, his regime was attempting to prevent POC from immigrating to the US, legally or otherwise. Among other policies he signed an executive order that came to be known as the “muslim ban“. Fine organizations like L4GG fought him tooth and claw, but on the southern border several refugee families had been torn asunder by an intentionally cruel program of separating children from their refugee families. Inept paperwork and tracking meant that thousands were never reunited with their parents.

On the Northern border many muslims who feared attacks by their neighbours, either in future or because they’d already experienced them, were fleeing into Canada alongside asylum seekers and other persons at risk.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was sympathetic to the plight of these asylum seekers, tweeting “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”

According to the two nations’ Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) asylum seekers must apply for status in the first “safe country” they reach. They can’t apply for asylum in Canada at official border crossings with the US, because according to the treaty they’re already deemed to be in a safe country. However, a loophole in the agreement enables migrants crossing at unofficial border points to claim asylum from within Canada.

But there was understandable concern about undocumented people slipping across the border, whether welcomed by Trudeau or not.

As a small scale solution a Canadian founding member of the White Rose Resistance used contacts within the Canadian federal government to negotiate a Parole In Place system.

Asylum seekers and other at-risk people were brought near the Canadian border by American White Rose Resistance members, where they would perform an “irregular crossing” – walking across the border without going through a checkpoint. They were picked up on the Canadian side by other members who drove them to host families arranged by religious leaders in nearby communities. Their identification was copied and given to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Border Services Agency along with the address of their host family.

They were technically arrested but “paroled in place”, living with people who spoke their language while the RCMP and CBSA ran the necessary background checks and other due diligence. While that was in progress Canadian immigration consultants would help them work with Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on their claim.

In this way the at-risk people were safe and housed, at no cost to US or Canadian taxpayers (save for the voluntary expenses of the host families) and the proper authorities knew of their crossing, their identity, and their location.

In the 2018 midterm elections, while MAGA Republicans won two more senate seats, Democrats won 41 more house seats and gained 7 more state governors. This bolstered the guard rails that helped keep Trump’s power grabs and some of his more repugnant first term policies in check. Some MAGA politicians feared for their positions and others stepped down.

Half way through his presidency Trump had still not yet staffed all of the available cabinet positions in his whitehouse and the regime was undergoing a lot of churn. His presidency had more turnover in his regime than any president since the Brookings Institution started measuring in 1980, with 92% of his A-team followed by another 45% of his second hires for his A-team. The turnover rate in his first year was double the next highest president since Reagan.

By 2019, irregular crossings from the US into Canada were on the wane, down 46% from the same period in 2018. White Rose Resistance members on both sides of the border were able to take a breather from the PIP program – which unfortunately became a permanent one. More on that later.

Those American and Canadian White Rose Resistance members who were part of the network funneling at-risk people into Canada quietly returned to their daily lives, unsung heroes, to take part in resistance through other means.

White Rose Resistance was now more than 25,000 strong. Rather than redundantly duplicate other efforts, the leadership focused on using social media to alert its members and followers of upcoming protests and events organized by other partner groups such as the Third Annual Women’s March in Washington in January 2019, a protest out of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York against its funding by the Sackler family, the owners of Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma in February, and so on.

On 25 July Trump placed a phonecall to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanding that he “find” evidence against Joe Biden’s son Hunter, which Trump could then use as leverage against his political opponent. Zelenskyy refused.  Trump illegally threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine, an act for which he was later impeached.

While Trump and his MAGA crew were for all intents and purposes politically cock blocked, it was not a time to let the anti-nazi guard down.

In 2019 data gathered by the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center documented a continued and rising number of white nationalist groups for the second straight year, a 55 percent increase since 2017.

Domestic terror attacks by white nationalists and other extremists, at home and abroad, delivered blow after blow in 2019. A synagogue in Poway, California. A rabbi’s home in a New York City suburb. A Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Beneath those headlines, underreported hate crimes added to the death toll and reinforced the climate of violence that threatens lives

The beginning of 2022 saw much instability. Just weeks after Russian troops had built up along the Ukrainian border for an “exercise”, they broke the ceasefire and invaded Ukraine. On the US / Canada border there was a surge crossings, reaching over 20,000 in Biden’s first year in office. Disingenuous conservative pundits used this as a “gotcha” – if the earlier irregular crossings were people fleeing Trump’s policies, why then were people fleeing under Biden?

This assumes there is only one reason for people to flee, and ignores the obvious other; the rise in neonazi activity in the US making people feel frightened and unwelcome.

The White Rose Resistance hoped to reactivate the unofficial PIP program used earlier, but this gate had slammed shut. In March of 2022 Prime Minister Trudeau closed the loophole, decreeing “To address irregular migration, we are expanding the Safe Third Country Agreement to apply not only at designated ports of entry, but across the entire land border, including internal waterways, ensuring fairness and more orderly migration between our two countries.”

Even as White Rose tried to solve this problem there were far, far fewer people referred to the network. Rather than planning and linking up with groups that could help them, people were so deperate to flee the US they were running for the Canadian border and hoping for the best.

Throughout 2022 and 2023 nazi attacks on individuals and even infrastructure continued to increase.

Trump slithered back into office as POSOTUS once again, this time bringing Elon Musk with him. Fascism wasn’t just rising from street groups – it infected the oval office.

Just as Musk had yanked wires and fired entire departments at Twitter, causing outages and losing revenue, he went around US government departments as an unelected, unofficial representative leaving pulled funding and mass firings in his wake.

Musk endorsed the AfD, a far right fascist party, during the 2025 German elections and spoke at their rally.

Trump spent half of his first month in office golfing, the other half enriching himself and pissing off his allies.

Not content with setting up his own crypto token, selling billions of dollars worth, then rugpulling his own fans to put the money into his pocket, He, Melania, Eric, and Junior invested in established cryptocurrency like bitcoin and etherium in the days before he took office. On 3 March he announced that the US will heavily invest in a crypto reserve, immediately sending prices higher.

He strengthened ties with industry, as fascists do, by removing oversight, made moves to disband OSHA, and began firing workers at the FAA and other departments.

Trump hadn’t forgotten that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had refused to help him smear Joe Biden in 2019. In a publicly televised meeting between the two men on 28 February, Trump and his vice president JD Vance ambushed Zelenskyy, lying about how Ukraine started the war and several other points, then haranguing him for not saying “thank you” in that specific meeting.

It was clear that the one-sidedly hostile meeting was an attempt to get Zelenskyy to snap so Trump could justify pulling US weapons and other aid that had been promised to Ukraine. When Zelenskyy didn’t take the bait, Trump unilaterally cancelled the aid on 3 March, three days after the meeting. Illegally cancelling aid to Ukraine without congressional approval is what got him impeached in 2019, but now Trump has stuffed the supreme courts and the cabinet with yes men and women.

The White Rose Resistance, and the American people, are faced with the challenge of fascism returning to power. An autocratic ruler whose only loyalty is to his robber barons supporters, a base that is mobilized by hate toward minority groups and foreigners, isolating the country from allies while talking about expanding by seizing land from other nations.

Hans and Sophie Scholl et al did what they could to resist in Munich, Nazi Germany just 8 decades ago.  Through the spread of information, helping to organize protests, and other means the White Rose continues its resistance.