Okay. We have to talk about fascism, "patriotic education," and the very real threats facing this country.

Here's what I found writing AMERICAN RULE and is the closest thing I know to a solution as to how we fight fascism and save this country.

1/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/american-rule-by-jared-yates-sexton/

I have to tell you, before I wrote AMERICAN RULE, I didn't understand the true history of this country, I didn't understand what fascism actually was, and I didn't understand how this big ugly mess functioned or how to fight it.

We have to destroy our dangerous myths.

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The problem we have is that America's concept of itself, particularly among white Americans, is a weaponized propaganda that hides our crimes and faults behind a sheen of exceptionalism, trapping us in a fake reality where genocide, slavery, and racism are protected.

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What Trump is doing in pushing "patriotic education" is fighting for white supremacist propaganda and to try and trap future generations in a mythical reality where white supremacy can be propagated, strengthened, and vulnerable populations oppressed.

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The Right wants you to believe our Founders were divinely inspired, that God had a hand in the creation of America, and because of that divinity, we are perfect and beyond critique and are champions of a racist god's will.

This is the lie they tell us in order to control us.

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American history has been filtered through the idea of divine intervention and "manifest destiny," but all of it is white supremacist pursuit of power.

In this, America is directly inked to the founding of fascism and current neo-fascist pursuits like Trumpism.

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To begin understanding, we must go back to the aftermath of World War I, where Germans, believing themselves superior, languished following a defeat and were left to wonder how a "superior" country could possibly be defeated.

These are the roots are fascism.

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Among the Germans puzzled by Germany's defeat and humiliation was a young veteran named Adolf Hitler, who would dedicate his life to reestablishing Germany's power and attempting to explain the unexplainable loss.

This delusion is what powered Nazism and fascism.

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Nazism fell into union with fascism, a movement touted by Benito Mussolini, who tapped into masculine anxieties and a desire for past glories.

Mussolini believed fascists could "revive myth" and return their nations to their former states by embracing national myths.

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Meanwhile, in America, writers like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard were penning bestselling books about white supremacy being imperiled. Americans bought them, politicians used them for counsel, they testified about laws and immigration.

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Grant and Stoddard's The Passing of the Great Race and the Rising Tide of Color inspired white supremacy in institutions, including the US government, affluent circles, and in fascistic Europe.

They were treated like dignitaries, visionaries, here and in Europe.

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The intellectual push of white supremacy would not have been successful, however, had the failings of nations like Germany and Italy not been explained by racist conspiracy theories.

Henry Ford, automobile magnate, played a bizarre role in supplying those stories.

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Henry Ford was introduced to the conspiracy theory of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that claimed Jewish "puppetmasters" were manipulating world affairs and attacking white supremacy.

It was a forgery, but Ford, a complete dullard, fell under its sway.

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Marshaling his resources, Henry Ford published the antisemitic conspiracy theories in America and around the world, popularizing their paranoia and hatred and galvanizing white supremacists in need of a conspiracy theory to explain their own failures.

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For his services to white supremacy and the Nazi cause, he was awarded a medal by Hitler, who said repeatedly he wished he could install Ford as a fascist fuehrer in America and would happily supply troops for the effort.

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With the antisemitic conspiracy theory, the fascists had a mythology they could pair with white supremacy in order to craft their alternate reality to ensnare followers and their countries.

Fascism is a mix of these weaponized myths of nationalism and conspiracy.

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But fascism and nazism weren't limited to Europe. They gained popularity in America because we were directly linked to the ideology. There were marches, movements, tens of thousands of Nazis gathered in Madison Square Garden under swastikas and portraits of Washington.

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Aviation hero Charles Lindbergh lauded Hitler, wrote that we should join him to protect white supremacy, denounced Jewish conspirators angling for war, talking about the media as being controlled and an enemy of the people.

He was wildly popular and openly fascist.

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Lindbergh's American First movement was fascistic in its rhetoric and goals, pushing for America to join on the side of the Axis Powers and he grew in popularity and strength, even as he vilified Jews, the media, and liberal "traitors."

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Of course, it isn't hard to link "America First" from the fascistic pre-WWII movement to Donald Trump's movement, both of which use the same rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and tactics.

They are the same and we have to recognize that we're dealing with fascism here.

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Post-WWII, we moved on from fascism to scapegoating communism, with American fascists claiming Soviets were influencing people of color to rise up and commit violence.

Many even partnered with former Nazis in order to "combat" this fake, imagined threat.

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Even our most reliable papers and mainstream media outlets bought the conspiracy and ran stories about communists inspiring race riots, protests, and critiques of America.

The Red Scare was a far right, white supremacist fascistic movements and swallowed us whole.

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Desegregation was treated as a Soviet conspiracy, efforts for equal rights treated as an attack on America. White supremacists claimed they were fighting a war against a terrorist threat and so any means were necessary to "defend" themselves.

It was fascism. Again.

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Leaders like Martin Luther King were portrayed as communist sleeper agents, marches as left wing operations, protesters as conspirators. Every speech and every attempt to undermine white supremacy was met with violence, disinformation, and blatant fascism.

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Leaders on the Right like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace, claimed protesters for civil rights and against the Vietnam War were agents in league with Soviet conspiracies and needed to be dealt with like terrorists by any means necessary.

Again. Fascism.

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It is the same story over and over and over again. The myth of the knife in the back, the traitor in our midst, the outside manipulator, the only way a "great country" could ever falter or be critiqued.

An antisemitic, fascist conspiracy theory that legitimates violence.

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After the fall of the USSR, the Right needed another scapegoat, another conspiracy to blame for protests against white supremacy.

Quickly, they turned to Americans and blamed them. Particularly liberals and anyone who wasn't white or Christian or pro-capitalist.

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The New World Order conspiracy theory became the stand-in and animated fascistic movements that sought to destroy the government and install a dictatorship dedicated to white supremacy.

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You know it now as the Deep State, but it's the exact same conspiracy theory that girds white supremacy and capitalistic control.

This is what's broadcast and hinted at constantly. An antisemitic, Nazi-style mythology that promotes fascism.

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24 hours a day Fox News and the Right Wing media broadcasts fascist-style conspiracy theories meant to make their white base feel under attack and thus support preemptive attacks and violence.

It's not hyperbole. This is fascist propaganda on repeat.

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This is how we reach a point where immigrants and refugees are treated like terrorists, their lives easily snuffed out, their bodies violated, their fates offered up to Nazi-style eugenic experiments.

Because we're in the middle of an honest to god fascist movement.

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Trump supporters in the streets with weapons, carrying out violence, echo fascist paramilitary groups, citizenry motivated by fascist scaremongering to believe they must mete out violence lest they be subject to future imagined violence.

It is an observable cycle.

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Trump has knowingly positioned himself as a cult leader in the head of a fascistic movement, declaring himself the only defender of a way of life that will be snuffed out if "enemies" and the "conspiracy" get their way.

This is the fascistic appeal.

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Here is what I know: You must fight fascism by calling it what it is, by ripping from it its disguise and exposing it as the threat that it is.

You must call it fascism, recognize it as fascism, and work to pull its mythology out by the root.

We must do this.

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Trumpism is empowered by our American desire to hold onto the myth of exceptionalism, the same mythology that empowers fascism.

We have to sort through our history, find truth, and use that truth to fight this mythologically-powered movement. It's the only way.

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America's history is ugly and disturbing. But as long as we traffic in exceptionalism we are playing in THEIR arena and by THEIR rules.

Trumpism wins if we continue to pretend we live in an ordained, exceptional country instead of a troubled, faltering one.

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What history shows us is that when people recognize they have power, that the fight is theirs to win, that the system holds them back and must be troubled, we win.

It is a cycle of powerlessness and power, and we must turn this pendulum around. And fast.

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While declaring Trumpism fascism, while correcting the historical record, we must also repair communal bonds and trust, form grassroots communities and organizations.

This has worked time and again in the past, and it's the only chance we have.

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We must vote. Fundraising works. Calling out hypocrisy is important. But we have to do the hard work and heavy lifting, too.

We have to stop waiting on saviors and messiahs. They're part of the same exceptionalism narrative that powers fascism.

We must act as people.

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THERE IS HOPE.

Dismantle this poisonous mythology, recognize that America is faltering, that we're not immune to fascism, that we're currently fighting off fascism right now, and that heroes are not coming to save us.

Repair and build communities. Find the power.

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