Good morning, all ye citizens who stand against fascism! I sadly say that only partly in jest, because many of the stories I am looking at for the week ahead are deeply troubling and indeed rooted in fascist ideology.
The right is going all in on its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. It’s part of the authoritarian playbook to pick the most vulnerable group in society and turn the masses against it through lies, fear and distortion. Putin did this to the LGBTQ+ community in the name of a more “masculine” and “Christian” Russia with devastating results. Orban of Hungary and Bolsinaro of Brazil picked up the baton, and now far-right agitators, legislators and governors in the U.S. are racing to outdo one another to bash LGBTQ+ community, especially trans people.
The attacks just this past week range from a bill in Iowa defying the Obergefell decision and the federal Respect of Marriage Act to declare marriage as only between a man and a woman; to a new law in Tennessee banning public drag performances by labeling gender impersonators “adult cabaret” that cannot be shown before anyone who could be under 18; to outright genocidal speech at CPAC by Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast co-host, Michael Knowles, who said transgenderism “must be eradicated from public life entirely.” It’s a firehose of hate, fear, and bigotry by an increasingly extreme right in America, and it will cost and destroy lives.
The abortion pill is used in half of all abortions in the U.S. That could change dramatically. It was never going to just be about states’ rights to “determine the reproductive choices” of their own citizens, bad enough as that is. The Christian Right is bent on controlling women’s bodies and choices and halting abortions everywhere in America. And if they can’t do it through national legislation, they will attack in every other way they can.
Their target right now is the abortion pill mifepristone. A group of anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas to get the case before the one federal judge there, appointed by Trump, who has a long record anti-abortion stances. They are hoping he will issue a national injunction against the pill, on grounds the FDA approval process twenty years ago was somehow flawed. That decision is expected very soon. Given that any appeal goes first to the conservative Fifth Circuit, I am not confident the ruling would be blocked.
Unsatisfied with attacking the legality of the abortion pill, right wing activists have also targeted suppliers of mifepristone, and this past week Walgreens agreed not to carry the pill in 21 of the red states. The move was in response to threats from a group of red state AGs who threatened to sue if Walgreens did not act to ban it. This is an especially huge blow to those living in rural areas who already don’t have any access to abortion clinics. Bans on obtaining the pill by mail are likely next in those states.
Accountability is late, but coming. Discovery in a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News revealed that the network, through its chairman Rupert Murdoch, had shared Biden campaign ads and Fox’s internal analysis with Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Now, Democratic strategists are calling on the party to pull all political advertising from the network, given its likely illegal assist to the GOP. Further, a media watchdog has filed a complaint with the FEC alleging an illegal campaign contribution by the network to the GOP.
Serial fabulist Rep. George Santos (R-NY) aka Anthony Zabrovsky Devolder is finally going to have to answer for his lies before the House Ethics Committee, which opened a case against him last week. We are still awaiting word from the Department of Justice and local prosecutors as to whether Santos committed crimes, as it appears on the face of his bogus disclosures to have done.
And, of course, we all are waiting to see whether Fani Willis, the District Attorney from Georgia, will file charges at long last against Donald Trump. At CPAC, Trump told a much diminished crowd there, “I am your retribution” and vowed to stay in the presidential race even if he is indicted. That puts us in completely new territory.
In the face of all these horrible attacks on vulnerable communities, on reproductive rights, and on the rule of law and democracy in general, it’s admittedly hard to keep any perspective and stay the course, especially as they take Steve Bannon’s advice to “flood the zone with shit.” Our system hasn’t been tested in this way in over 150 years, with defiance from within the Department of Justice and attacks by leaders of one of the major parties upon the fundamental underpinnings of our Constitutional Republic.
The temptation is to use their same tactics and politicize the levers of government in order to achieve a quick result. But once that box is opened and the rule of law set aside for expedience, it cannot be closed again easily by either side.
I hope through my writings to amplify not only the very real dangers to our system but also our best hopes for righting the ship without destroying it in the process, and how each action is faring in the face of these unrelenting attacks.
Thank you for being here with me along the way. This is going to take a lot of us working in concert and with steady and focused attention to achieve.
Jay
I'm just done. The last straw was that asshole at CPAC calling for the eradicating Trans people. Hate like this is unfixable. I fear this country is not going to ever recover from the stench of trump, his co-conspirators, and his base that happily cheers for this shit. The rot is deep. The hate and cruelty being spewed on a practically minute by minute pace is exhausting. It doesn't help to blockthese people because Democrats love to retweet all of this, ad nauseum, to try and make their points. There is literally no escape. Add to that the regular media, who covers all of this like it's somehow normal and the fact that no one has yet to be held accountable for any of this, and I just can't. I'm losing my voice, both literally and figuratively, from screaming into the void.
While I am not a supporter of violence, it is, I believe a mistake to not fight back. Just as in war, one side will be completely obliterated if after the aggressor starts shooting missiles , they try and use words to stop it. The mind set behind the attack is NOT going to listen to reason, nor are the supporters of the aggressors.
You only have to look at the war in Ukraine to see how ideology has been used to attack a peaceful neighbour, while the supporters of the attack, increasingly becoming almost hysterical in their egging on their troops to “destroy” the Ukrainians. If the Ukrainians hadn’t fought back, in the same manner as the aggressors, it would have been a very short war, and Ukraine would no longer exist.
Trying to fight creeping fascism, with words is NOT going to work. Half of the US population is unaware of just about everything going on around them, out of the other half, 20% are either dedicated fascists or cheerleaders for them because their ignorance and inability to think for themselves is palpable, leaving only 30% of the population who are aware of the problem and are willing to fight against it.
While I’m not telling you to get down and dirty with them in the muck, some of the tactics the right is using SHOULD be put into play by the left as well, because if you can’t galvanize enough people to push back, to protest the anti-protests, to write the letters against creeping fascist laws and actions, to use the courts, the legal system, social media, and every other available means of communication, to fight back, just like in Hungary and Poland and a great many other countries, one day you’ll wake up and realize it’s far too late. And once established a fascist state is extremely hard to remove.