Fascism doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Last night, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Jews around the world mourn the 6 million lives lost to the Nazis, Donald Trump took another step down the path towards fascism.

While we remember and mourn all who lost their lives in the Holocaust, we must recognize that we have not yet defeated the forces that led to the discrimination, displacement, and systematic murder of many of our ancestors. We must face the fact that the world in which those atrocities happened looks devastatingly like our world today. In the years leading up to the Holocaust, the world endured a deadly pandemic, a fractured world order, economic devastation, and the rise of a vicious far-right. Moments of instability always open up space for new paths to be forged. The choice in that time was clear: build a world where everyone enjoys dignity, justice, and well-being, or cede the future to those who use hate to divide, control, and attack us — while benefiting themselves.

We face the same choice now.

As Yom Hashoah began last night, Trump continued to use the same tactics as the failed authoritarians before him. He and his followers will try to scapegoat immigrants to distract from the mass death they have wrought and the oppressive, broken economic order they seek to protect.

We know that only leads to more death and more disaster.

Since he announced his candidacy and throughout his presidency, Trump has depended on the lie that America’s ills are due to undocumented immigrants here and other people, particularly people of color, who would want to live here.

The scapegoating of Jews for Germany’s economic troubles was a centerpiece of Nazi ideology.

Like the Nazis said of the Jews, Trump and co. suggest that immigrants are taking American livelihoods and hurting economic recovery. We know that the damage to people’s livelihoods is due to inadequate crisis relief that’s built for big corporations and the 1%, and an economic system built on widespread insecurity, during normal times, for the vast majority of people.

Like the Nazis said of the Jews, Trump and co. blame the spread of disease on foreigners and immigrants. We know the spread of disease is due to his administration’s incompetence, negligence, and greed.

Trump and his followers are so dependent on this ideology in order to cling to power, that they choose to keep immigrants in ICE detention to die as COVID spreads inside, choose to give masks for ICE agents instead of doctors, choose to seek funding for more border security, instead of directing all resources and efforts to saving lives.

The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity for the hateful and powerful to accelerate those myths — but also an opportunity to show how hollow they are, and to point towards a future that actually serves us all.

On a day like today, many of us find ourselves asking, “How could ordinary people have let something so atrocious happen?”

The years leading up to the Holocaust may provide a clue. Recall any number of infamous images of ordinary people pushing wheelbarrows of devalued money, of waiting in interminable bread lines, of families cooped up in dismal housing. Those old images may feel very familiar at this moment. Then and now, ordinary people facing deprivation and scarcity naturally seek out answers. They want to know who is responsible for their hardship. And they want to know how it will get better.

The Nazis channeled the outrage of people who were facing unemployment, low wages, food scarcity at the Jews. But that answer did not help people in need: it wrought mass violence and further disaster.

But it was not inevitable then, and that outcome is not inevitable now.

Another option has always been present. While we remember today the centuries of slavery, oppression, and massacre, we must also recall the equally long history of coresistance, rebellion, and struggle. As the right tries to distract from the opening wounds in our society by blaming immigrants, we must all rally around the real solutions to the longtime crises now at the center of attention.

We know the solution is not to choose fascism. The solution is to choose solidarity and justice.

We know that this country has the means to provide adequate economic relief for all people living here, regardless of their immigration status. We know that this country can provide health care to all people here as a fundamental right. We know that this country can stop its cruel and violent deportation machine and provide papers for all undocumented people. We know that this country can choose a Green New Deal that can power an economic recovery in the present and save us a livable future.

We can fight to make sure all of us get the help we need, that nobody in this country goes without food or shelter or healthcare.

Or we can sit back as Trump abandons millions to poverty and fear, while telling his followers to blame their suffering on immigrants.

Never Again.