We absolutely don’t have time to waste the way America has. Even if Trump leaves, America’s now done as a working society. Those who don’t want to end up like it have to make the right decisions in the decade or so we have left before things get really bad.

So what is life like in an authoritarian state like? I feel we survivors haven’t made our warnings concrete enough. So here is what life is like in an authoritarian-fascist state. (Thread) 1/x

I received my first death threat when I was at the ripe old age of 14 years. It wasn’t like you think — some chubby basement-dwelling dork with fists about as dangerous as pillows says he’ll kill you on Twitter. 2/x

This one came from seriously violent men in organised groups, wings calling themselves militias, carrying machine`guns, whose only real job it was to kill people who had crossed the line. I was still just a kid — but I’d crossed a line, and now the fascists wanted me dead. 3/x

It happened like this. There isn’t much to do in authoritarian states — so I became the science writer of a noted paper. Yes, that’s a little strange for a kid, but in authoritarian states, education isn’t valued, and neither is science, much less writing about either. 4/x

So there I was. My job basically consisted of taking articles from functioning societies, which had a thing called science — we weren’t allowed to, because the fanatics would kill you over it — and publishing them, for what audience we had. 5/x

I tried to make it fun — I was a kid, after all. So I came up with weekly science quizzes. I wasn’t totally insufferable — mostly, I was a teenage punk. My science quizzes were a big hit. Because they poked fun at the authoritarians. 6/x

Who believes dinosaurs never existed? A) the fanatics B) Charles Darwin C) Albert Einstein D) Meteors. Who believes science is more dangerous than an AK-47? Lol. You can see why the fanatics were getting a little hot under the Nazi collar, and sent the Nazis after me. 7/x

Now, I took great pride in my little quizzes. I’d go to parties, and all the grown-ups would laugh uproariously, deliriously, at them. I was too young to get: mostly because I was saying what they were afraid to say out loud. 8/x

But there was a good reason they were afraid, and I was about to learn it.
One day, the office received a hand-written letter addressed to me. 9/x

‘Umair, we’re going to kill you, you bastard heathen. And so on. Signed, the Army of the Pure.’ I laughed. The Army of the Pure? LOL. But nobody was laughing. There was pin drop silence in the office. 10/x

And so even fourteen year old me knew this was somehow very bad news. They were, I understood, the guys who rode around on motorbikes executing people in broad daylight with machine guns. People like me. 11/x

So I got assigned a bodyguard. There I am, a fourteen year old punk with green hair…and a bodyguard. I didn’t even take all that seriously. Until one day, we were driving home, and we came to a roaring surging, shouting crowd on a street. 12/x

Not of peace-makers — of raging fanatics, of fascists. Look at these fools, I said, rolling my eyes. Shush, said my bodyguard. This was serious. Because they were about to notice me. At that instant, they did. 13/x

And then all hell broke loose.
They started pelting the car with rocks, with bottles, with bricks. My bodyguard turned into Vin Diesel from the Fast and the Furious. But we couldn’t escape. 14/x

I heard the whine of motors. In the rearview mirror, motorbikes approached. Uh oh. Men carrying machine guns rode them, pointing and shouting. Someone in the crowd had called them. One of their hated targets was here, trapped. The death squad. Shit. 15/x

I went numb. My bodyguard slowly forced the car’s way through the crowd, and we made a narrow escape. Too narrow. My heart was pounding. It had been a joke, and now it was lethally real. 16/x

Maybe that sounds exciting to you. It was, to fourteen year old me. All those grown ups at the parties? With that, I earned their respect and even more laughter. “Umair escaped from the gunmen!! Right under their nose! Ha-ha!! What a kid!!” 17/x

I wondered what they would’ve said if I hadn’t. I’d been one bullet away. Ten feet away. Five seconds away. From being shot to death by fascists and fanatics. 18/x

That’s life in an authoritarian society. Sure, it sounds like a scene from a movie. It was like one. Is that what you want for your kids, though? To be hunted in the streets for doing things that are considered normal in free societies, like, say writing for a newspaper? 19/x

After I was nearly killed by fanatics for writing a science column, the editor of my paper wrote a piece challenging the government. Only a little too strongly. 20/x

He’d always edged the line — that fuzzy boundary which exists in authoritarian states, of what you can get away with, how much criticism is allowed, how much reality you can really talk about. And now he’d crossed it. 21/x

And so one day, armed men without any badges showed up to his home, early in the morning. They knocked his guards to the ground, burst into his home, beat his family, and abducted him. 22/x

My editor had been disappeared. He was not a nobody in this society. In fact, he was quite well-known. The message has been sent. If they can make one of the most famous people in this society disappear…they can do it to anyone. 21/x

My editor emerged unbroken. Fazed, a little, maybe, as Americans say, bent, but not broken. And we all thanked our lucky stars. Because the truth was that they could have done anything they wanted. That they didn’t kill him, maim him, was a calculation, too. 23/x

You might say, “Umair, why are you telling me this?” It should be clear already. You can read the rest here: https://eand.co/when-we-warn-you-about-authoritarianism-were-not-kidding-here-s-what-it-s-really-like-966b4031aa8e