Long story, but I'm slowly moving into the tech-nerd world. I'm still available for tattooing. I'm still doing commissioned art & merch when able. I'll get more into it down the line, but all you need to know is that I am still around, but I am shifting some gears. A lot of of it has to do with what I've been doing on the side as an activist-y hobby & turning it into a career. The below relates to all this and I figured I'd preface this long-ass screed with that. So...
Been trying to do a post like this for a while. At least since that white power dipshit shot up a grocery in Buffalo a little almost 5+ months ago. Shoulda said something then, but it seems that others, especially experts, are seeing the same shit now.
FFS, Ken Burns was like "well, no time like the present" and the Godwin's Law creator has repeatedly said, "yes, 'Nazi' is now a legit comparison.
Instagram’s a poor platform for this and I keep my other social medias pretty private, but here goes an incredibly truncated version of something that needs saying:
•THINGS AIN’T LOOKIN’ GOOD FOR ANY OF US•
especially if this last week/month/year are any indication
I’ve been a history/politics nerd most of my life, but for at least the last 15 years I’ve been keeping eyes on darker corners of the web where far-right dickholes, like these mass shooters, roam and where white power dweebs openly discuss their hopes & plans for an ethnostate and the genocide it will take to get there in what they think are “safe spaces”.
What was once considered taboo in run-of-the-mill conservative circles has become normalized ideas & run-of-the-mill rhetoric.
Century’s old klan & fascist rhetoric are in the open again. Barely covert with spuriously worded sentiments like “I’m not saying they’re trying to replace whites, but blacks & immigrants are being used to change the voting makeup of America”.
Take it from someone who's spent too much time scraping, compiling and diggin through this shit...
it’s simply gettin’ extra fucked as the “We are the real America and everyone else is a threat to the society/youth/nation” rhetoric is becoming part & parcel of everyday discourse from talking heads & thought leaders. (see Echo’s Features of Ur-fascism #7.)
Little surprise. I could’ve/should’ve written a post 25 years ago about how adventurism in the Middle East would lead to a refugee crisis which the backlash would fuel a rising far-right movement. 15 years ago I could have mentioned how extremist ideas were being mainstreamed via website algorithms, social media bubbles, and a well-funded think-tank/media net and how most of a nation will be demonized & scapegoated as enemies/degenerates/others by a minority who think they’re the “real America” as the far-right gets into elected powerful positions in federal, state, and municipal offices.
Basically... hardened extremists push the messaging that democracy doesn’t work: “stop this steal”, “our elections are stolen”, “everything’s rigged”, “these institutions are against you”. They really, really want us to lose faith in democracy.
“There is no political solution” is a super common message found among violent & extreme actors on line and in IRL, because they want violence to be the solution.
When you have big politicians and big media figures laundering these types of narratives, especially from alternative or conspiratorial news sources, it’s not gonna be good. (also)
“Accelerationism” is the strand of thought that the current system is so corrupt that they should speed its demise through any form like violence and acts of terrorism, or celebrating natural disasters like power grids going down, because it contributes to making the state harder to govern.
They want to weaken a perceived status quo as much as possible so that it collapses and a new political order can be born that aligns with their worldview for how things should be (if overtly stated, generally something CI-esque, like a “Christian Nationalist white ethnostate”).
By increasing mainstream paranoia, people start to question whether they’re safe.
I could go on & on about historic similarities and correlations, but it seems the realization is hitting even moderate center-right pundits & politicians. So I can be slightly assuaged that the discussion has also hit a mainstream audience. Enough that an aging “let’s try making nice with the guys constantly calling me a commie” can’t ignore it and has to make the fashy-types uncomfortable for being called out for what we can all see plain as day. (I do wonder how much of this rising antisemitism & almost uniform regurgitation of Nazi-ish rhetoric has to do with almost every human that witnessed WWII no longer with us.)
So what should we expect in the coming months, years, decade?
WORSE CASE: (and if the ex-President’s speeches alongside multiple white supremacist-sympathetic guest speakers is any indication): you’ll get an authoritarian Christo-Fascist government by 2024.
Think Franco meets Mussolini & Allende... although they’ve already shown they’ll go down the same the Nazi’s Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion route, remove all “un-loyal” government employees, proposed concentration camps for homeless & undesirables, kill all those we deem undesirable (“drug dealers”), and fix elections if we don’t like the outcome. (How low do you hope you will be on that “…and then they came for me” list?)
If you grew up near the Bible Belt you'd know that this is the direction many determined people of power are wanting to take the US. And they are just getting louder and more open about it than they were several decades ago.
And if so, don’t expect any of the pressing issues we are dealing with to be addressed. Environmental degradation will not be dealt with in time (or ever) to even mitigate incoming disaster. Solving inequality, inequity, and economic disparity is off the table (unless used to play victim and rile up the “true Americans”) for the foreseeable future. That’s some nice things compared to what could be in store.
LIKELIEST CASE: get yourselves ready for America’s “Years of Lead”. (Italy had theirs in the late-70s if ya wanna google it)
My take is that despite far-right the rhetoric of pushing for & being ready for a Civil War, there's several factors that squash this notion. But there will be many that will be trying really hard to kick one off. Or at least punish the "others", i.e., the rest of us.
So if you’re not ready for lone wolf mass shooters, intimidation at borders by militias of women crossing state lines, enough random-seeming bombings that the FBI can’t keep up foiling, voting becoming a brave & even radical act, then you’re not ready for what’s coming.
Again, major issues aren't gonna be properly addressed & a lot of us are gonna end up in morgues. But I would put my money on this being the case (heck, even right-wingers are now discussing this bloody era of southern europe)
BEST CASE: an asteroid takes us all out.
I have so much to say, but I'll keep it simple (and maybe write a book about it)... wherever we are, we are lookin' pretty damn screwed.
If you’re in Canada: you can try to be Atwood’s Handmaid’s Canada or Austria circa 1937. Either way, a septic tank leak spoils the neighbors yards, too. Hell, the convoy shit has been organized by the same types that would invade a Capitol building in an attempt to stop an election and share standard white supremacist & militant accelerationist rhetoric on their podcasts. And of course that’s spilling into mainstream CPC (and of course PPC) circles. Meanwhile, the PM & the Liberals did the opposite of helping by playing political theatre with gun laws so now a whole bunch of otherwise centrist law-abiding gun owners have now been pulled into a right-wing grievance echo chamber. I don’t fault them for the anger, but it’s like they just gave the Canadian far-right the biggest present & espresso possible in return for a few extra votes in already leaning Liberal ridings.
At least that’s what the lay of the land looks like in Canadian online forums I’m keeping an eye one. yay.
If you’re in Europe: if you don’t notice the rise of a fascist movement with leaders with both Russian & MAGA connections (e.g., CPAC held in Hungary (wtaf?) and then Orbán coming to CPAC in Texas to share more talking neo-Nazi rhetoric), then you may wanna start paying some attention.
If you’re in the US: again… you’ll be lucky if it just gets messy and death & destruction is limited to a few mass shootings a month & an OKC style bombing only once a year.
I could go on & on & on, but attempting to point out the forest for any of the recent explosive tree growth is a Sisyphusian task and ain’t gonna get more people following or reading this at this point.
This’d be way better as a long chat over a beer, maybe on the drive to the range, or over the course of a few long tattoo sessions.
I can’t put this succinctly into a blog, let alone a social media post, but from what I’ve seen and what people more educated & know more about this than me, I can’t not say something.
If you don’t want your fascism pointed out, then quit doing blatantly fashy stuff.
If you’re fash-adjacent and still offended, then rest assured you may be one of the last ones against the wall. But “RINOs” are already being purged now, just not violently yet.
Voting will do a lot only if everyone gets off their asses to do it because so much of the game has been rigged by those very fascists ( because as it is with fascism: "Every Accusation is an Admission").
The rest of us are going to be busy calling out this shit, communication with each other, learning to protect & defend our rights & communities, and mostly doing it ourselves.
So vote like your life depends on it, but also organize, learn, and train like it does as well... because our lives literally depend on doing all of the above.
That’s my more than 2¢.
What are You Willing to Do? How Civil Wars Start – And How to Stop Them by Barbara Walter
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