With that aim, I will start with fascism at home, and try to highlight how intersectional and multifaceted it is, touching on the strategies fascists use in cultural, political, and economic structures to build and maintain power, specifically focusing on the role that ICE plays in this system, as well as looking at the idea of the “too woke friend” and finishing on the general economic model. Then I will move to a brief overview of fascism’s effects and relationships abroad, looking at the clear intention for intervention in Venezuela, the crossover of Apartheid with American fascism, and finally the expansion of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a SPLC designated hate group, abroad.

And then I end shortly with what is to be done, reiterating and applying the mantra every leftist is saying: engage in mutual Aid and Community organizing to enable resilience, direct action and Community self-defense against fascists.

This is effectively six short articles pushed into one narrative, so it can be read in any order, at any time. Hopefully it is a starting point for mapping the fascist takeover of the american empire, why it matters and what is to be done, so that ultimately you don’t have to know everything that is going on but you do just have to figure out where you can plug in. With that said, lets dive in.

Fascism at Home – A Takeover on Every Front

I want you to think about how authoritarian regimes work.

We are taught that a dictator is one ruler that took over, but this is not accurate. The dictator like all politicians are the front man for a complex system of power in any given society. That is not to say they don’t wield some independent power nor that they are not evil, but that you should be much much more interested in the systems that got them there, and that they are beholden to understand how to prevent and undermine it. So what are those systems?

So immediate adjectives come to mind: cultural, economic, political, social, technological etc. And I’m sure you’re familiar with the basics: they use the violence of the state to suppress opposition throw them in jail or work camps (alligator alcatraz), they mobilize the whole entire state to the fascist agenda as opposed to a supposedly meritocratic independent bureaucracy, (thats what DOGE is) they propagandize to affect culture by demonizing minorities (WH Wire).

But there’s more than that. I am going to review three examples of this, the role of state violence, culture, and economics have in maintaining an authoritarian state, summarizing the obvious points and providing what I hope to be the less obvious points.

ICE – The Role of Violence and State Power

Take ICE for example, what is their job? Everyone reading this I hope knows they don’t care about immigration, maybe the people on the ground do, but ICE’s is positioned in the system is not about immigration, so we must ask what it is?

The starting point is that a system’s function is what it does and what ice does is mass brutality primarily against minorities. Why do authoritarians want this? It revs up their base, it allows political enemies to get “caught in the crossfire”, and allows massive power expansion. We have already seen this threatening a city with violence by ice is effective to change almost any policy Trump wants changed, whether its in NYC, DC, LA or Chicago. It’s a good excuse to fold already white supremacist organizations or latent white supremacists into the federal payroll to do what they love doing. The violence is the the point.

So we know what this expression of power is for, we have to ask how he got it. The answer is at first obvious which is he became president and that gave him control of the federal workforce including ICE, but that’s not the end of the story. Even the president can’t order people to enroll, not yet, nor can he yet unilaterally decide the budget, nor produce the thousands of tear gas canisters they need to engage in chemical warfare against toads.

This power did not come from one man, but a complex web of culture that validated the violence, industry that armed the violence, electoral politics that funded the violence, and a society that sat back and watched it. Every level of that can be resisted and every level of that can be bolstered, it is our choice which part we play, and importantly recognizing it for what it is rather than what it claims to be is the first step in actually undermining it.

And so while ICE and State violence may be the open sores of fascist takeover, the weapons used to inflict them are more complicated and that brings me to the role of cultural takover.

Cultural Takeover – Media Suppression, Tech Integration, and Liberal Idiocy.

Just as important as the physical violence being perpetrated is the the cultural precepts that prevent the victims from defending themselves. If you doubt this I want you to remember how scared shitless the American elite were when the the response to an american seemingly defending themselves from a murderous Healthcare Executive was met with celebration and not condemnation. So we must ask how are they manufacturing a culture that is willing to mourn the death of a fascist rather than celebrate the resistance of a hot italian?

Some Tools Are Obvious – Jimmy Kimmel, Bari Weiss and Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon

Some tools obvious they’re shutting down media dissent, they are integrating classical media as well as social media into the state apparatus by manufacturing monopolies for people like Larry Ellison and his family, creating policies that will either force classical media to self-censor or lose privilege such as we are seeing in the pentagon, and directly engaging in state violence against media like we are seeing in Chicago. These have both direct effects of silencing the person immediately in front of them as well as knock-on effects of threatening anyone that would be in a similar position. These are obvious, and they are serious but they are not interesting.

The Less Obvious Ones -ex. “The Too Woke Friend”

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this month about the cultural production of the “To Woke Friend”. I don’t mean this in what woke literally is which is a good helpful term that comes out of a black academic tradition. I mean this in how it is now culturally used, and how I see it used like when I suggest that Caleb Hammer, Taylor Swift, or tropes like “Not understanding averages” are right-wing propaganda.

We’ve produced this concept to shut down analysis, but the distribution of analysis that it is used to shut down is almost always reflective of the power imbalance that exists.

The example that comes to mind is the way that the anti-Semitism is leveraged by the Anti-Defamation League to shut down critiques of israel and racism is leveraged by blue MAGA to shut down critique of Kamala Harris. Neither of these have ever been called the “too woke friend” despite incredible reaches in logic that absolutely do not follow. They are responded in different ways but very rarely is the idea that they are too sensitive to anti-Semitism or racism the response, but rather accurately that they are actively misusing this very important concept.

Yet when I go searching through popular culture for (what I think are pretty obvious) links to Fascism or ethno nationalism even the most obvious ones are shut down as being too woke. The starkest of this contrast outside of my commentary is the ADL’s response to Elon Musk’s salute. The ADL, who should be most sensitive to the most obvious right wing dogwhistles (or at this point blowhorns) dismissed it and effectively used the trope of the too woke friend to say the whole interent who just witness a nazi salute were being too sensitive.

My point here is not to go on a long rant about how everyone got mad at me for my takes on Taylor Swift or Caleb hammer, but it’s to point out that we have created this Trope, this concept, this mantra that is used selectively and in a way that reflects power to shut down critique.

This was done over decades, with memes and comments and commentary to produce a cultural item that is deeply helpful to a regime that wants the populace to ignore nuance, and the many nuanced ways they are getting fucked over. I can’t list out every single cultural production that I think is part of this, but I do hope this example makes my point.

Thought Terminating Trope – Leftists Version –

Leftist circles have their own thought terminating trope, instead of calling each other the too woke friend, demonizing empathy, they compete for who is the most empathetic: “people are being kidnapped why are you talking about culture”.

This plays on an attempted moral superiority, genuine care about the horrible things that are going on and a misplaced understanding of political strategy. But most importantly, this could be used on literally everything: “why are you talking about people being kidnapped people are being murdered in Palestine”.

This trope has the same function of allowing power to determine the narrative, and instrumentalizing leftists (as the prior trope does liberals) in enforcing that narrative. If all a regime has to do to shut down critique of its cultural, economic or artistic production, is increased State violence in another area, then it has control over the critique and narrative. In effect, it allows the regime to play the game of whack-a-mole pointing to a worse thing that it’s doing and critiquing leftists through their own mouths for failing to focus on that.

Do not allow those in power to determine the narrative and do not allow them to instrumentalize you to do so.

Overall, these cultural tropes were produced, either actively or accidentally, and even if the intentionality or malice of this production is hard to find we must be wary of such tropes and concepts in our culture and art and communication that are so easily leveraged and weaponized by a fascist regime. Be the “too woke friend” and care about stupid shit, because thats so much better than being a fucking tool (of the state)

Economic – They Want You To Be Poor

The final point I’ll touch on is the economic levers they are using. Because I think everyone can understand how fascists want you to be poor at least in the basic sense that if you are poor you have no choice but to join the Gestapo to pay your bills and feed your family. Further if you are struggling they can blame it on the immigrants and the ethnic racial and gender minorities. But they don’t want you to just be poor, they want you to be dependent on them. And once again I think this is something people intuitively understand which is that you cannot resist a corporate oligarchy if you are reliant on the corporation to eat, not only to pay for their food, but to drive your food to you and show you how to cook it.

There’s an infinite amount of analysis that could done as to what precisely this rendition of fascists want with our international economic policy, though it is looking simply like autarchy is the goal. But as to how they leverage economics to build power within the domestic populace it is quite clear the poorer they can make you the more they have support from the oligarchs they enrich, and less capable you are to resist.

The obvious answer to this is to build alternative systems of sustenance and support, that allow you to not be dependent on corporations and the regime for life, but rather dependent and accountable to communities you have a democratic say in, be that friendships, familys, churchs or organizations.

Conclusion of Fascism At Home –

This is way too long and I’ve said way too much. But this is also largly a practice for me of organizing my thoughts over what is admittedly a very long month, so I hope you forgive me if I mildly rambled. The throughline is helpful though: we are being attacked on all fronts here at home, and their attacks are inherently interwoven. The cultural bigotry against poor people that have been built into most Americans , compounds the power their economic agenda has and legitimizes the state violence enacted against people in the name of their poverty.

If we ever want to effectively resist, the first step is naming and analyzing their methods of Oppression. This is a scary but hopeful message, because it means that we can resist on every single front.

Fascism Abroad – Intervention, Expansion and Intermixing

Fascism never stays at home and it didn’t start at home, it’s often said that fascism is imperialism come home, and that’s equally true of fascism leaving taking the form of imperialism. And this is just as true of American fascism as anything else, and while the nasty face of fascism that is often highlighted is the domestic stuff, just as important is its relationship with the outside world.

Fascists, as ironic as them being nationalists is, are deeply intersectional and internationalist, and to highlight the many relationship fascists have with the outside world we can point to three stories that have been largely underplayed underplayed in the new cycle: the Alliance Defending Freedom going to England to push their same alt right agenda, Trump clearly setting up a regime change in Venezuela and apartheiders being woven into the current regime. In my mind these are all consequences of fascist holding power and actions to build up and promote the power of American fascism, as well as explanatory of where it came form.

Why War in Venezuela? – Intervention

The starting point is that fascists love war, and in fact almost every politician loves War. It’s incredibly helpful at distracting the populace, justifying a massive increase in government spending and thus regime power, and putting on a show of a violence and power for those that get effectively turned on by such things. This is what America has been doing for the past 70 years and for the past 200 years in South America, the Monroe Doctrine and its effects and whatnot. Trump’s been signaling the exact same thing and kind of feeling around where he can do this from his incredible comments about Greenland to his increased violence in Yemen, it seems the administration have settled at least for now on continuing to brutalize South America, a long American tradition.

But Why Venezuela?

Oil. It’s a little more complicated than that but not a whole lot more.

It’s not about Maduro and human rights, there’s literally nothing Maduro has done worse than the Saudi Arabian monarchy which we give Millions to each year. It’s not about drug trafficing, america is the largest producer of deadly drugs that kill Americans if we were interested in stemming the tide of the drug deaths, we know how to do it with harm reduction and actual regulation of the healthcare industry. Its not about immigration, War even if it were to be Justified will only create more refugees. This is because it is profitable to the oligarchs that are pushing for further destabilization or is beneficial to the regime itself.

And America has had its eyes on Venezuelan and especially control of Venezuelan oil for a very long time, considering they are controlling one of the largest reserves of untapped oil in the world. Not only that but similar to how America is habitually and emotionally bothered by Cuba existing as an apparently socialistic country close to it, Venezuela being a country that is outside of the Americans sphere of influence that has proximity to it is necessarily threatening to anyone that wants to maintain American hegemony in the world, an interest that Trump despite being an autarchic fascist does still seem have wet dreams about.

I don’t have much more to say about this, other than to simply emphasize that whatever lies they make up about Venezuela to justify invading it are just that: excuses, never reasons.

Aparthieders in Our Fucking Government – Where the Fascist Myths Come from

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Steven Hatfield all have one thing in common which is a quite clear and obvious connection to apartheid in South Africa. Elon Musk is famously an immigrant from South Africa, where his father was quite wealthy during the time of Apartheid. Peter Thiel’s father ran a Uranium mine. And Hatfield received his medical degree in Rhodesia. When we say that fascism is international, this is precisely what we mean all of these people 1 – don’t care about immigration considering two of them are immigrants 2 – don’t believe the national Supremacy myth they are peddling considering once again they either came or went to another nation and 3 – Most importantly are not randomly becoming fascists, but have had influences of it in their lives forever.

If you would like a good summary of the incredible entrenchment and cross-pollination of American white supremacy and white supremacy movements within apartheid South Africa, I cannot suggest the podcast weird little guys enough. From this it becomes incredibly clear that the fascistic myths that are made up about racial supremacy, national grandeur and demonization of the other are precisely created for the purposes they serve; they are not misconceptions nor accidents, but intentional conceptual devices used to justify and reify systems of domination. These motherfuckers know what they’re doing because they were raised to do it.

ADF in England – Expansion and Infection for Fascism Abroad

The final point of fascism that I want to point to is the expansion of the corporate nonprofits across the globe proliferated from America. Most interestingly this month is the ironically named Alliance Defending Freedom, that is at the center of the Supreme Court case currently going on attempting to undo bans on conversion therapy, and have been historically tied to almost every single major legal victory for the far right culture warriors in America.

They are expanding into England which is not terribly surprising if you’ve been following UK politics, but it is an interesting example of how what starts in America moves on to other countries in the American sphere of influence just as Turning Point USA did as well as Prager U. this serves two functions which is first of all to expand the influence of the people that genuinely care about the cultural issues but also serve as a bulwark of American power and influence within these clients states of the American Empire.

One of the most radicalizing things someone can see is the rest of the world because it demonstrates how much of our worldview has been pushed into our specific cultural sphere by our specific political economic and social influences. Therefore one of the most effective things the American Empire can do is not only cut off access of its citizens to the rest of the world which it is already extremely effective at but also attempting to make the rest of the world slightly more like it.

And it doesn’t have to make the whole world like it but it does have to make the parts that it has already trained its citizens to care about and value (read white) more and more bigoted in the exact same ways. that is why they have a hard-on for England, that is why they want the United Kingdom to become a little United States, because then they can point to the Grand historical made-up Vision that Americans have of the United Kingdom and say “look they’re doing it right so should we”.

What’s to be done?

I fear I may have contributed to the outrage machine more than I intended to with this. My apologies, if you are reading this please stop, take a breath, text a friend and then come back.

Ok, welcome back comrade. Now you may be asking yourself wow everything is burning. What can be done? why do I feel like shit? and luckily the answers to those two questions are the same, if mildly long and convoluted: build Mutual Aid networks and Community to facilitate direct action and Community self-defense. There are 10 trillion better zines on this, but to put that in regular speech: make friends who are cool, and with those friends enable you and your community to fight back against fascism.

The mutual aid part is the infrastructure of resistance, whereas the direct action is the action of resistance. Direct action looks like things that I won’t say online. Mutual aid looks like the communities that we have built up that will feed, house, clothe, hide and protest for those that do the things I won’t say online.

But I don’t want you to just take this Mantra and run, my goal with outlining the many pressure points of fascism is so that you can recognize all of the battlegrounds they are fighting in and meet them there. We must be as internationalist, artistic, propagandist and willing to fight as they are. We must have the same solidarity that the oligarchs do, and if we do there are so many more of us than them.

We have seen so many examples of this, from the large scale buildings of international cooperation and Community to resist the genocide in Palestine by building relationships with Palestinians under siege, to the organization funding and coordination of community defense groups within Chicago New York and DC from ICE, to the growth of orgs like Food not Bombs and Tenants Unions Where Collective economic actions of resistance and mutual Aid can be facilitated, America is Organizing. Find Groups in you area, make relationships of trust and reliance, and get the fuck to work.

Note On No Kings and Proposed Action in it-

The final note I will end this on, is the hot topic of the no kings protests. Or more accurately the no Kings parades. There is an incredible amount of critique rightly leveled against them, for working with cops which is directly harmful, to simply being useless and at worst a cheap pressure valve for liberal anger at fascism. I agree, but these critiques are more useful when paired with other calls to action that leverage the admittedly large platform and influence that such parades provide. so my ask for fellow leftists would be to treat these parades as you would any other parade, and get fucking creative. Use it as cover for direct action, or attempt to direct it to sites of actual interruption. Take this gathering of angry white liberals as an opportunity to recruit and radicalize. Critique is fantastic, action is better.

Conclusion –

Times feel weird, this is more earnest of an article than I wanted to write, and frankly way longer and mildly convoluted. Forgive me for that. I do think it is important though that we take time to sit down as this authoritarian takeover continues and reflect and categorize all of the violence oppression and importantly resistance that we have seen. You do not need to know everything, you do not need to see everything. You just need to find the place you can plug in, and do it well. This is the best approach we have not only to ending this as quickly as possible, but living through it in the happiest, most effective and least harmful way we can.

I promise my writing going forward will be a little bit happier, or at least hopefully going a little bit more deep into any of these topics, but for now I hope a high level overview of General themes of fascism and resistance that I see are helpful as we Orient ourselves into building effective communities to undermine this shit.

The Ceasefire and Hostage Exchange –

I also am quite biased against it, as someone with quite severe dyslexia and even more severe stubbornness, I simply refuse to spell correctly when it can be avoided. I write in textspeak, and I habitually violate grammar norms. I was raised by an English teacher and might have been an English teacher’s worst nightmare, as a devastatingly talkative kid that simply refused do a workbook.

That said it should be pretty clear why in my mind language and power are so intermingled. The ability for me to control how I express myself has been central to my life, and the expectations of how I write or speak or think have had real material form. So here I want to set out the positive argument for an almost childlike revolution against grammar and style norms, and a reclamation of what “serious writing” looks like. Or put simple: why correcting my grammar is counterrevolutionary.

Whats The Point of a Style Guide?

In my view a style guide should focus on one purpose, effective communication. If having a standard helps me communicate its needed, if it does not, it’s superfluous. For an example of the basic argument, in legal writing we always put case names (example v. example) in italics, this is to help them stick out among the prose and make reading it easier. This works in the legal writing community because we all agree on it. But if I am writing to a lay audience, it does not, and it possibly confuses or distracts. So if a lawyer gets annoyed at me not italicizing to a lay audience, they are missing the point.

Thats the most charitable reading of style guides, but thats not why I actually think they exist. Or at least not why anyone on the internet will make a fuss about them. I think, as all leftists annoyingly do, that it is about power and influence.

Language Standards and Power

I don’t give a fuck if one of my friends misspells something, and I have would not correct them. If someone I am arguing with in comments uses the wrong “Their”, oh baby it is fucking on.

Because its not about what is correct, it is about me showing I am smarter than them, it is me showing I am to be taken seriously. This does not have to be malicious, and in my experience it is often not. When I am writing a legal text, I know I will only be taken seriously using a certain language even if I know that that’s not the most effective way to communicate. I use my language to signal I know what I’m talking about, that I am part of the in-group.

In classic leftist fashion I must expand this systemically. If it is true I use language to denote my membership of an in-group, then surely language is generally used to denote social in-groups and out-groups, and my god this topic has been beaten to death in leftist circles because of course it is. Language developed in black and brown communities is seen as slang, if it’s from the South its lower class, and if its queer its often (stolen) slang as well. We demote and demean language outside of the group in power, and when we are told that language used is not “serious” we are maintaining that power structure.

Now I recognize this is not every correction. Sometimes (often) I misspell things and I rejoice in someone correcting it, and in fact if I misspell to the point of worsening comprehension, I beg y’all to tell me. But I do know the above phenomenon does occur when if pushed on why the standard helps communication the answer is that “that is how it is done”. This non sequitur hides a real reason, whether that is because I’ve accepted the standard uncritically, or society has deemed my mode of communication less valuable.

What is to be Done?

These ideas are not new and have been somewhat beaten to death in the leftist canon, the idea that language itself, and especially how we regulate language, is a reflection of and thus is a avenue to challenge power1. So I think any self respecting leftists can recognize that this is true. What baffles me is how many refused to accept the obvious solution: a radical rejection of received language standards.

If we accept that the standards we have received are seeping in classism, racism, and elitism, the first step is not to accept them but reform them. I thought we were fucking leftists, we are revolutionaries. We revolt. We always tell ourselves to “kill the cop within us”, and yet many of us have not killed the grammarian.

And if your knee-jerk reaction is to say I am being too serious about this, I want you to test yourself. Do you sound like the very conservative and right wingers that call us “too woke”? Are you saying this is not that deep? I think its uncomfortable to turn analysis in on oneself and consider the standards that have allowed them to engage with the world productively. For many learning to speak “properly” is both of an empowering and deeply constraining practice. 2

I have personally felt this, when I see people communicating in a informal way, it makes me squirm, but not because they’re doing anything wrong but because I feel the embarrassment that was pushed upon me for communicating the same way. At some point the cycle must end. At some point I have to give up the tool that lets me signal my status, and I would call on you to do the same.

As a final note before I turn to what this looks like in practice, I want to know that my goal is to communicate effectively. This critique doesn’t apply to things that genuinely help me communicate with different groups of people more effectively, and as a matter of fact rejection of the social norm that is ubiquitous and unwieldy allows a nuanced and contextually helpful method of communication. So I still recognize that sometimes my spellings are so bad no amount of leftism can justify them, thats not my point. My point is that the issue is not them being “unserious,” it is them being “unintelligible.”

So Allow Me to Deep it for a Second – What is to be Done?

Ok, if we take this seriously and want to live it, how do we do that? Do we start typing gibberish? Do we make a new language? Do we abolish the Oxford Comma? Maybe. But I can tell you what we don’t do: continue policing each other’s language as long as we understand each other.

We should be infinitely more interested in communicating effectively genuinely and productively between ourselves than we should in maintaining the appearance of seriousness. We should be more interested in exploring just how far we can push language, than we should in staying within the box that the very Society we are trying to reshape has set around our language. We should call out when people are using these language standards to assert power, and help develop language standards that are accessible and understandable to all, that are genuinely helpful in mutual understanding. And we should collectively unlearn the narratives that have demeaned and sidelined so many valid ways of expression.

Final Thoughts –

For me, that means I’m not going to worry about using the language I am comfortable with, from “y’all” to “u”, I’m going to put my internal thoughts in random parentheses, and I’m going to flop between my learned formal method of writing and my deeply casual method of speaking. I am going to write the same way I made videos, sometimes I have a shirt on and I am talking about silly topics and sometimes I wear my tank top and talk about the worst war crimes this world has seen. if this is not how you think writing should be done, thats ok. But I would ask you consider why.

In all cases I expect people to perceive me how I intend to be perceived, to engage with what I say and not only how they think I should say it. If I make a mistake, or there is a way I could help *you* understand me better please let me know, but if critique comes down to “it is inappropriate” or “unserious” I want you first to consider who has defined appropriate and who has defined serious.

As a conclusion, this could all be cope. It could be true that I’m simply a bad writer, or I am simply too lazy to proofread my work or spell out my words. This could be me projecting the insecurities I grew up with spending three years learning cursive that I still can’t do. The world may never know why I care about this, but I do hope the arguments I made stand: if language matters, use it consciously. If you are more comfortable and more effective writing how you speak; do that, bc ik sure as hell I will be. 3

This week I got put under an incredible amount of fire for my wild take that heckling war criminals is … good. I also has hundreds of Caleb Hammer fans deny his political role in some form of “soyboy you are looking to deep into his homophobic language and deeply unhelpful content”. And finally I spent a long time this week trying to outline some common myths about facsism and how I think yall should understand it.

So the three pieces are expansions and clarifications, with the postive response to the nonsense defending of Kamala, a simple structure of why Caleb’s content feeds right wing narratives, and a primer on how to start thinking about facsism in a tactical productive, though perhaps unsophisticated, manner. These are drafts to some extent, but I hope they are helpful.

Why Protest Kamala Harris –

TLDR: yes kamala had power and did crime with it. No protesting her is not wrogn morally (protesting war criminals nvr is) or tactically (it sets a good political line for our liberation + helps build the infrastructure for further work). If you dont think its a good use of ur time, do different work, but don’t pretend the people doing it are doing harm.

We should protest and heckle anyone who has every committed a war crime and not received justice for it. This is a very simple maxim, and yet when applied to our former Vice President, I get 20+ stitches saying leftists are the reasons fascists are in power. Counterpoint: Israel is a fascist state, so supporting it is empowering fascists.

I do wanna give a fully written response so the positioning is clear and we can hopefully move on to more productive uses of all of our time.

“She’s not a war criminal she was just VP” –

Stupid almost not worth addressing. The second in command of a administration is of course complicit. Himmler was complicit, Goebbels was complicit. gtfo.

“Why are you protesting her and not the people in power” –

This actually seems to often be in good faith and a genuine not understanding of why these protests are happening. Very simply – we do protest trump. the whole world is protesting trump. pretty much always, but you and I can agree not enough. So the strong version of this criticism (“You have much more smoke for kamala than trump”) is simply wrong, trump gets attack so much more.

“Any energy used protesting Kamala is better used against this admin”

This weaker version is still possible, and logically makes sense, those protestors literally COULD be going against trump. This misunderstands the relationship between one protest and another. Anti-imperialist protests against the dems are the very movements that developed into the infrastructure of the antifascist protests against the republicans. They are synergetic, not zero sum. The best example of this is if you literally track the activists doing anti-ICE work, about 1 year ago most of them were working in some form of pro-palestine work. Pro-Palestine work is necessarily anti-all imperialists, and thus in some form protesting the imperial actions of the democrats. In the same way oppression boomerangs to the metropole of the empire, the tactics for liberations boomerang too. ALSO the individuals protesting kamala had thier family literally killed by the Biden/Harris Admin, that is not just a token of energy that could be used anywhere, the grievance is specific and the harm is personal.

“We need to work together to beat fascism”

Great then work with us. Show up to the antiICE actions, help support mutual aid an direct action in ur community, stop calling the cops on people bc trump told u they are terrorists. I am HAPPY to work with war criminals, even though I think u should be in jail, hell i even voted for u. Are you happy to work with us? Is you being upset at a protestor who says mean words to you more important that fighting fascism? bc when u shun us bc of it, even though ur welcome in our spaces… it seems to suggest it is.

This feels like a more than fair summary of why u should get out and heckel any war criminal you see. its an act of democracy, of liberation and is just generally fun. Go watch the video of george w bush having a shoe thrown at him and tell me its not fucking hilarious.

Thanks for reading! Thispost is public so feel free to share it.

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Caleb Hammer and Personal Responsibility as Right Wing Propaganda –

TL:DR ; he is political and it is bad politics. This is obvious from the political consequence of what he is saying and displaying. it being hidden is part of the propagand. he could be not bad if he recognized and combatted this.

Every inevitably frat bro in my comments yelling at me that every person that signed up to be verbally abused on Calebs shows deserved it because they need to take some “Personal Responsibility“ and gave ever more ridiculous ways people spent their money to demonstrate the lack of this apparent virtue. These are the same people yelling at me that it is not in fact political. How they do not see the hypocrisy is beyond me. So lets run through this as clearly as possible:

Are His Actions are Political and Of what Flavor-

All Actions are political. But in a more specific sense, when you display emotion, publicly and intentionally, you are suggesting necessarily your reactions are justified, acceptable and either neutral or productive. When you make editorial choices about who to bring on, you are responsible for the narrative that develops whether ur intention or not. Caleb Hammer habitually highlights people making poor financial decisions who are in the situation where if they did not they would make a livable or even quite generous salary. This naturally makes an archetype of people struggling financially in this country, as people who could make better decisions who are choosing not to.

It is then not a far leap to see how if that is your archetype for struggling people in america, then your solution is focused on punishing them or rewarding them properly to change their behaviour, rather than giving them more money, because they will just blow it. I know more than two logical conclusions feels like reaching, but it should be obvious that this then naturally translates to policys that focus on infantilizing and “training” people out of poverty rather than simply giving life saving and necessary support to people that are.

This is not even getting into demeaning degrading or embarrassing these people publicly. If you do that, u are suggesting it is socially or politically justified to do that. This takes the archetype of an impoverished person in america and performs what he things should be done to them: the “tough love” of verbal abuse.

No matter how ridiculous someones spending, you will never convince me they have done something immoral. And even if they had, it will never be more immoral than the billionaires frivolously spending the money we made for them. By choosing to highlight them, and by berating them, he is creating the model interaction between you and poverty: not one of camaraderie and mutual aid, but one of individualist and infantilizing charity

“But don’t all financial shows do this” – How to do this right?

Yes and thats a problem. I recognize that stupid ppl with potential is the most interesting content, but that does not absolve them from political consequences. And it does not mean u cant do this content, u just have to do it consciously. The simplest way to do it is to verbally recognize what you are doing, admit it is not representative, don’t suggest financial advice as the only and unique change, be actively political because you already are. But he is not doing this, and so my critique stands.

Why does this Bother Me So Much –

Because these politics hurt people. This media builds the political concepts that are used to justify denying food to “welfare queens” or “Tough love” policies that trade giving diapers to new mothers for job training. We don’t in fact live in this fantasy world where people are poor simply because a random guy did not yell at you for an hour and centering that gives people an excuse to ignore the solutions. And when people are convinced this is the biggest problem, they justify worsening the real problem: people not having enough money to budget in the first place.

Fascism – My Practical Primer

TL:DR, when talking about fascism there is a lot more “yes, and”’ing rather than “um, actually”’ing. Be deeply interested in what they believe and where its coming from, because it displays their weakness and exactly how to beat them … again.

You may have noticed i am supremely bad at spelling fascism, I have it misspelled in multiple captions and i simply will never spell it correctly. That does not prevent me from recognizing them when i see them. They are the motherfuckers with swastikas on their arm, doing the heil and talking about a storm. But what do they actually believe? what are their policys and platform?

I am not going to to do an academic write up analyzing fascism, its not my field and its not my expertise. But i do wanna do a summary of how I approach fascism, because i think it may be helpful.

How to Think about Fascism being Multiple things –

As with all concepts its kinda a loose amalgam of ideas and things that are all equally true. Take this stapler:

it is equally a tool, and a weapon, and red and a capitalist construction and a cultural icon. All of these things completely and entirely describe the physical thing in front of us.

Fascism is equally a helpful word to refer to a lot of things. It is the strategy the wealthy use to direct working class politics away from the contradictions of capitalism (leftist defintion for more see1). It is also equally an actual real political movement that happened in the 1920s-80s (shoutout franco really holding out for the group). It is also an actual set of political theories that pre-date and differ from their implementation (ref Georges Sorel or Mussolinis og works). Further the modern understanding of it as a set of Authoritarian ultra nationalist policys is accurate and helpful.. though tells you very little about why and how those came about.

Finally it is very much a thing alive and well in americas political sphere, not really the same movement or theories or occupying the exact same place in leftist analysis (though it does look damn close).

My point is this is not a precise term, and it is an incredible important one primarily due to the place in the political popular imagination. Being able to pin someone with the label fascist is very (though unfortunately diminishingly) powerful. But which of the above definitions do you need to fufill to have that effect? In my experience of cynical instrumentalist rhetoric’ing, any of them.

How to use this understanding – Be as nimble and “Bad Faith” as the fuckers

How to Label them:

Fascists will always hop between these definitions to deny it“no no, i am not a fasicst, i hate mussolini but find Giovanni Gentile helpful” , so you should feel equally comfortable hopping between them , “well not only are both of them properly seen as fasicsts, but you are occupying the same position of them in the political world, diverting class consciousness to hyper-nationalism and bigotry” or when helpful “well you may not like the policys of mussolini but you are advocating the same policys as franco”. These different definitions exist on different levels of abstraction from the material policys, to the cultural context to the economic and political “why”. Positioning modern action, policys and movements in any of those contexts is sufficient to use the slur “fascist” , which contrary to popular belief is not used nearly enough. So if your goal is to convince non-fascists the person in question is a fascist, use any of them.

How to Understand them

If your goal is to undermine fascism overall, build a theory of change and of action to undermine it in america right now I cannot suggest enough reading up on historical fascism, what they believed and what they thought they were doing. Once you do, the relevance cannot be overstated, the themes and aesthetics and sometimes one to one the policies are just right there. Look into what the modern people on stormfront and at this point the white house are saying.

And by the way, the similarities are not only due to some esoteric marxian class and material analysis (though it definitely is also that) but modern day white supremacists, facists and racists are ALSO learning from history. they are obsessed with history and what their mythological leaders did. They are modeling and dogwhistling on the basis of what old nazis did, but that also means they have the same weakness’.

So yes, theory on this important, and yes fasicsm is also an actual set of policys and actions and yes I personally agree fasicsm is imperial capitalism falling in on itself. That is a helpful and true understanding. But when dealing with these nazis right now, the specific national myths, wierdo cult shit, and internal understanding will allow us a specific, nuanced and effective understanding to undermine them.

This is not a game of calling names, its a moment of being scared shitless bc its literally back from the 1930s. Learn it from the same place they did, understand it in the context of the fall of empire, and fight it fuckin tooth and nail.

As I said, I can’t summarize the long and varied history of the worlds biggest assholes. if you want a good LONG podcast series to understand these vibes I cannot suggest enough Cool Zone Media’s Weird Little Guys (Molly Conger pls notice me :)).

I hope this was helpful, and if you would like to support my work across platforms please do consider joining as a paid subscriber! If you do not want weekly updates or articles, feel free to subscribe to only the monthly one, I am trying to create a more censorship resistant network in case meta or tiktok inevitability dont appreciate my work LOLLL.

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Administrative and Links –

All my videos in one place, please enjoy this deeply odd podcast :

1

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/australia/rem-fascism.htm

September 30, 2025

Helpful Delusions of Fascism – Nation, Race, Brotherhood.

Fascists have (unfortunately) lots of ideas. They have nationalism, race, ethnicity, aesthetic and brotherhood. The most importnat part of these ideas is not that they are true, but that they are helpful.

Take nationalism for example. Nations don’t exist. Ask three americans what makes them american and you will get three answers. Ask a macedonian what the difference between them and bulgaria are and u will go through 300 years of the most complicated history i have ever had the disfortune of hearing2. But whether it is actually they are actually descendant of Alexander the great simply does not matter. Thats not why ppl say it. Thats not why people believe it. They believe it because they want to. Telling that story makes them feel good, find community and mobalize self or group beneficial action. Its a useful idea, whether its true or not.

This is the starting point, recognizing why these ideas come again and again, why it seems no one in france believes in british supremacy no matter how much more logical it may be (poor example), bc they have soemthing so much better than logic promoting thier ideas: feelings. That warm feeling i get when i as a southerner hear a person with a drawl, when someone notices my mildly higher use of yall, or when as. gay guy can immediately clock the fagccent. its nice to be a part of something. I am no more southern than the average person, though I am notably gay than the actual person, but thats not what gives me those happy feelings, its that in that moment I feel connected to other ppl, like I belong. Thats intoxicating, and thats what matters. When I talk about nationalism or other particularist isms (like regionalism etc) that is what i’m talking about. Fasicsts leverage this to mobalize millions, a connection I can elaborate on if yall want, but hopefully the point is made.

Liberals Helpful Delusions – Institutional Grandeur and Functional Democracy

Liberals have the same thing, not only in their half hearted and nonsensical acceptance of nationalism in the name of “patriotism” but in the creation and deification of institutions. Have you ever walked into a court room? or read a judgment? in that room or in that document exist facts and reality’s that are helpful3. We talk about rights and obligations and states and, in England, the monarch as if they are in the room. The judge dresses in a gown, not bc it looks cool, but because when wearing it they cease to be a person, they become a judge. Its drag. None of those things exist, they are not literally there and they have no literal power.

But seeing a judge as a judge, and not a person with flaws and biases, serves those in support of law and order a purpose. It gives one the language to treat their word as final, and gives you the different standards to hold them to. No longer is the court a place but its a machine. The same is done to the police. They are not people with family’s, homes, and vulnerabilities. They are extensions of the state, tools in a large machine. Even if you get how this is not literally true, i hope you see why there is a good moral reason to accept it as true: if we all agree the judge decides the truth, the system works better. The benefit of believing is more important than then the belief being true. And if we accept this, it then feels good to believe it. It feels great to believe judges are actually infallible, then we dont have to worry about how corrupt they are. There is a systemic argument for a helpful delusion and that delusion also makes you feel good. Fuckin bingo.

Leftists Helpful Delusions: Revolution

Leftists have the same, revolution is the primary one that comes to mind. Dreaming of it is fun, but the reality of it is not only messy also entirely unpredictable. We speak of revolution to simplify an incredibly complex mess of dispersed organizations people and moments, not because its true that its any one thing , but its helpful to talk about it that way. it mobilizes, it excites and it allows for discussion.

I think I’ve made my point, everyone and every conversation has a gap between the concepts being talk about and the reality of them, not just because of ignorance but out of necessity or systemic and political benefits or tertiary benefits (oozey woozy good vibes) Now will, why does this fuckin matter? well dear reader I will tell you

Why does this matter ?

Because recognizing and instrumentalizing what is a helpful delusion just as much a part of building a plan of action as creating good concepts and good actions.

Undermining Nationalism –

For example, if I want to undermine nationalism (which i do), and I think the ppl who believe it are actually convinced 1 – they are descendant of alexander and 2 – that matters in a material way, then my time is well spent talking history with them. But they arent. No one fucking thinks that if they have the language or analysis to consider what the nature of their beliefs are. They hold that concept bc it makes them feel good then develop narratives around it. This changes how to address it, no longer is logic enough but allowing them an emotional out or alternative is needed.

And this is what we are dealing with. Fascists find comforts in their delusions of national mythos, racial superiority, and fraternity. They build athestics that display and promote that, you need not go deep into history to find these. But for most its not because its the most logical or factual belief but the one they needed to feel good, or in some cases to persevere through quite difficult times to their perception. If that is the core of the belief , even if the fascist in front of us cannot be reformed, which i agree is nearly all the time, to prevent more of them forming, we must build a better way for those who would need such ideas for comfort to recieve the care and community they need. If the only club in town is the KKK, ppl r gonna join. Build another club. Live another way.

Undermining Liberalism

This applies equally to liberals. While The illusion of independent electoral democracy is empirically untrue, which it is, it serves a purpose. Originally, the agreed on delusion of electoral democracy served the same as the delusion of a judge’s decisio being correct: we don’t bicker about who won or who deserves power we just accept it and society functions. The machinery continues. But in the rise of fascism, it serves another, more emotional purpose.

It allows them to feel comfortable and moral simply voting or even better if they canvas. If they believe the clearly compromised judiciary will come to the rescue they don’t have to feel like shit not fighting the very fight that got us a judiciary in the first place. and they can justify denying the facts on their own somewhat meta analysis, with things such as “if we give up hope in the judiciary that is only allowing them to become corrupt” and they are right… if the system was working. So we have spotted the cognitive dissonance, the emotional and logical reason liberals hold on to these symbols of power: 1 – it justifies inaction 2 – they believe holding onto this helpful delusion protects the little amount of good they can see “recognizing the dems are committing genocide is only making things worse”, and in a system as they envision it, a liberal democracy, they are right.

2 comes down to a factual debate, are we in that system anymore, to which I suggest we hold them to their word that trump is a fascist. That is an admission we are no longer in a liberal democracy and gives them a factual out to let go of their delusion of liberal institutions. We are seeing this btw, with them no longer holding the stiff upper lip about redistricting. its a TINY admission of liberal democracy failing but its something. seize on it. 1 is both easier and harder. Because to undermine it we must also provide them an alternative. They hold on to the delusion of voting as effective activism because they simply are terrified of whats going on. If voting does not work, and all i know is voting, or all i have ever done is vote…. am i a bad person? does fascism win? IDK but i can make u feel a bit better by saying “look here is what worked before” and point to revolutionary organizations in the past that actually worked, that actually fought fascism with a large variety of tools, from building revolutionary infrastructure through mutual aid, to using it to do direct aciton to diverse and creative propaganda and pressure campaigns.

Give them hope, not because its necessarily there, but because it can replace one formerly helpful delusion of liberal institutions with a different, updated one, of revolutionary optimism. I think its true because it seems to cohere with reality, but even if it does not, I think its all we got.

Conclusion –

Everyone believes shit that is not true, myself included, but often its not because of ignorance its because the sheer complexity and depressive nature of the world. Fascists have the mythos of the national past. Liberals have the grandeur of the institutional present. Leftists have the liberation of the revolutionary future.

All of these are simplifications, they are all delusions and they are all dangerous. We should treat them like drugs: Intoxicating and addictive, but at the right dosage at the right time, they are medicine.