Nowhere GirlMar 8, 2024

People's failure to understand that fascism is a fairly banal worldview reflects a refusal to understand how common and ordinary looking it is and how well it hides behind our modern high tech lifestyles.

Fascism doesn't have to have 1930s pomposity and daily military parades.

It can look like America, right now, today, depending on who and where you are. America already has military jingoism, mass incarceration, mass surveillance, unchecked paramilitaries, and theocrats denying our rights.

Show threadNowhere GirlMar 8, 2024
Many Americans are fascists and always have been, including people you know, and they look perfectly normal most of the time. Virtually every Republican is a fascist and has been for years; they've just worked hard to convince you they're not so they can continue advancing their agenda, hiding in plain sight.
Show threadNowhere GirlMar 8, 2024
Which gets at the real problem -- fascism isn't new and in fact, it's been winning for years, dismantling democracy, corrupting institutions, seizing power, and inserting itself in the lives and choices people make on a daily basis. The fact that you haven't noticed reflects how well their propaganda has worked on you.
Show threadNowhere GirlMar 8, 2024
The belief that there are Real Americans, that those Real Americans are white, cis, het, Christian, and conservative, and that those Real Americans are inherently good and deserve to prosper while others should suffer, and that those Real Americans should have the power to control and subordinate people who are different, here and abroad, backed by the threat of violence from a massive police force and an even larger military, is an inherently fascist one.
Show threadNowhere GirlMar 8, 2024

Honestly, I don't trust anyone who doesn't find stuff like the Pledge of Allegiance or the bombastic jingoism of the Fourth of July at least a little creepy.

But a lot of people -- cis-het white people specifically -- have internalized so much of this stuff as "normal" that political discussions are derailed by having to convince them that things are already bad for other people and that it's been happening for years.

Show threadeagerpebbleMar 8, 2024
@gwynnion The pledge gets even creepier when you add in that most people who were educated in the USA have no idea that pledges like that are abnormal. Those of us who do know that, typically found out by accident.
Show threadJess NickelsenMar 8, 2024
@eagerpebble @gwynnion I found out about this when I moved to New Zealand as a young person and started trying to explain it to people. Also children sitting in their school hall and singing military songs on Memorial Day or Veterans Day (or whatever the hell day it was) also seems very strange to me now too.
Show threadeagerpebble
@jessnickelsen
That last part is new to me, and I grew up in the south.
@gwynnion
Mar 8, 2024 at 8:48pmWeb