By Antonio
There’s no getting around it. It’s a fucking scary time to be alive.
Fascism is on the rise, in the halls of state power (of course), but also among “the people” (at least, certain portions of them) who are lost in the sauce of misinformation, who are taken over by the thrilling feelings of hatred that make their own miseries a bit more tolerable, and who are actively lending their hearts and minds to fascist strongman leaders.
Those leaders, emboldened by a state apparatus set up to push elite will on the majority even in more “normal” times, are now leveraging that state to attack its scapegoat enemies (mostly migrants and trans folks at this point), while dismantling whatever parts of the state may have actually served some social good. They’re rewriting history to suit their white supremacism and macho penchant for violence. They’re cracking down on dissent — even from the most tepid liberal opposition, but of course preparing the ground for a full-scale attack on leftists, anarchists, antifascists, and anyone who actually gets what’s going on.
In this context, the liberal institutions that we anarchists tend to oppose — but which compose some form of bulwark against the worst overt abuses of state power in the USA — aren’t even doing their nominal job. The Democrats form a sad, useless, positively counterinsurgent “opposition party”. Media agencies readily bend over to sate authoritarian concerns. University administrators hand over names of pro-Palestinian members of the university community, helping Stephen Miller and his minions target them in future rounds of legal repression. With the exception of some parts of the judicial system (including individual jurors who refused to indict a hero who threw sandwiches at the ICE gestapo), most institutions are falling in line, accepting the fascist turn, and crossing their fingers they won’t be attacked next.
Meanwhile, the economy stands on edge, between tariff whiplash, job losses from federal cuts of many sorts and the knock-on effects of that which have yet to be fully felt, wholly bad “fundamentals” (i.e. the global lack of highly profitable expansion opportunities for capital), and the looming bubble pop and crash of the over-capitalized “AI” sector. Great for you if you currently have a job. But that may not last.
So yeah, there’s plenty of good reasons to be freaked out. The world is always a bit fucked. But this time of ours seems unprecedentedly fucked. I mean, I haven’t even mentioned the climate crises!
For many radicals, this feels like an intolerable weight. We know things are fucked, but the litany of specifics is too much to take on. We start checking out. Personally, I’ve stopped paying as close attention to news. No more daily listens to “Depress-a-me Now!” Occasional dives into the headlines or social media feeds are enough to know: bad things keep happening.
So, what can we do? How can we think about this moment in a way that is not demobilizing, but also not naive? How do we stay informed, but not overwhelmed? How do we take seriously the fascist threat, while also not losing hope and our own humanity?
Here I want to offer two simple ideas that — I think — can help us feel better (which is actually pretty important!) and act more effectively.
First idea: the world is complex, interconnected, chaotic, and it exists beyond the immediate stuff that we tend to see via media and our daily lives. Many parts of planet earth — beings, mountains, natural processes — couldn’t care less who is “President”: elites’ control is as total as the entirety of the planet is controllable. Upon this enormity and complexity, history advances in non-linear and surprising ways. What seems like “end times” with no way out, is not actually the end. There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the inevitable march of change. When you step outside of our narrow, present-oriented viewpoint, you see a much wider and longer story, where authoritarian power has never held on for long.
Trump will not last. Capitalism will not exist forever. Fossil fuels will run dry. Nation states we find so horrific are only hundreds of years old! And oh-so-many asshole “leaders” who once seemed impervious to their contemporaries, turned out to not be!
Many times before history has confronted anti-systemic actors like ourselves with seemingly nonstop and unstoppable crises, end times thinking, and the prospect of no hope. Yet, in each case, the world did not in fact end1. People struggled. People survived. Sometimes, in fact, people improved conditions through their struggles against fascism. Look at Brazil, post-military dictatorship. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil have been able to occupy millions of acres of land, growing food and livelihoods for their people and movements, precisely as a result of their wins against a dictatorship that lasted decades. They fought for a constitutional right to land and have (since winning that) used that law to get land and build ecological autonomy. I’m sure if you asked activists under that dictatorship if they were overwhelmed, you’d find reflections of your own current condition. But time did not stop. The military was not invincible. Brazil is no paradise now, but grassroots movements are strong, and at least they are actually punishing their last fascist strongman (Jair Bolsonaro) for his crimes! No one knew, during his reign, that such a turnabout was possible. The future is not foretold.
Surviving is important. Our own happiness is important to our ability and will to survive, and to continuing to take care of each other. It’s important to recognize our self-worth, and the power held in surviving so as to pass on our own ideas and strategies to the next generation. Our literal existence can be resistance. But to survive and to fight back, we need to take care of our own hearts.
In order to do that, I suggest a second idea: this almost unthinkable bigness and unpredictability of the world may make us feel less powerful, but it actually can help us be more effective. How? By reminding us to focus, to see where we fit in specific parts of that larger universe, and to act with concerted and thoughtful effort.
One person cannot go to all the ICE protests, AND call their “representatives” about Gaza, AND build a mutual aid pod, AND feed the homeless, AND organize for grassroots hormone therapy or birth control provision, AND be a parent, a provider, and a musician, and a reader, and a polycule navigator, and an enjoyer of life. We simply cannot do it all.
But we can certainly do something. And to the extent we focus, we can do it well. Especially, of course, when we do it with others. Yes, there may be plenty of bootlickers out there. But most people want freedom, and many of us will fight for it. And when we fight, we win.
In the long arc of struggle, it’s critical to remember that we can win. Winning is not certain, sure. It won’t be easy, obviously. But history is often surprising. The forces that we face seem impervious to our power, yet history is full of examples that belie that defeatist position. Leaders are assassinated — or killed by their own hubris and ambitions. Apartheid regimes get called out — and are suddenly determined to be unconscionable after being tolerated for decades. You don’t need to be a Star Wars nerd to know that empires inevitably fall. Just like it’s important to remember that workers outnumber capitalists, let’s remember that (globally) there are more people who hate fascists like Trump than those who support them, by a lot.
Rather than be distracted and overwhelmed by the litany of crimes against humanity and our future, when we find something we care about, and work on it with others, we do three crucial things at once. We refuse to give up or give in, and show others that resistance is possible. We tangibly affect our world. And we embolden ourselves, reminding ourselves that our values matter, our values exist and make sense and cannot be exterminated, and they — we — can change the world. We feel better about ourselves, we maintain a horizon that we are moving toward, and we keep ourselves alive because it feels best to keep on collectively moving toward that horizon, regardless of what the assholes do.
As Assata Shakur famously said (RIP):
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
1 I admit that many people died and species were exterminated, but not all.