us politics

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.

A common chant at U.S. demonstrations for a while now has been "this is what democracy looks like." I disagree. Marches are a patch for when democracy on its own doesn’t deliver the "will of the people". Ideally we wouldn’t be in the streets; we’d all have a our voices heard in the room. But we march anyway. We understand that sometimes you have to pull on the levers of power you can reach, even while you work to dismantle and rebuild the machine.

The U.S. is, if we are being wildly generous, a deeply flawed democracy. Power is concentrated and fortified by money and violence. Most folks are left out in the cold. We all know this. And yet elections happen. Maybe the outcome only matters a little and maybe the process is warped by the flows of power. But elections still happen. They are still a lever, however inconsequential, that can be pulled.

Some of you are thinking “If voting mattered it would be illegal” and that’s half right, but only half. Power isn’t monolithic. There is a tendency to build up the enemy as a pervasive suffocating power. But in the real world everything is a bit more squishy and porous and human than that. That’s why organizing and demonstrations and all that good stuff sometimes work. Why oppressive power still sometimes inexplicably leaves itself open would require a whole line of analysis that is way beyond the scope of my rant here. The point is that, for now at least, elections are still a thing in the U.S. and, while the process is shit, they’re not yet 100% a puppet show. We have to hit them any way we can, however small.

And some of you are going to start talking about not wanting to consent or be complicit in the horrors of the next administration. There will be horrors. I agree. But voting isn’t a pledge of loyalty. You already don’t believe that the U.S. is a democracy, you already don’t believe that they particularly care about your consent or are in need of your complicity. I know the Liberals like to attach moral baggage to voting. But why would we, as anarchists, accept that? All that talk about “earning” and “deserving” your vote, about the patriotism of participating in the process, about democracy … fuck it. Your vote isn’t any of that. It’s just a thing you can do to maybe make the world slightly better. It costs you practically nothing. At the end of the day those in power are more than happy to take abstention at the polls to mean that you’re basically fine with whatever. Voting is only being complicit if it’s the only thing you do; what matters are the other 364 days.

And I more than admit that the U.S. is system is beyond dumb. If you live in Wyoming or Washington D.C. I don’t care if you vote for the presidency or not. You’re right. You’re vote in that race mostly doesn’t matter. But, and I know this isn't a novel insight, there’s a lot more on the ballot than the presidency. Local races at the city, county, school board, sheriff, judge (can you fucking believe judges are an elected position??) make a massive difference in people’s daily lives. I promise that if you don’t think so you aren’t paying enough attention. Will electing the right people usher in the revolution? Of course not. Neither will not buying stuff from Amazon, using Signal, or running the local Food Not Bombs. But all of those can make the world a little bit better so we do them anyway.

bonus tangent: There is a tension in anarchism between wanting to build alternative institutions and community in parallel to the current world and wanting to challenge the current world. Both streams are living and valid parts of contemporary anarchism. We often try to paper over that difference with talk of “direct action” but I am not convinced that that’s as theoretically robust as we would always like it to be. And my tangent to this tangent is that historically anarchism was all about “propaganda by the deed” and somewhere (if some historian of anarchism could help me pinpoint when I would be deeply grateful!) that fell away. At the very least the idea that anarchists have never wanted to engage with the current system is ahistorical.