While not wrong, this is focusing on what can be done inside the system. It’s ignoring an additional threat.

Fascist regimes typically require a kind of “secret police” to enforce the broader agenda. Such a force acts in a completely extra-judicial way while being completely loyal to the regime and its need to gain and express power. All that’s required for this to work is for people to look the other way, including police.

The whole game is about optics. They won’t look like Nazi SS or whatnot. Think proud boys (white t-shirts, brown pants), KKK, white nationalists, and worst of all, just groups of guys dressed like they’re ready to carpool to the office. Given any amount of power, groups like this will waste zero time exercising violence, but with all the optics of legitimate police, government, and even judicial process. So picture kidnappings dressed up like arrests, murders that look like resisting arrest, trials that are just kangaroo courts, public assassinations that resemble lawful executions.

Resistance is the opposite: communities banding together, aligning themselves with legitimate local government, and operating within the strict limits of the law. This forces the bad guys to operate outside the law in full view of the public, which blunts their power and reach. It’s not impossible to mount a defense in this way if one considers the huge amount of overreach this generates - power tends to dislike other people rendering that power moot. So throwing in with local and state government is a worthwhile tactic here.