Been thinking about this—subtitle of Undertow is Scenes from a Slow Civil War. (This WaPo scoop is one.) But could be, We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Fascism. Prayer+guns+purity+hate+reverence for “fitness”+ masculinization+mystic nation? Is there a word for that? 3/
— THE UNDERTOW, by Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) April 13, 2023
Everyone's sick & tired of making the same points over & over again, but still...
— David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress) April 13, 2023
The idea of protecting "normal" women & children from scapegoated "deviants" is one of the absolute, fundamental, building-blocks of fascism, 100 years ago, and now.
When the history of how fascists came to power in the United States is written, it will be particularly unkind to the liberal academics, journalists, and politicians who fear-mongered about "crime" by the poor and pushed surveillance and state violence as the solution.
— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) October 23, 2022
THREAD. Two Harvard professors published an academic article calling for 500,000 more armed cops, who they say will arrest 7.8 million more people per year. The article reveals alarming flaws in elite academia at a time of rising fascism. This is one of my most important posts.
— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) November 3, 2022
The border is just a mob, exhibit #536854. I was told, upon trying to re-enter the country where I live, no: I have no legal status there. (I'm married to a US citizen but my new green card is taking 5 months + counting to process). Magically, $585 was able to solve this problem.
— Sophie Lewis (@reproutopia) October 27, 2022
The classic fascist genre of justifying the arbitrary criminal persecution of political enemies because someone on their side is actually held accountable through proper legal process. pic.twitter.com/BZ8Ml31URv
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) March 18, 2023
Read: "What Is Fascism? A century of attempts to define and whitewash Fascism." Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Substack, Dec 7, 2022.
"Fascism is a constant problem of the human condition," Jared Yates Sexton says in this April 16, 2023 Twitter thread. An authoritarian movement, semi-hidden, semi-open, wants "neoliberal globalism" to persist. It's fundamentally about "white supremacist capitalism," and it's "a crisis of a declining America." They want to recreate hierarchies and destroy liberalism and progressivism. All of this is fascism. "So many moderates and 'respectable' Republicans want to believe MAGA is an aberration, but it’s only an intensifying of the same ideas, paranoia, violence, and antidemocratic energies that have been there all along and have been essential for their political projects. Reaganism and classic GOP projects were authoritarian cruelty with a smile and a happy ad campaign. But they used the same racism, the same conspiracy theories, the same ideology. It felt better for them, and what MAGA does is make them confront their deserved shame." And: "Affiliated projects like National Conservatism and Christian Nationalism are cousins of fascism and the religious components it bastardized." They can't complete their project without an "authoritarian push," and they want "someone more respectable than Donald Trump" to do it. Arguing over the fascist label is "an attempt to maintain the authoritarian structures that served you well in an attempt to reclaim them from Trump and the rabble you’d rather control than serve." Here he discusses it in a 25-minute video. At 21:00–21:30, he says that Christian Nationalism is the storytelling that fascism takes on. The worldwide commonality in fascism, Nazism, U.S. movements like this, etc. has been white supremacy.
The topic came up again on Jared Yates Sexton's interview of Angela Denker (July 12, 2024 episode). The framing: Christian Nationalism uses Christianity's reference points to argue that "God is on our side" and grab power. To the extent that it has any real theology, it's a "theology of glory." From a conventional Christian theological perspective, it's idolatry because it's more motivated by power than by God. It falsely claims that American history is "Judeo-Christian"; this serves its fascistic, populist narrative. To them, religion isn't about improvement of the soul or having a relationship with God. They want to establish dominion.
Sexton references Senator Josh Hawley's speech. On July 8, 2024, Hawley said:
"The campaign to erase America’s religion from the public square is just class warfare by other means: the elite versus the common man, the atheistic monied class versus America’s working people. And it’s not really about eliminating religion, either: it’s about replacing one religion with another.
Every nation observes a civil religion. For every nation is a spiritual unity. The Left wants religion: the religion of the pride flag. We want the religion of the Bible.
So I have a suggestion. Take the trans flags down from our public buildings and inscribe instead, on every building owned or operated by the federal government, our national motto: In God We Trust."
Christian Nationalists want to turn Christianity into a civil religion. The American ones want to make Christianity American. They don't care about any Christianity that isn't American.
And to them, religious freedom isn't primarily freedom to practice one's own religion; it's the freedom to discriminate and wield power over others. They're moving away from the idea of states' rights and toward a consolidation of power for the federal government.
This started back with Jerry Falwell's segregationism, which leveraged anti-abortion movement, and now it's gathering power. White women are often the messengers to appear to soften the blow.
Sexton argues: Josh Hawley is trying to fill people's need for a sense of meaning in life. The narrative is that Democrats are snide about saying that economic numbers are good even though everyone is struggling, while Republicans are speaking to people's bitterness and resentment.
The day after the episode aired, someone tried to assassinate Trump. He suggested that divine intervention had saved his life, which seems to me an example of the ideas above, as Trump doesn't really believe in God but is happy to use religion if it gets him votes.
Mike Rugnetta says on Bluesky, Jan 2, 2024: "fascism isn’t a coherent ideology but an aesthetic position which uses political tools for post-hoc justifications of assuming said aesthetic position." (In other words, primarily it's a preference for looking at displays of hypermasculinity, crosses and flags, etc., and if anyone questions your taste, you just take away their basic political rights to go to the doctor or speak or exist.) Because it's weaponized and it gains power, it's dangerous. Nonetheless, as a philosophy there's little meat on its bones — intellectually, it's a "garbage nonsense position for insecure fools and bootlickers."
A.R. Moxon, March 24, 2024: "A fascist politician has a pretty easy way to differentiate themselves [from other candidates]. All they have to do is offer more eliminationist violence and a more bigoted rationale for it than anybody else is offering."
A.R. Moxon, April 6, 2024: "The conservative project is a supremacist project, which means it is a blame-management system, which is why it has embraced fascism's myth of purification through elimination, and why they intend to accelerate the fascist program of eliminationist violence against their own citizens."
Harrison Ford said the character he played, Indiana Jones, would punch a Nazi. He said: “That was a black-and-white world and its evil presented itself to the world. I mean, it’s incalculable that this vision of evil not be confronted.”
Gwen Snyder says that we should prioritize "dismantling their structural and social power." If we get to the point where we have to punch a Nazi, "we have failed to make them scared of coming out from under their little rocks, and...we have allowed them too many rocks to hide under." Furthermore, once we accept "their [Nazi] arguments about nature and strength," we'll tend to "privilege and empower the people who are most likely to deploy those [Nazi-punching] tactics successfully (able-bodied cis men), get away with deploying those tactics (white cis men), and successfully enjoy those tactics (angry, violent men)." It then becomes a machismo game about who can punch a Nazi, rather than recognizing that we have failed at making a nonviolent society where no one seriously considers being a Nazi because there's nothing appealing about it and that set of beliefs finds no safe quarter in society.
Again, let me be clear, there are times where Nazis encroach and just, you gotta punch them. But streetfighting with Nazis is a last resort. It means we have failed to make them scared of coming out from under their little rocks, and also that we have allowed them too many rocks to hide under.
— Gwen Snyder is undead (@gwensnyder.bsky.social) October 26, 2024 at 2:11 PM
Nazis have extremely punchable faces, and sometimes those faces simply must be punched as a form of community self-defense. But when we privilege punching those faces over dismantling their structural and social power we end up implicitly accepting their arguments about nature and strength.
— Gwen Snyder is undead (@gwensnyder.bsky.social) October 26, 2024 at 1:45 PM
When we privilege those things within our movements it means we also privilege and empower the people who are most likely to deploy those tactics successfully (able-bodied cis men), get away with deploying those tactics (white cis men), and successfully enjoy those tactics (angry, violent men)
— Gwen Snyder is undead (@gwensnyder.bsky.social) October 26, 2024 at 1:50 PM
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