Watching Assassination Nation on the eve of Trump’s second inauguration as president was a strange experience.

I picked this film because I was in the mood for a trashy B-movie, something about kids getting into trouble, a good way to wind down. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how wild and bizarre this movie turned out to be.

To give you an idea of what it’s about: it’s essentially a retelling of the Salem witch trials set in the social media era. In fact, the town in the movie is literally called Salem. The story follows four girls who are targeted by vigilantes seeking to punish them for alleged wrongdoings—wrongdoings they didn’t actually commit.

The film came out in 2018, during the height of the #MeToo movement and the peak of social media activism like Black Lives Matter. That era felt like a turning point in online discourse, and Assassination Nation captures some of that chaos. It’s a brutal film that opens with a laundry list of trigger warnings: violence, blood, gore, toxic masculinity, gender-based violence—basically, it doesn’t pull any punches.

The core of the story is this: everyone in the town has their privacy violated. All their secrets are exposed, and people who feel wronged go looking for scapegoats. The four girls become those scapegoats, and the movie follows their fight to defend themselves. They’re victims of violence, but they’re also survivors, fully willing to fight back. That’s what makes the movie compelling—the raw defiance of these characters.

Watching this film in the context of Trump’s second presidency felt disturbingly relevant. We’re heading back into a time of outrage, scapegoating, and “us versus them” mentalities. Only now, Trump has even more control over the platforms that shape public discourse. Social media giants—Musk, Zuckerberg, TikTok, you name it—are bending the knee.

As a Canadian, I can’t just ignore what’s happening. Trump has openly talked about annexing Canada, and that’s not something we can dismiss as rhetoric anymore. The next four years are going to be rough, not just for the U.S. but for everyone in its orbit.

This is why we need the Fediverse. We need decentralized social media—platforms not controlled by billionaires or tech monopolies. We can’t afford to rely on corporate-owned spaces anymore. The last four years under Biden made us complacent; we thought we were safe, that Trump wouldn’t come back. Now we’re paying the price for that complacency.

The Fediverse could be our alternative, a space free from corporate control. But we need to open it up. I get frustrated when people say, “We don’t want TikTokers or Instagrammers here.” We don’t have the luxury to gatekeep anymore. The fight for decentralized, independent platforms isn’t just about principle—it’s about survival.

What does this have to do with Assassination Nation? Everything. The movie is about a witch trial, and witch trials are coming back. The social media-fueled mob justice in the film feels like a warning for what’s ahead.

Great movie. Heavy as hell, but worth watching.