A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference in upstate New York, where the American writer and film-maker Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm, Restrepo) traced his father’s flight from the Nazis.

From Dresden he made it to Spain, then to France, and then to Portugal. Eventually he managed to settle in America in 1941 because “he said fascism would never follow him here”.

Junger did not need to labour the point because it may well be that the guarantee of a fascism-free America is a warranty about to expire. There is a 50-50 chance that, a week from now, a fascist will be heading back to the Oval Office.

The US in which Junger’s father found refuge was by no means a full democracy. Millions of Black citizens were systematically disenfranchised. White supremacist groups had deep roots and powerful political influence.

But the US did have vibrant democratic institutions, traditions and civic movements and it did, of course, expend an immense amount of blood and treasure in helping to liberate Europe from the Nazis. It was not naive to imagine that this was one place where fascism would not follow.

It is now. The term I coined in writing about Donald Trump as president in 2017 was “pre-fascist”. It was intended to suggest that although he was not there yet, the direction of travel was clear. But it’s been obvious for a while that the “pre” should be dropped.

Rather belatedly, Kamala Harris has used the f-word about Trump. Last week, John Kelly, the former Marine general who was........

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