This Is How an Age of Fascism Is Dawning in America

When More Than Half of a Society Is Losing Their Basic Rights — It’s Fascism

Image Credit: John Raoux, follow him here

Scarcely a day goes by when I don’t — sigh. Nobody’s going to like this essay. I suppose I have to write it anyways, because, well, someone has to. So let me try again. Scarcely a day goes by now when I don’t see something about “wokeness.” Florida, the state where woke goes to die. Anti-woke this and that. The war on woke.

Let me do the painful yet necessary job of pointing something out.

The days have long gone by when “wokeness” meant basically…abstruse, and sometimes obtuse, semantics. Often ones that seemed pretty absurd — “pregnant people” instead of women, etcetera. You can go down the list, and stop where you like.

But what does this new rising war on woke, death to woke, this moral panic and frenzy and histrionic mania about wokeness really mean — now?

At this point it means that if the elderly gay couple who live around the corner from me, supporting each other through cancer, old age, time, with love and dignity and grace, wear rainbows— that’s not OK. It means that if I talk to the wonderful trans lady up the street, whose doggie plays with little Snowy, and she tells me all her about life — star-studded, glamorous, amazing — and I call her “her,” that’s not OK.

Shall I keep going?

It means that if little kids walk by me clutching books, I’d better check to see if those books are banned, because now, being against woke means being for banning books. It means that I should rally, screaming in rage, around Ron DeSantis, and his new book, though. It means, too, that if a kid’s different, in some way, I shouldn’t sit down and talk to them about it, and empathize about how damned hard it is to be that kind of kid — nope, I should tell them not to talk about it, not to even mention it, not to share their challenges, because, now, being “anti-woke” means even bullying and hectoring little kids.

Should I keep on going? Let’s do one more.

It means that if a woman sitting next to me is in tears, and discussing her reproductive healthcare with a friend, I’d better keep a close eye on them, because “aiding and abetting” women is now…too woke.

Maybe you get my point.

Is it really…”woke”…to think that gay people should have rights? That, hey, whatever you think about trans people, at least call them by their names? That kids should be able to…read books? That women should be able to have healthcare of a modern kind? That “aiding and abetting” all these groups is…LOL…actually aiding and abetting them…like we’re talking about crimes?

Is any of that really woke? If it is, count me in. Sign me up. But let’s be real. It’s not. At least not in the sense that it once meant, which was almost academic, about power structures and so forth. But now? Woke just means thinking that people should have the right to exist. It just means believing in equality, liberty, and justice for all, and you can call those hackneyed and trite if you like, but just go ahead and look at Florida, Kansas, Texas, or Montana. Liberty for all much these days?

Woke, at this point? It just means whatever the right wants it to. They keep defining it down. Right into the abyss.By now it just means that you believe in democracy and modernity. If you doubt me, let’s do a quick litmus test. Think kids should be able to read books? Learn about slavery? Know gay people exist? Think that perfectly peaceful people should be able to be themselves in public— which just means basic freedoms like association, expression, privacy, movement, intimacy, speech? That’s woke! Well, now it is, anyways.

How absurd, how ridiculous, is this?

 Let me put more technically what’s going on here.

The circle of scapegoating has expanded so far that it now includes ideas. If you believe in those ideas, you’re the enemy. You shouldn’t have the right to exist, either. That’s a very, very dangerous and sinister thing, because, well, it’s a pretty advanced level of social collapse. Let me explain.

How do societies fall into authoritarian fascist abysses? Well, a circle of hate opens — and then the gyre widens. First, it’s outgroups. Then, in-groups, too. Then, finally, it’s just ideas. Abstractions. To even believe in such abstractions is to be an “enemy” in a “war,” — and such annihilation rhetoric isn’t just that, it’s a very real intention to inflict harm on the people it targets, too.

You can see this happening in America over the last decade. During the Trump years, the circle of hate opened.Mexicans and Latinos were in its crosshairs, to the absurd degree that even their babies were seen as existential threats to “real” Americans. Today? Not even a decade later? That circle of hate’s expanding at light speed, like a black hole roaring open. Now? It includes the LGBTQ…kids…women…teachers…professors, journalists, you know the score.

Think about this fact, and I mean really think about it. There are now more people inside the circle of hate than outside it. Women — more than half of society — are on the list, right? So consider for a moment just how much trouble a society is in when more than half the people in it are to be hated subhumans with no rights, as in, we can force birth on you, take away your basic freedoms of movement, expression, association, privacy, just like that.

And we can do it to anyone “aiding and abetting” you, too. But what’s “aiding and abetting”? This is where wokeness being defined down to just believing in elementary aspects of modernity like decency and dignity and truth, in equality, truth, freedom, at all, comes into play, and into power.

The circle of hate hasn’t just stopped at the various social groups above, though that’d be bad enough. The right’s new idea is to include in it anyone who believes in an idea. Now, the idea itself has become the scapegoat, and that idea is “wokeness,” but it doesn’t just mean college kids who want to change the way we speak, clumsily — it includes anyone who believes in things like gay rights, equal rights for women, kids being able to read books, and demagogues not being able to control everyone’s life. When Ron DeSantis proudly proclaims a “war on woke,” he doesn’t just mean some kind of academic debate about theoretically accurate terminology — he means that you had better not believe that this long, long list of people, more than half of society, has the right to exist.

Think of how dangerous that really is. How different is this from any other form of fundamentalism?

The idea has become the scapegoat. And that’s a dangerous line to cross. Because it means…a lot of things. It means that anyone in society is now fair game. It means that tabs must be kept on people, because, well, now the menace to society is an idea. But who’s going to keep those tabs? Hence, the rise of all kinds of shadowy new “forces” that various demagogues, from DeSantis to Texas Governor Greg Abbott want. When ideas become scapegoats, then a society is in profound trouble.