And: how understanding Fascism motivated and enabled us to Build the Strategy to Win the Present and the Future.
(Editorial note: my capitalizing Fascism and Democracy speaks to the high stakes battle for our minds and souls, and how the predominance of one over the other makes dealing with additional existential crises -- climate, war, genocide, pandemics, poverty -- that much more doable or difficult. And here, again, is my "Three Cornerstones" definition of Fascism: Click Here)
It's not too late, though the clock is ticking louder with each passing minute. Wake up, America! Wake up to the Fascism looking to destroy our fundamental freedoms! See it, say it, define it, defeat it!
As a child, I was tormented by a recurring nightmare where, while playing alone in our family's front yard, facing the street, I turn to my right to see a T-Rex ominously approaching, from maybe 100 yards. I immediately run inside our house to warn my parents, my two older sisters and little brother of the imminent danger. I open my mouth to shout "Get out!! Run!!" - but no words come out. Only silence. I dash to the front window only to see the T-Rex getting much closer, now heading directly for our house. Again, I helplessly try to shout "Get Out!! Run!!" Just then, I wake up in a pool of my own sweat.
My sense of powerlessness exhibited by this re-run night terror amounted to being able to see it, but not being able to say it, define it, or defeat it.
Maybe you had a similar nightmare scenario during your childhood, adolescence, and beyond. Even if you didn't, I hope you can stretch the metaphor to have the rapidly approaching Fascist Trump dictatorship stand in for the menacing T-Rex. After all, fans and lovers of Democracy, what we're living through now is no less terrifying.
Not coincidentally, I've spent a lifetime working on social justice causes, both to overcome those feelings of paralysis and to fulfill my larger purpose of improving the lives of the vulnerable and those unjustly treated - the exact opposite of Fascism. But to do the work effectively, I've had to see them, say them, and define them - justice and injustice, freedom and tyranny, Democracy and Fascism - before I could work effectively with others to develop strategies to realize the opportunities or overcome the threats.
By observing, inquiring, studying, researching, exploring, hitch-hiking, traveling, writing, teaching, canvassing, laboring, union organizing, military draft counseling, directing issue and electoral campaigns, running for the United States Senate, working with others, I have/we have been able to move the needle forward on a range of pro-Democracy principles and policies. All told, I've been a part of many more wins than losses, due mostly to the see it, say it, define it, solve it methodology.
So, after a lifetime of winning electoral, issue, and labor campaigns, why and how, in 2025, are we sliding rapidly into a Fascist dictatorship under Trump 2.0? I have several ideas, but first...
...here comes the humbling part: the realization that I had it wrong, or at least mostly wrong until about five years ago.
First, I am convinced a form of self-delusion gripped me, along with almost all of my politically active Baby Boomer peers, as the idealistic 60s gave way to the more hedonistic, cynical, and narcissistic decades to follow. Even with the deeply traumatizing assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK, we kidded ourselves into believing Martin Luther King's aspirational assertion that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." As if social progress is somehow preordained and that the universe is, in fact, moral, when, over the last 50+ years, American society has bent more toward injustice than justice. That's a gut punch.
Second, fast-forwarding to 2018, and accelerating with the early 2020 pandemic onset, I've come to realize, through the prism of several personal, professional, and health crises, that the "successful efforts" I mentioned above - issue and electoral and labor wins - were narrowly tactical in nature; that those victories I contributed to, while important, were de-linked from a larger process of strategic visioning, comprehensive assessment, detailed planning, and preeminent commitment to unity and universal justice.
By contrast, the right-wing "dark vision" for America gained ground in an ongoing, seven-decade, disciplined, strategic planning and implementation process that has culminated in a perfect storm of destruction - centered on an evil - yes, evil, the most evil and diabolical - ideology: Fascism, the definition of which I call the "Three Cornerstones of Fascism": State-Corporatism, White Supremacy, and Christian Nationalism, plus 28 toxic characteristics - funded and fueled by sociopathic billionaires. (The best treatment of the right-wing origins story is Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. Many more resources for this and other related topics can be found at our new website domain: https://fightfascism.us).
Now come along for a brief ride into the future - a 'radically visioned' future - a process that will allow us to look back at how we defeated the (2021-2027) U.S. Fascist coup and dictatorship (now nearing completion), and how we wrestled to the ground the right-wing authoritarianism smothering 72% of the world's people. (Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg). And then see how, emerging out of deep crisis, we catapulted ourselves and our global sisters and brothers to a transcendent society based on principles of universal justice and fundamental rights.
From our future utopian retrospective view, therefore, we know what people first had to do in early 2025: emphatically and purposefully see, say, and define the billionaire-funded and billionaire-fueled dystopian American Fascist takeover before we could develop the future utopian vision to develop the focused, disciplined, and inspired strategic plan to crush the cruelest, most cynical, violent, hateful, divisive, manipulative, propagandistic, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, imperialist, corrupt, scapegoating, law-breaking, election-stealing, war-mongering, anti-freedom, anti-life, anti-democratic, anti-constitution, anti-union, anti-individual, anti-opportunity, anti-privacy, anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-artistic, anti-environment, anti-free press, anti-queer, anti-logic, anti-fact, anti-science, anti-secular ideology in human history.
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