A recently leaked memo from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to the Department of Justice calls for a list to be made of Americans and organizations with a wide array of anti-fascist ideologies, referring to them as domestic terrorists. Things like believing trans people exist, gay people should be able to be married, and women should have autonomy over their own bodies could land you on a list of “domestic terrorists”—despite these being popular beliefs.

This comes after the Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7 which was signed in October, designating “Antifa” as a domestic terror organization and threatening non-profits and activists with a terrorist label. Calling people terrorists for their beliefs rather than their actions dehumanizes them, and attempts to shift the Overton window to make talking about these things unacceptable.

The “radical left” isn’t the only “enemy within” narrative that the Trump administration has crafted. They also demonize immigrants, justifying their large-scale detention and deportation efforts with tough-on-crime rhetoric. Trump often refers to immigrants as murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. But most immigrants they detain have no criminal record and frequently make positive contributions to their communities. U.S. citizens and veterans are being swept up in the mix as well. Detainees are suffering under inhumane conditions, and deaths in ICE custody have reached the highest point in more than 20 years.

Fascist governments throughout history have created targets within their own citizenries to demonize. Stalin called his opponents “enemies of the people”; Hitler and Mussolini used similar language. They did this to stoke fear of both the targeted population and of the wrath of the government.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. government has deployed this type of rhetoric. It isn’t even the first time in this century—Bush used this language after 9/11. It was effective enough to scare Americans into supporting the Patriot Act and giving up our privacy for the sake of our safety; we never got that privacy back. Journalists were sent to Guantanamo Bay and tortured for anti-war coverage. The difference today is that the population of so-called enemies is far more sweeping. It is also paired with a dramatic shift in the dynamics of our government after the decimation of our checks and balances.