If there was any doubt that America has been encroaching fascism, it ended on Wednesday with the white nationalist coup in the US Capitol. The image of an American flag replaced with a Trump flag symbolises the "F-word" to its very core. At this point, America might as well wake up and prepare for another historically horrible political event infiltrated by Donald J. Trump, the most unhinged leader in the nation's history.

It's not a left and right polarisation debate anymore. The Republican Party has lost its right to those civil debates. They've destroyed their reputation choosing Trump's lawlessness over America, over and over again. Some such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have taken a backseat now. Things had to escalate to life-threatening emergencies under their own feet for them to merely break ties with Trump. It should not have.

Last year, Republican Senators —aside from Mitt Romney— voted against convicting Trump in the impeachment trials and erected the very wall of impunity that's tumbling on their heads now, and rightly so. Susan Collins famously justified her vote, as teaching Trump a lesson. If history has taught us anything, it's that you don't put a crown on a deranged man's head and hope it will function as a leash.

Even after the riot, almost two-thirds of House Republicans voted against Pennsylvania's electors. Republicans have proven themselves to be nothing but a fractured, far right, extremist government that enabled a fascist leader and his racial, nationalist agendas. Opportunist Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley shamelessly continued to choose power over democracy and led separate challenges to Wednesday's electoral certification process. They are complicit in inciting violence and must resign. Republicans don't deserve to be exonerated with any leniency. They don't deserve that polarisation pass when American democracy hangs on the noose that Trump's terrorising supporters hung outside the US Capitol on Wednesday. It is blatant. It is terrifying.

Appeasement within America and from the rest of the world has led us here. The international media has been reserved from sharply condemning the insurrection for what it is: a fascist leader's call to violently overturn the results of a lawful election. We love to love America, excuse its imperialistic foreign policies that have left multiple nations in debris over the past decades. From Iraq, Vietnam, the Tulsa race massacre 1921, to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, America has a massive racism and terrorism problem. There's a lot of ugly truth Democrats will have to deal with in the next four years. But they have to redeem America first. There's a difference between the nation's past imperialism and the current tightening grip of fascism.

As Senator Sanders has said, 75 million people in the United States voted for Donald Trump and at least 10 million of them believe his baseless lies and conspiracy theories. Thousands of white supremacist rioters who stormed the Capitol vividly illustrated the terrorist cult Trump has created. They will violently go after anyone Trump goes against and anyone who goes against Trump. After Trump castigated Vice President Mike Pence for not having the courage to defy democracy, rioters in the Capitol were videoed chanting, "where's Pence?" After Senator Lindsey Graham publicly abandoned the President, dozens of Trump supporters wearing QAnon t-shirts gathered at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. and verbally harassed him, shouting "traitor."

Donald Trump must be removed immediately. The Republican Cabinet and Mike Pence must invoke the 25th amendment to remove him from office. He is mentally unstable and unfit to serve as the President of the United States. He always has been.

From the beginning, Trump offered nothing but bitter bigotry. America elected him for it. Once he entered, he fired those who went against him. His seditious acts now had warning signs much earlier. Many of us who pointed it out over the past four years — during the Mueller Report, the national emergency over the wall, his failure to condemn neo-Nazis, his racist rants, impeachment, and so on — were dismissed as hysterical and "alarmist." If not now, when, will the alarms go off in the world to understand the repercussions of Trump's white nationalist rhetoric and the damage he is capable of doing?

America's international military allies are now willing to give credence to the idea that Trump deliberately orchestrated the coup with help from some federal law-enforcement agents who were too unprepared for a planned attack. Even if they are mistaken, Trump was caught on camera directly egging on rioters, which is enough to impeach him again. There is no grey area here about his corruption. Just days prior to the riot, Trump was caught on tape with the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to "find" 11,000 votes, which legal scholars say may have amounted to prosecutable criminal intent in violation of federal law. It's already dark. It will only get darker.

With less than two weeks left, it is said that Trump might pursue self-pardon, which, if the Supreme Court allows, could reduce the likelihood of his criminal conviction by the Justice Department after he leaves office. It is hard to determine what a self-pardon would do without historical precedence. While it may as well not work in his favour, but if it does, it could potentially place Donald Trump above the law and shred the justice system of the United States. Since Donald Trump has changed the course of history for the worse, it is difficult to not expect the worst road ahead.

Everyday that Trump stays in the White House, more wreckage is expected. Inaction from the Republican Party and the U.S. government will have serious consequences of excusing and legitimising America's fascist turn. The world is watching. This is their last chance to stop it.

Ramisa Rob is pursuing her Masters in Columbia University.