'Anti-fascism can act as an antibiotic against the worst inclinations and possibilities, which want to further reify social stratification and cruelty as a shortsighted way out for a privileged few. But we can choose something entirely different.'
features work from Kim Kelly, Jeanelle K. Hope, David Renton, Tal Lavin, and many others, and is edited by my friend Shane Burley. Shane, who is also the author of, also has written work featured in the book, including an interview with me — which reversed our usual roles, given that Shane is a regular guest onand what we need to build to defeat the right today.. It’s a book that’s worth owning for its glossary alone, but it offers so much more.
At the same time, we saw a new slate of Trumpian candidates that push the party even further to the right. Those are now being thrown into a place of flux because they lost so many elections during the midterm. So it’s really unclear exactly how that plays in the party. It’s both toxic on the one hand, but it’s the only thing that wins on primaries. On the other hand, they have to have… That’s where the energy is.
But they’re also being carried by Jews. So right now Libs Of TikTok is a main kind of purveyor of this line of thinking around LGBT spaces, particularly this groomer stuff. And that’s led by an Orthodox Jew. And we’re seeing really complicated incidents like, at January 6th, where you’re literally having ultra-Orthodox Jews standing next to people with Camp Auschwitz shirts. Again, a very confusing sort of mix of those things.
In Florida, where Ron DeSantis currently reigns, public school teachers have been forced to make their classroom libraries inaccessible to students, with the threat of felony charges looming over any teacher who allows a student to access an unvetted book. The policy is part of a broader moral panic around the idea that teachers are grooming students to embrace queer identities or leftist politics.
There’s these different manifestations of that and it’s different than just the structural inequality of your employer or of your landlord. They work fundamentally different because the folks that are participating in that oppressive apparatus are sometimes working-class people themselves. And so I think learning those tactics from our historic anti-fascism and then applying it to these different contexts is what’s absolutely necessary to keep us safe.
That’s the kind of conversation people are having and it’s really dictated by people who are survivors of violence and people having that kind of reflexive relationship where they can hear each other. So I am encouraged by the fact by when a social movement doesn’t stop at looking for victories, but it totally displaces the old institution entirely. So we are in a society where we’re atomized and we’re unsafe.
When I think about how to reach the world I want to live in, I’d prefer one with no government or capitalism. But honestly I’d probably settle for one that just isn’t being destroyed by fire and flood and Nazis. The only way that seems realistic is to see a movement of movements, a federation of equals with our own needs and tactics and strategies and ideas and aesthetics, learning to work together, not in unity, but in diversity. I want that.
They’re going to have ideological influence. So for example, we have just seen really, really far right governments enter power in Italy and Israel. Those are going to have profound impacts on global politics. Not just the people who are directly touching those governments, but everyone’s going to echo across the world and figuring out how to have not just solidarity with the people most immediately affected, but how to create international collaboration to confront that.
And I think in the pandemic we have uneven levels of affectedness. We have chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, particularly vulnerable jobs, different experiences that make that uneven, on the one hand. And so, I think there’s a sort of breakdown of the empathy for people who don’t feel as though they’re as affected by this, whether or not that’s an accurate assessment by them, it’s different. So, I think that creates a problem.
So, I think creating this constant system of institutional care and support is really, really important. And I think we have examples of people sort of playing with this. We have community groups, we have mutual aid networks. Those are great. I think we need to expand though, the role of that personal connection.
And it’s really difficult when only a minority of people are asking for what now feels like extraordinary. “Oh, can you wear a mask around me?” Extraordinary. That kind of thing. So, I think normalizing basic measures is really important. Communicating and being able to hear those sorts of things. And I think there’s a cultural shift in how we talk in friendships and relationships, that’s really productive, where we’re sharing a little bit more about how we feel and the uniqueness.
I think that’s especially important now that we’re seeing the breakdown of even the oppressive social order that we had. And so, mutual aid and basic counter-institutions in dual power are even more important, I think now, and more viable now than they were before. So, I think that’s a piece of that.
On my best days, I can be involved in organizing, but a lot of my days are not my best days, and that pulls me away from it. And it actually makes it an incredibly toxic place for a lot of people. And our organizing models are often based on superheroes, basically people who stretch themselves until they break, and then we move on to the next person who stretches themselves till they break.
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