Can’t You Read: The Home Front
The Home Front
I must admit that I am somewhat touched by the overwhelmingly positive response my recent writing about Trump’s fascist intentions and agenda has received. After three and a half years of being told I was either hysterical or actively supporting the neoliberal interventionist agenda, I must admit I wasn’t expecting even my more truculent readers to come around at this late a date; I guess trying to send the army into the streets to smash public protests, calling anti-fascism “terrorism” and admitting you’re rigging the election represents a bridge too far for the average American after all.
While this welcome support for my writing has unquestionably worked to cure my resentment and bitterness, it has also cast me in the unfamiliar role of “anti-fascism advisor” as more and more people are asking me online “what can I personally do to stop fascism in America?”
I’ll concede now that my life’s experience has lead me to be far more comfortable with the role of doomsayer than activist and there are of course numerous legal limits to what types of anti-fascist action I can advise folks about on the internet. I am not a protest organizer and I think if you turn on your television, you’ll see that there are plenty of already existing protest actions you can join if you want to put your body on the line against the fascist creep – of which racialized police violence by white supremacist murderpigs is a key component.
Additionally, I have little interest in advocating for an electoral process that will not function as an antidote to fascism and might not work even for removing Trump because this election is clearly rigged six ways from Sunday; there are plenty of people telling you how to vote and I’m just going to assume you’ve made your decision on that front already, independent of anything I could or would ever say you. There is an argument to be made that a “legally” re-elected Trump is a more dangerous fascist than one who must attempt a coup to retain power, but that argument would be better saved for another journal in my opinion.
What I would like to do today instead then is to talk about how everyday people who are as of yet unable (or unwilling) to man a barricade, can fight the spread of fascism in our society even in their everyday lives. While this work is by no means as glamorous, courageous or heroic as staring the reactionary serpent in the eye and challenging neonazis in the streets, it is by no means a less vital part of a society’s immune-system to the fascist creep. After all, it does little good to “bash the fash” if the reactionary ideas, impulses and politics of a nation continue to breed more fascists; it is not an accident that the epicenter of the modern, increasingly global fascist movement is a white supremacist country built on slavery and genocide, namely the United States of America.
In order to effectively resist the “everyday” fascist creep, it is necessary to understand the importance of the ideological work undertaken by reactionary media and intellectuals to simultaneously normalize fascist ideology, argument and political policy, while obfuscating the fascist nature of those activities.
The simple truth is that fascism is a death cult with a fairly consistent track record of getting a lot of people, including its adherents, “perished.” You can’t sell a society on fascism by outright admitting you’re a fascist anymore, Hitler and the Holocaust kind of ruined that option for would be fascist dictators and violent reactionaries. Even after four years under Trump, you still can’t openly admit you’re a fascist in America and as such the reactionary right (which is to say the entire American right) is devoting millions upon millions of man hours trying to convince you that fascist ideas, eliminationism and violent right wing vigilante movements are “just American politics.”
As I have written in the past however, this position is not only ridiculous on its face but an active attempt to encourage violence against numerous marginalized groups in our society. White supremacy, ethno-nationalism and emliminationism are not political positions, they are statements of genocidal intent and should be openly treated as such in “polite” society; if only because fascism cannot yet survive the light of day in America even if the nation itself is awash in crypto-fascist ideology and perhaps always has been.
And yet with the exception of dedicated anti-fascists, we as Americans generally make little if any effort to push back against this normalization of fascist ideology in our everyday lives. In our communities, at our workplaces and indeed in our own homes we as a people have largely “gone along to get along” and remained silent as fascist talking points, disseminated by fascist right wing “media” or conspiracy websites, escape the mouths of our reactionary, fascist-curious friends, co-workers and family members. When we do engage these fascist ideas dressed up like “conservative politics” we overwhelmingly engage the reactionary right on its own terms and seek to merely debunk the factual inaccuracies presented in these arguments.
Why? Well of course because there is a social cost to calling your friends, co-workers and family out on spreading fascist ideology. This cost is only magnified if the call out in question is directed against someone in a position of authority in our lives, a boss, or a parental figure perhaps. Yet is it not reasonable to ask if in the face of rising American fascism that cost might not be too much bear? Can one not argue that there is virtue in refusing to work silently for a fascist, that there is a worthwhile reward in calling out fascist ideology before it poisons our communities and social groupings? How might a teenage antifascist or Black Lives Matter protester view our continued refusal to pay that cost from streets choked with tear gas and rubber bullets?
Moreover because we are not yet outnumbered by those who would openly embrace fascism, paying that cost and calling fascist ideology disguised as right wing politics out for what it is, allows us to levy an immense social cost in return on those who would preach fascism and fascist ideas. Ultimately that is the only way a society already steeped in nationalism, racism and genocidal white supremacy can hope to resist the fascist virus – by increasing the cost of embracing fascism on all fronts until nobody in their right mind is willing to pay it. The would-be fascist must be forced to pay that cost at every turn so long as he seeks to normalize eliminationism, ethno-nationalism and violence against his political enemies. That cost must be collected in the streets with his teeth, in the workplace with his livelihood and in the social sphere of his everyday life; otherwise the most marginalized among us will continue to bear that cost instead, as fascism eventually overwhelms American society.
And that my dear reader is what you can do, right now in your everyday life and beginning the moment you finish reading this journal – start making the fascists, crypto-fascists and reactionaries in your life pay a social cost for preaching hatred, violence and repression by publicly calling out their fascist ideas for what they are, regardless of the social cost to yourself.
Hey, I didn’t say it would be easy; just that I knew how you could fight fascism without taking it to the pavement until you’re ready for that level of engagement. As always, your mileage may vary and one way or another – the future is left.
– nina illingworth
