ON December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, a campaigner for racial justice, was shot dead in his bed by Chicago police. The US Senate Church committee (1975) would later condemn the “dangerous, degrading or blatantly unconstitutional techniques” used in thousands of such cases against left-wing groups.

“We always kill those good guys …and we let the demons run amok,” said American comedian Bill Hicks. Tragic, but true.

The genocide of the land’s native inhabitants went well beyond that, as did the centuries of mass enslavement and perpetual wars.

In the past century the US has built an empire, used a repressive domestic security apparatus to shut down dissent, and hid those dark realities behind the liberal facade of light entertainment.

Extremist senior US figures are not new, even in the recent past. Secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger were at best complicit in various fascistic wars and coups.

In this context, Donald Trump, as a violence-stoking, white supremacist sociopath, is not an exceptional president-elect. What makes him unusual in a modern context – and more dangerous – is the way he openly he lauds the violence previously outsourced to US agencies and advisers. Military torture – he loves it. Mass deportations – he wants it. Corporate environmental destruction – he backs it. War crimes against civilians – he promotes it.

For liberals, used to denunciations and denials of these sins, this is shocking. Since the election he has, for instance, threatened to deport two to three million people, a dog-whistle racist threat.

While the Obama administration deported 2.5 million people, it did so in a softer tone of voice.

I say this not to minimise what is happening to the world’s superpower. It isn’t normal.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” as the saying goes. This context matters because the roots of Trump and the US far right are structural. They are not sudden or isolated, even if it feels that way.

Now the face of US power will be as ugly and oppressive as the system it sustains. No more the Prozac optimism of Obama’s tinkering reform. Racism, violence and right-wing nationalist culture are there at the top for all to see.

Neither is this a new threat – but it is an escalation. Did you notice mass incarceration, with more black men in US jails than were previously enslaved? Did you notice the Baltimore and Ferguson riots? The crushed resistance of Dakota pipeline tribes? The mass shootings every damn day? The under-reported civilian bombing casualties?

Behind Obama’s face of progress, thousands of Americans were putting their bodies on the line to challenge the growing prospect of human extinction from climate change, the military-industrial complex (which may also wipe us out), and the extreme levels of US inequality. Democracy Live, one of the nation’s top online media groups, has covered this extensively.

I understand the feeling behind this threatening wave of further extremism and it’s one of fear and powerlessness. The No vote. The Tory victory. Brexit. And now Trump. Yet it’s nihilism and a retreat from politics that are the worst response of all to these events.

The Tory Home Office, continuing its horrific treatment of refugees, wanted a new detention prison built near Glasgow Airport. Campaigners persuaded Renfrewshire Council to block it. Lorne Street residents in Edinburgh faced a loss of tenants’ rights, and possible evictions. Over a year and a half, they organised and they won last week too.

In Scotland, we have our own right-wing extremists on the run. None have got near parliament, although that is no reason to abandon continued vigilance.

It has, after all, partly been the complacency of liberals and some in the media, especially on economic issues, that has allowed right-wing extremists to grow support. While the leaders themselves, be it Farage, Trump or Le Pen, should be aggressively challenged on lies and bigotry, their voters should be listened to and given a viable left-wing alternative.

That means fewer lectures from those with power; stamping out elitism and corruption; delivering jobs and infrastructure programmes; building quality housing and reducing rents. Most importantly, it means left-wing politicians must show they are tough, that they will challenge establishments and vested interests, not be dominated by them.

That white men in America were Trump’s main voters, from the anxious and insecure to the racist, is no surprise. It has happened in the west before with genocidal consequences. Right-wing extremism, fascism, has also been defeated with action, organisation and education.

Professor Noam Chomsky, talking of the US election, said that humanity was now “accelerating the race to disaster” and its own extinction. Others, in a new surge of resistance, have raised their voices. If anyone had missed the warning signs, this is the wake-up call.