Call Portland City Council NOW: Demand they rescind their dirty deal with Zenith Energy and ban explosive oil trains.

**Tell Portland City Council to do their job! Call them now.**

Thousands of Portlanders have taken action against Zenith Energy’s oil train and tanker terminal on the Willamette waterfront because it presents a clear and present danger to our communities. Last year we thought we’d won this existential battle when the City denied Zenith’s Land Use Compatibility Statement (essentially a box that must be checked by Portland City Government before Zenith can successfully apply for an Air Contaminant Discharge Permit at the state level).

When Zenith then sued the city, both the Land Use Board of Appeals and the Oregon Court of Appeals found in favor of the City. Even the Oregon Supreme Court refused to review the decision, upholding the lower court’s findings. **But despite these people-powered victories, Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan cut a backroom deal with Zenith, permitting them to endanger Portland with another five years of explosive oil trains.**

Send Portland City Council members a reminder that they swore an oath to protect and serve the people of Portland, NOT a Texas-based oil company whose business plan destroys the climate and threatens our city’s very existence. Here's how you can get involved:

**Call City Council and Demand the Rescission of Zenith’s LUCS Permit**

Commissioner Dan Ryan: 503-823-3589, [commissionerryanoffice@portlandoregon.gov](mailto:CommissionerRyanOffice@portlandoregon.gov)[](mailto:CommissionerRyanOffice@portlandoregon.gov)

Commissioner Rene Gonzalez: 503-823-4151, [gonzalezoffice@portlandoregon.gov](mailto:gonzalezoffice@portlandoregon.gov)

Commissioner Carmen Rubio: 503-823-3008, [comm.rubio@portlandoregon.gov](mailto:comm.rubio@portlandoregon.gov)

Commissioner Mingus Mapps: 503-823-4682, [mappsoffice@portlandoregon.gov](mailto:MappsOffice@portlandoregon.gov)[](mailto:MappsOffice@portlandoregon.gov)

Mayor Ted Wheeler: 503-823-4120, [mayorwheeler@portlandoregon.gov](mailto:mayorwheeler@portlandoregon.gov)

Here's some sample language to use in your call:

> For years the Portland public has shown consistent massive opposition to Zenith Energy’s dangerous oil-by-rail operations.
>
> Commissioner Ryan’s decision to quickly and quietly approve Zenith’s Land Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS) in October was a serious breach of public trust.
>
> I am calling on you to use your existing authority under Oregon state law to rescind the recent LUCS approval. At the very least, additional public involvement is called for given the widespread outrage at the failure to deny the LUCS thus far.
>
> The significant threats to public health and safety, as well as increased greenhouse gas emissions in the context of climate change, demand transparent investigation and public engagement.\
> Your constituents are fighting for our future, and we’re counting on you to rescind this permit before it’s too late. Thank you.

\
Thank you! Don't forget to sign the pledge to join this campaign and receive updates.

Tell Congress: Pass Medicare for All!

The pandemic has made it all too clear: We can’t allow private insurance corporations to deny us care just so they can rake in huge profits.

To finally guarantee healthcare as the human right that it is, Congress must improve Medicare and expand it to cover all people in the US.

**Add your name to urge Congress to pass the Medicare for All Act!**


Sign Now: Make weed legal

John Fetterman understands that legal weed means more revenue, jobs, justice, and freedom. He sees how it will benefit our farmers, veterans, and small businesses. **And most of all, he sees it as a vital chance to expunge all bogus marijuana records and release every person incarcerated for using the plant.**

That’s why legal weed has always been a center-most issue to our campaign. We know it’s unusual — and that’s why we want to hear from you. **Will you sign on if you agree we need national weed legalization? Your response will help us propel this important issue into 2022 and Congress.**


Tell Biden: Cancel all student debt via executive action!

Biden can make a smart political move, jump start the economy, and ease a crushing financial burden on millions of people by signing his name to cancel student debt.

People are simply fed up with the student debt crisis.

Biden must act now, before loans kick back in on February 1st. (And before the midterm elections next year)


Congress has the power under Article III of the Constitution to adjust the composition of the judiciary, including the number of seats. They need to use it.

Tell Congress: Expand the Supreme Court!

Congress must do its job and enact legislation that will actually protect people, including the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021 Act.

Tell Congress: Pass gun control legislation now.

Want Gun Control?  Want Universal Healthcare?  Want the Green New Deal?  Want Student Debt Reform?  Want to Raise the Minimum Wage?  It won’t happen with the filibuster.

Tell Senate: End the Filibuster

Want Gun Control?

Want Universal Healthcare?

Want the Green New Deal?

Want Student Debt Reform?

Want to Raise the Minimum Wage?

It won’t happen with the filibuster.


Tell the Biden Admin: Honor people’s right to asylum

Migrants have a right to asylum. Yet we all saw US border patrol agents abuse Haitian migrants. And many were deported soon after.

Enough. The Biden Administration must honor migrants’ right to asylum and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve!


Tell the Senate: Pass the Women’s Health Protection Act!

The House just passed the Women’s Health Protection Act which would guarantee a person’s right to an abortion throughout the US.

Now the Senate needs to act. But they need to abolish the filibuster first. As we’ve seen in Texas, abortion rights are under attack like never before.

A person’s right to abortion and reproductive healthcare needs to be guaranteed federally.

Please add your name to urge the Senate to act.


Other98

Andy Menconi

Artistic Director

Genevieve Raymond

Operations Director

John Sellers

Executive Director

Lacey Dickinson

Social Media Strategist

![An older male judge with white hair and glasses stands in a courtroom, wearing a black judicial robe and gesturing with one hand as he speaks. Behind him are shelves lined with legal books and a U.S. flag. In the lower left corner of the image, a smaller, digitally added figure of Donald Trump sits at a desk looking down with a displeased expression.](/images/trump-judge-dispatch.jpg)

Judge William Young, a federal judge from Massachusetts appointed by Ronald Reagan, just did what no one in Trump’s orbit seems capable of: he told the president no. Not politely. Not behind closed doors. In a federal ruling that reads like a civics lesson for a misbehaving child.\
\
Judge Young: “\[The president] ignores everything … The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies – all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act”.\
\
The scheme was simple. “The government’s aim,” Young wrote, was “tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.” \
\
He called out the theatrics too: “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence.” He linked the practice to “cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.”\
\
Young rejected the core premise outright: noncitizens “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.” The First Amendment “does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction.” \
\
This wasn’t a narrow slap on the wrist. It was a hard check on power. Newsrooms called it what it is: a landmark rebuke of a White House using deportation to silence dissent. Reuters and AP both note the court found the policy chilled campus speech and abused executive authority. \
\
Even the op-ed pages got it right: Young’s opinion is a “stirring rebuke” of a “bullying and authoritarian” approach, and a civic lesson that free speech “protects … all people, regardless of citizenship.” That’s the headline the country needs. Facts, not spin: the court found an unlawful plan to punish speech. \
\
A remedy hearing is next. But the map is drawn: courts can stop it, campuses can resist it, communities can protect it. \
\
So act like it. Quote the ruling. Teach it. Share it. Use it to defend every kid with a sign and a voice. Because if they can deport for ideas today, they can jail for ideas tomorrow. This decision says no. Hold that line.

—

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“ICE Goes Masked for One Reason”: Reagan Judge Torches Trump’s Crackdown as Klan-Like

![An illustration of a figure in sillhouette, holding a smoking molotov. In the background is a mass of other shadowy figures. The text at top reads "We live in a fascist nation. What now?" ](/images/fascist-nation.jpg)

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%. Once they win elections, it's already too late. \
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In 1933, German conservatives thought they could control Hitler. Two years later, they were being executed in their own homes. I spent weeks researching this question, desperately looking for counter-examples, for hope, for any time in history where people successfully stopped fascists after they started winning elections.\
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Here's what I found: Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever.\
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I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think.\
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Let's start with Germany because everyone thinks they know this story. Franz von Papen, the conservative politician who convinced President Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor, said "We've hired him" in January 1933. He thought he was so clever. Within 18 months, the Nazis were machine-gunning von Papen's allies in their homes during the Night of Long Knives. Von Papen himself barely escaped to Austria with his life. Every single conservative who thought they could "control" or "moderate" Hitler was either dead, in exile, or groveling for survival by 1934.\
\
Italy was even dumber, if that's possible. October 1922, Mussolini announces he's marching on Rome with 30,000 blackshirts. Except here's the thing: they were poorly armed, disorganized, and the Italian military could have crushed them in about three hours. The King had his generals ready. He had martial law papers drawn up. The military was waiting for the order. Instead, he invited Mussolini to form a government. Just handed him power. Twenty-three years later, partisans hung Mussolini's corpse upside down at a gas station while crowds beat it with sticks. The king died in exile. Hundreds of thousands of Italians died for that moment of cowardice.\
\
Spain might be the worst because everyone saw it coming. Three years of escalating fascist violence. Actual assassination attempts. Then in 1936, Franco and his generals launch a straight-up military coup. The Spanish Republic begged for help. France said "not our problem." Britain said "both sides are bad." America declared neutrality. The result? Franco ruled for 39 years. He died peacefully in his bed in 1975. They're still finding mass graves in Spain. Still. In 2025.\
\
Want something more recent? Look at Hungary. Orbán won democratically in 2010. By 2011 he'd rewritten the constitution. By 2012 he controlled the media. By 2013 he'd gutted the judiciary. It's 2025 and he's still in power. The EU has been "very concerned" for fourteen fucking years. They've written strongly worded letters. They've held meetings. Hungary is now a one-party state in the middle of Europe and everyone just... accepts it.\
\
Okay, but surely someone, somewhere, stopped them?\
\
Finland 1932 is the only clean win I can find. The fascist Lapua Movement tried an armed coup before they'd secured government power. The military stayed loyal to democracy, crushed the rebellion, and banned the movement. That's it. That's the success story. One time out of roughly fifty attempts, fascists were stopped because they were stupid enough to try violence before winning elections.\
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France in 1934 looked like a victory for about five minutes. Fascist leagues tried to storm parliament on February 6th. Six days later, twelve million workers went on general strike. Twelve million. The entire country stopped. No trains, no factories, no shops, nothing. The fascists backed down. Great victory, right? Except those exact same fascists enthusiastically collaborated when the Nazis invaded six years later. They just waited.\
\
Portugal's fascist regime finally fell in 1974. After 48 years. How? Military officers launched a coup. Democratic resistance had been crushed for five decades. International pressure meant nothing. The dictator Salazar died in 1970 and his successor just kept going until the military said enough. That's your success story: wait half a century and hope the military gets tired.\
\
The pattern is so consistent it's almost funny if it weren't so terrifying. Every single time it goes like this: Conservatives panic about socialism or progressives or whatever. They ally with fascists as the "lesser evil." Fascists take power. Fascists immediately purge the conservatives who helped them. Then it's 30-50 years of dictatorship. This happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.\
\
Want to know how many times conservatives successfully "controlled" the fascists they allied with? Zero. Want to know how many times fascists purged the conservatives after taking power? All of them. Every single time.\
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And here's the part that breaks your heart. Violence works. For them. Fascists use violence while claiming to be victims. They create chaos that "requires" their authoritarian solution. Then they purge anyone who opposes them. Meanwhile, democrats keep insisting on following rules that fascists completely ignore. They file lawsuits. They write editorials. They vote on resolutions. And fascists just laugh and keep consolidating power.\
\
The statistics are brutal. Fascist takeovers prevented after winning power democratically: zero. Average length of fascist rule once established: 31 years. Fascist regimes removed by voting: zero. Fascist regimes removed by asking nicely: zero. Most were removed by war or military coups, and tens of millions died in the process.\
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I'm not allowed to make the obvious contemporary comparisons, but you're already making them in your head. "We can control him" is being said right now, in 2025, by people who apparently never cracked a history book.\
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Based on the historical record, there are exactly three ways this goes. Option one: Stop them before they take power. Option two: War. Option three: Wait for them to die of old age.\
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They tried anyway.\
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But here's the thing: we already missed our chance. The window isn't closing; it's closed.\
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The Supreme Court declared Trump above the law. He's threatening to arrest political opponents. He's already sent the FBI after elected officials when they haven’t committed crimes. Congress is his. Most state governments are his. Billionaire oligarchs openly coordinate with him. The window slammed shut.\
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So let's stop pretending we're in the "prevention" phase and start talking about what you do when fascists already control the institutions but haven't fully consolidated power yet. Because historically, nobody's been here before, not like this.\
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No wealthy democracy with nuclear weapons has ever fallen to fascism. The 1930s examples everyone cites were broken countries. Weimar Germany was weakened by World War I and hyperinflation. Italy was barely industrialized. Spain was largely agrarian. They didn't have the world's reserve currency. They didn't have thousands of nukes. They didn't have surveillance technology that would make the Stasi weep with envy.\
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America has all of that. Plus geographic isolation that makes external intervention impossible. Plus a population where 30-40% genuinely wants authoritarian rule as long as it hurts the "right people." The historical playbook is useless here. We're in unprecedented territory.\
\
But that also means the old rules about what's possible might not apply.\
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**Option 1: The Blue State Coalition**\
California's economy is bigger than the UK's. New York controls global finance. The blue states collectively represent over 60% of America's GDP. They could, theoretically, make the federal government irrelevant.\
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Imagine if California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, and others started coordinating directly. Ignoring federal mandates. Creating their own interstate compacts for everything from climate policy to civil rights. They already started this with climate agreements when Trump pulled out of Paris. But I'm talking about going much further.\
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State-level cryptocurrency to avoid federal monetary control. State-funded healthcare systems that ignore federal restrictions. State-level immigration policies that simply refuse to cooperate with ICE. Make the federal government have to physically enforce every single policy, stretching their resources to breaking.\
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The precedent? The way Northern states nullified fugitive slave laws in the 1850s. The way states are currently ignoring federal marijuana prohibition. But coordinated and comprehensive.\
\
**Option 2: Selective Compliance and Irish Democracy**\
The Irish called it "Irish Democracy" when they were under British rule, the silent, dogged resistance of millions who simply ignored laws they found illegitimate. Don't protest. Don't riot. Just don't comply.\
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Red states need blue state money. Blue state taxes fund red state governments. What if millions of people in blue states simultaneously decided to claim exempt on their W-4s and simply... stopped paying federal taxes? Not as protest but as a coordinated "forgetting." Overwhelm the IRS. Make enforcement impossible.\
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Doctors in blue states could ignore abortion restrictions. Teachers could ignore curriculum mandates. State police could refuse to enforce federal laws. Not dramatically, just... incompetently. "Sorry, we couldn't find them." "The paperwork got lost." "Our systems are down."\
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Make every single act of authoritarian control require physical enforcement, then make that enforcement impossibly expensive and difficult.\
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**Option 3: Secession**\
We already have two incompatible visions of what America should be. One side wants a multi-ethnic democracy with a social safety net. The other wants a white Christian ethnostate with unlimited corporate power. These cannot coexist indefinitely.\
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What if blue states started seriously discussing secession? Not threatened as political theater but actually planned. Constitutional conventions. Referendums. Negotiations for national debt division. Military base transfers. Currency agreements.\
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Yes, the last time states tried to leave it caused a civil war. But that was over slavery, with clearly defined geographic boundaries and two relatively equal economic systems. This would be the economic powerhouses leaving the welfare states. What would the red states do, invade California? With what money?\
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The mere serious threat might be enough to force structural changes. Quebec nearly left Canada twice and got massive concessions both times just from credible threats.\
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**Option 4: International Intervention**\
This has never happened to a nuclear power, but there's a first time for everything. Blue states could request UN election monitoring. They could sign their own climate agreements with the EU. They could create alternate diplomatic channels.\
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California could request Canadian peacekeepers for "election security." New York could invite European observers for "financial transparency." Make it embarrassing. Make America's collapse visible to the world. Force the international community to pick sides.\
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No, the UN can't invade America. But they can isolate it. Sanctions work. Ask Russia. International humiliation works. Ask South Africa under apartheid.\
The Uncomfortable Truth\
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We're past normal. The fascists already won round one. They control the institutions. They have their judges. They have their media ecosystem. They have their army of true believers who will excuse anything.\
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But they don't have the money. They don't have the cities. They don't have the educated workforce. They don't have the young. And most importantly, they don't have legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.\
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The historical record says once fascists gain power, they stay for 30-50 years. But the historical record doesn't have examples of fascists taking over a country where their opposition controls most of the economy, technology, and cultural production. We're in uncharted territory, which means we need unprecedented responses.\
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The question isn't whether these options are extreme. They are. The question is whether we're ready to admit that normal is already gone. The window to prevent fascism closed. But the opportunity for something else, something unprecedented, might just be opening.\
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The German conservatives who said "we can control him" were all dead or fled within two years. We're just months into our version of this story. The question is: are we going to be the first generation that finds a new way out, or are we going to be another cautionary tale future historians write about?\
\
At least we're finally asking the right questions.

—

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*Written by [Chris Armitage.](https://substack.com/@chrisarmitage1?fbclid=IwY2xjawM32nhleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF6NW1pSzA2ajVXcTYzVVUxAR5M3uTahn9v9TKbgImB2AlzCYOhq_YnCoQFJDklE9vw2ghYO8kXkCRLafj58g_aem_53Jr5NUWmhR-cbdJFcFK3Q)*

We Live in a Fascist Nation - What Now?

![A crowd of enthusiastic supporters reaches toward Donald Trump at a rally. Trump, wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, is touching a baby's face while the smiling mother holds the child. A prominent sign in the background reads, "Thank you, Lord Jesus, for President Trump."](/images/tide-never-turns.jpg)

We’ve been reading stories like this for over a decade. Each one meant to signify an inflection point, a turning of the tide. Yet the tide never turns. 

As of today, Donald Trump’s supposedly “tanking” approval rating stands at 47%. Which is pretty much where it’s been for the past eleven years. Yes, its seen upticks and downturns over that time, occasionally even dipping into the thirties. Yes, a majority of Americans dissaprove of the tarriffs. Yes, a majority think the economy is heading in the wrong direction. And yes, a majority dissaprove of the job Trump is doing.

That’s not new. Trump’s popularity has almost never been above 50%, except for very brief periods of time. He’s never needed it to be. His power derives not from the size but the durability of his popular support, and there’s rarely been an approval rating as stubbornly durable as his.

Especially given the hundreds — thousands — of incidents over the past decade that would have sunk the careers of, say, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. 

Think of it. All the corruption, the scandal, the pain and death and misery. All the insults to human decency and injuries to democratic ideals. 

And his numbers are still pretty much where they were when it all started. 

I am uninterested in whatever minor fluctuation will follow yesterday’s vile display in the Oval Office, or tomorrow’s outrage, or next week’s. They will mean nothing.

What Trump supporters (as a whole, as a voting bloc, PLEASE dont tell me about your MAGA cousin who’s having second thoughts) are thinking means nothing. The only thing that matters is what Trump’s opponents are thinking. What we’re thinking.

I remember making posts like this during Trump’s first term, and wondering exactly what I’m wondering right now. 

Which is very much not, “What will it take for his supporters to turn away from him,” but rather, “What will it take for his opponents to realize his supporters won’t turn away from him?”

Because the answer to that question is crucial. It will shape everything that happens over the next few weeks and months.

If, as I suspect, a sizable number of us are sitting at home today thinking that Trump’s open defiance of a Supreme Court ruling, refusal to return an innocent, legal resident of the US from a gulag in El Salvador, and declaration that he wants to send American citizens to the same prison without due process, will somehow harm his approval rating, that does not bode well for our side. 

Nothing will harm his approval rating. 

Sure it might — might — go down a few points in the next few days. It won’t mean a thing. Give it a few weeks. 

To believe otherwise is to not understand the story of the Trump era. The story of the Trump era isn’t “A bad man came along and duped a bunch of well-meaning, gullible people.” Donald Trump didn’t conjure his supporters from the ether with his magic MAGA wand. His supporters conjured him. 

They wanted him. Badly. They’d been looking, searching, begging, screaming for someone like him, pushing every Republican candidate further and further to the right with every election cycle, demanding loudly that they “take a tougher” line on this, and “not give an inch” on that, that they “tell it like it is,” and “say what everyone is thinking,” for years. For decades. 

They werent duped. They are never going to see the light. (Of course a few will, here and there. But not in meaningful numbers.) There will be no scales falling from eyes, no epiphanies, no death bed conversions. Not among the bedrock base, which has not budged an inch in ten years. 

They waved signs that said, MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW at their third Trump convention. 

They weren’t duped. 

The only duping that’s gone on is the self-duping many of us have been guilty of for many years. It’s a very human, very understandable, thing to do. To think better of your fellow human beings than perhaps they do themselves. To believe that, with enough patience, empathy, education and reason they are bound to see the error of their ways. 

That belief is a dangerous one in this moment. It manifests in political choices that are bound to not only fail, but help the bad guys continue doing bad things. 

It doesnt matter if a few thousand Trump supporters see the error of their ways. It doesn’t matter if this or that Republican politician is momentarily siezed by courage or conscience and speaks up about his or her disappointment in the president. The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters will remain Trump supporters NO MATTER WHAT. 

Did you ever think you’d see Republican voters support a candidate who was openly subservient to Russia? Did you ever think you’d see them support a flagrant, serial adulterer and drug user? A denigrator of the military? A draft dodger? A New Yorker?

In 2014 Republicans raged at President Obama for supposedly not working hard enough to stop the Ebola epidemic. Six years later they followed Trump’s lead and physically threatened people working to stop an epidemic. 

Nothing will shake them. Well, almost nothing.

There is one thing, one thing Donald Trump could do to lose significant support. And no, it is not making his supporters “feel the pain.” It is not making them poor. These are people who are openly welcoming an imminent recession. 

No, the one and only thing Donald Trump could do to tank his approval rating would be to stand in front of a camera and say, “Black and Latino people are as fully human as any white man or woman. They are posessed of the same inalienable rights, and deserving of the full enjoyment of those rights and the opportunities they promise, opportunities they have for too long been denied.”

Now THAT would be a deal breaker.

Because that’s the deal. They give him everything, he gives them fewer Black actors on their TV’s, fewer Black managers at their offices, fewer Latino pilots on their planes, fewer Spanish names on the backs of their team’s uniforms.

He breaks THAT deal, and all bets are off. 

So we need to get it straight. We cannot see this struggle as a debate, as a project of persuasion. If some MAGA supporters are persuaded along the way, great! I say welcome them with open arms. And never, ever stop fighting hard to make their lives better. All of their lives. 

But progress is going to come when we, not they, see the light. Before the left can meaningfully slow the MAGA rampage it needs to come to terms with the fact that the enemy isn’t merely Trump, but the people who put him in the White House.

That is a very hard thing for a lot of us on the left to accept about our countrymen. But this struggle is more analogous to a civil war than it is to a heightened disagreement between poltical parties. We won’t win it by persuading the enemy, but by overwhelming him. 

Our energies should be channeled towards each other. Galvanizing, motivating, and enabling each other. Creating and sustaining solidarity. We can get a hundred first-time protestors out in the streets, or first-time voters to the polls, for the same investment it takes to turn one MAGA supporter toward the light. 

Our hope doesn’t lie in Trump’s poll numbers going down. It lies in our commitment to keeping students from being disappeared and government workers from being fired and cancer research labs from being defunded and democracy from being destroyed. 

Our hope doesn’t lie with them, it lies with us.

—

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***Written by Peter Birkenhead***

Trump’s supporters are not persuadable. Our hope lies with us.

![Claude Malhuret, who is an older French man, in a dark suit and tie speaks at a podium with two microphones in a formal, wood-paneled chamber. He wears a small pin with the Ukrainian flag on his lapel.](/images/claude-malhuret.jpg)

Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ministers, my dear colleagues. Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs and duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency.

We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised.

What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea. At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.” So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation. This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, and prisoners, and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defense, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy. It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed. Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense. They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Congress, the Supreme Court and social networks. But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

—

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*Claude Malhuret is a French physician, lawyer and politician who has served as a member of the French Senate since 2014, representing the department of Allier. A member of Horizons, a center-right party that was created to attract support for Emmanuel Marcron in the 2022 French presidential election, he has presided over the The Independents – Republic and Territories (LIRT) parliamentary group in the Senate since 2017.*

This French Senator's fiery speech on the collapse of the American Empire is required reading.

![Collage with bold text "TRUMP IS FLOODING THE ZONE" showing Trump, Elon Musk, detention centers, a “TRUMP 2028” hat, and various political scenes.](/images/flooding-the-zone.jpg)

Steve Bannon's "flood the zone" approach to state capture (which he has described using terms like "muzzle velocity" to refer to the speed and volume of “bullets” that must be shot at the public and the state in order for the “flood” to be effective) represents a deliberate governance strategy that scholars of authoritarianism have documented across multiple contexts. According to experts studying democratic backsliding, this approach contains several key components:

#### Overwhelming Information Systems

This involves:

* Generating an unsustainable volume of controversial actions simultaneously
* Creating too many fronts for opposition to effectively organize against
* Exhausting media capacity to thoroughly investigate any single issue
* Overwhelming public attention spans and institutional response mechanisms

As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, this creates "a cognitive overload that makes it difficult for citizens to maintain focus on any single abuse."

#### Creating Cover for Priority Actions

This overwhelming volume serves multiple tactical purposes:

* Highly visible, often symbolic actions consume media attention
* Meanwhile, less visible but structurally significant changes receive minimal scrutiny
* The distinction between serious threats and political theater becomes blurred
* Outrageous but ultimately less consequential actions distract from fundamental institutional changes

#### Normalizing the Abnormal

The strategy includes a psychological dimension:

* Constant violation of norms eventually diminishes public shock responses
* Previously unacceptable governance approaches become baseline expectations
* Institutional actors gradually adapt to new operating conditions
* The window of acceptable political behavior shifts dramatically in a compressed timeframe

### The Long Game: Strategic Objectives

According to scholars of authoritarian transitions, the "flood the zone" tactic serves several longer-term strategic goals:

#### Institutional Capture

* Rapidly install loyalists throughout government bureaucracy
* Replace career officials with political appointees
* Reorient agency missions toward executive priorities
* Create parallel power structures bypassing traditional chains of command

This institutional capture focuses particularly on:

* Justice system (prosecution decisions, judicial appointments)
* Electoral administration (rules, oversight, certification)
* Regulatory agencies (enforcement priorities, rule-making)
* Information gatekeepers (media regulation, data access)

#### Democratic Exhaustion

* Induce resignation and withdrawal from democratic participation
* Create sense that resistance is futile due to overwhelming pace
* Exhaust limited resources of civil society organizations
* Fragment opposition through multiple simultaneous crises

As political scientist Erica Frantz observes, "When citizens cannot meaningfully track governmental actions, accountability mechanisms break down."

#### Creating Justification for Further Centralization

* Generate administrative chaos that "proves" government dysfunction
* Use resulting inefficiency to justify further executive control
* Create social division that "requires" authoritarian solutions

#### Long-Term Power Consolidation

The ultimate objective combines:

* Electoral system changes ensuring continued power
* Judicial transformation preventing legal challenges
* Media environment restructuring limiting information access
* Economic realignment rewarding allies and punishing opponents

### Countering the Strategy: Expert Recommendations

Scholars of democratic resilience suggest several response approaches:

#### Strategic Prioritization

* Identify and focus on structural threats to democratic systems
* Distinguish between offensive rhetoric and substantive action
* Develop coordinated division of labor among opposition groups
* Maintain focus on key institutional protections

#### Building Resilient Information Systems

* Develop specialized monitoring of specific institutional domains
* Create networks connecting disparate actions to reveal patterns
* Establish regular documentation of governance changes
* Support deep investigative journalism beyond news cycles

#### Preserving Democratic Energy

* Pace resistance to prevent burnout
* Create sustainable engagement structures
* Celebrate small victories to maintain morale
* Build community-level democratic practice

As historian Timothy Snyder advises: "Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf."

The historical pattern suggests that while the "flood the zone" approach can be initially effective, it also creates vulnerabilities through overreach, administrative chaos, and eventual public backlash—but only if democratic forces maintain strategic focus on the most consequential institutional threats rather than becoming disoriented by the deliberate chaos.

—

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*Written by [Scot Nakagawa](https://substack.com/@scotnakagawa)*

The "Flood the Zone" Strategy: Understanding Authoritarian Governance Tactics

![A collage of four images: top left shows a crowd of Trump supporters wearing "Make America Great Again" and "Save America" hats; top right shows tech billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk in suits; bottom left features a serious-looking Donald Trump surrounded by his family; bottom right depicts armed protesters raising a large wooden cross in front of a government building with Trump and American flags.](/images/trump-coalition.jpg)

Four groups aim to degrade our one-person-one-vote election system so a few billionaires and certain religious zealots can consolidate their political power. The Trump coalition includes four groups of people:

* The MAGA base, mostly rural white men and women;
* A group of Silicon Valley billionaires known as the Paypal Mafia;
* A separate political movement called “religious nationalists”
* The Trump crime family itself.

All four groups share one basic aim: to degrade our one-person-one-vote election system so a few billionaires and certain religious zealots can consolidate their political power to eliminate free and fair elections to become even more controlling and richer than they already are.

Here are brief descriptions of the four groups.

### 1: The MAGA Base: Who Are They?

The hardcore, mostly-rural MAGA base can be understood as an echo of the Confederacy. Philosophically, many of them are the same people who tried to destroy the United States to preserve slavery via the Civil War (1861-1865). In their view, the basic ideas that inspired the founding of the U.S. (1776-1788) are wrong: All humans are not created equal and should not have equal rights under law. In 2022, MAGA believers included about 15% of the U.S. adult population, or about 39 million out of 258 million adults.

#### The MAGA Base: What Do They Want?

For many MAGA believers, President Donald Trump has been sent by God to make American great again, restoring white power. To many of them, white men naturally should dominate all people of color and all women. To varying degrees, many of them scorn foreigners, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, LGBTQIA people, and anyone they think looks down upon them (the mainstream media, Hollywood, and college types, among others).

White MAGA confederates share a seething resentment that they are losing the power and privilege that they have always taken for granted. Trump is their retribution, and many of them find community by rejoicing in his sadistic cruelty.

Of course, they want to restrict the vote. To achieve that goal, they are working to limit or eliminate the right to “due process” guaranteed in the Constitution, which is a step toward their goal of curbing the authority of the judicial branch of government. They seek freedom—freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they please, and they have made real progress.

### 2: The Paypal Mafia: Who Are They?

The Paypal Mafia is a loosely-affiliated group of billionaires in California’s Silicon Valley with roots in apartheid South Africa. Nazi-saluting Elon Musk is the most famous of them, though Peter Thiel is likely more influential. Many have become devotees of a man named Curtis Yarvin, a racist and avowed monarchist who believes democracy is unworkable and has failed. Yarvin is friends with Vice President JD Vance, whose political career was launched and funded by Peter Thiel.

#### The Paypal Mafia: What Do They Want?

The Paypal Mafia wants the U.S. to be run by a king, whom they would call a “CEO” (but which Curtis Yarvin has bluntly called “a dictator”). Seriously. They want the nation run like a corporation because corporations are “efficient” (meaning tightly controlled). Another term for what they want is “techno-fascism.”

This “tech broligarchy” (which reveres unlimited male power) wants to “get government off its back” as it continues to create and sustain gigantic monopolies of dubious legality like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Paypal, Palantir, and so forth—while they freely explore the profit potential of crypto currencies and artificial intelligence, among other dangerous wild-west technologies. Obviously, they oppose one-person one-vote democracy, which might eventually break up their monopolies and curb their dangerous tech gambles.

### 3: Religious Nationalists: Who Are They?

Religious nationalism includes a large group of people who share an overwhelming desire for political power to eliminate democracy and who are exploiting religion to achieve that goal.

As Katherine Stewart has shown in two well-researched books, The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God, this is not a religious movement. It is a radical anti-democracy political movement dressed up in religious disguise.

About one-third of U.S. adults (roughly 78 million people) either strongly support (26 million) or partially or moderately support (52 million) religious nationalism. Although they are often called Christian nationalists, their actions and goals have little to do with the teachings of Jesus—feed the hungry, house the homeless, welcome the stranger. None of that.

Christian nationalists are Donald Trump’s largest group of devoted supporters. Two out of three completely or mostly agree that God ordained Trump to win the 2024 election. Without religious nationalist support, Trump would never have become president. So, their wish is his command.

#### Religious Nationalists: What Do They Want?

As Katherine Stewart has shown, religious nationalists want political power so they can eliminate democracy from the United States. They want to end the separation of church and state; eliminate public education and, in its place, substitute particular religious teachings; ban abortion nationwide and restrict access to birth control; deprive gay people of the right to marry and rescind laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation; eliminate no-fault divorce and restore “traditional” family roles in which men dominate; pack the federal judiciary with religious nationalists; allow corporations to discriminate openly against female employees (denying them access to birth control); declare “war” on progressive social policies and on “critical race theory;” end all restrictions on corporate monopolies; cut funding for science; get rid of governmental social safety nets (for example, social security, Medicaid, and food programs) so people will become dependent on churches for their survival; promote a Christian Nation identity in which conservative Christians have a right and a duty to enforce their values, sometimes by force; and of course make it hard or impossible for most people to vote.

Their core mission is to take over America and end democracy. Some of them are well on their way.

### 4. The Trump Crime Family: Who Are They?

Over the years, many people have compared Donald Trump’s family to a “crime family” and Trump himself to a Mafia godfather, demanding unquestioned loyalty from underbosses, enforcers, and associates.

Trump is always looking for ways to keep his soldiers and associates (in the three groups described above) loyal by giving them some of what they want. Meanwhile his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, are roaming across the planet making lucrative deals with people who seek privileged access to the President of the United States. Cryptocurrency has made such access simple and secret.

#### The Trump Crime Family: What Do They Want?

So long as Donald Trump can use his office to acquire gobs of money, push people around, receive endless praise and adoration from his subordinates, and inflict cruel revenge on those who stand in his way, he seems happy. His sons seem satisfied to score a few billion dollars here and there, based on their family ties to the president. At bottom, the family wants to retain power so they and their soldiers and associates can make boatloads more money. This requires modifying election systems so Republicans can win despite the odds against them.

### Conclusion

So that, in a nutshell, is the Trump coalition. They all share one goal: to end one-person one-vote democracy. To do that, they first want to disempower the federal judiciary and eliminate the expectation of “due process.” Then, by making it difficult or impossible for large numbers of Americans to vote, they intend to remain in power forever.

It is up to the rest of us to make sure they don’t.

—

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*[Written by Peter Montague](https://www.commondreams.org/author/peter-montague)*

The Trump Coalition Wants to End Democracy as We Know It

![Book cover of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. The design is minimalist, with black and red text on a beige background framed by vertical red lines.](/images/on-tyranny-cover.jpg)

Here is my best guidance for action. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists.

**1. Do not obey in advance.** Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

**2. Defend institutions.** It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about -- a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union -- and take its side.

**3. Beware the one-party state.** The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

**4. Take responsibility for the face of the world.** The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

**5. Remember professional ethics.** When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

**6. Be wary of paramilitaries.** When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

**7. Be reflective if you must be armed.** If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

**8. Stand out. Someone has to.** It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

**9. Be kind to our language.** Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

**10. Believe in truth.** To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

**11. Investigate.** Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

**12. Make eye contact and small talk.** This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

**13. Practice corporeal politics.** Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

**14. Establish a private life.** Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

**15. Contribute to good causes.** Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

**16. Learn from peers in other countries.** Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

**17. Listen for dangerous words.** Be alert to use of the words "extremism" and "terrorism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "emergency" and "exception." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

**18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.** Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

**19. Be a patriot.** Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

**20. Be as courageous as you can.** If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

—

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*Written by [Timothy Snyder](https://substack.com/@snyder).*

The Author of “On Tyranny” on What Happens Now

![A large crowd of protesters fills a public square, many holding signs. The crowd is dense and stretches into the distance. Several American flags are visible among the demonstrators.](/images/lasmir-collective-how-to-fight-fascists-other-98-com.jpg "How to Fight Fascists")

Authoritarianism doesn’t usually creep in quietly. It tends to come with violence. But sometimes, it just arrives through packed courts, gutted agencies, police crackdowns, and disinformation campaigns. It criminalizes dissent, scapegoats the vulnerable, and centralizes power under the banner of patriotism or tradition. It builds alliances with the wealthy, captures the media, and reshapes laws to serve the few.

When it succeeds, it’s not because people didn’t see it coming, but because they couldn’t organize fast enough to stop it.

We are watching this happen in the U.S. now, in real time. To grasp the scale, we have to zoom out. What we’re living through isn’t just a domestic slide into repression—it’s part of a broader global shift. Imagine the view from Moscow: Vladimir Putin, a strategic and ruthless authoritarian with a long-term strategy to weaken the U.S., watching U.S. institutions fracture, alliances fray, and public trust collapse. For him, that is victory without invasion. Add in a global network of billionaires, corporations, and nationalist actors willing to prop up autocratic systems to protect their assets or advance their ideologies, and you get a powerful alignment of forces committed to democracy’s failure.

To meet that threat, we need more than symbolic opposition. We need a serious strategy. As a movement, we should think about what we need to accomplish, what victory might look like, and plan backward from there. We need to be realistic about what will force the regime to negotiate or to topple. Given what we have seen recently, with a regime ignoring Supreme Court decisions and illegally gutting federal agencies that provide lifesaving care, we undoubtedly need to build rapidly toward mass noncompliance - like strikes, peaceful blockades and stay-at-homes - to shift the incentives of the powerful and create cracks in the regime. 

Here’s what history—and frontline organizers around the world—teach us about how to win.

### 1. Undermine the Pillars of Authoritarian Power

No regime holds itself up alone. Authoritarians rely on specific power centers—courts, police, military, media, corporate interests, labor and logistics, even religious institutions—to enable repression and suppress dissent. These are the “pillars” on which their power rests, that must be identified and eroded.

What this looks like in practice:

#### Legal and political confrontation:

Build coalitions to block judicial takeovers, expose corruption, and pressure electeds into choosing sides. Electoral wins are necessary—but not sufficient without pressure campaigns that raise the cost of complicity.

We’ve done this before. For example, when Donald Trump issued the first Muslim travel ban in 2017, legal resistance and public protest erupted simultaneously. Legal organizations and a coalition of state Attorneys General immediately filed lawsuits, while tens of thousands of people flooded airports in spontaneous demonstrations. Judges around the country blocked the ban’s most extreme provisions, and repeated legal battles forced the administration to revise it multiple times. Though a limited version eventually took effect, the legal and political backlash delayed implementation, protected families from separation, and sparked a wave of civic engagement that energized immigration advocacy for years.

#### Economic resistance:

Target financial backers through sanctions, boycotts, shareholder organizing, divestment campaigns and travel bans. When the regime’s leaders and enablers lose money and privileges, alliances can start to fracture.

During the global fight against apartheid, students and activists across the U.S. and Europe launched sustained divestment campaigns that targeted banks and corporations investing in South Africa. Universities, churches, and city governments withdrew billions from companies complicit in the regime’s human rights abuses. The economic pressure created growing fractures within South Africa’s elite class and contributed to the regime’s eventual collapse. It remains one of the most successful examples of global economic resistance against a racist, authoritarian government.

#### Security force engagement:

Organize inside the military, police, and civil services. Support dissenters and defectors. Provide exit ramps and legal protection for those who refuse unlawful orders. Authoritarians fall faster when the repressive apparatus breaks rank.

In 1974, a group of mid-ranking military officers in Portugal, disillusioned by years of dictatorship and brutal colonial wars, launched a peaceful military coup known as the Carnation Revolution. Supported by mass civilian mobilization and a refusal by other security forces to escalate, the revolution succeeded without significant violence. The authoritarian regime collapsed in a matter of days. The key to the revolution’s success was the internal fracture within the armed forces, proving how quickly authoritarian rule can crumble when the repressive apparatus breaks ranks.

#### Targeted non-cooperation:

Encourage mass refusal—from government workers to tech engineers to contractors—to participate in the fascist project, to refuse to participate in surveillance, detention flights, censorship and repression. Bureaucratic sabotage has long been a tool of quiet resistance.

On Oct 24,1975, nearly 90% of Icelandic women walked out of their jobs and refused to clean or care for children. They went on strike to end workplace discrimination and call for gender equality. The walkout, a watershed moment in Iceland that is still celebrated, spurred government leaders to pass the landmark Equality Act in 1976. While the struggle for equality continues, Iceland has been the most gender-equal country for 14 consecutive years. 

This isn’t about symbolic defiance. It’s about strategic disruption—making it impossible for authoritarian systems to function as designed.

### 2. Build Widespread, Coordinated Visibility That Hurts Their Narrative

Authoritarians rely not just on power, but on perception: the illusion of consensus, inevitability, and strength. They flood the public square with propaganda, manipulate crises to their advantage, and use visible brutality to intimidate.

Our task is to rupture that image, poke fun at them, stigmatize and satirize them.

#### Bold visibility campaigns:

Mass mobilizations, yes—but also decentralized visual resistance: projections, art, public noise, workplace walkouts, local disruptions. Show that resistance is widespread and impossible to contain.

In the lead-up to the 2019 Hong Kong protests, activists projected massive slogans onto government buildings, hung neon banners off overpasses, and covered city walls with Lennon Walls filled with post-it notes and artwork. These decentralized visibility tactics turned the entire city into a living message of dissent—making resistance impossible to ignore even when protests weren’t happening. Meanwhile, small workplace walkouts, masked flash mobs, and laser-pointer “raves” showed that opposition was both joyful and widespread, beyond the reach of easy suppression. This kind of visual defiance sent a clear signal: the movement was everywhere.

#### Disruptive storytelling:

ocus less on abstract moral outrage and more on concrete impact. Highlight how authoritarian policy harms people’s jobs, health, safety, and families. Make the consequences personal and impossible to ignore.

When Tennessee passed sweeping anti-trans laws in 2023, local activists didn’t just issue statements—they told the stories of parents whose kids lost access to gender-affirming care, teachers who were fired for supporting students, and teenagers forced to leave the state to feel safe. These stories were shared in public hearings, digital campaigns, and community gatherings, shifting the narrative from abstract “debates” to gut-wrenching lived experience. By making the harm visible, tangible, and deeply human, organizers reframed the conversation—and brought new allies into the fight.

#### Ridicule as a weapon:

From Eastern Europe to South America, resistance movements have used satire and surrealism to expose the absurdity of power. Humor disrupts fear, lowers the barrier to participation, and punctures myths of invincibility. Remember Trump kissing Elon’s feet?

In Serbia during the Milošević regime, a youth movement called Otpor! (Resistance!) used absurd humor and satire to destabilize authoritarian power. One famous tactic involved placing a barrel with Milošević’s face on it in the middle of the street and giving passersby a bat—crowds gathered to take swings. Police who showed up to arrest the barrel looked ridiculous, and the footage went viral. Humor became a political weapon: it broke the fear, drew in people who were tired of solemn appeals, and made the regime look weak and ridiculous. In modern terms, think Trump memes, TikToks roasting fascists, or public pranks that expose hypocrisy with laughter.

#### Don’t just “raise awareness”—coordinate action:

Visibility without direction exhausts people. Potent public disruption is tied to real demands, pressure campaigns, or material goals.

In 2020, when McDonald’s workers walked out to demand PPE and hazard pay during COVID, the action wasn’t just a symbolic protest—it was part of a tightly coordinated campaign tied to legal complaints, media coverage, and public health demands. Organizers made sure the visibility led somewhere. 

That same year, youth-led climate actions sharpened their asks and messaging from raising awareness about the climate crisis to concrete fossil fuel divestment goals, pressuring universities and banks. The most effective campaigns didn’t stop at raising awareness—they gave people something clear to do, and made institutions feel the heat until they moved.

This isn’t about being seen for its own sake. It’s about narrative control. When people see mass resistance, their willingness to resist grows. When elites see it, they start calculating the cost of staying loyal to the regime.

### 3. Mutual Aid is Infrastructure, Not Charity

Every resistance movement faces the same challenge: how to sustain itself when the news cycle moves on, when the repression hits hard, and when people start to burn out. The answer is not just political—it’s material.

Mutual aid is what keeps people alive and movements functioning.

**Support the most affected:** From frontline protesters to undocumented workers, those targeted by repression need legal, emotional, medical, and logistical backing to stay in the fight. Make it safe for security forces to defect rather than turn their weapons on us.

**Tend to the broken social fabric:** Authoritarianism thrives where the state has failed. Local mutual aid networks can do what institutions no longer do—feed, house, and protect. That builds loyalty and trust across lines that typically divide us.

**Invest in in-person, low-tech organizing:** Secure networks, offline meetings, community hubs—these are more resilient to digital surveillance and harder to fragment than online coalitions.

**Create on-ramps for everyone:** Not everyone can take to the streets. Resistance also happens through childcare networks, ride shares, court support, food delivery, prison visitation, banned book clubs and quiet conversations over dinner tables. All of it matters.

Sustainable movements don’t ask people to sacrifice endlessly. They build systems that make participation viable and connecting for the long haul.

### This is the Work

What we’re facing isn’t new. The tactics of authoritarianism are well-documented. So are the strategies that have brought them down.

What’s different now is the speed, the scale, and the stakes. This isn’t a political disagreement—it’s a contest for what kind of world we want to live in.

We don’t need to wait for permission. We don’t need to wait for a perfect strategy. We need to start where we are: weakening the systems that enable repression, showing up in ways that shift the public imagination, and building networks of care that no regime can crush.

No single action will stop what’s coming. But taken together, and taken seriously, our actions will change the outcome.

This is the work—not just of resistance, but of reimagining. Because when (not if) we succeed in defeating the fascists, we’ll be faced with a profound challenge: What comes next?

Do we return to the systems that got us here? Or do we dare to imagine something entirely new—a government, a society, a democracy worthy of the people who fought to reclaim it?

We’ll be writing more about that soon. For now, the task is clear: disrupt, protect, build.

―

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*Written by [The Lasmir Collective](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1207453001426697&set=pb.100064860241186.-2207520000&type=3)*

How to Fight Fascists: A Tactical Brief for the Times We’re In

![Digitally altered image of Elon Musk in a tuxedo shrugging in front of a stylized, purple-tinted White House. The background is bright yellow with large white and pink block letters spelling “FRAUD” above his head.](/images/elon-says-fraud.jpg)

How does Elon Musk use the word "fraud" to dismantle the US federal government?

The term is not used as an attempt to describe the world, but to change it. It is a political tool, used by a politician to justify a political action: regime change to oligarchy.

The word "fraud" operates in six ways.

**1. The bait and switch.** When Musk says "fraud," people who benefit from government programs are supposed to think "that applies to others, but not to me." The idea of "fraud" creates a sense of us-and-them. I am a normal citizen just receiving Social Security or Medicare or other benefits. But other people are abusing the system. Naturally, I am against those people and in favor of Elon Musk, the person who will halt their abuses. In this way, the idea of "fraud" creates political cover. When the benefits themselves cease, when institutions cease to function, people are confused. But that was always the point.

**2. The linguistic inflation.** At first, the idea was that there are incidents of "fraud" within government programs. This shifts very quickly, though, to the idea that "fraud" is so widespread that the program or institution itself must be eliminated, as has happened with foreign aid and consumer protection. At a certain point, which we have reached, the association with "fraud" becomes the justification for cutting popular programs by way of legislation. It becomes the rationale that Republicans in Congress use to justify attacking Social Security or Medicare.

**3. The state of exception.** The notion that there is widespread "fraud" inside government is supposed to suggest that all previous rules no longer apply. Promises made to constituents no longer matter, for example. Congress has to cut things because the situation is somehow so dramatic. Entirely new tools are necessary, such as a group of private citizens led by Elon Musk marching through government departments, taking personal control of key systems, and collecting the data of all Americans for themselves. We need a strongman to cut through the mess. And so on.

**4. The slander of civil servants.** The explicit policy of Musk-Trump, as described by the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is to traumatize federal workers. We see this in the decapitation of their institutions, the choice of obviously unqualified people to run those institutions, in the firings, and in the abuse. If there is "fraud," then we should understand civil servants as its perpetrators and they should understand themselves as such. The idea is to break bonds of trust between citizens and civil servants and to make the latter feel hopeless and alone. When the departure of civil servants reaches a certain threshold, then government ceases to function. And that is the goal.

**5. The delegitimation of government as such.** The word "fraud" becomes the main way that government is discussed. No one in or around DOGE, or in or around the White House, is talking about the good things that government does for people, how government can ease lives, how government can liberate. No one speaks about the benefits of workplace safety or consumer protection or disease control or public schools or public highways or health care or pensions. "Fraud" becomes a paradigm, undermining the sense of having a government. The implication is that only a lone oligarch can be pure and uncorrupt. The opposite, of course, is the case.

**6. The ennoblement of oligarchy.** If government is dirty, we are meant to think, then the oligarch is pure. Only a centibillionaire can carry out the necessary cleansing, the happy purge. The insistence on government "fraud" by the oligarch himself is meant to suggest that a new form of politics, oligarchy, must be the answer.

Musk's "fraud" rhetoric is presented as an anti-politics, as something fresh and exciting. But it is in fact a politics, a very old sort, the politics of oligarchy. As he himself has made clear himself, Musk is a politician with a program. It is to disable the rule of law, leaving no barriers to his oligarchical power. In this scheme, the only parts of government meant to function are the ones used to silence people who point out this obvious truth.

—

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*Written by [Timothy Snyder](https://substack.com/@snyder).*

Elon Musk is Saying “Fraud” for a Reason

![Illustration of raised fists in various skin tones emerging from blue-collared sleeves, symbolizing worker solidarity. Bold red text in the background reads "MAY DAY," referencing International Workers' Day.](/images/may-day-matters.jpg)

Right now in the U.S., we’re living in two different realities—at the exact same time.

There’s the world most of us wake up to every day. The one where you’re making coffee, rushing the kids to school, clocking into work, maybe squeezing in time to text a friend or fold the laundry. It’s tiring, but familiar. The headlines may be horrifying, but you have a job to do. You’ve got things to take care of, and somehow, you just keep going.

And then there’s the other world—a world of rising authoritarianism, racial violence, institutional collapse, and lawlessness dressed up as law. It’s the one where billionaires rewrite tax codes to steal your Social Security. Where people are abducted off the streets. Where the “rule of law” becomes an instrument of repression, not justice.

The terrifying part? These two worlds exist in parallel, but most people only see one. Until it’s too late.

Every society has both functional and broken parts. That’s not new. What’s dangerous is when the broken parts grow—and no one notices until they’ve taken over.

That’s what authoritarianism counts on: invisibility, denial, delay.

And that’s why May Day matters.

Because marches, actions, walkouts—these aren’t just symbolic. They tear through the illusion that everything’s fine. They force the two worlds to collide. They make it harder to pretend. They make it easier to remember that resistance is still alive.

The longer we wait to reveal the truth, the harder it gets to stop it. That’s the pattern. That’s the history.

If you’ve ever wondered how fascism takes hold, this is how:

People weren’t asleep. They were just trying to get through the day. They didn’t know what to do. Or they thought it wouldn’t get that bad. Or they told themselves someone else would stop it.

Meanwhile, the machine kept building.

When repression comes, it doesn’t always start with soldiers in the streets.

Sometimes it shows up in packed courtrooms, in rising deportation numbers, in billionaires draining public funds while smiling on magazine covers.

Sometimes it feels like that sinking feeling that the world around you is slipping—and you’re the only one who notices.

It’s easy to feel like resistance is pointless—that the people with money and power will do what they want, no matter what. But here’s the truth:

They wouldn’t be trying to silence us if our voices didn’t matter.

They wouldn’t be outlawing protest. They wouldn’t be targeting immigrants. They wouldn’t be terrorizing communities or punishing dissent unless people power still worked. Unless it was still a threat.

Which brings us to May Day - National Day of Action, our chance to stop the broligarchy in its tracks. And we need you and everyone you know to join in.

How do we know this works?

When we talk about the power of being in the streets, it’s not abstract. It’s not theoretical. There are moments—raw, real, and undeniable—when collective presence becomes the turning point.

In May 2020, the world watched the murder of George Floyd on video. And something ancient and righteous snapped. People flooded the streets—not just in Minneapolis, but across all 50 states, and eventually across the globe. It became the largest protest movement in U.S. history. There were no polished scripts. Just grief, rage, and the stubborn insistence that Black lives must matter in policy, in policing, and in public consciousness.

The protests didn’t stop at marches. Cities began examining their police budgets. Statues of colonizers and racists came down. Conversations shifted in schools, workplaces, and homes. Derek Chauvin was charged, tried, and convicted—an exceedingly rare outcome. And although the work is far from over, that uprising cracked something open. The streets made it impossible to look away.

Just a few months earlier and a continent away, women in Chile had taken to the streets in a different kind of uprising—this one through art and voice. They gathered in plazas across the country, blindfolded and chanting in unison:

“And it wasn’t my fault, nor where I was, nor how I dressed. The rapist is you.”

It was called Un Violador en Tu Camino—“A Rapist in Your Path.” And it spread like wildfire. Within days, the performance appeared in Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, and New York. The message was unmistakable: state violence is gendered, systemic, and global.

But the action didn’t stop with the song. The flash mobs catalyzed something deeper. Feminists in Chile helped lead the call to rewrite the nation’s dictatorship-era constitution. And when that process was approved by a public vote, it was clear: a performance had become a movement, and the streets had made it real.

Of course, these breakthroughs aren’t new. The roots go deeper.

In June 1969, police raided a gay bar in New York called the Stonewall Inn. It was routine harassment, the kind queer people endured constantly. But that night, the patrons fought back. Trans women, drag queens, butch lesbians, sex workers, and street kids turned over tables and stood their ground. The uprising lasted for days.

There were no rainbow floats back then. There were bricks and blood and an urgent refusal to stay quiet.

And from that fire came something enduring. The modern LGBTQ+ movement was born. Pride was born. And decades later, legal victories—from the right to marry to protections for trans youth—can trace their roots back to those nights on Christopher Street.

These moments weren’t just symbolic. They sparked chain reactions—because when people show up, loud and visible and unapologetic, systems have to respond. Power doesn’t step aside on its own. It bends when we push. It breaks when we refuse to back down.

So when we say May Day matters, this is what we mean.

May Day is a rupture in the ordinary. A line in the sand. A moment to say: We see what’s happening. And we are not going quietly.

Teachers, students and workers are staging walkouts. People are preparing to take to the streets across the country. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your issue is. 

You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need the right words. You just need to show up.

Because history doesn’t just happen to us—it’s made by us. And every time we rise, every time we resist, we make it harder for the machinery of repression to roll forward unchecked.

So don’t stay home. Not this time.

They will not deport us into silence.

They will not crush us into compliance.

They will not steal our future without a fight.

Not if we show up.

Not if we stay loud.

Not if we remember that the most powerful force on Earth has never been money.

It’s been people. Always.

We’ll see you in the streets.

—

*Look for an event in your city at [maydaystrong.org.](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmaydaystrong.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExbW5LdkxhZWJ5UXdqWng3MwEeh9xnTbsZKUbD27XmtyuzET_APplL9lZqwbD5Ga1m55LnGsERIfd5Az6Kcjs_aem_GeujbLqegjSbUbB20XCkbA&h=AT1Rtdpr0M30Y3PZf-fgnp-NDTLmqy47j5WAo_a99BCf38csorLnOeJG8jk8X7R6cV7wvtHni9q1ItxzxUIw5EUBU4Of8UobpKvOhVPZR-9jfvNlhghRvIGcPMs6qUchLQmd8CzX696CSncMrxlYroDxDk-45fTeF4KmHQ&__tn__=-UK*F) If you don’t see one, think about starting one yourself! If you can, reach out to your people in your networks - people in local unions, faith communities, students, the Movement for Black Lives, your local art group, your sports team, whoever it may be - and see who might be interested. Together we are powerful!*

—

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[Written by The Lasmir Collective](https://substack.com/@lasmircollective?utm_source=about-page).

Dispatches from a Dying Democracy