We are a fascist country committing genocide.

With forced sterilizations, now.

I feel so hopeless and sad at this point.

I'm very honestly afraid we're close to reaching the point of no return.

Forced sterilizations aren't a new practice for the United States.

We have a long history of horror.

What terrifies me is the brazenness and degree of acceleration, and people's complacency as we wade deeper and deeper into overt fascist violence and genocide.

Forced sterilizations aren't a new practice here or even a long-discontinued one.

Indigenous and disabled organizers have been telling us that for a very long time.

The United States has been doing many of the things we think of as "what fascists do" for a very long time.

That's part of the problem in naming the rise of fascism.

Its elements don't seem new.

We think of fascism as something foreign, different.

The truth is, fascism is like a cancer metastasizing.

The cells spreading the disease are very familiar to us, because they are cells from one of our culture's socio-political organs.

They look like the church or the police, just...

More.

And in new places.

In cancer, cells in one organ-- let's say a kidney-- begins to multiply in a way that's dangerously out of control.

When/if the cancer metastasizes, those cancerous kidney cells go off to start multiplying more kidney cells in a different organ.

Fascists succeed by capitalizing on the familiar and using it to confuse us about what the new is, exactly.

They rely on late detection.

They rely on us not understanding that we've had cancer all along, that what is happening now is the reckoning, not the beginning.

They rely on us leaning into our ignorance for comfort.

They rely on us choosing to ignore our history, because it reflects poorly on us.

They rely on us not being willing to acknowledge that Trumpian fascism is the aggressive spread of a disease we already had.

When we can't acknowledge that this is who we are, we cannot accurately assess the danger.

People who see genocide done in our names say "this isn't us" with the best of intentions, but it's the mindset that will do us in.

Saying "this isn't us" is like saying "this is a new cancer."

It's not a new cancer.

It's metastasis.

It's an exponentially more dangerous state for our body to be in, yes.

But it's just a later stage of a cancer we've always had.

And as that misconception pops up in liberal circles, the left reacts by saying, "hey, no, we've always been this way."

Which is deeply, tragically true.

It has to be said, because if it isn't, we can't understand the nature or stage of our disease.

At the same time, there are reactionary tendencies within the left that start at "no, we've always been this way" and use it as a launching point towards "we've always been this way, so things aren't that much worse."

It becomes an excuse to downplay the threat.

It's like saying, "we've always had cancer, so we don't need to treat it now."

Yes, the cancer of nationalist capitalism disease has been with us for a long time.

When we say, "this is fascism," we're naming the metastasis, not the cancer.

Fascism is the cancer's acceleration.

That's the deep tragedy of reactionary leftists spouting accelerationism, saying the disease has always been here, we've survived and so we'll keep surviving, let it run its course.

It's like saying, just let the cancer run its course.

It is saying, let fascism run its course.

We know from history what happens when electoral leftists decide to let fascism run its course:

The vulnerable end up dead.

We know from history what happens when liberals refuse to face facts about the origin and stage of the disease:

The vulnerable end up dead.

We've always been a right wing country, but the distinction between even our "right" and "far right" is shrinking down to near-meaninglessness.

They are ready, many of them hungry, for a violent civil war.

They are violently consolidating, with Trump's overt approval.

That's the time we're at on this clock.

The fascists are consolidating and accelerating genocide.

Meanwhile, the post-Bernie left (the closest thing we've had to a mainstream left in my lifetime) and mainstream liberals are bickering about just how long we've had cancer for.

The world has seen this show before, back in it was touring the Weimar Republic.

We've seen how it ends.

I keep saying we still have a fighting chance.

We do, if we fight, if we fight *them.*

But here we are, telling each other that voting will fix it or that it isn't so bad and it will fix itself.

Here we are, fighting over who has the best reason not to fight the fascists.

Here we are, with liberals trying to soothe people into thinking that voting will solve the problem and that Trump will take the L and willingly walk out of office.

Pearl-clutching over "riots," as though uprising won't be needed to oust him even if Trump loses the election.

And here we are with an increasingly reactionary post-Bernie left finding its own ways to pretend that it's okay to just take our ball and go home.

Saying we need to can it with the protesting and focus on the next election, as if there will be a next election.

I am heartbroken over the accelerating atrocities being done in our name.

I am terrified that we seem so unable to grasp that acceleration and its meaning.

We are a fascist country accelerating towards totalitarianism.

We are accelerating our genocide.

If Trump assumes office for a second term, there is not going to be another election.

There's no "try again in 2024."

There's no 2024.

Meanwhile, this 2020 election is not a democratic election.

Trump will do everything in his power to steal it.

He's putting his thumb on the scales.

Voting by itself is not going to save us from the existential crisis that is Trump.

Whether he succeeds in that theft of the election or not, Trump will not give up office.

Either way, militant and sustained mass protest that meaningfully disrupts the normal functioning of society will be the *only* way to counter accelerating Trumpian fascism.

Acceleration doesn't just mean moving fast.

It's that thing that forces your back against the seat behind you as the car speeds up and goes ever faster.

If you don't have an eye on the speedometer, it means getting where you're headed faster than you expect.

We are a fascist country committing genocide.

Our fascism is accelerating.

Our genocide is accelerating.

The cancer has metastasized.

We need to understand that there is need for radical action, and that the stakes are life or death.

If we can't come to terms with the stage our disease has progressed to, we'll die from it.

At least, the vulnerable among us will.

It's already started.

It started a long, long time ago.

It's spreading, fast.

It's so deathly simple, but ignorance is so much more comfortable and tempting.

I watch our leaders ignore or downplay new horror after new horror, and I watch us fail to flinch.

I hope we'll summon the courage to find our way out in time.

But I am so scared we won't.

(fin)