Perhaps nothing reveals the American Left’s fascist inclinations better than the ongoing effort to force-feed the transgender agenda to the American public. Quite simply, you’re either on board with the idea that gender is “fluid” and that one’s sexual identity is determined solely on the basis of self-identification — wholly absent the same “settled science” argument leftists use to promote their moral superiority on global warming — or you’re a bigot. And since so many parents are “bigoted,” leftists have to make sure their children “get their minds right” at school — whether parents like it or not.

On August 12, USA Today published a column by parent Jay Keck, whose daughter attended public school in Hinsdale District 86 in Illinois. His ordeal with the fascist inclinations of leftist school officials began when his then-14-year-old daughter, who was enrolled in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) because she was “on the autism spectrum” and had difficulty making friends, “was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender,” Keck explains. “Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name.”

Keck notes this was an unprecedented development. “Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy,” he writes. “She loved stuffed animals, Pocahontas and wearing colorful bathing suits. I can’t recall a single interest that seemed unusually masculine, or any evidence that she was uncomfortable as a girl.”

None of it mattered. As Keck discovered, the wholly subjective and utterly absurd “standard” of self-declaration was all it took to put the fascist machinery in full gear, and usurp his rights as a parent. Thus, when she came out as a boy, he reveals that “the faculty and staff — who had full knowledge of her mental health challenges — affirmed her.” Specifically, he says, “Without telling me or my wife, they referred to her by her new name. They treated my daughter as if she were a boy, using male pronouns and giving her access to a gender neutral restroom.”

That was only the beginning. At an IEP meeting shortly after his daughter’s announcement, Keck told school officials he and his wife wanted his daughter’s legal name to be used when addressing her. A social worker present told Keck he had the right to make such a request, which Keck reiterated in a follow-up email. He assumed the school would follow his wishes and that would be the end of it. Yet he learned his request was ignored “and school staff continued to refer to her by the male name.”

A meeting with the school district’s assistant superintendent was equally fruitless, when that superintendent insisted his hands were tied by federal law. Yet as Keck rightfully pointed out, there was no law — there was only the Obama administration’s 2016 Dear Colleague letter whereby the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education brazenly asserted that the failure to embrace the transgender agenda was a violation of the Title IX provisions of the Education Amendments of 1972 “that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.”

Despite the letter itself describing its contents as “significant guidance” that “does not add requirements to applicable law,” the administration nonetheless warned schools they faced a loss of federal education funds if they did not accommodate the transgender agenda.

That directive was overturned by a federal judge in Texas on August 21, 2016 following a lawsuit filed by 13 states. In addition, the Trump administration’s Departments of Education and Justice rescinded the Dear Colleague letter in 2017, when Education and Justice departments officials, who also notified the U.S. Supreme Court, asserted the administration wants to “further and more completely consider the legal issues involved,” because there must be “due regard for the primary role of the States and local school districts in establishing educational policy.”

Keck also cited the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as evidence the school was acting out of turn. It gives parents “the right to inspect and review the student’s education records maintained by the school,” and “the right to request that a school correct records which they believe to be inaccurate or misleading.”

None of it mattered. “My daughter told me that the school social worker was advising her about halfway houses because he thought we did not support her,” he writes. “The social worker confirmed this when I scheduled a meeting with him to discuss it.”

In other words, the school was advising Keck’s child to run away from home.

On top of that insult, a district approved-psychologist who evaluated his daughter — and determined that her infatuation with transgenderism was driven “by her underlying mental health conditions,” refused to go on the record, because he feared the backlash he would endure. Thus, the letter he submitted to school officials and Keck omitted that part of the assessment.

What intimidated the psychologist? “The National Education Association has partnered with the Human Rights Campaign and other groups to produce materials advocating automatic affirmation of identities, name changes and pronouns, regardless of parents’ concerns,” Keck reveals. “In 18 states and the District of Columbia, including in my home state of Illinois, there are ‘conversion therapy’ bans, which prevent therapists from questioning a child’s gender identity.”

What this nation desperately needs are bans against indoctrinating impressionable children, while intimidating their parents to prevent them from challenging that indoctrination. “Many parents just like my wife and me are often afraid to speak out because we are told we are transphobic bigots, simply because we do not believe our children were born into the wrong bodies.”

When his child went into senior year, Keck called the principal to voice his expectation that her legal name would be used at graduation. “Once again, the school refused to honor my request,” he writes.

And therein lies the problem. Parents don’t need to request that schools avoid promulgating progressive dogma, they need to demand it. If they don’t, every state in the nation will become like California, where the Board of Education has determined schools should begin discussing “gender identity” in kindergarten. State officials insist that “children in kindergarten and even younger have identified as transgender or understand they have a gender identity that is different from their sex assigned at birth.”

No, they don’t. Virtually every aspect of “thinking” by children under the age of seven is wholly determined by the adults with whom they interact, many of whom apparently embrace the wholesale destruction of the nuclear family.

“Public education has become an institutionalized form of child abuse,” columnist David L. Rosenthal asserts. “Rather than being a tool used to prepare children to become productive adults, public education is being used to indoctrinate them to believe what powerful interest groups wish them to believe.”

Those powerful interest groups embrace the “fundamental transformation of the United States” — by any means necessary. Nothing serves that purpose better than the indoctrination of children and the intimidation of their parents.

That is the essence of fascism.