sport of sacred spherical cows"Maybe that’s because making do-it-ourselves time, space, and rituals for grief is, in general, still so difficult. Still so hidden away, individualized, or private. Still so almost forbidden to extend beyond certain moments, like a funeral, or certain categories, like loved (human) ones."
We lack the tools of collective mourning.
"What if we dared to hold hands with these ghosts—our ever restless, unquiet ghosts against fascism—as a bridge to aid them and ourselves to mourn out loud, rebelliously and collectively?"
Cindy Milstein (they) (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Fascism grief. It doesn’t roll off the tongue like the phrase “climate grief,” but perhaps it needs … if not a name, to at least be named. To be acknowledged. To step out from under the same shadow of denial that seems to make it hard for too many people to even decisively say “fascism.” Maybe that’s because making do-it-ourselves time, space, and rituals for grief is, in general, still so difficult. Still so hidden away, individualized, or private. Still so almost forbidden to extend beyond certain moments, like a funeral, or certain categories, like loved (human) ones. Or because it’s so huge, amorphous, and overwhelming—a daily onslaught of bad news—that it’s tough to even recognize the feelings of grief. We say instead “depressed,” “hopeless,” “scared,” brushing off the loss. So much loss. We don’t have words for the specificity of grief that accompanies fascism, maybe because its genocidal logic+practices are too monstrous for a *simple* thing like mourning. Yet we have ghosts. Our ever restless, unquiet dead lost to past fascisms. They haunt our bodies and tear at our hearts and rend the fabric of our lives even if our minds can’t grasp “fascism grief”—theirs, which has become ours. They cry out for vengeance, but they also cry—issuing a communal wailing of sorrow and rage that shreds the veil between the dead and us living, magnifying our grief backward. What we anticipatorily grieve is something that has already happened, and as if to us. It is carried in our bones—something our ancestors didn’t want to leave for us as their legacy, but fascism forced on them. If we’re “lucky,” we carry the muscle memory of resistance too. What if we dared to hold hands with these ghosts—our ever restless, unquiet ghosts against fascism—as a bridge to aid them and ourselves to mourn out loud, rebelliously and collectively? To let their blessed memory spark a blessed flame to illuminate the patterns of fascism grief we all seem to share these days, versus suffering on our own? What if, by naming and honoring our grief under (Christo)fascism, we see our way forward together in ways that break some of the patterns that are breaking us and better break fascism? (photo: tag “ghosts against fascism” spotted on a wall in Tioh’tia:ke/Montreal, June 2025)
"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.