Can the term 'cloud fascism' help us to resist the hard right?

Last month, a few weeks into the random detentions and denied entries at the US border, I was supposed to go to Princeton University as a guest lecturer to discuss global fascism.

- Ece Temelkuran

I asked the professors who invited me whether they thought it was safe to come. When I was in Turkey, European journalist friends once similarly asked me whether they'd be detained. And just as I did then, the American professors hesitated with half sentences: "Well, you know..." It was decided that a law firm should be involved. After some back and forth, the final assessment remained unsettlingly ambiguous: "A detention is unlikely, but we cannot be sure." Eventually, to be on the safe side, we choose the online option.

In the end all was fine on the surface, but I know from being on the other side of this story that the silk threadlike connection between us humans had been cut.

They felt their land a shade darker, and I felt like giving up on the unfortunate in dire times. After all, I should know: this is how a country drifts into darkness -not by a dictator's orders but rather by the outside world abandoning its people to their own means, by cutting millions of the threads that hold humanity together.