Polite language has failed. Calm explanations have failed. Panels, op-eds, “both sides,” and soothing reassurances have failed. Fascism does not advance because people lack information. It advances because people are comfortable, distracted, anesthetized, and trained to mistake civility for virtue.
If you’re looking for gentle guidance, go find a museum placard. This article is not for you.
FASCISM IN AMERICA
American fascism isn’t creeping in. It’s already unpacked, changed the locks, and put your institutions on a payment plan. Camps exist. Courts are bent. Power is centralized. Cruelty is procedural. And half the country is still arguing about whether the word “fascism” is too dramatic, like vocabulary is the problem instead of cages.
You don’t defeat this by convincing everyone. You defeat it by making it unworkable.
Fascism is a machine. It requires obedience. It requires participation. It requires millions of people doing small, cowardly things every day and calling it normal. Your job isn’t to scream at the machine. Your job is to throw sand in the gears until it starts tearing itself apart.
NORMAL IS THE MOST DANGEROUS LIE IN THE ROOM
Every authoritarian project survives on one magic trick: making the unacceptable feel routine. Once cruelty becomes policy, people stop reacting to it like an emergency and start reacting to it like weather. Camps become “facilities.” Abuse becomes “incidents.” Dead people become “statistics pending review.”
The first move is to kill normal.
You do that by refusing euphemism. By documenting obsessively. By naming names. Contractors. Officials. Judges. Budgets. Timelines. You make the system visible again because fascism thrives in abstraction. When the harm has faces, when the paper trail is public, when denial becomes embarrassing instead of easy, the spell starts to crack.
This isn’t moral outrage. This is forensic exposure.
MASS BEATS HEROICS EVERY TIME
Fascism loves lone wolves. It loves martyrs. It loves isolated bravery it can crush quietly. What it cannot handle is scale. Not rage scale. Participation scale. The kind that makes repression logistically impossible and politically radioactive.
That’s why disciplined nonviolence keeps winning in history, even against regimes that look invincible. Not because it’s nicer. Because it recruits more people, fractures loyalty, and forces the state into impossible choices. Beat people publicly and look brutal. Back down and look weak. Either way, legitimacy leaks.
This is where tactical frivolity becomes lethal.
Humor shatters fear. Ridicule punctures myth. Absurdity exposes how fragile authority really is. When power is forced to arrest clowns, chase costumes, and explain why it’s scared of jokes, it looks ridiculous. Ridiculous power bleeds supporters. Bleeding power panics.
But frivolity is not chaos. It’s strategy with a grin. Clear message. Clean moral contrast. Punching up, always.
HIT THE PILLARS, NOT THE CROWD
Protests alone don’t topple regimes. Noncooperation does. You identify what keeps the system functioning and you deny it.
Labor that refuses complicity. Professionals who slow-walk enforcement. Cities that block cooperation. Vendors that cancel contracts. Donors who feel heat. Bureaucrats who demand process until the machine grinds itself raw.
This is boring. It works anyway.
You build legal defense. You train for repression. You rotate roles so burnout doesn’t decapitate the movement. You turn every crackdown into proof and every arrest into recruitment. The system is betting you’ll get tired. You build something that outlasts that bet.
STARVE IT AND CONTAIN IT AT THE SAME TIME
Fascism runs on money and legitimacy. So you attack both without playing its game.
Boycotts that hurt. Exposure that sticks. Follow the money until it squeals. Make profiteering from cruelty socially radioactive and financially painful. At the same time, you contest power everywhere it shows up. Local. State. Federal. Courts. School boards. Election infrastructure.
This is not about being “above politics.” That’s how authoritarians win. This is about denying them uncontested space.
BUILD WHAT THEY CAN’T BURN DOWN FAST ENOUGH
Mutual aid is not charity. It’s survival infrastructure. Sanctuary networks. Community defense of institutions. Parallel systems that keep people fed, housed, informed, and connected when the state turns hostile or useless.
Fascism collapses when people stop needing it. When fear loses its leverage. When solidarity becomes practical instead of rhetorical.
HOPE ISN’T ENOUGH
This will not be quick. It will not be clean. It will not feel heroic most days. It will feel like work. Relentless, unglamorous, grinding work.
But fascism is brittle. It looks strong because it demands obedience. The moment enough people stop cooperating, it starts screaming. That scream is not victory. It’s the sound of the spell breaking.
This is why hope isn’t enough. Hope sits still. Strategy moves. Pressure works.
You don’t wait for history to save you. You force it to change course.
That’s why this is written like a banshee instead of a brochure. Because people don’t sleepwalk out of emergencies. They wake up when something screams loud enough to make ignoring it impossible.
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This post has been syndicated from CLOSER TO THE EDGE, where it was published under this address.