Now is the time to learn skills, consolidate resources, and form plans. Turn your anxiety and anger into action in this way. Build a network of like-minded people if you can do so safely. Fascism is gaining ground but it has not yet gained critical momentum. But you won’t decide when that will be. Use what time you still have wisely.
It would be wise to use this time to prioritize health and fitness, too. A lot of people in the more right-wing prepper communities completely disregard that element of preparedness. If you find yourself in a crisis, your physical capabilities will almost always be at least as important as any equipment or supplies.
I know we’ve all got a lot going on, but for me I’m sacrificing some of my unproductive relaxation time to prioritize fitness, and it’s easy to do when I remind myself “being lazy right now helps the fascists”.
I started going to the gym three times a week, up from leisurely outdoor cardio twice a week. I don’t want to have visible muscle, but I also want to be able to deck a fascist if I need to, so I’ve been working on my biceps.
Not only that but organizing locally with like-minded individuals is important now. While talking about it online can have some benefit, real planning and organizing happens in small groups and in person. My thought is that we should start small organizations and move communications to secure platforms (e.g. Signal or Matrix) and hash out details in a more secure environment. However, what is absolutely necessary is a real internal structure.
It’s helpful to think of this as in similar terms to a military operation. We are currently somewhere between late Phase 0 (shaping) and early Phase 2 (seize the initiative), which means we’re already behind, so we need to play a bit of catch up to act in a semi-unified manner.
What I mean by semi-unified manner is that all of our groups have the same purpose–force the administration to back off of its radical agenda, eschew the Unitary Executive Theory, and remove Elon Musk from government (for starters)–but we act independently. Having a unity of purpose makes demands clearer and shows the force behind the demands. In other words, if several smaller groups demand the same thing and are willing to independently demonstrate that, the government will be forced to act.
I could probably go on, but that would be an essay itself.
One of the things to be mindful of is that, to your brain, “talking about doing the thing” is almost as good as “doing the thing.” This means that you can find yourself not being motivated enough to do the thing if you’re talked about doing the thing enough. Still, using technology to organize is a good idea.
I am not at all perfect here. There’s a whole bunch of things I need to actually do. (I’ve always had trouble with motivation, though.) I think I need to make myself some lists of even simple things to accomplish, and keep checking them off day by day, week by week. I need to make myself accountable to myself.
What I have been able to accomplish for myself is to be more prepared to react to dire circumstances, wherever and whenever I happen to be.
“You can discourse and quote-dunk and fact-check until you’re blue in the face, but at a certain point, you have to stop and decide what truth you believe in. The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a puzzle. But there is also such a thing as having enough information. As the internet continues to enshittify, maybe what we really need is to start trusting each other and our own collective sense of what is true and good.”
having more examples of collapse won’t hold back collapse or help you prepare for it.
and in a “post-facts” world, it’s more important to build strong connections with other people who share your BELIEFS and less important to respond to every new supposed “fact” (claim) being shoved into our faces by an unreliable media.
beliefs are increasingly more potent in the world of political organization than facts/new information, just look at how easily our country has been overtaken by millions of voters who believed in blatantly false promises and simple answers to complex problems.
