Riot police fanned across Moscow last weekend, hunting for gay men.

They stormed three clubs, cut the music, and forced patrons to sit on the dance floor as they roamed among them with billy clubs. According to TASS, a state-run news agency, the raids were authorized as “measures to combat LGBT propaganda.”

What a long way Russia has fallen. And how similar the path America seems to be taking.

I was a journalist in Russia when Vladimir Putin launched his campaign against LGBTQ+ people just over a decade ago. Society was broadly homophobic—it wasn’t until after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s that homosexuality was decriminalized. Traditional gender roles were lionized, particularly in the wake of the USSR’s collapse, when high unemployment dovetailed with a concerted push to nudge women out of the workforce and into the home.

When Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, after four years in a shadow role as prime minister, he searched for an ideology to bolster his power. He settled on a reactionary conservatism that centered on anti-LGBTQ+ hate. A bill banning “gay propaganda” to minors, signed into law in June 2013, paved the way for an increase in social suspicion of those in the gay community. High-profile gay people were fired from their jobs, and vigilante mobs entrapped and beat LGBTQ+ individuals across the country. After Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, “sexual minorities” were singled out for precision targeting by local leaders in lockstep with the Russian military. “We in Crimea,” declared Putin ally Sergei Aksyonov, “do not need such people.”

The Kremlin’s anti-LGBTQ+ campaign has taken many turns over the years, sometimes dark, sometimes absurd. The “gay propaganda” bill, once ostensibly for minors, was expanded to cover people of all ages. Last year, Russia’s Supreme Court declared the global movement for LGBTQ+ rights an “extremist organization” (even though it is not an organization). Then, lawmakers banned gender reassignment surgery. This year, they set their sights on “propaganda” promoting a child-free lifestyle and banned that too.

Putin had long been autocratic, but the seeds of his turn to authoritarianism—and the brutal war on Ukraine that accompanied it—can be seen in that 2013 bill. Announcing his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin blustered about many rationales, including the West’s desire “to destroy our traditional values” and force on Russia “attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration.” He didn’t mention LGBTQ+ rights by name, but he didn’t have to.

How easy it is to look across the ocean and see with clarity the purpose of this campaign. The creation of internal enemies is a key step on the road to authoritarianism, and, ultimately, fascism. Now that Donald Trump and his Republican Party are making similar moves on our shores, some liberals who spent years warning of the threat to democracy are wavering. The moment is too pivotal to bargain with those who would do society’s most vulnerable members harm.

The American experiment was sorely challenged by Trump’s first presidency, from his smashing of norms to the January 6 insurrection. During the 2024 campaign, Democrats put Trump’s threat to democracy at the heart of their electoral pitch. Both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden believe he is a fascist, and ran their campaigns warning what his return to power would mean for the country.

Trump’s victory, including his winning margin in the popular vote, however thin, shook the Democratic establishment and sent it scurrying for answers, a process that rightly continues. As the president-elect assembles his cabinet, we see a clear image taking shape: a sea of loyalists who won’t question his commands, outsiders looking to bring down the system, and a man accused, at worst, of rape (which he denied), and, at best, a worldview grounded in traditional gender norms and views of reproduction that pose a real threat to the freedom of millions of people.

It was jarring, in the days following the loss, that some prominent Democrats and liberals, from Representative Seth Moulton to columnist Maureen Dowd, articulated the case for questioning the rights of trans people. Most zeroed in on the issue of trans girls playing sports and presented their approach as common sense. And yet, it was not so long ago that refusing to obsess over the gender identity of kids who play sports was the common sense view. Back in 2022, when vetoing an all-out ban on trans girls playing public school athletics, Utah’s (Republican!) governor noted that the proposed bill upended benefits that were intended to accommodate the “very small number of transgender kids” in his state (four in total) “who [were] looking to find connection and community.” Moreover, of those four kids, only one was playing in girls’ sports, he added. “That’s what all of this is about…. Never has so much fear and anger been directed at so few.”

The Trump campaign reportedly spent nearly 20% of its ad budget—more than $37 million—on TV spots invoking issues involving trans people. That concerted outlay, plus the GOP’s campaign against trans people—from bills about sports to bathroom access to healthcare—has all the hallmarks of targeting a small population on which to blame, or litigate, contentious issues in society. Such efforts against diverse and marginalized communities have effectively mobilized Democrats for decades. And yet, this time, some in the party—first paralyzed in the face of Republican attacks, and now reeling from its defeat at the polls—have decided by default to throw the trans community under the bus. This is hardly the only option. Instead, Democrats can, and should, acknowledge that America is living through a time of enormous change—culturally and politically, medically and technologically, socially and sexually—without compromising their support for human rights and tip-toeing toward aiding Trump in his creation of an internal enemy.

In the wake of the election, I called several Russian friends and acquaintances, all involved in various ways in opposing Putin’s return to full power in 2012. I wanted to know what we could learn from them. I didn’t expect to find the conversations so hopeful. Across the board, these people evinced a faith in US institutions stronger than I’ve heard in years from those residing in this country. They understand the power of an independent judiciary, of a legislature elected by American citizens, of the idea of checks and balances—so absent in their own nation, despite its leaders’ hollow insistence that they follow “the rule of law.”

This week, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. “This case has implications far beyond the courtroom,” wrote Chase Strangio of the ACLU, who became the first openly trans lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court when he made his case.

The lawsuit was brought by three Tennessee adolescents, along with their parents, as well as civil rights groups, including the ACLU. It is being backed by the Biden administration, which is key.

After oral arguments on Wednesday, however, it appears the court will likely uphold state bans on gender-affirming care. Republicans have made their intentions clear in targeting trans rights—not least by bending to Representative Nancy Mace, who wasted no time in introducing a bathroom measure in Congress upon the arrival of newly elected Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of the body. Democrats brushed that stunt off as a distraction, following the lead of McBride herself.

But there is much more at play here. In the wake of Trump’s shocking win in 2016, most resistance energy flowed to the Democratic Party. This time, the space for dissent feels much more fluid. Democrats are now deciding who they want to be. And allowing the issue of trans rights to tear them apart, as Republicans hope it will, would be a grave mistake.

When Putin launched his anti-LGBTQ+ crusade, his opponents didn’t try to figure out if he had a point. They stood up to him, in the ways they could. Many took the brave step of coming out into a society that did not fully understand them. Allies, like the legendary journalist Yevgenia Albats, began covering the issue prominently and sympathetically. “This notion that you have to defend your most vulnerable—that’s extremely important, you have to do it,” she told me when we spoke last month.

Republicans are feeling empowered by Trump’s victory. The fact that many Democrats are flirting with some of his basest ideas undermines the very warnings they have spent years telegraphing to the country about his authoritarian nature. Authoritarianism cannot thrive without the creation of internal enemies, be they trans people or migrants. Trump’s minions will go after all of them; Democrats should not help the cause.