- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in his first remarks after being elected Wednesday afternoon, told Members of Congress that “Scripture” and “the Bible” are clear that they have been “ordained” by God.
Let me begin by saying that I don’t know if it’s even possible at this point to reverse the course we’re on. I’m not a political scientist, or a historian, or a lawyer. I’m a white guy in my 20s who was born and raised in the rust belt.
There needs to be an effort made to understand the underlying factors that are driving these people into a fascist death cult and address them. Yes, they’re racist, uneducated assholes, but they’re also poor, desperate, and in many ways culturally marginalized. There was a massive brain drain out of the rust belt in the 70s. The money flowed out and the drugs flowed in, just like what happens in the inner cities. It’s been decaying ever since. This decay has create a breeding ground for extremism that was first ignored by everybody, then harnessed by Republicans into a potent political weapon.
It’s reached a point where we may be forced to solve this kinetically, but efforts need to be made to draw as many people out of the cult as possible. The thing that kept me hooked in (I was involved in a lot alt-right spaces back in 2012-17) was the persistent notion that “the left doesn’t want me”. We need to be offering opportunities to leave the Trump bubble, and to show them that we genuinely want to help and work together.
That was a lot of rambling but I guess the gist is we need to learn to extend the right olive branches where possible, and prepare for a fight because it could easily turn into the largest war this hemisphere has ever seen. They’re anger is borne out of real frustrations, and their threats are unignorable.
What was it then that drew you out?
It was a combination of a lot of things. In 2018 I dropped out of college and on a whim signed up for AmeriCorps. I ended up working with my local Habitat for Humanity affiliate and found myself surrounded by people from all different beliefs and backgrounds, many of whom were recent immigrants or refugees. I made new friends and ended up in a lot of left-leaning spaces which, at the time, was very uncomfortable. Through these people, I learned that those I had feared and hated were just that: people.
As the Trump presidency wore on I became more and more disillusioned with the far right and their incompetencey, while simultaneously becoming more receptive to leftwing solutions to the political anxieties that had lured me to fascism in the first place. By 2020 I was off the Trump train and ridin’ with Biden.
It has taken me years of work to pull the hooks of fascism out of my psyche, and the scars they left behind will take years longer to heal. It is an ideology devoid of love, which takes a lot of effort to relearn. I don’t know how to do the same for the millions of others who have been inducted into this cult. Years of deliberate self-reflection and dis comfortable may be too much to ask, especially without a healthy support system to fall back on.
There may be nothing we can do to stop what is happening now, but I suppose we can try. The number one thing is we need to do is offer them a way out. They are not irredeemable for having been magats and we don’t hate them. We need to show them that we’re on their side and offer real demonstrable solutions to the problems they face. We need to treat them real like human beings with legitimate worries and fears. We need to flood their spaces with leftist ideals that don’t punch down at all the “stupid racist hicks from flyover country”. As corny as it is, we need to love this movement to death, because that’s the one thing they need more than anything.
Failing that it may be time to pull out some 155.