Week 4: The Path to Resistance

This Week’s Readings

• How Fascism Works - Chapter 9-10 + Conclusion

• How to Stop Fascism - Chapter 6-9

Next month's Book Club choices are posted at the bottom of this post. Don't forget to subscribe so you can join the Resistance Book Club!

Hello, Welcome to Week 4 of July's Resistance Book Club!

We certainly have a lot of work ahead of us, don't we? This week, we finished two important books on understanding fascism. At the same time, I am disillusioned about how we got here. It will be decades before this mess is cleaned up, but like Paul Mason said in How to Stop Fascism, we now need to embed anti-fascism into our ethos. Now, the bigger question: how do we get our fascist family members to come back to reality?

Sodom and Gomorrah

Oh, the wonderful Sodom and Gomorrah Bible passage. Growing up on the far right, I, too, believed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was brought about by the city dwellers' unholy and perversive homosexuality. NPR has a wonderful section discussing this. The Bible is often perceived by many as a black and white theology, but it's a very grey theology running the gamut of gender fluidity.  The Reformation Project breaks down these Sodom and Gomorrah passages. The general evil of these people was arrogance, pride, and failure to help the needy, which is the real reason these cities were destroyed, not homosexuality. This certainly plays into the fascists' sexual anxiety, who want black and white thinking surrounding marital relationships: men and women only. 

Fascist politicians love targeting rural areas to use this Sodom and Gomorrah tactic against their opponent: "Look at them over there in the city, so corrupt with their sexual deviation and letting illegal immigrants into ruin our country!" This certainly sows divisions, along with the rhetoric of saying city dwellers are lazy and living off the system, while we rural folk are the hard workers. According to Paul Mason in How to Stop Fascism, it is believed that fascists have a repression of childhood sexuality, which the Nazis preyed upon through propaganda. This makes complete sense to me, growing up on the far right, where you are told to save yourself for marriage with no exploration or understanding of your own body through masturbation, along with following the "traditional" norms of sexuality, probably does create some homophobia. Back in the day, an activist by the name of Wilhelm Reich combatted this sexual repression and anxiety through a movement called Sex-Pol that distributed educational material surrounding sex and reproductive healthcare. 

So, for our new Anti-Fascist ethos, we need to be raising the next generation to be educated regarding their sexual and reproductive healthcare to avoid sexual repression. NPR has a wonderful discussion with Cory Silverberg on their podcast about this topic. This education probably also needs to include abortion, which will be a topic we are discussing later this year. 

Arbeit Macht Frei - Work Shall Make You Free

Fascist politicians create an "us" vs. "them". The chosen nation gets to be the only people who receive government assistance because we're hardworking, while they have to work for it because they're freeloaders; freeloaders to them being immigrants or people of color, which is a myth according to NPR. This is a form of dehumanizing this population, which will lead to brutal treatment of them. We are already seeing this among various unlawful ICE raids, the detention centers being put up, like Alligator Alcatraz.

We also see this through policy. Massive cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and other social safety nets are going to disproportionately affect African American citizens who already suffer huge wealth gaps. This creates a school-to-prison pipeline, which has been arguably said to be the modern-day labor camps of the United States. We will explore that in our Book Club as well. I imagine we will see various other labor camps appear from immigration detention centers with the Trump regime.

Creating an Ethos of Anti-Fascism

To defeat fascism, we will need a mass mobilization of people, interweaving anti-fascism into our everyday lives. Too many of us took our Democracy for granted; we will need to take an active part in Democracy more than once every 4 years to vote, get involved, and find community in person, not just online. Defeating fascism will be through the battles of ideas; so speak truth to power, create art, write, or make videos! Fascists thrive on hate and violence, so shut it down! Do not let hate fester. Take back Christianity from Christian Nationalists. Hate will not win!

With warmth,

Amy

Working Towards Improvement