fascism

I’m seeing a lot posts from folks in the US-sphere about how to “prepare” for the next four years. And they’re mostly good, (though, not entirely¹) and folks are right to fear what may come. For a lot of folks the coming years are going to be hell; let’s call that category 1. But, in a way, I’m more afraid that, for many nothing, will come at all, or at least only very little will change for them. I don’t mean the rich and racist who are salivating for future horrors; let’s call that category 3. I mean all the folks who with a small shrug and a bit of adaptation will blithely and happily continue along with their lives. This is category 2. The thing is, I strongly suspect that a lot of folks (not everyone; I’m not saying that at all) posting, reading, thinking about “preparing” actually fall into this second category, even though they might think they are in the first.

I think a lot of folks are going to be all geared and gussied up to fight fascism and then find that it has come in the night to beat up some folks in that other neighborhood (you know the one) and they at most heard some sirens in the night. I think folks are so focused on being prepared, on their own safety, on knowing how to react, on being the target that they’re going to miss the fact that fascism might not care about them all that much. A story my Grandmother used to tell was that after the war ended a neighbor a few doors down knocked on their door and said proudly (smugly?) “I knew what you were doing and I didn’t rat you out to the Germans.” and my Grandmother politely said “thank you” but in her mind was thinking “That’s the absolute bare minimum you asshole [I’m paraphrasing here]; that’s not being part of the resistance. That doesn’t make you one of the good ones.”

I’m not saying bad shit isn’t going to happen and lots of folks aren’t going to get hurt. That is definitely going to happen. But, well, for example. You’re book club isn’t going to pick Trump’s “Stories of True Patriots™”…but it only has 4 members. The local church, a nice normal church, might though because Lucy really wants to, and the President did ask everyone to read it, and what’s one book to stay friends with Lucy? You aren’t part of that church. What are you going to do about it?

I’m glad so many folks are interested and eager to think about the work ahead. I really am! And I’m not offering a full blown solutions here, which is a weak-sauce cop-out, I know. But I would like to offer one small correction and one small addition to the present discourse. First, yes be prepared but be realistic about what you—you specifically—are actually going to face. Second, to that end, look more closely at how historical and present day fascist and totalitarian states operate. Present day Hungary and India, recently Philippines and Poland, historically East Germany and Portugal are all good examples. Unfortunately there are many. The scenes that play in the popular imagination of jackbooted thugs smashing down your door and sending you to a camp to die the day after you dared say “the Leader is a poo-poo head” are … simplistic. Those regimes are/were scary and awful as fuck. But also more complex and janky than a Hollywood hero movie.

And now this post is starting to veer into what fascism actually is and isn't and how it's not just anything ultra conservative or any big shot who wants to be a dictator but a specific combination of the two that has love of Power (with a specific capital P) combined with a totalitarian outlook, and totalitarian not just in the political sphere but also the cultural, civic, and social sphere which I think we haven't seen play out in the U.S. to the same extent yet.

But that's not what I wanted to say today! I just wanted to say (tl;dr:) I’m glad y’all are thinking about how to prepare but just keep in mind they might not actually be coming for you, or even your next door neighbor, and certainly not necessarily in an overt show of force way and you should also be ready to handle a thousand soft choices while the black shirts are terrorizing that other neighborhood (you know the one) and do you actually know anyone over there? Because—and be honest with yourself about this—your neighborhood might actually continue unscathed for a good while yet. That’s one of the scariest things about fascism.

How do we keep going in a world full of unbelievable suck? The philosopher Walter Benjamin described history as “one single catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before [our] feet.”¹ Sounds like 2017 2024.

The question of how to keep going isn’t new. I imagine my grandparents faced it while in the underground resistance during the Second World War back in Holland. Of course, as Jews—and I believe they would say, as people of conscience—there was no alternative. Today we once again find ourselves in a historical moment where naked fascism is stepping out into the foreground of our collective psyche.

I hope we all agree that it must be stopped.

I keep hearing “We’ve beaten them before,” as though the military defeat of the Nazis in the second World War was the only time fascists were a threat. It wasn’t. For example, just ask the Spanish who suffered under Franco’s rule until the mid-’70s. Or, as if that somehow ensures the invincibility of “Western” Democracy forever. It really doesn’t. The truth is, there is no sure path, no eleven point listicle, to stemming the rise of fascism.

But what actually scares me the most these days is that when I wake up every morning the sun is still shining. Fascism, while apocalyptic, does not arrive with a swarm of locusts or a blood red moon, and does not lead to an inevitable showdown at high noon between good and evil.

The struggle against fascism cannot be reduced to a struggle for normalcy. For many—let’s call them ‘white men’, for short—normal may never be disturbed. And for others, “normal” has been shitty for a while now. To stand with the oppressed is a choice, a choice to actively put oneself into confrontation with the forces of fascism.

This is true at the grand political level; when Antifa faces off against white supremacists they are seeking out conflict because you can’t wait for the neo-Nazis to show up at your door. And it is true in our personal lives, where we must constantly interrogate our own beliefs and behaviors. Or, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it, the deepest enemy we need to defeat is “The fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”²

Personally, I cannot think of that confrontation without thinking of my grandparents and what they faced. My close friend Katie once described protest as a ritual to appease our ancestors. That makes sense to me. Of course I carry the memory of Oma and Opa with me everywhere. But, I hope to do more than appease them. I hope to complete their work.

I want a revolution, but not one driven by the desire for utopia but as a gift to the past. Revolutions break the flow of history. They rupture that progression of “catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble”.

I guess you could say I’m not wondering “how do we keep going?” so much as “how do we make it all stop?”

Because through that rupture we can reach back into the past. I know that the past can’t be fixed. But, it could be reoriented towards a new future, made part of a new story, and in so doing redeem all the struggles of our ancestors.

In the meantime, I wake up everyday and greet the still shining sun with a prayer:

Good morning. Today…
  I train my heart to desire revolution
  I teach my mind to think of love
  I shape my mouth to speak resistance, and
  I discipline my legs to stand in solidarity.

Because we must practice the world we wish to see.

A slightly different version of this was first published in 2017 as the backmatter to issue #4 of Steve Stormoen’s The Pros. This version, that I put here in 2024, has been lightly edited—mostly so that it makes sense without needing to have read Steve’s excellent comic.