Never Say Never, Never Say Die: We Can Stop the Fascist Creep (or Fascist Creeps)

There’s this reaction that we humans have – a feeling, really – that something is wrong in the way things are being defined by the institutions tasked and trusted with providing us definitions. “There’s something happening,” we think, “but no one is saying it or no one is being clear about what it is.” It’s a reaction that, when unanswered, leads to mistrust, cynicism, and/or conspiratorial thinking. Instinctively, we “do our own research,” which, when done as an amateur, can deepen the problem, or we snort and say “Fuck it! I’m through!” In either case, our mistrust and confusion lead to atomization and isolation. Rather than fight, we engage in flight or we freeze. And, the chuff of it is, our reaction to what we are hearing is correct: Something something is wrong in the way things are being defined by the institutions tasked and trusted with providing us definitions.

Right now, at this moment, the United States is in the first phase of fascism, and nary a soul in the mainstream media is reporting this. Right now, at this moment, the United States is in a “constitutional crisis,” and the mainstream dances around naming it. “Wait, let us make sure that this is a real crisis before we call it a ‘crisis,’” the mainstream says, projecting calm and responsibility as a cover for timidity and fear. When threatened by the powerful, the mainstream freezes or falters. It accommodates and the messaging gets muddled.

Muddled is bad. Muddled is worse than becoming a mouthpiece for those in power. A mouthpiece can be easily spotted, challenged, and defrocked. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt is a mouthpiece and obviously so. She’s a hostile sycophant, undisciplined and trite. When she isn’t playing make believe, she is lying. And, though, the mainstream media won’t identify her as a lying hack – for fear of being treated like the Associated Press – those of us who are paying attention see Leavitt for what she is.

Leavitt is easy. MAGA is easy. MAGA might contradict itself, but MAGA isn’t muddled. Muddled is a media that calmly reports on fascist creep as if it were the natural order of things. DOGE, illegal immigration round-ups, outsourcing incarceration to foreign countries, imprisoning foreign tourists trying to legal enter the United States, arresting legal residents for dissent, threatening judges, knuckling universities and threatening to take over their curriculum, seizing cultural organizations, defunding libraries, creating so much fear within the government that public servants will not speak openly about what is going down? Nothing to be alarmed about. Just your government at work.

And because we are conditioned to look to our institutions for definitions – and not trained well enough to suss out our own through critical thinking and legitimate research – we wait for the media and the experts to definitively declare that the United States is entering (if not already in full embrace of) fascism, that the administration is renegade, that we are experiencing a systematic rip-off of what is ours right in front of us, etc. before we act.

Given the events of the last two weeks, I have no reservation saying that the United States is in the first phase of fascism and that we are in a constitutional crisis.

Now, I don’t want to make this screed against the mainstream media. On the news side – I am talking mostly about “print” – there’s a lot of good and great reporting, not just outside the mainstream but in the establishment press. There are mainstream columnists doing an excellent job. We have a lot of information that we can access and use, and it is pretty damn easy to find. Tap into that information, sift through and analyze it, put it into context, and it is not too difficult to come up with concrete, reasonable definitions without the help of the Washington Post’s and New York Times’ editors.

This being the case, why aren’t most Americans concerned about what is going on as a whole and making noise about it? There are a few reasons why. The first and most obvious reason is that the mainstream and left media shares public space with MAGA media, which, at the very least, creates more muddle.

The second reason why Americans response to fascist creep is muted is that we tend to look at things in the micro rather than macro, the details as opposed to what the details add up to. We focus on each DOGE attack rather than DOGE as a whole, while some of us zero in on DOGE and not its role in Trump and the Billionaires creation of an oligarchy. We keep citing individual immigration-enforcement atrocities and not overarching drive of White supremacy and the goal of a new American apartheid. On these and other things, we avoid or lack the skill to put things into easily understood context.

Third, and most important, most Americans do not follow the news. Pew reports that from 2016 to 2023 the number of Americans who followed the news dropped from 51% to 38% (we are still in this gully). Those who do follow the news, tend to do so on a digital device, followed by television, which either means Fox or the muddle of mainstream news. Further, how those get their news from digital sources is concerning.

Sixty-six percent of Pew respondents get their news from news sites and aps, which sounds positive until you consider that Fox, America One, and InfoWars are considered news sites. Another 66% “search” for their news, which often means the searchers are looking for news that coincides with their point of view. Fifty-four percent find their news through social media, which we know is crazy (though many of us still do it).

Blue Rose Research’s David Shor did a couple of interviews last week where he identifies some key reasons why Trump beat Harris, while expanding his support among men – Black, Latino, Asian, and youth. Central to Shor’s analysis is that these men are very low information voters. They tend to get their news indirectly, through right-wing-leaning entertainers like Joe Rogan and through social media. They avoid news sites – mainstream or not – because they are boring and/or these men have never developed a habit for reading the news (or much anything else). So, they go by what they are told by people who they trust or their own sense of what makes sense. They live in a closed information world.

This fact creates a dilemma for the opponents of MAGA who firmly believe that the news media is failing us by not reporting “enough” on Trump, Musk, etc. and that, if more people just read more, things will change for the better. On the first point, as I stated above, there is plenty of reliable news and strong reporting out there that is easy to access. On the second point, sure, more people need to read, but they aren’t reading and they probably are not going to read any more than they do.

When I was a kid, I was constantly around books. My mom had a big bookshelf full of an assortment of books and just their presence in the house was a message that books are good. When the Scholastic Books order form was sent home with us from school, mom didn’t put a limit on how many books I could order. She made an evening together roaming the aisle at Tower Books a regular special event. She took interest in what I was reading – without censoring me – and even fed me books like Ladies and Gentlemen Lenny Bruce and Beyond Good and Evil when I was a pre-teen, which is a bit crazy! My reading habits are so deep that they might as well live in my DNA. That is me. I bet that some variation of that applies to you, after all right now you are reading a pretty obscure writer. But that does not apply to most Americans.

According to Gallup, in 2022, only 15% of Americans read six to ten books a year, with 17% conquering eleven or more. Forty percent read one to five books a year and 27% didn’t read any books. The number of readers of six or more books has remained fairly steady since 1990, while the one-plus and non-readers’ numbers shift radically, each taking the top slot for a while.

Reading one or two books a year does not make one a reader. Hell, I’d struggle to call someone who reads only five books a year a reader, especially if what they are consuming are mass market mysteries and romances and not massive tomes like War & Peace or Infinite Jest. By my measure, that makes 67% of Americans who don’t regularly read books and 15% who don’t even read one book a month. No judgement here, but when nearly a quarter of the country mostly ignores books – for whatever reason – we’ve got a problem, especially if we stress that if only more people read about what was happening, things will change.

So, what is my answer? We must stop outsourcing organizing for change to the media no matter the form it takes. Because we are dealing with so many people who have no or poor news reading habits and many people who do not read much or at all, we cannot rely on the media to get through to people. Relatively few people read newspapers or news sites, especially reliable one. Podcasts don’t reach enough people (a bit over 20% of the population). Tic Tok and social media videos are little more than visual memes and cannot provide the depth or analysis that changes people’s minds and gets them to act.

The only proven, effective way to reach people is face to face organizing and getting in rooms with people and hashing things out. That means talking to people that we might feel uncomfortable conversing with. I’m not talking about the full on MAGAs or Muskovites, but low info voters who rely on what they feel and what others tell them, basically those who voted for Trump because they have legit concerns over inflation, the economy, crime, and immigration as they understand these issues.

We don’t want our engagement to turn to conflict, so we avoid engaging at all. Instead, we lecture, we blame, we shame, and we shun – all pretty stupid tactics when you are trying to build solidarity, support for opposing Trump, and create something that will build (and rebuild) the institutions and things that we need.

To be clear, I am not talking about accommodation or the Democratic Party bugaboo “meeting them in the middle.” I am talking about what Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez are doing right now, going into red or red-leaning states and talking to people honestly about the issues and the dangers of Trump/Musk, without lecturing, without blaming, without shaming, in very clear language and with grit. Whatever you think about his politics, I don’t think anyone can deny that Sanders is an excellent communicator who many people – regardless of their ideology – trust…and he will engage with anyone providing they aren’t MAGA hacks or trolls.

Which bring us to this: It is quite clear that we cannot rely on our current institutions to foster opposition to Trump and to create the change that we need. As I’ve written before, we must rely on ourselves and we must do it now. That starts with reaching out to those who feel as you do, seeking out those already in the fight, and actually doing something concrete in the real world. Concrete doesn’t have to be big or extravagant – actually, it shouldn’t be. Concrete means “small” actions that collectively become something bigger like a movement.

And here is where I volunteer. I am a pretty good organizer of people and I’ve done this stuff for a long, long time. I am happy to help facilitate your involvement by meeting with you and a group of your friends and allies, people who want to do something, anything, but don’t know where to start. I can do this in person (in Northern California, for gas money) or via a meeting ap. You don’t need a lot of people, just five or more, a core that you will build on as you organize and engage. And you need not plan for a revolution or anything grand. There is plenty to do that is modest and obtainable. But this starts with you. It always starts with you.

PS: A new issue of Record Time is on its way. You can pre-order one of you want. More information here.