Ahead of the latest Trump rally in DC that is meant to make legislators cow in fear, I'd like to advocate for wide participation in counter-protests to far-right rallies in general, using lessons from the recent history of Germany.
You don't see much of it on national TV when it's not connected to widespread violence, but ever since Charlottesville, there is a widespread movement in the US to confront rallies of far-right groups like the Proud Boys with counter-protests, involving a wide array of groups, from concerned mothers holding vigils (the overwhelming majority) to anarchists smashing windows, and notably including a lot of the same people who participate in protests against police violence.
Similar counter-protests have an at least 30-year history in Germany: they emerged as a grass-roots counter to a surge in far-right activity in the early 1990s, especially in former East Germany. Although these protests grew out of relatively small events by anarchistic left-extremist anti-fascist groups active since the 1980s (the original Antifa), as in the US, these protests brought people together from very different backgrounds: groups aligned with Germany's two main Christian churches (Catholic & Lutheran), Jewish groups, Muslim groups; politicians and local party branches of the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party and occasionally the right-liberal Free Democrats; members of fringe far-left parties, as well as anarchistic groups like the original Antifa; unions and NGOs like immigrant-helping groups. The German counter-protests included some groups ready for violence, too (and not all of them very ideological: youth from left-leaning subcultures like punks fought back against harassment from neo-Nazis at school or on the streets and occasionally initiated fights themselves), who were used as springboard to create a fantasy image of left-wing terrorism by far-right and even some center-right politicians. But I'm not here to tell about the parallels, rather, about the core idea of these counter-protests and their successes.
To understand the counter-protesters’ aims and methods, one must first understand why far-right groups like to hold rallies and marches. These gatherings are a show of force, but also more than that. Central to far-right propaganda is that they represent a silent majority. Massing lots of people in one place is a way to create a false impression in that direction in the minds of both existing supporters and potential recruits among naive on-lookers, especially if done unopposed. The counter-protests in Germany had the ambition to thwart this recruiting and morale-boosting effect: as a minimum, they sought to out-number the neo-Nazis, and if possible, sought to even block their movements (usually with mass sit-ins).
(To be clear, German anti-fascist activism does a lot more than just counter-protest: there are educational campaigns, projects to de-convert neo-Nazis [by approaching them individually], lobbying of politicians, research & exposure of clandestine far-right activities, artwork and so on. But IMHO the counter-protest part is the most important.)
The counter-protests had many successes over the years. This is not immediately clear if you've heard that Germany now has a far-right party (the AfD) in the federal and multiple state parliaments, but note that this one is relatively tame in comparison to several earlier formations that had a rapid rise but the faltered. Consider what happened in the city of Dresden, for example.
Dresden is known to have been the target of one of the largest Allied fire-bombing attacks towards the end of WWII, a method that intentionally targeted residential areas with an explicit intent to kill civilians. Right from German Reunification, neo-Nazis sought to equivocate with Nazi crimes and hijack commemorations of this event and go for recruitment with a national victimhood narrative. While Saxony's centre-right government looked the other way, by 2009, the annual far-right commemorations grew into neo-Nazi marches with nearly 10,000 attendants and guest speakers from all over Europe. That was when a local anti-fascist coalition put themselves in high gear. Over just four years, they forced this genie back into the bottle: they outnumbered the neo-Nazis in 2009 already, could also block their march route in the next two years, and even prevented them from leaving their rallying point in 2012. With morale sinking, neo-Nazi attendance dropped towards zero. They tried to re-establish the “tradition” last year, but the counter-protesters immediately re-mobilised. The achievements came not without enduring hardships: in addition to attacks from violent neo-Nazis, the counter-protesters also had to endure police violence (also last year) and massive police surveillance from a state government more paranoid about left-wing extremists from Berlin than baseball-bat-bearing jackbooted thugs from Saxon villages.
To get back to the present situation in the US, I think the best antidote to Trumpist delusions would be if every Trump rally and MAGA protest would be met by an equal or larger counter-protest, and thus the most extreme members of the movement would have to face the fact that they are out-numbered. So, if you can, find & join counter-protests (and wear a mask!).
One final note. Some people may not want to participate for their own safety, thinking of potential violence. Now personal safety was very much a concern for the mostly not so young and not so strong participants at German anti-fascist rallies, too, for 1990s German neo-Nazis were in ways more violent than Proud Boys today (IMO there is a generational difference: while the typical neo-Nazi was a lost son of long-term unemployed parents who found joy in getting drunk & beating up random people with some "friends", the typical modern US right-wing extremist is someone who switched from a blissfully ignorant childhood as gamer to struggle in the gig economy and found “relief” in on-line trolling). But those who turned out at the counter-protests considered the risk to their personal safety if the far-right gets anywhere near power greater. And hopefully more people realise today that tens and tens of millions of Trump supporters (who will also follow whichever younger demagogue who'd take over from him) would have no problems with a violent coup.