What Can We Do? A Hierarchy of 20 Things to Resist Fascism (Part 2 of 3)

Return to Part 1

1. Sur­vive (pre­pare and plan)
2. Thrive
3. Deep­en your ties to com­mu­ni­ty
4. Stay engaged
5. Think crit­i­cal­ly. Fact check.
6. Doc­u­ment the truth
7. Give support/ Deny sup­port
   
   Part 2
   
8. Acknowl­edge strange bed­fel­lows (for tem­po­rary alliances)
9. Sup­port Demo­c­rat politi­cians (Yeah, I know.)
10. Do not obey in advance
    
    Part 3
    
11. What CAN you do?
12. Choose an insti­tu­tion or ide­al to defend
13. Start small
14. Con­tribute to the groups you want to sup­port
15. Edu­cate
16. Speak truth to pow­er
17. Pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble
18. Resist
19. Dis­rupt
20. Pas­sive resis­tance

8. Acknowl­edge strange bed­fel­lows (for tem­po­rary alliances)

It can be real­ly hard to want to close ranks with some­one who has harm­ful beliefs.

To the far left, mod­er­ates seem like a bunch of mil­que­toast bootlick­ers whose sense of jus­tice ends well before doing the work of antiracism, LGBTQ+ rad­i­cal lib­er­a­tion, and don’t even get me start­ed on (gasp) social­ism. Mod­er­ates uphold white suprema­cy with­out exam­in­ing the ways in which they do so. Mod­er­ates don’t unpack their priv­i­lege and retreat with­in it when it’s point­ed out. When Dems are back in office and things are back to the “a LITTLE bit fas­cist” sta­tus quo, mod­er­ates go back to their unex­am­ined lives with a sigh. They don’t want lib­er­a­tion; they want things BACK TO NORMAL.

But “nor­mal” is a lit­tle fucked up.

On the oth­er hand the cen­ter finds the far left unsafe. Hell, even the LEFT finds the far left unsafe. For all their under­stand­ing of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty, left­ists often still gate­keep in ways that vicious­ly exco­ri­ate any­one not pre­loaded with years of social jus­tice dis­course and cre­ate an acces­si­bil­i­ty block by demand­ing a lev­el of engage­ment that is ableist to most people’s men­tal health. Left­ists do not seem to under­stand that in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety, you can’t just call every­one bootlick­ers, can­cel them with exact­ly the same tac­tics as online bul­ly­ing, and hate them ever hard­er. At some point, if the pro­le­tari­at is going to do any­thing to help left­ist caus­es, some hearts and minds must be won over. (Not that the most oppressed need to be the ambas­sadors of gen­tly explain­ing their own mar­gin­al­iza­tion.)

What left­ists and mod­er­ates need to con­sid­er is that allies are not ene­mies, and that egos kill move­ments. Pro­claim­ing that no one’s efforts are ever enough until and unless they reach full-throat­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ism has the effect of mak­ing peo­ple who are just start­ing to try to under­stand their place in left­ism feel very fright­ened, intim­i­dat­ed, impos­tor-syn­dromy, and unwill­ing to pro­ceed. A well-mean­ing lib­er­al who gen­uine­ly WANTS to do more will only put up with being chewed out so many times before they find oth­er orga­ni­za­tions to help, and then left­ists are scratch­ing their heads because they’re sure every­one secret­ly agrees with them. Every­one seems to under­stand that call-out cul­ture can be abu­sive (at least tox­ic), until it’s them that want to do the call­ing… and then it’s knives out.

And it’s okay to keep all those ani­mosi­ties. Okay… no, I mean it’s NOT real­ly okay. It’s going to keep work­ing against us: these divi­sions cre­ate nat­ur­al wedges that pre­vent us from com­ing togeth­er for our mutu­al goals and areas of over­lap, and they cre­ate deli­cious points of con­tention for Russ­ian troll farms to divide the left so that fas­cists can win in the first place. It’s called divide and con­quer and it’s a TRIED AND TRUE tac­tic of the elite. The prob­lem is that these issues define the mod­ern strug­gles with­in left-wing thought—liberal, mod­er­ate, and leftist—and I’m not going to “crack the case” in one heart­felt blog para­graph.

How­ev­er, we have to set aside those ani­mosi­ties and come togeth­er if we’re going to win. They have to see MILLIONS in the streets. We have to over­whelm the polls—as flawed as our democ­ra­cy is. Whether it is a mod­er­ate who will prob­a­bly go back to watch­ing the MCU and relax­ing with the knowl­edge that life is “back to nor­mal,” a six­ty-year-old white dude who cares most about his 401(k), or us left­ists doing cease­less work towards demil­i­ta­riza­tion, social­ism, and rad­i­cal lib­er­a­tion, no goal that ANY of us have won’t be expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult under author­i­tar­i­an fas­cism.

We can mea­sure each oth­er and find each oth­er want­i­ng all day after we come togeth­er to agree that we’re not fas­cist and that is the first order of busi­ness.

Fas­cism killed tens of millions—mostly mar­gin­al­ized groups. It destroyed sev­er­al democ­ra­cies. It oblit­er­at­ed Europe for decades. It caused glob­al upheaval that we’re still sort­ing out. We paid a heavy price for those ball­point pens. The left and the cen­ter have to come togeth­er and rec­og­nize that fas­cism is a big­ger threat to either of them than the oth­er. We need every one of us. Mod­er­ates. Hard left. MAGA defec­tors. Every­one.

So let’s have these fights. We can agree that we have a diver­si­ty of views, that we don’t agree on every­thing, that our dif­fer­ences are not triv­ial, and that they are not just points of live­ly debate. As long as we can ALSO agree that we’re not fuck­ing Nazis. That our diver­si­ty is WHAT we have in com­mon, and the fas­cists will put us all against the wall togeth­er.

Large coali­tions will always involve peo­ple you do not align with, but it must hap­pen if fas­cism is to be defeat­ed.

Just for now. Just for this fight. Just for today. We all want the same thing.

9. Sup­port Demo­c­rat politi­cians

Yeah, I know.

No, I know.

I KNOW!

I want to make a dis­claimer here… I’m not telling you how to vote. I’m not even telling you TO vote. Some of you sim­ply can’t cast a vote for some­one who belongs in The Hague. Some peo­ple won’t vote for some­one who made promis­es and then threw them under the bus. Some of you walked into this lis­ti­cle already sneer­ing at num­ber nine, and your minds are clear­ly made up.

Some folks have com­pli­cat­ed rea­sons for think­ing harm reduc­tion isn’t a thing, and though I dis­agree with that more than I do with the idea of the Geico cave­man get­ting their own sit­com, I grudg­ing­ly respect the deci­sion (the vot­ing thing—not the sit­com). Some folks are deep in anar­chist move­ments and build­ing par­al­lel infra­struc­ture. That’s great. But this post is for peo­ple just try­ing to fig­ure out how to help.

So I’m going to try to make a case.

I’m going to make a case because if you’re ask­ing, “What can we do?,” you’re prob­a­bly going to hear the oppo­site case a LOT, espe­cial­ly if you are online. Gaza has been used to make the far left dis­af­fect them­selves. And online left­ist space is VERY white and has not decolo­nial­ized a sense of indi­vid­u­al­is­tic ego yet. (“I can­not vote for some­one I don’t believe in.”) These left­ists often echo sen­ti­ments (almost word for word iden­ti­cal to Russ­ian troll farms who bad­ly want right-wing author­i­tar­i­ans to win, but… maybe anoth­er time) that a politi­cian must reflect their deeply held val­ues on every issue, and they won’t vote for some­one they don’t believe in. They val­ue their rage and per­son­al ani­mus over the needs of folks who might die with­out health care, be des­ti­tute under Project 2025, get shipped off to El Sal­vador for being Lati­no, or lose their body auton­o­my over their uterus.

Do-or-die left­ists tend want to skip hard work and jump six squares to rev­o­lu­tion. And this is an act of indi­vid­u­al­ism that hasn’t been decol­o­nized yet. Rev­o­lu­tion is a delib­er­ate act of deep mutu­al aid, and at each step it con­sid­ers who will pay the price—it’s not just vio­lence, and not just an out­let for the per­son­al rage with­in white left­ists. There is a pro­le­tari­at that MUST be con­vinced to come along if you don’t want your rev­o­lu­tion to be a six-per­son pic­nic (and no one brought chips). And when mar­gin­al­ized groups pay the bills (as they always do) for white people’s rash impul­siv­i­ty, it’s just anoth­er form of white suprema­cy. When actu­al rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies talk about rev­o­lu­tion, they are not too good to use any tool in the tool­box to get clos­er to their goal.

You don’t have to believe in this politi­cian. You don’t have to believe in that Demo­c­rat can­di­date. They don’t have to reflect your deep and true val­ue sys­tem. (This is an almost unique­ly Amer­i­can-indi­vid­u­al­ism per­spec­tive.) You just have to see them as a means to an end—a downed tele­phone poll on the track to fas­cism. And right now, Democ­rats have the best orga­ni­za­tion­al infra­struc­ture of any oppo­si­tion group and the clos­est thing to the actu­al pow­er to do any­thing about all this.

Now maybe you like Demo­c­rat politi­cians but most of the left does NOT. Most Democ­rats don’t even love Demo­c­rat can­di­dates. When com­pared to oth­er coun­tries with work­ing democ­ra­cies (which no group that tracks the health of democ­ra­cies thinks that the U.S. has), the Unit­ed States doesn’t have a viable left-wing par­ty. They have a slight­ly right-of-cen­ter par­ty, and they have open fas­cists. And it’s real­ly hard to be a left­ist and vote for right-of-cen­ter politi­cians, who are prob­a­bly over­all not real­ly what we want and anti­thet­i­cal to our val­ues on a few issues.

Some­times the idea of vot­ing blue, no mat­ter who, is… real­ly a stretch. They real­ly do make it so fuck­ing hard. Espe­cial­ly with their inabil­i­ty to ACT when the GOP is prac­ti­cal­ly dar­ing some­one to stop them from caus­ing one con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis after anoth­er.

Still, it is a very par­tic­u­lar mind­set that thinks it knows bet­ter in every sit­u­a­tion, and it is a think­ing pat­tern that hasn’t been decolo­nial­ized. There’s a rea­son every left-lean­ing activist group from Black Lives Mat­ter to Trans­gen­der Law Cen­ter to the ever-vaunt­ed Bernie Sanders and AOC and Omar Ilhan (and and and…) all have the EXACT SAME PHILOSOPHY about vot­ing. And it isn’t “they don’t deserve our votes.” And it isn’t “why both­er?” And it isn’t, “both par­ties are exact­ly the same.*” And it isn’t “par­tic­i­pa­tion in a cor­rupt sys­tem is being com­plic­it in that sys­tem.” And it isn’t “I can’t vote for some­one who thinks X.” And it isn’t “harm reduc­tion isn’t real­ly a thing.”

And it’s def­i­nite­ly def­i­nite­ly DEFINITELY not that they like who they’re vot­ing for and real­ly real­ly SUPER DUPER believe in their mes­sage.

Fuck that. It’s vote blue, and then hold them account­able. It’s “This might not make things bet­ter, but there is a sure­fire way that they’ll get worse…”

They vote their heart in the pri­maries and try to make sure impor­tant issues get debat­ed, and dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, they vote for who will be eas­i­er as an oppo­nent when it’s time to go to the mat—who will be the best means to their end. They vote for who they are best equipped to strug­gle against. Who they can manip­u­late the eas­i­est. Who will do some of the work FOR them.

They vote for the bus that takes them down­town even though the bus stop is twelve blocks from their des­ti­na­tion because if they don’t take that bus, the oth­er bus is going the oppo­site direc­tion, and will put them 20 blocks fur­ther away than they are now. Also, they will not be per­mit­ted to just walk.

They vote to set the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el to “Real­ly Hard” instead of “Night­mare mode.”

[*Real talk about this “Both Sides are the Same” thing. I am alive because of Oba­macare. Twice. I would be dead if not for Oba­macare. Twice. I might might might be alive but des­ti­tute if not for Oba­macare. Twice. I would have been afraid of the cost and most prob­a­bly ignored things until they killed me. Twice.

A few of my loved ones are in the same boat.

Repub­li­cans pass more and more vot­er sup­pres­sion laws every god­damn time they lose and half the time they win. Repub­li­cans pass bath­room bills. Repub­li­cans cod­i­fy big­otry. Repub­li­cans ham­mer away at repro­duc­tive rights and the body auton­o­my of peo­ple who can have chil­dren. Repub­li­cans sneer at “DEI” and then eject BIPOC and replace them with mem­bers of the “good ol’ boys club” time and time again, all while smirk­ing and telling you that you can’t PROVE they’re racist in their hearts. Repub­li­cans relent­less­ly attack LGBTQ+ folks through leg­is­la­tion and have made their inten­tion to roll any pro­tec­tions back quite overt. Repub­li­cans work reli­gion into the pub­lic sphere at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Repub­li­cans shit the bed when slav­ery and Jim Crow and mod­ern inequal­i­ty are exam­ined in schools. Repub­li­cans lob­by to get text­books to say, “Maybe slav­ery wasn’t THAT bad—I mean, they had a bed and food and shel­ter, right?” Repub­li­cans bust unions and then make it legal to exploit work­ers. Repub­li­cans destroy insti­tu­tions built to pro­tect us. Repub­li­cans want an ever-big­ger mil­i­tary (but with­out vet­er­ans’ sup­port). Repub­li­cans want more polic­ing and more mil­i­ta­rized polic­ing against BIPOC, of course, not in the sub­urbs. Repub­li­cans cut the EPA fund­ing and ignore places where BIPOC are deal­ing with sewage com­ing up out of the ground. Repub­li­cans side­step civ­il rights as a mat­ter of course.

All Repub­li­cans may not be Nazis, but there’s a rea­son all Nazis are Repub­li­cans.

And we can care about all that and vote for harm reduc­tion with­in a (deeply) flawed sys­tem with­out all being fas­cist-adja­cent neolib­er­al geno­ciders who don’t real­ly care about any­thing but our­selves. Some of us are just dis­ap­point­ing­ly prag­mat­ic about what a deeply racist coun­try is ready for.

I agree that the two par­ties have painful over­lap.

They’re both late-stage cap­i­tal­ist. They’re both (neo) colo­nial­ist. They both sup­port geno­cide. They both pan­der to cor­po­ra­tions. They’re both a shit­show of cor­rup­tion, con­sol­i­dat­ing their own pow­er, mon­ey, and influ­ence, while clos­ing the door on any­thing out­side a nar­row range of views that allow THEM to con­trol how far the debate can even go. But when I hear the idea that they are “the same,” it’s hard not to hear that my being alive doesn’t mat­ter. That my loved ones don’t mat­ter. That some tiny ves­tige of dig­ni­ty (still, obvi­ous­ly not enough) for trans folks doesn’t mat­ter. That my LGBTQ+ clan deserves relent­less per­se­cu­tion. That an admin­is­tra­tion try­ing to dis­man­tle the Equal Rights Amend­ment doesn’t mat­ter. That a FEW envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions don’t mat­ter. That an econ­o­my focused on some­thing oth­er than bil­lion­aires doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. It’s hard for me to hear that and not think it’s a lit­tle self­ish to hold all these things against a sense of puri­ty.]

If you’ve elect­ed a Demo­c­rat, they (gen­er­al­ly) will at least let you protest and orga­nize and speak out and debate and share ideas. They will let you orga­nize and push left. They won’t crim­i­nal­ize your grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion. (They may even be cheer­ing you on from some red­dish-pur­ple dis­trict where they would LOVE the chance to move the nee­dle with­out sewing up their own elec­toral defeat.) On the oth­er hand, if you’ve elect­ed a fas­cist going to silence you—by force, if they have the means, they’ll shut down your march­es with state vio­lence. And late­ly, they seem pret­ty okay with sim­ply dis­ap­pear­ing peo­ple who speak out.

There is noth­ing the left wants that isn’t a hun­dred times hard­er to achieve when author­i­tar­i­an forces have us scram­bling. If we are wor­ried about our next pay­check, we’re not giv­ing to left­ist caus­es. If we are wor­ried that speak­ing out will get us killed, we are going to be more qui­et. If we are stuck in step one of this list because of the world we live in… we will nev­er move into action that could move the nee­dle.

Fas­cism exists in the U.S.—even under Democ­rats. (Even though Democ­rats don’t like to think about that very much.) But it is SO much eas­i­er to fight. It is so much more vio­lent and devel­oped and artic­u­lat­ed under Repub­li­cans.

Many Democ­rats in office suck, and only a few aren’t a trash fire… but there might be a lot of them stuck in mod­er­ate dis­tricts who know that if they vote like an ide­al­ist left­ist, it’s going to be their last term, and they will lose to some MAGA ten times worse. And some of them real­ly ARE mod­er­ates.

But here’s the thing—not all Democ­rats in office are like that. It’s a broad coali­tion. Dems are as much the par­ty of Max­ine Dex­ter, AOC, and Sum­mer Lee (very much pro­gres­sives) as it is the par­ty of Jim Cos­ta and Scott Peters (very much uh… ahem… NOT pro­gres­sives). Nel­lie Pou is one of the only tru­ly lib­er­al Democ­rats who ISN’T in a strong­ly Demo­c­rat dis­trict, but before we declare vic­to­ry for ide­al­ism among plu­ral­is­tic vot­ers, let’s see if she gets reelect­ed when the incum­bent pres­i­dent isn’t right­eous­ly hat­ed.

My rep­re­sen­ta­tive is an old white dude who is such a mid­dle-of-the-road Dem, he was actu­al­ly a Repub­li­can before 2000. I would love to pri­ma­ry his ass with a gen­uine liberal—never mind a leftist—but I don’t live in a blue area. I live in a blue STATE… but not a blue dis­trict with­in that state. Places like Anti­och and Pitts­burg and LaM­or­In­da wouldn’t have it. And if I did pri­ma­ry him for a left­ist, that per­son would lose to a Repub­li­can.

Also, if I don’t vote for him, the Repub­li­can wins.

SOMEONE gov­erns. That’s life.

You sit out an elec­tion, you don’t get to have NO one at the wheel for a cou­ple of years. The job WILL be done. And if I don’t par­tic­i­pate in the choos­ing of some­one, some­body else will do it FOR me. And they might very well pick a full-throat­ed fas­cist. And armed agents of the state will show up if I refuse to do what that fas­cist says. So, I don’t love my choice by any means, but if there’s a choice between two—one of whom is a damned sight worse than the other—and prag­mat­i­cal­ly sit­ting out will let OTHER peo­ple make the choice for me, I know what choice I’m mak­ing.

We can­not gov­ern if we don’t win, and unless we are will­ing to be just as author­i­tar­i­an as the peo­ple we are crit­i­ciz­ing (but with a pass because we have the moral high ground?), we can­not win—and thus govern—without broad sup­port. And the Unit­ed States isn’t a left­ist coun­try.

We got our­selves into a sit­u­a­tion where every­one (left AND right) was under­min­ing the pow­er of Democ­rats, and now they can’t do any­thing but show­boat and be an oppo­si­tion par­ty. That’s because they don’t have pow­er. THAT’S BECAUSE WE UNDERMINED IT. They can pre­vent a super­ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate. That’s about it.

Are they cal­low? Yes. Are they polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent? You know they are. Are they often just absolute­ly pathet­ic? Sure are. Are they career politi­cians who have a VERY good idea what hap­pens if they go in swing­ing and sac­ri­fice ide­al­ism for reelec­tion? You bet your not-pan­der­ing ass they are.

It’s also all there is.

So maybe a more nuanced view of prag­ma­tism in a (trag­i­cal­ly) two-par­ty sys­tem is in order if we want to fight fas­cism, show a crit­i­cal mass of vot­ers a bet­ter way, and give those who would love to see this regime put in the ground the polit­i­cal cov­er they need to make the ges­tures we’re now ask­ing them to do.

If we don’t do that with every­thing we have, and we believe in democ­ra­cy, and we acknowl­edge that we live in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety… then we are demand­ing they touch the third rail.

Remem­ber, there’s over half the list to go. Your resis­tance doesn’t begin with sup­port­ing Demo­c­rat politi­cians (it begins with sur­vival). And it doesn’t end with sup­port­ing them either. You can vote for harm reduc­tion one Tues­day a year, and then go do some­thing more pro­duc­tive with the rest of your time.

10. Do not obey in advance

We’re mov­ing into the part of the pyra­mid that can get a lit­tle hard­er. Not every­thing remain­ing is ful­ly with­out con­se­quence. You can stay tucked behind the scenes and be safe. You can even come out of the shad­ows and be a Demo­c­rat, and (at least for now) you’re not real­ly risk­ing much. But as things get more “resisty” and less easy, you might have to jeop­ar­dize some social cap­i­tal or pos­si­bly endan­ger your job or com­mu­ni­ty stand­ing.

Do not obey in advance.

Most pow­er is yield­ed to author­i­tar­i­an regimes freely. Of course, some peo­ple agree with what’s going on. But even among those who don’t, there isn’t real­ly any appre­cia­ble foot drag­ging. Peo­ple con­sid­er what the author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment wants and then do it with­out even being asked. They think if they’re super extra sug­ar-on-top coop­er­a­tive, the eye of per­se­cu­tion will nev­er fall on them—even though there was LITERALLY no time in his­to­ry when that was ever true. And if the author­i­tar­i­an can move six steps with­out even hav­ing to ask, then they’re that much less tapped out when it’s time to take steps sev­en, eight, and nine.

They are watch­ing us close­ly to see what they can eas­i­ly get away with, and what will cost them polit­i­cal cap­i­tal and a hard fight. At least, make them pass a law before you obey. Or expend resources to force your con­tri­tion. Or demand it. Some­thing.

At some point, they will ask. Then they will tell you that you should. Then they will get in your face. Then there will be threats. Then they will come after you. Whether any of this is legal when they do it is high­ly ques­tion­able. It’s up to you how long you hold out, but do NOT com­ply in advance.

On to Part 3 (of 3)