Of course, elites and reactionaries around the world weren’t sitting quietly, ready to give up. They decided to mobilize their own global reaction, the fascist wave we’re living through right now. The genocide in Gaza. The civil war in Sudan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Orban and Erdogan, the rise of Farage and the AfD, and on and on and on.

2/4

I think that’s the frame that helps make decisions like “the Trump administration cutting funding for food for starving people and research into mRNA vaccines and disappearing hair stylists and kidnapping tourists and imposing absurd tariffs” make the most sense.

The US of 2020 was too big, too diverse, too unruly for capitalist elites to truly feel comfortable.

So they’re settling on a smaller, poorer, more homogenous US that they believe will be more obedient.

It’s a trade-off: they can try to control a bigger pie, with more risk of being overthrown, or a smaller pie, that’s easier to dominate.

3/4

All of these things that make liberals scratch their heads—nonsensical, random, seemingly self-defeating policies—make sense from the fascist perspective.

They’re culling the herd. Weeding the garden.

JFK Jr wants sick people to die. Stephen Miller wants to expel every brown person in the country. Trump wants to control or shut down every university. No more tourists, no more scientific discoveries, no more foreign trade.

Smaller, poorer, dumber, weaker, less diverse. They saw what people could do in 2020 and don’t want to face that same fear again.

4/4