a blog without a purpose

It’s hard to ignore the news from today. In advance of the certification of the electoral college votes, a largely symbolic process made to show that Congress and the Senate approve of the next President, closet fascist Donald Trump tweeted encouraging his followers to protest en-masse against the confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidency. We all know where it went from there— they stormed the capitol building, whereupon government staff were evacuated and little resistance from police lead the empowered reactionaries to damage public offices, theft, etc. I will not be discussing specific events from today, although I think it adds to an interesting conversation about free speech, and where movements like these originate.

This post will be discussing our premise of free speech, and the “marketplace of ideas.” Furthermore, I will discuss the centrist conceit that through debate, level heads will prevail. The events of the last few years, and today especially, paint an interesting picture about where these baseline assumptions of our democracy have taken us. To put it briefly, what was once a pseudo-intellectual alt-right movement on the outer margins of politics has evolved into a movement that not only controls the US government, but has empowered its followers to a point at which they feel they can overturn the results of multiple elections, court decisions, etc.

Open fascist organization has been no secret during the Trump presidency. The most blatant of that, besides today, was Charlottesville’s “Unite The Right” rally in 2017, which was a forum for encouraging violent white supremacist ideas, with such chants as “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil,” a Nazi chant expressing their desire for a white ethnostate. Both rallies ended in murder, from police or from white supremacists. In response to Charlottesville, we heard the infamous ”very fine people on both sides” line from the President. Today is no different. Despite seemingly no resistance when storming the Capitol building, “both sides” were again to blame today. Those in power simply cannot build the courage to condemn violence, white supremacy, and the like. Claiming “both sides” is not a condemnation.

With this coming from the right, one might expect the centre-right Democrats to have an opposing reaction. While they might openly condemn fascists and white supremacists, their actions haven’t extended beyond their classic strategy: “They go low, we go high.” The idea is that truth always wins. That through following institutional processes, respecting debate, and waiting for their turn in power, eventually level heads will prevail and things will be okay. Joe Biden is the embodiment of this ideology— an uncontroversial candidate who is reminiscent of professional establishment politics. Take the high road, and things will go back to normal. These are the premises of democracy, after all: throw a bunch of ideas into a functioning system, and only the good ideas will remain after debate and institutional processes run their course.

When working with a group that champions co-operativeness, and dissents most strongly with sassy tweets or eye-rolling for photo ops, the optimal strategy to make things go your way is to do to them what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. In short, “you go high, we go low,” outlined in Innuendo Studio’s series, the Alt-Right Playbook. This has been seen in practice daily through this last election: while Republicans claim that the election was stolen, Democrats trust that the Courts and proper institutional means will produce a just result. Joe Biden will be confirmed as the President, and that’s that. The system has produced a favourable outcome. Today’s events have proved this idea wrong.

Fascist ideas do not simply go away through institutional function. Fascists do not give up through debate and level-headedness. They do not listen to you when you debate them: fascist ideals rely on giving “us,” the in-group, power, no matter what. “It permits and makes justifications for violence against dissenters. It relies on nostalgia for a mythologized past to sell a narrative of cultural rebirth.” Hopefully you get it. When Trump loses the election, it’s a global conspiracy that is attempting to destroy “us.” When fascists become violent, it’s instead antifascists that are violently infiltrating rallies in attempt to make fascists look bad. When the Senate moves to confirm a centrist president, it is an act of war. These are not ideas that can be talked down, rather, they need to be stamped out. There is no rational discussion to be had. It is a worldview entirely reliant on world-splitting delusion.

You might be able to see how democratic values conflict here. A system that relies on logic and reason cannot meaningfully engage with fascism. And with Joe Biden’s presidency imminent, we cannot expect this to just disappear with the shift in power. This will not be the last time we see attacks on democracy, and blatant disregard for the status quo from delusional fascists. As for what my expectations are, I personally believe that this movement is going to either continue to escalate and end in a crash (as most fascist movements do), or get stamped out . The corporate establishment, if it has any sense of longevity, should prefer the relative stability of years’ past to the raging accelerationism and open acceptance of violence from the Trump camp.

The tolerant nature of the centrists and liberals alike have done nothing but bite them in the back. It should go without saying that a fascist is aware of these democratic ideals. A fascist knows how to turn liberals’ naiveté into a pawn for their own power grabs. The overarching message here is this: level-headed debate will not settle the crises of late-stage capitalism. We do not need to coddle fascists in the name of free speech. We need to question why we employ our values in ways that allow fascists to gain power in the first place.




I think that’s all I have in me for tonight. I’ll post this tonight, but I might add onto it tomorrow before I share with friends.

I hope this post exposed you to some new ideas! These are frustrations that I’ve had building for a fair few months, seeing movements like the Proud Boys gain so much momentum with open collaboration with the police. And today, seeing police taking selfies with fascists, seeing them open the gates for fascists to freely break into the Capitol building with no resistance, things came to a point for me. I had to provide some commentary that wasn’t reposting infographics or whatever on social media. Thanks for reading 🙂