Fascism can only survive through terror management. What Trump and his merry band of fascists are trying to do is scare us into submission. Every time you respond: “America has fallen,” “We’re running out of time,” or “We are in a dictatorship” consider that you might need to take a step back from social media— take a breather for the collective good. It’s okay to think those things and to feel fear, but when you blurt it out on social media, you help the fascists proliferate their program of terror. Don’t help them by inadvertently repeating their outright lie that resistance is futile. He’s putting on a show for you— to try to scare you and get you to repeat this very message to everyone around you. It’s meant to manipulate you, and if you’re reapting their central message, it’s working. Again, fascism can only be sustained through terror, and so much of that is about the spectacle of power. Don’t spread fear.
The messages we ought to be sending are ones of hope and ones that mirror back to people their strength and their love. Practice alchemizing your fear offline and sharing out messages of solidarity on social media. Here’s some strategically hopeful messages you can share to counter the despair-filled messages circulating online:
“We the People of the United States of America are rising up with a fierce love for our communities.”
“We We the People of the United States have stared down tyrants before. Our ancestors are with us; their brilliance is in our bones and they whisper of another freedom summer. We are rising up, and we are just getting started.”
“We the People make this nation great. We the People are the democracy. We the People are the Republic. We are a free people. They may temporarily occupy our buildings and our airways, but we the People are indivisible— and we refuse to be governed unless and until there is liberty and justice for all.”
Do not be cowed, neighbor.
Do not think you don’t have the goods for this moment. All that is required is for you to show up. The universe and your neighbors will do the rest. Move with them— become a murmuration of democracy. Keep going.
Keep coming back. And more important than that: talk to each other like a free people. Build friendships. Build experimental ways to sustain community in troubling times. Because that’s the thing fascism never wants you to recognize— the upside down always coexists with the right side up:
Times of cruelty are also times of divine compassion. Times of cowardice are also times of courage. In attempting to destroy the buildings and binding laws of our democracy, they also guarantee that democracy grows back stronger than it ever was before. The time of monsters is also the age of miracles. The lion lays down with the lamb.
We are not invulnerable but we have also already won. The greatest of these has always been love, and love always wins. And how do I know that? Because I am here with you right now. Because when everything feels lost, you are reaching out. That is ancestral wisdom. We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. The circle will not be broken.
Link up.
Cry it out.
Feed each other.
Give long hugs.
Look at the stars.
Love your neighbor.
Keep loving.
Keep going.
