Outside theology, the term “Antichrist” has a broader, more secular, and highly descriptive sense. It names a powerful, grossly malevolent person who persistently parades wealth and preens perverse tastes, who is bad to the bone, who is the polar opposite of “good.” A person like, say, Adolf Hitler  as he fostered and rode the NAZI tide. Or nowadays, a person like Donald Trump, as he resurrects and rides a neo-NAZI tide. 

You might reply: “Big deal. So what? Trump is a buffoon. He’s a moron. There have been and there are now others like him. Time is his antidote. Time passes and so will Trump. Meanwhile, I look the other way.”

Yes, time waits for no one, but meanwhile Trump covets being Fuhrer of the Fascist States of Trumplandia. Trump is an Anti-Christ on super steroids. He is locked and loaded. The longer Trump rules the more people he tramples. The longer he rules, the harder removing him and his ilk becomes. Time is too slow a solution. 

“He is fucking odious, yes, sure, I get that. But he has so many resources. What can I do other than avoid his wrath?”

You can help stop him. Did you do No Kings?

“Sure I did, and I can rally once every few months, but what does that achieve? What more could I do that would help stop him?”

The big rallies get steadily more people to act and then ask what’s next. Well, next we can help grow the opposition to Trump and to his enablers. We can help deploy that opposition to diminish Trump’s capacity for doing harm. We can help remove Trump from history. We can go on to help remove the underlying structures that produced and elevated Trump in the first place. To avoid Trump’s wrath leaves his wrath in place. It ignores those who can’t avoid his wrath.

“Okay, sure, that sounds nice, but I have to ask again, what can I personally do to help topple him?”

You can empower the opposition to Trump or to anyone like him. You can oppose his executive orders that remove obstacles to his fascist plans or that establish new tools to more aggressively pursue those plans. You can raise social costs for Trump and Co. until those costs are too high to endure. 

“Come on, those are just vague words. I need personal clarity. What specifically can I, me, this person who is right here replying to you, do?”

Let’s say you are a teacher. Each day you stand before your students. They face on-rushing hell. You know it, but you ignore it. You say not even one word to them about it. You don’t want to upset them. You don’t want to upset their parents. You don’t want to upset Trump. Really? Is that the best you can muster? How about if instead of seeking cover, you teach.

I am sorry to be a bit brutal about this, but I can’t deny what I feel. Why not say to your students—not just if you teach social studies, or current events, or history much less ethics, but even if you teach literature, chemistry, or math—“students, the world outside our classroom matters. The world outside our classroom calls for attention. Here’s why.” And then you spell out the dangers, pain, and suffering that Trump’s agenda enforces. With that said, you continue, “Students, you, your families, your friends and all people matter. Here is why.” And then you spell out the predictable impacts of what is happening now and what will happen later if Trump isn’t stopped. And you say, “So students, our next course topic is to discuss the evil that is escalating out there, and to discuss what we can do about it.”

That would be impressive. It would be exemplary. But how about if you also talk with your fellow teachers about how they can really teach, too. And how about if you tell your students to tell their friends and their families that they need to also get involved. And how about if you then join together with students and also with students’ parents to fight to open your school in the evening so that the parents and others can get together to talk about what else to do and how to use the school as a base from which to work to stop Trump. “You must be kidding,” you might reply. But no, step by step, I am not kidding. And if you saw these type acts prepared and undertaken in a movie, you’d admire the teachers. You’d applaud them. So why not do what you would admire and applaud?

Or let’s say you are a worker for Amazon, General Motors, or whatever. You truck and carry, hammer and clean each day without influence your dignity defiled. You work to earn enough for food and housing, daycare and medicine for yourself and your family. You may hate your days, but you need your job. Okay, how about if you talk with your workmates about the evil going on inside and outside your workplace to get a fair share and dignity? Not easy to do, but you do it anyway. You urge that to look away is to welcome steadily worse conditions not only for you but for your families and communities. You ask what people think. You listen, and finally, when plausible, you entreat. “We need to act. We are many. We are who this corporation depends on. We are who society depends on. Together we can raise demands. Together we can withhold our work. Together we  can reach out to the consumers of our products. We can reach out to the communities that our companies pollute. We can resist Trump and Trump’s billionaire sidekicks and puppet masters too. Everything new looks impossible until after it gets done. We can do what looks impossible—but not if we don’t try.

Or let’s say you are a soldier or a police officer—or maybe you are a relative or a neighbor of one. How about if you discuss what would be admirable, helpful, ethical things for justice-keepers to do, and also what are ugly, harmful, unethical things that justice keepers are now too often commanded to do? Did you become an active duty enforcer of law to hurt people or to help people? To be just or to impose injustice? When Trump orders you to deport, to club, to intimidate, to shoot, how about if you just say no? You may reply, “I get it, but that is seriously hard. I’d be fired. I’d be jailed. Maybe worse.” Yes, so how about if you first converse off duty about it with your fellow soldiers or police men and women? How about if you identify those who share your concerns and desires and you talk together and when ready you organize together to collectively resist? How about if you go to demonstrations against injustice and suffering not to crush dissent, but to register your own dissent? Does that sound impossible? Like you’d be attacked for it? Well, yes, and that’s why you first ask around about it. You first make a case. You first develop a group. You first grow the group. Then the group makes careful plans. And then, when you are too many to dismiss and too righteous to deny, you go public. It may sound impossible, but it is what you can do to help stop Trump like he has never been stopped before. 

Or suppose you personally know police or soldiers, national guard or ICE members, and you live near them or you socialize with them. Okay, how about if instead of avoiding the issues, you sincerely listen to them and talk with them? How about if you bring them well conceived literature? How about if you set up tables at their police stations or their military bases, and you patiently hear them and make your case with them day after day? Yes, it would be risky. But it has been done before. Watching a documentary about past war resistance, in the dark of a theatre, you might even cheer for those who did it. So why not cheer for yourself doing it?

Or let’s say you are a college student and you are on a campus that is obeying Trumpian demands. You weren’t asked your opinion. Your dean caved and then ordered you to follow your administration’s cowardly, hypocritical plans. How about you then hold meetings and discussion sessions in dorms and even in classes too? How about you collectively discuss what is happening to your school, to the community around your school, to your state, your country, and the world? 

How about you ask what you and your school are doing about what’s going on. You ask what you should do about what’s going on. You organize dorm to dorm and room to room until you have numbers sufficient to demand that Trumpian demands and Trump himself be rejected. Until you have numbers enough to demand that your school stop complying with oppressive policies, whether about distant war or ecology at home. You demand your school aids immigrants and not ICE. That your school aids dissenters and not perpetrators. That your school aids the resistance, not the Anti-Christ. And if it doesn’t, you shut it down and then open it up to pursue new values. How about that? How about sustained resistance?

Or let’s say you play football or basketball, college or pro. How about you think about and discuss with your fellow athletes how you and your sport conducts itself. What could be done to aid those who can’t even afford your tickets? What could be done to make your neighbors better off? What could be done to disavow macho violence? You not only dribble on court or run and tackle on the field, but you also use your notoriety and your wealth to better society. You stand tall with banners saying “Dear Donald, you are not welcome here. Dear ICE, get out of our city, get out of our state. Leave now, or there will be no more games until you are gone.” You take a little break from dribbling and tackling to rally and march?

Or let’s say you are a health worker in a hospital or clinic. How about demanding free medical care for all? And how about doing no harm but also demanding that Trump stop doing harm? Or let’s say you are a Republican Congressperson. Okay how about you grow a spine. You leave hypocrisy behind. Or let’s say you are a mainstream Democratic Governor or Senator—how about you face facts? Mainstream institutions and practices birthed Trump. You need to think harder to truly serve the people, to provide power to the people. Or perhaps you write. How about you write less about murder and mayhem and even about all that is wrong in society, and more about what to do about it right now and over the longer term as well? Or maybe you are a mom or a dad, or a son or a daughter. You care about your children’s or parent’s future. How about you care enough to address the forces perverting that future? Or perhaps you are a Priest or a Rabbi. You care for your congregation’s future. But how can that be, if you passively watch their world turned to shit? So you make your religious center a sanctuary for immigrants. You preach peace but also resistance.

I think you get the idea. We all need to think and think again about what to do, and then we need to do it. And I bet you can yourself think up many more ways in which you yourself in whatever your situation may be might lend your mind, lend your time, and lend your energies to help stop the rush toward fascism and, simultaneously, to replace the many ugly factors that have brought that rush to the fore. But if you resistance is new for you and you are still unclear about what you might best do, about what you can do given your means and given where you are at and all your responsibilities, that’s okay too. In that case, the task is to raise questions, to read up a bit, to converse a lot, and to think on it all until you get clear enough to act. The key first step is not to look the other way.

Think for a just a minute about Germany in the 1930s. I am no historical expert, not even a little, but even I know that Hitler couldn’t do what he did alone. And he couldn’t do it with just Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, Eichmann and the rest of his henchmen. Not even with them and also with the ultra millionaires who sought to benefit from his rule and not even with help from the rank and file workers and youth who fell for his lies and manipulations and then doted on him and supported him. Hitler also needed and indeed Hitler absolutely had to have the disbelief, the passivity, the fear, and the surrender of what came to be called “Good Germans.” That is, Hitler needed regular folks who didn’t like what he was doing and who even hated what he was doing, to do nothing much to stop what he was doing. History never exactly repeats, but in that one respect, in a growing number of places around the world, it is the Thirties again.

In the U.S., for example, Trump needs more than the likes of Vance, Hegseth, RFK Jr., Rubio, and the rest of his gang of sycophantic toads. And he also needs more than his billionaire supplicants and puppet masters. And he needs more even than his rank and file worker and youth support, especially since that seems to be finally wavering and even unraveling. Trump additionally needs people who don’t like and who even hate him and his policies to do nothing much to stop him. If they’re scared to act, that’s fine with him. If they just don’t believe hell can happen here, that’s also fine with him. Lazy or too busy is fine with him too. Whatever keeps people submissive, distracted, or aware but silent, is absolutely fine with him. Trump needs “Good Americans” just like Hitler needed “Good Germans.” We won’t be that, will we? 

P.S. If you want to find a specific project or organization that does good things that you favor and which you can volunteer to help where you live and that has aims and inclinations that you share, and that needs help you can provide, you might want to check out allofus.org. It’s an online tool that is designed to help you find your “action match.” Not a date, a cause. You enter your locale and your interests, the site displays organizations and projects that fit your conditions that you can choose to contact and perhaps decide to help.Email