“No dog whistles, no plausible deniability,” wrote one historian. “It’s a show of power and an another attempt to make this look and feel normal.”

From start to finish, Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night was a torrent of bigotry and fascistic rhetoric, with the former president and a bizarre lineup of preceding speakers trashing Puerto Ricans and Palestinians, condemning the press, and casting their political opponents as a satanic “enemy from within.”

The New York City event, held on the second to last Sunday before the November 5 election, amounted to a closing pitch for a candidate who has pledged to wield the power of the federal government—including the U.S. military—against those he views as obstacles to his ascent to power and his political project, which includes a large-scale deportation campaign, massive deregulation for industry, and another round of tax cuts for the wealthy.

“When I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy,” Trump said Sunday, characterizing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and other party leaders as mere “vessels” for the “radical left machine,” which the former president called “massive, vicious, [and] crooked.”

“It’s just this amorphous group of people. But they’re smart and they’re vicious. And we have to defeat them,” said the Republican nominee, who falsely claimed the U.S. is an “occupied country” facing a “migrant invasion” that only he can stop.