For four years, pundits, op-ed writers and intellectuals have tussled over whether the word fascist accurately describes the persona and politics of US President Donald Trump.
Some commentators on the left have refrained from using the term, worrying that it cleanses US history by casting the Trump years as exceptional, offering an alibi for, as Samuel Moyn puts it, "the coexistence of our democracy with long histories of killing, subjugation and terror".
Among those histories, of course, are multiple forms of racist violence, including the kind that brought millions out to the streets earlier this summer, sparked by the brutal police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
But the events of 71 years ago today in Peekskill, New York show that the word fascist has played a particular, vital role in Black activists' struggle against racist police violence; remembering this usage can reconnect us with a radical history of activism often buried in conventional accounts of the civil rights movement.
On the chaotic Sunday afternoon of September 4, 1949, truncheon-wielding police officers and stone-throwing rioters descended on cars belonging to the racially integrated audience of an outdoor performance by the singer and activist Paul Robeson.
Minutes after relaxing on blankets listening to Let My People Go and other songs from Robeson's well-known repertoire, drivers and passengers girded themselves as rioters screamed at them: "Dirty Jews!" "Lynch Robeson!" and "Go back to Russia!"
Some exited their cars to fight back; others were dragged from them and beaten. The violence left at least 150 audience members with broken bones, lacerations, bruises, black eyes and other injuries. That no one died was a marvel. Concert attendee Woody Guthrie, riding back to New York City on a bus filled with shards of shattered window glass, confessed to his seat neighbour, "This is the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot."
State troopers beat a man leaving Paul Robeson's concert in Peekskill on September 4; troopers and police, who were supposed to protect concertgoers from anti-Robeson protesters, joined in attacking them instead [File: Getty Images]
Speaking at a news conference in Harlem the following day, a still-shaken Robeson indicted the violence, singling out the police in particular as "fascist storm troopers". Of course, it was only four years since the end of World War II, what many of Robeson's leftist colleagues called the "war against fascism".