Epstein. What can I say? How about nothing? Or how about Epstein was disgusting and Trump is Epstein writ large. Should we look away even while we cautiously hope that Trump has fatally skewered himself? Should we fear he may be about to skewer everyone else? At those extremes, Epstein’s legacy may end Trump’s reign. How ironic. But flip it like so much else has flipped, and Epstein’s legacy may entrench the beast. How horrid. USA! USA! Can you imagine any other contemporary society slithering like the USA now slithers? Hmmm. I bet you can. Our future: Unify and fight our way out of this place or pitch tents for a long stay.

Fascism is not just racist negation. It is not just misogynist relegation. Not just repressive threats, heinous actions and a lot of people wildly assaulting one another. Not just hate, cowardice and hypocrisy. Not just books burned. Not just truth toppled. It is all that and more. 

Fascism doesn’t just turn a political party into a cult. It doesn’t just bully lawyers. Threaten judges. Capture universities. It doesn’t just trounce education. Corrupt culture. Sink science. Fascism doesn’t just rip food from hungry children. Rip medicine from vulnerable adults. Dehumanize opponents. Fascism grows Alligator Alcatrazes from coast to coast and finances a domestic army to round up sought inmates. Fascism uses fear, confusion, payoffs, and chaos to establish a new normal. Fascism institutionally revamps, reorders, and restructures. It makes transforms institutions to enforce extreme daily horrors. 

Fascism unfolds all around us. Can you hear it, see it, smell it? Do you feel it encroach? Challenge fascism? Fascism smirks. Fascism shrieks. You can’t stop the rain. You can’t stop me. Do you wonder, will I be cowed or will I have courage? Will I succumb or will I resist? It isn’t too late to resist, but it is getting there. If you aren’t already resisting, it is time to do so. Together.

Fascism is a vile, pathetic, lying, cowardly, bad joke of a creature who seduces sufficient support and sullies sufficient minds to grab the reigns of current government sufficiently to assault law, knowledge, health, and even human compassion and empathy. Fascism reconstructs government, education, health care, law, communication, economy and culture. It parades a repressive, perverse, caricature of civility and caring. Fascism establishes a click bait society, an atomized society, a police state society all built on invidious individualism of the most debilitating sort. Fascism is Trump and Company unless we stop them. 

Now what? Let’s turn to stopping Trump and Company, turn  to stopping fascism. But before we do, I mentioned clickbait. I mentioned invidious individualism. Do they seem to you a bit minor, a bit marginal to have brought up? I think not. 

Clickbait is when an author or media venue offers an article, interview, video, or whatever with a title that promises X to attract eyes. Eyes arrive. X is absent. Eyes leave. Each clickbait instance perfectly embodies two themes. Seek profit before all else. Lie with total impunity as if to lie is a virtue and to be truthful is naive stupidity. But what does clickbait damage? 

Someone clicks on a lying title. They read, view, or hear the titled item. The title proves to have been clickbait. They got tricked. Now what? Do they get angry? Do they swear off the venue that tricked them? Do they consider the author a lying manipulator? I think all that is warranted but quite rare. I think nearly always we just roll with the punch. It wasn’t a knockout blow. We survived. So we moved on. To have gotten outraged might have led to our being perpetually outraged because click bait is everywhere. So we suck it up and move on. We passively resign to it. Our passivity sublimates our passion. Clickbait not only attracts our eyes, it infantilizes us. Clickbait produces the human trajectory that fascism needs.

Each new venue decides that to not use clickbait, to not become really good at clickbait, will lose audience to whoever click-baits better. To not like, much less to not accept lying becomes naïve. So we manipulatively lie and we passively accept others’ manipulative lying. We “go along to get along.” We join the survival slide. We make modestly self-aggrandizing personal choices that yield unmitigatedly awful collective collapse.

Consider another nasty nightmare. Call it invidious individualism. We confront a difficult situation. We assess only implications for self, for some close family members and friends, or maybe even for our tribe. Our workplace faces Trumpian-imposed job cuts. We expect a pink slip. We don’t join with other workmates to sit down and collectively refuse our dismissals. Collectivity doesn’t surface even as a passing thought. I, me, mine calculus takes command. Invidious individualism is us.

Or consider another example. We hate Trump. We stew in anger but don’t contemplate ways to work with others against Trump. To collectively resist doesn’t enter our consciousness. Donald threatens. Our anger rises but we don’t show it. We don’t harp on it. We might lose a friend. We conclude it is better to bow and proceed obediently. 

Or, perhaps we are in high school or college. Our classes don’t discuss oncoming fascism and what to do about it. Not a word. Think about that. And there’s too little discussion of fascism in our dorms and dining halls as well. But we don’t initiate discussion. We don’t want to offend anyone. We don’t want to stand out. There is a lot of talk all around about solidarity and mutual aid. Invidious individualism nurtures Fascism’s game plan. 

Or perhaps your law firm sells out. You are a lawyer. A para legal. A secretary. Whatever. Now what? Or maybe you work in some other firm. What to do? Pre-censor your words and actions to not anger the beast? Or resist?

Perhaps your medicine and doctor’s appointments end. The clinic that serves your community closes. Now what? Or maybe masked marauders have come for your neighbor or your workmate. What do you do? 

The sounds of silence, reverberate. The sounds of pain and violence, the cries of the bombed and the moans of the starved echo and crescendo. It’s today’s soundtrack. You hear it. Perhaps you yourself moan. You yourself cry. The soundtrack includes you, but what do you do? Or perhaps you don’t moan. The evil hasn’t come explicitly for you. But it has come for others. So what do you do? 

I recently saw a film titled Deaf President Now. The title wasn’t clickbait. And the film is currently on Apple TV, assuming it hasn’t been removed since I saw it. The film recounts the 1988 struggle at Gallaudet University for the deaf to successfully win a demand to install a deaf president. 

Yes, I know, the campaign didn’t win student/faculty self management. It didn’t even seek it. It wasn’t anti imperialist. It wasn’t overtly feminist. It wasn’t overtly anti-capitalist. But I watched and I thought this film is highly relevant to our time precisely because not very political and horribly subordinated students got shocked by gross mistreatment, got angry at raging hypocrisy, got organized, got strategic, and won. 

The film shows the many lies, fears and obstacles that assaulted the students, including from their own prior commitments. The film reveals what grassroots anti-fascism can look like. Yes we have to go further than the Gallaudet struggle went. But I took inspiration from seeing their story. You don’t need more inspiration? Great, but perhaps show it to your parents or your children, your schoolmates, workmates, or friends. And then perhaps talk together about it. That would be some serious socializing. 

About a month ago a bunch of committed organizations selected July 17th for the next day of anti-Trump demonstrations around the country. These would be called Good Trouble to honor John Lewis, whereas last month’s demos were called No Kings to trounce Trump. It is purely anecdotal but I saw almost nothing about the Good Trouble planned events until July 14th and even then not very much. I asked others who said the same. Then I saw some messages indicating the time and place to come out to join the events, but the messages had little about why to come out, about what the day’s events would accomplish, and particularly about how to get involved beyond the day’s events.

The turnout? I am not sure, but it seems to have been a small fraction of the earlier No Kings turnout. Millions had demonstrated in June, and would hopefully have come out again. Additional anecdotal evidence suggested militance may have grown and focus may have enlarged, but numbers seriously declined. Why?

One explanation is Good Trouble was on a weekday compared to the No Kings weekend time slot. But another explanation may be that the No Kings demonstrations didn’t sufficiently convey to their participants that to succeed they would need to return and bring others. No Kings may have left many participants feeling we came out and it changed nothing so no more of that for us. Likewise, the call for the Good Trouble demonstrations may not have conveyed convincing reasons to turn out. 

So, now what? The task remains as it has been. Resistance needs to spread understanding and commitment that fuels persistent, growing activism. Resistance needs that activism to say to elites the cost to you of your agenda will keep growing. To avoid the costs that resistance imposes on you, you must back off. You must give in. But what can convincingly convey such a message? 

Paramount is that elites see that resistance is not going away or even stabilizing. Resistance is getting broader, stronger, and more effective. This isn’t complicated. Smaller than earlier says to elites, wait it out. It will dissipate. Larger than earlier says to elites, worry about what’s coming. To get larger, resistance must continually welcome new participants. Immigration, tariffs, misogyny, racism, climate, and war will upset steadily more people. Resistance must speak with and involve those new people. 

Resistance must actively involve millions of already justifiably scared young people, and even more millions of already furious, outraged, scared, and in their hearts progressive and not so young people who, however, exhibit all their pain and fear only to a spouse over dinner, or when standing in front of a mirror, or when cursing while taking a shower but not yet visibly, not yet publicly, not yet on the streets or in a job action. 

It is critical but it is not sufficient that resistance mobilize folks who are already eager to participate. But resistance must also reach out to folks who are not yet eager to participate, and even to folks who disagree with us.

What about our movement getting broader and stronger? When anger grows at a Trumpian policy Trump backs off a bit and throws up distractions even as he plans to later revisit his disruptive intentions. Trump and Company need to see resistance getting less atomized and more generalized. They need to feel us getting more intent on collectively stopping and reversing the whole fascist makeover of government, economics, education, health, science, culture, upbringing, human emotion, and even empathy.

Elites need to see people who are outraged at genocide aid people who are horrified at health cuts. People who defend and celebrate immigrants also defend and celebrate teachers who resist regimentation. People who slam Tesla also slam Palantir. People who slam Fox News also move on to challenge the New York Times and all mainstream media. People who demand an end to ecological suicide also demand an end to billionaire domination. 

Elites need to hear a distant but growing ringing of revolution. They need to think to themselves, oh shit, we don’t want to provoke that. We need to reconsider our choices. 

But what specifically can send that message to their board rooms and gated communities? How about if our mass demonstrations include side trips to board rooms and gated communities? How about if some already eager employees and students don’t give in or leave when ordered to but instead dig in and fight? Fired employees refuse to leave and instead sit in to demand changes in work day length and pay? Outraged students lock up their campuses and demand changes in curriculum and hiring? How about we grow and also we work toward that?

How about if our artists stand on stage and convey that it is time to fight and then engage with and perform at demonstrations? Bruce, yes, of course, but also Taylor. How about if our demonstrations demand a massive wealth tax and display signs in the crowd that say no more corporate greed, no more private ownership? How about if a huge rally spins off marches to some fascist corporate bosses’ homes to block the streets where the richest live? Cops come. There are two thousand of us. Picture it. What do the cops do, tear gas Scarsdale? Bring it on.

How about if we carefully, thoughtfully do that which tells elites that there are more and more of us and we are more and more unified and more and more energized. We do what doesn’t alienate but organizes. We do what welcomes still more growth. We do what says to elites, hey, look, look closely, you see our most militant part, you see our most radical part, that is what the whole resistance is threatening to become. That is what you are provoking. We can get more militant. We can diversify our demands. We can come directly after you. And at the same time we will not alienate or repel but instead attract, welcome, and elevate new allies. 

Can you hear us? Can you see us? Can you smell us? Do you feel us encroaching? You will be cowed. You won’t have courage. It isn’t too late for you, but it is getting there. If you haven’t already, it is time for you to switch to our side or to surrender.

---