Nina-Bytes: Framea Thrust

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

In the fall of 2022, the ongoing evolution of American fascism forced me out of my comfort zone as an antifascist analyst in a starkly personal way. Although transphobia and anti-gay persecution have always churned in the undercurrents of modern fascism, the year-long lead up to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections exposed a well-funded, GOP-supported plan to make an anti-trans pogrom a foundational organizing principle for "respectable" fascists in American politics. Predictably, this escalation of trans and LGBTQ persecution in everyday politics worked to unite violent street fascists with Republican fascists in politics, leading to an immediate outbreak of violence and murderous acts of stochastic terrorism.

Unfortunately, even sympathetic media outlets chose to report this phenomenon almost exclusively as it pertained to the (then) upcoming American election. When firing up the trans pogrom failed to produce a Republican "red wave" victory, an already transphobic American establishment quickly lost interest in defending, or even discussing trans rights. As I and many others warned however, an election in which the fascist party seized control of Congress, and numerous transphobes with real political power won re-election, was no sign whatsoever that this latest era of pogrom as politics was now over. Today, just as in Nazi Germany, persecuting trans people, particularly under the guise of protecting children, remains an important skeleton key in the fascist strategy to unlock political power.

How important is transphobia to the American fascist project? Important enough that after attempting to pass a record number of anti-trans bills in 2022, more legislative attacks on trans rights are at the top of the agenda for Republican-controlled state houses here in 2023. For more details, let's turn to this January 7th, 2023 report by Hannah Schoenbaum for AP News:

 

States target transgender health care in first bills of 2023

I chose this article because unlike the overwhelming majority of mainstream news reports about the anti-trans hate campaign motivating American fascists, this piece does an acceptable job of summarizing the facts within the proper context of this coordinated incitement, albeit barely. Even without mentioning the existence of a larger fascist pogrom however, those facts are themselves quite revealing. As Schoenbaum reports, just days into the 2023 legislative season, eleven GOP-controlled states have introduced or pre-filed bills that would severely restrict trans peoples' access to gender affirming healthcare. This is in addition to continued attacks on trans existence in public life that were also the focus of GOP legislatures in 2021, and 2022.

Crucially for our discussion here however, the majority of these bills are clearly designed to attack and intimidate vital medical, community, and even family support for young trans people, as noted by our author:

"Gender-affirming health care providers and parents of trans youths are the primary targets of these bills, many of which seek to criminalize helping a trans child obtain what doctors and psychologists widely consider “medically necessary care.”

As informed observers have noted, there is of course a method to this malfeasance. Criminalizing the support networks trans people rely on, particularly young trans people, is a way of legally enshrining the othering and de-personing of trans identities. This enforced isolation and dehumanization is a necessary precursor step recognized by scholars as part of the process of genocide, or in this case, a culture-war infused pogrom against trans people. Further demonstrating the point that this is about driving trans people out of public existence and not "protecting the children" is the fact that many of these bills actively restrict adult medical choices regarding transition:

"Legislation pre-filed this week in Republican-controlled Oklahoma, which passed restrictions last year on trans participation in sports and school bathroom usage, seeks to ban gender-affirming care for patients under age 26 and block it from being covered under the state’s Medicaid program.

“This is the worst anti-trans bill I have ever seen filed in any state,” [Erin] Reed said, noting that adult medical transition bans were a “hypothetical escalation” until recently.

Another Oklahoma proposal would prohibit distribution of public funds to organizations that provide gender-affirming procedures to patients younger than 21.

“It’s irresponsible for anybody in health care to provide or recommend life-altering surgeries that may later be regretted,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen. “Performing irreversible procedures on young people can do irreparable harm to them mentally and physically later in life.”

A similar bill pre-filed in South Carolina, where Republicans control both chambers, also requires that trans adults older than 21 obtain referrals from their doctor and a licensed psychiatrist before they can begin treatment."

Friends, what we're looking at here is a closed loop of fact-free, fascist fuckery. Under the guise of preventing nonexistent child abuse, Republican lawmakers are seeking to criminalize medically-necessary gender affirming care for trans people well into adulthood, thereby legally enshrining fascist propaganda designed to marginalize, and incite violence towards trans people and the larger LGBTQ+ community. If the law says trans care is child abuse and legally inaccessible, it doesn't matter at all what individual Americans feel or believe. Which brings us back to the horrifying context of a larger fascist campaign to isolate, terrorize, and de-person the entire queer community; from the article:

"Cathy Renna, spokesperson for the National LGBTQ Task Force, said she views these bills as the product of “a permissible climate of hate,” driven by disinformation and fearmongering, that made anti-LGBTQ rhetoric more palatable in the years since former President Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

“We have politicians, celebrities and just folks in our communities who were given permission under Trump to kind of pick that scab and do and say harmful things without consequence,” Renna said. “It unleashed a nightmare Pandora’s box of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism.”

“When you look at the last few years,” she said of the LGBTQ community, “we feel like we’re under attack in a way that we have not for decades.”

These anti-trans bills are not the first attacks on queer existence in American life, nor will they be the last. The literal erasure of LGBTQ+ identities in our society is not an election ploy designed to win votes; it is a tool which organized fascists dominating American political and cultural life are using to install an objectively fascist order from above. The eradication of queer identities is not only a foundational goal in fascist ideology, but it infamously has a proven track record of empowering fascist domination of nominally liberal democratic societies already. Legalized assaults on trans rights are quite literally the tip of the fascist spear; and latent transphobia in American society is the breach politically empowered nazis are exploiting to seize power.

The simple truth is that you can't beat fascism at the ballot box, you can only slow it down; and anyone who told you otherwise, was probably just looking for your vote. If we're prepared to let fascists criminalize trans people, and drive queer folks out of public life today, there is no limit to who American nazis will target and de-person tomorrow. As a society, we no longer have the luxury of considering trans and queer rights a niche political issue; this isn't about empathy, it's about stopping billionaire-backed fascists from legislating anyone who disagrees with them out of public existence. We will all stand together here, or we will surely die apart; once again I advise you to choose wisely.

 

 

• nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Mastodon, Instagram, and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Want more? Subscribe to NIDC to see all my writing today!

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: By Any Other Name

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

I must confess that recent ominous developments in Amerikkkan political life have forced me to write about Pig Empire fascism almost exclusively as a project of the larger political right in the West; including its violent street enforcers, the US Republican Party as a whole, and the reactionary billionaire muppets funding the fascist creep. These are important discussions in the near term, and it would be disingenuous to imply folks facing down fascist violence from the right are missing the bigger picture; these are questions of survival. By that same measure however, it is simply a historical fact that healthy societies don't birth politically empowered fascist movements; fascists don't create the conditions that allow fascists to topple a "liberal democracy."

Indeed, one of the reasons that America and the larger Pig Empire it influences has proven so vulnerable to fascist political techniques, is that our culture has wholly embrace numerous elements of fascist ideology because they are useful to capital; the carceral state, white supremacy, nationalism, and so forth. Take for example the fully bipartisan migrant carceral complex and America's objectively hyper-nationalist immigration policies. At the height of the Trump era, important voices in American media were willing to admit that we were running a concentration camp system; yet under Joe Biden, our society has done nothing to dismantle the camps, and in fact many influential voices have forgotten they exist.

Of course, not everyone has forgotten because not everyone treats human lives as political footballs; to examine this issue a little more closely lets turn to this November 21st, 2022 post by Jessica Corbett over on Common Dreams:

Rights Groups Demand Biden Close 'Inhumane' ICE Detention Centers

This relatively simple article is built around covering a letter by 114 rights organizations to U.S. President Joe Biden, demanding the dismantling of the migrant detention complex (those would be the concentration camps,) on the grounds that the practice is "inhumane, unjust, unnecessary, and fiscally irresponsible." While it would be nice to actually see the phrase "concentration camps" in this piece, it otherwise serves as a decent recap of three key issues surrounding the so-called "migrant crisis" under Biden; widespread human rights abuses in U.S. migrant detention facilities, the crass hypocrisy of a Biden administration that ran on ending "kids in cages" under Trump, and the existence of a lucrative industry built around warehousing asylum-seekers and refugees in private prison complexes.

As regular readers of my writing about America's fascist "border" politics will know, I consider that last point crucial to understanding why running concentration camps is a bipartisan position in American politics; it's definitely about the money, honey. Our focus here today however is less about the "whys" and more about the effects; specifically the ways in which our horrifying immigration policies feed racist, reactionary, and eliminationist ideology in our culture; ideas that have objectively paved the way for the rise of overtly fascist movements in the Pig Empire. It is after all very hard to stamp out fascism, when you're actively feeding into its component beliefs, as many folks quoted in this article noted:

"It is urgent for Biden to act boldly to rebuke white supremacy by protecting and welcoming immigrants in the next two years of his administration," Ghandehari argued. "Detention is inhumane, morally and financially costly, and completely unnecessary."

Andrea Carcamo, policy director at Freedom for Immigrants, similarly stressed that "immigration detention is animated by racism, xenophobia, and hate—the very forces President Biden vowed to fight against upon taking the White House."

"Instead, Biden has overseen a dramatic increase in the use of immigration detention since taking office," Carcamo said. "This administration has utterly failed our communities who continue to be subject to abhorrent human rights abuses inside detention. It's clear that immigration detention is beyond the reach of reform, which is why we demand Biden close detention centers and free people back to the love and safety of their communities."

Look folks, I'm not highlighting this article because I want to score "gotcha" points against a fake antifascist muppet like Joe Biden; this issue is about something much bigger than elections and political parties. The criminalization and incarceration for profit of (mostly) brown others, is simply another facet of America's long love affair with ultra-nationalism and white supremacy. This is gas for the fascist creep, because once you can de-person one group of people and toss them in concentration camp money machines, simply due the geographical randomness of their birth, you're well on the path to doing it to anyone else those in power don't like as well; a path we know ends in genocide.

Do you think I'm being hyperbolic? Then ask yourself if Trump built the concentration camps the liberal establishment so readily admitted he was running back in 2019? The answer is of course, no; Trump was able to double down on the cruelty of the migrant carceral system because that system existed in the first place. Furthermore, liberal media muppets who'd like to pretend the problem wasn't the concentration camps, but the Trump administration's cruel family separation policy are still being disingenuous because Biden hasn't ended that practice either. To prove that point, let's take a look at this November 21st, 2022 article by John Washington and Anna Cathrine-Brigida in the Texas Observer:

Biden Is Still Separating Immigrant Kids From Their Families

The plain truth here is that this article should make you absolutely furious with bougie liberal influencers trying to equivocate about America's still incredibly fascist border enforcement operations under Biden. From pretending that posting motivational signs in a concentration camp for kids makes it less of a concentration camp, to blithely ignoring this administration's gutless embrace of the same Title 42 policies all of these folks admitted were authoritarian and racist, if not outright fascist under Trump, this entire shitshow has been a willful act of deception perpetrated by people who pretend to be "resisting" fascism. Personally, I don't think the word hypocrisy covers enough ground here; this is craven and outrageous.

Furthermore, this piece itself certainly isn't winger propaganda, or progressive invective; the authors are in fact staggeringly charitable about the Biden administrations intentions, and they're quick to point out the areas where Palooka Joe's team have marginally improved on Trump's worst ethno-nationalist adaptations of America's always white supremacist immigration policies. Ultimately however, we're left with the facts on the ground, and they point to broken promises and a staggering lack of appetite for conflict with a hyper-reactionary Border Patrol power structure still quite partial to fascism; as the article demonstrates in the two quoted sections below:

"In January 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established select criteria under which children can in fact be separated from their families: Immigration authorities may only do so if they deem the parent unfit, if the parent is going to be prosecuted for a felony, if the parent is hospitalized, or other specific circumstances.

The incoming Biden administration promised to stop such separations for good and offer reparations for the previous administration’s harms.

But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.

“We said never again, but here we are,” said Kassandra Gonzalez, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project."

 

“We still have a system in which individual agents who have no background in child welfare are making these decisions without any sort of oversight,” said Jennifer Podkul, an attorney with Kids in Need of Defense. “There’s no check on their decisions at all.”

Franzblau of NIJC said that the problem goes much deeper. A lack of institutional overhaul—both among top-level decision-makers and the bottom-level CBP officials who encounter families at the border—means that the overall mentality toward immigration policy has not changed.

“As long as they have this deterrence approach of trying to scare families from seeking refuge in the U.S. through punitive programs, they’re going to have separation,” Franzblau said."

 

If I sound frustrated my friends, it's because after two years of this nonsense, I'm getting pretty tired of make-believe antifascism in American political life. At this point I don't have the first bloody clue what Joe Biden thinks "semi-fascism" really is, except a way to lose an election less badly than expected. What I do know is that you don't fight fascism by agreeing with and empowering it. I know that you can't defeat fascism by throwing money at fascists cops and the carceral state. And I know that you don't drive white supremacy out of mainstream American politics by extending white supremacist immigration policies.

The fact is that antifascism isn't about intentions; it's about results. This administration wasn't elected to mitigate the horrors of Trumpian fascism, they were elected to end them. Can anyone reading this say they're even trying? I doubt it; at least not with a straight face. Given the choice between striking a blow against fascism and keeping the prison industrial complex happy, Biden has picked the path of the collaborator once again; and that choice is likely to have grave consequences for us all going forward. The bottom line here is that the liberal establishment either needs to start dismantling American fascism, or get out of the way; you can't stop the birth of the permanent Pork Reich with vibes.

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Call and Response

 

Editor’s note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today. 

 

I'm not going to lie to you folks; this isn't an article I've ever wanted to write. As someone who has written repeatedly about the consequences of normalizing eliminationist ideology, and the intimate connections between fascism and stochastic terrorism, the news that a mass shooter targeted an LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs, killing five innocent people and wounding many more, did not surprise me; but it did hurt me, and that pain has not subsided yet. When I sat down to write about this horrifying stochastic terror attack yesterday morning, I found myself incapable of putting the event into a meaningful context. Ultimately I decided to focus on the mechanics of messaging and reaction, because that's all I could bear.

In today's edition of Nina-Bytes then, I'd like to stay inside that familiar wheelhouse; both for my own mental health, and because identifying the "call and response" nature of fascist politics, eliminationist propaganda, and stochastic terrorism is a vitally important skill during this political moment in the Pig Empire. The simple truth is, this is unlikely to be the last bloodbath. To help us cross that awful bridge, I'd like to share a couple of articles this time; starting with this November 21st, 2022 piece written by Melissa Gira Grant, and published on The New Republic:

The Massacre at Club Q Should Not Have Felt Inevitable

This was certainly not an easy one to read; but I will try to summarize. Grant opens this emotionally devastating article by correctly identifying the November 20th, 2022 attack as a "massacre" and placing it in the context of the larger LBGTQ community in Colorado Springs. As the author notes, this horrifying hate crime comes on the heels of the widespread mainstreaming of transphobic, eliminationist rhetoric from the reactionary American right; both locally, and in national Amerikkkan politics. To the surprise of precisely no one familiar with the adventures of noted Waffen-Karen Lauren Boebert, Colorado Republicans and prominent hatemongers like Chaya Raichik don't appear to have any regrets.

Crucially however, Grant also takes the time to point out that this deadly act of political violence against LGBTQ people occurred in a climate of broadly-supported transphobic rhetoric in American life; and certainly not just from right wing extremists and quasi-anonymous harassment accounts on social media:

"The steadily spreading political violence against queer and trans communities was not coming from the fringes. It was stoked by prominent Republicans pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation, amplified by media outlets including Fox, and became fodder for campaign ads. Neither was this all coming from the explicitly right, with some Democrats regarding anti-LGBTQ propaganda largely as a Republican-manufactured distraction or divisive talking point undeserving of a response. As the ACLU’s Chase Strangio noted recently, “resistance to anti-trans narratives among progressives and liberals is limited and often altogether absent.” The message sent by this reluctance to engage and defend trans people in particular, as Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote for the Washington Post, has been that trans people should “stand aside,” or else be “blamed for the ascension of conservatism.”

Finally, Grant concludes by addressing the horrifying elephant in the room that I spoke about here on NIDC last week; the fact that liberals seem to think the fight against violent, transphobic fascism in politics is over, even as some of the most anti-LGBTQ fascist politicians in the GOP easily dominated their own elections. In the face of already escalating anti-LGBTQ violence, and the political right's unfolding plans to make depersoning LBGTQ folks a fundamental plank in the ongoing fascist project, it would be utterly naïve to assume a less-bad-than-expected showing for Democrats at the ballot box, or even the political fallout from a mass shooting, will stop the ongoing pogrom on trans and queer people.

Of course, and speaking of naivety, all of this does vaguely presume the mainstream political right in America isn't just trying to suppress, terrorize, and murder LGBTQ people in America. To briefly talk about why that's a bad presumption, let's turn to this November 21st, 2022 article written by Anya Zoledziowski for Vice News:

"This Is the Point": Colorado Shooting Follows Rise in Anti-LGBTQ Vitriol

Primarily built around commentary by activist and researcher Erin Reed, this piece more or less puts anti-LGBTQ terrorism in the context of the right's war on trans and queer identities and states the obvious; the violence is unquestionably the point. Eliminationist rhetoric and fascist conspiracy theories targeting the LGBTQ community have become a persistent feature of reactionary politics in America; with completely predictable consequences:

"For several years, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including incendiary anti-trans and anti-drag disinformation, has been making the rounds on social media and in state legislatures, pushed by far-right personalities, including Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, and LibsofTikTok founder Chaya Raichik. 

In 2022 alone, more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S., according to Human Rights Campaign. Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio collectively spent at least $50 million on anti-trans ads during the midterms. Meanwhile, far-right pundits and politicians falsely accused transgender folks of being “groomers” and referred to drag queens as “pedophiles.” 

Look folks, whether a seemingly indifferent liberal media wants to acknowledge it or not, we are talking about cause and effect here. Pretending this was an unpredictable tragedy, or the inevitable result of human bigotry is myopic to the point of open collaboration with fascists. These monsters know what they're doing, and they're doing it on purpose This is confirmed by the open relationships between virulent anti-trans bigots on the fringes of the media, fascist billionaires who support the cause, and Republican politicians in government; relationships that are getting more difficult to ignore all the time. 

Speaking frankly, I am simply tired; and I know I'm not alone. I'm tired of reading eulogies for innocent marginalized people who've been murdered by fascists. I'm tired of being told I need to vote for Democrats to stop fascism while the fascist murders continue and rich liberals argue about whether or not something can even be transphobic if it's printed in the New York Times. Most of all however, I'm tired of playing footsie with collaborators who give fascist politicians every benefit of the doubt, while those same people organize against my very existence in the open. I can only speak for myself as one single trans woman, but I'd ask that you please save your prayers liberals; I can already tell we're not in your thoughts.

I don't have a message for the fascists riding transphobia to power over the dead bodies of my community; at least not one I could print here. 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Things Left Unsaid

 

Editor’s note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today. 

 

Well folks; with a few notable exceptions in boutique liberal, or left-wing media, I think it's safe to say that these past U.S. Midterm elections haven't produced a resplendent bounty of quality political analysis in Pig Empire media. I've tried my best to fill in the blanks by talking about what these results mean for antifascists, and trans people facing down a pogrom in progress, but in the face of precisely a billion corporate talking heads declaring this a resounding victory for "liberal democracy" it really does feel like pissing into a hurricane. Like many of you, I'm just about ready to move on from this moment because the fascists sure don't seem to have given up the ghost.

Unfortunately however, it remains impossible to say we've fully explored what the US midterm elections mean, until we talk a little bit about what they don't mean. How can we figure that out? By exploring the existential threats to our society that were not campaign issues at all. While the media warned folks that democracy, abortion, and trans rights were on the ballot with various degrees of proficiency, the same certainly can't be said for climate crisis or the still ongoing covid pandemic. In today's edition of Nina-Bytes then, we're going to look at two short articles about the surprising issues this campaign wasn't about; one for each crisis.

Let's start with climate crisis, and this pre-election November 2022 article by Ricardo Gomez over at Jacobin:

No One Is Talking About Climate in the Midterms

Well it's hardly Shakespeare, but you have to give Gomez some credit for getting right to the point; which is included in the subtitle of this article. In the lead up to the election, less than one percent of all televised campaign ads for House and Senate midterm races focused on climate crisis; with little difference between Democrat and Republican candidates. This is despite overwhelming evidence that America is already in the throes of the climate apocalypse, and numerous public polls demonstrating voters actually do care about not being boiled to death on an uninhabitable planet for corporate profits.

To put it bluntly, this is terrible politics; especially for Democrats. As our author notes however, just because politicians are choosing to ignore climate crisis, doesn't mean everyone is choosing to ignore the situation. Oil companies for example, remain quite invested in the issue:

"Although 80 percent of voters support a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies — a way of recuperating money by taxing surging profits — candidates are not running on holding fossil fuel companies accountable. Instead they are ceding the narrative on environment and climate change to oil and gas companies that have gone on the offensive — spending enormously and pouring millions into campaigns up and down the ballot to protect their profits."

Please keep in mind that none of this was a secret; when both activists and data nerds are telling Democrats to run on climate crisis mitigation policies, the decision to cede the field to oil companies is an active one. Keep a pin in that thought, we'll come back to it in the conclusion.

In the meantime, let's move on to our next article; this November 9th, 2022 piece written by Abdul El-Sayed for The New Republic:

It’s Weird that Neither Party Talked about Health Care in a Pandemic

This is another short and to the point read, albeit from a far more mainstream liberal perspective. After noting that the covid pandemic isn't over, and healthcare policy discussions dominated both the 2018, and 2020 US election seasons, El-Sayed asks how it's possible neither party wanted to talk about political solutions to America’s profound health crisis in 2022? He then breaks down a few possible answers; inflation discourse, watered-down health care reforms that Democrats can't pitch as a policy success, and general apathy from a Republican Party that would rather talk about pedophiles and white nationalist conspiracy theories.

While this is all pretty standard political class chatter, El-Sayed's article is relevant primarily because he keeps bringing it back to the larger, inexplicably unspoked issue of a raging pandemic that has killed millions already; and who benefits from that silence:

"So, two and a half years into the pandemic, that leaves us in a paradox. No single issue has so fundamentally altered American life as has the pandemic—an issue that is squarely about America’s approach to public health and health care. And despite a vigorous public debate about how to address America’s clearly failing public health and health care systems going into the pandemic, the conversation about how to fix them has all been snuffed out as we emerge from it … even though we have done next to nothing about them. The health care industry is breathing a sigh of relief after vigorously fighting any effort for reform in the last two elections."

Let's be real here for a moment, alright? You don't need me to tell you why the GOP didn't want to talk about climate crisis, or healthcare policy during the midterm elections. We're talking about a hyper-capitalist, reactionary political party wholly in the pocket of the medical insurance lobby and Big Oil. Given that the Republican response to both global warming and covid-19 pretty much consisted of pretending they aren't real and threatening anyone who disagrees, their midterm strategy wasn't much of a surprise.

Explaining the Democratic Party's failure to run on broadly popular issues of vital importance to bolster their electoral chances in an election against literal fascists however, requires more examination; especially in light of their perceived weakness on economic policy issues. Promoting policy-based solutions to problems like burgeoning medical debt, pandemic relief policies, safer energy, and green sector jobs would have been a win-win situation for Democrats; forcing the GOP to talk about something they don't want to talk about, while reeling in voters who support those policies. This isn't a question of Monday morning quarterbacking either; the Democratic Party lost control off the House this election, and even a narrow defeat will now have disastrous consequences in American life.

So what's the deal then? Well, corporate media can blow sunshine up my ass all they like, but the obvious conclusion here is that as a whole, the Democratic Party is also a hyper-capitalist, reactionary political party wholly in the pocket of the medical insurance lobby and Big Oil. If you've read any of my analysis about the Biden administration's objectively genocidal climate policies so far, you know that these folks honestly do not give a damn about anyone but rich donors, and corporate capital. Once you've decided that capitalist support outweighs the lives of billions, including millions of your own people, you've also pretty much decided that a little thing like "potentially losing power to fascists" doesn't rate either.

And in the long run, that's why you can't entrust anything as important as "stopping a fascist takeover of society" to the Democratic Party, and rich liberals in general. At the end of the day, capitalist realism demands the subordination of all other concerns to capital; including civil rights, and human lives. When push comes to shove, acolytes of the free market will always be willing to sacrifice everything, especially the poors, for a sufficiently appealing price. There is no such thing as an effective antifascism, that isn't also anticapitalist, and as such any antifascist alliance with liberal capitalists cannot help but be temporary in nature.

Let the liberal establishment bask in the warm afterglow of a less-bad-than-expected loss to clown shoes fascists, but don't join them. We've got a class war to fight; and literally everything depends on a victory for the common people, against genocidal capitalists. With any luck, they won't even see us coming.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

 

 

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today. 

Nina-Bytes: Impact Statement

Last week on Instagram, I briefly discussed the theatrical process of passing ineffectual climate crisis reduction policies that ultimately preserve capitalism in the Pig Empire. While our leaders spit double-talk about carbon reduction strategies they know will not save us, our society continues to facilitate fossil fuel-based capitalism that will murder us all. Ultimately, we're talking about an act of knowing, genocidal deception here; a lie so big, and so brazen, that people can't quite accept it's happening, even though the evidence is all around them. Furthermore, this lie is being told by so many powerful people in the Pig Empire, that it would be impossible to keep it a secret; which is more or less why they don't.

Take for example the crass hypocrisy of the just concluded UN Climate Change Conference (COP 27) at the dubiously proclaimed "first green city" of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. As I wrote last year about COP 26, here you have an international gathering of some of the most influential politicians on earth, loudly proclaiming that they care about climate crisis, before sitting around a table and shooting down every possible globalized effort to end fossil fuel capitalism; a prerequisite for addressing climate catastrophe and saving all life on Earth.

While last year's conference ended with open promises to commit genocide, this year's shindig included a truly mind boggling number of oil industry lobbyists. That would be the same industry that actively covered up the connection between fossil fuels and global warming for decades, and is currently paying even more lobbyists to *checks notes* criminalize dissent against fossil fuel companies and declare climate science denial a form of protected speech. You know who wasn't there however? Climate activist Greta Thunberg, who called the conference a forum for "greenwashing." Given that this is the 27th COP summit, and the data says we're still steaming towards the apocalypse at full speed, she's absolutely right.

Of course, while all of this is obviously odious and counterproductive, it doesn't become a genocidal "conspiracy" until you can prove that our leaders understand that they're dooming millions, if not billions, to die for capital. To demonstrate this is in fact the case, I'd like to examine this November 8th, 2022 article written by Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong over at the New York Times:

Draft Report Offers Starkest View Yet of U.S. Climate Threats

As this article notes, every four years the U.S. federal government is required by law to drafted and release the National Climate Assessment; a document composed by multiple federal agencies, and hundreds of independent scientists, that provides a real assessment of what we today call "climate crisis" in progress.  While ideologically this is a capitalist document at its root, these reports aren't about public relations and often speak uncomfortable truths about America's future; the last report for example predicted that unchecked warming would absolutely crater the U.S. economy. This year's report isn't completed yet, but a lengthy draft has been released for public comment.

So what do the actual scientists have to say about the climate path we're on? Nothing good my friends:

"The effects of climate change are already “far-reaching and worsening” throughout all regions in the United States, posing profound risks to virtually every aspect of society, whether it’s drinking water supplies in the Midwest or small businesses in the Southeast, according to a draft scientific report being circulated by the federal government.

"The things Americans value most are at risk,” says the draft report, which could still undergo changes as it goes through the review process. “More intense extreme events and long-term climate changes make it harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families, reliable public services, a sustainable economy, thriving ecosystems and strong communities.”

As greenhouse gas emissions rise and the planet heats up, the authors write, the United States could face major disruptions to farms and fisheries that drive up food prices, while millions of Americans could be displaced by disasters such as severe wildfires in California, sea-level rise in Florida or frequent flooding in Texas.

“By bringing together the latest findings from climate science, the report underscores that Americans in every region of the country and every sector of the economy face real and sobering climate impacts,” said John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Biden on clean energy, adding that the draft report was still undergoing scientific peer review and public comment."

To put it bluntly; this is a US government-funded body of experts telling you that your leaders have already failed you and we're almost certainly headed for climate-induced Thunderdome here in America. Furthermore, while I cut out a paragraph of fluff, I quoted such a long section of this article to point out one of the many small ways mainstream capitalist media continues to downplay the problem. In three consecutive paragraphs, our authors go out of their way to tell you twice that the report isn't final; as if sometime in the next couple of months all these eggheads are going to say "whoops, forgot to carry the two; actually everything is fine."

The truth however is that you don't need me to tell you that everything isn't fine; nobody does. While it may be refreshing to hear the U.S. government admit we're already in the middle of a global warming hockey stick graph, folks living on a boiling planet could have told you that just by stepping outside the past few years. What's important here is what this document, and the thousands of other official studies just like it proves; that Joe Biden, and other Pig Empire political leaders also know climate catastrophe, caused by fossil fuel consumption, is already here. Furthermore, so do all the other politicians, lobbyists, and even media muppets trying to sell you on planting trees, carbon capture, and bullsh*t "net zero" policies that won't stop the coming apocalypse, and ultimately only serve to sustain the very capitalist order causing it.

Of course, maybe you didn't need me to tell you that either. Perhaps hearing it from the Department of Defense, or major international banks was enough. Maybe it should just be pretty obvious that when an American President says we need to increase fossil fuel production now, to be able to decrease it at some undefined point in the future,  we are all being taken for a morbidly insulting ride. Maybe that's why capital is spending billions trying to disempower the people and lull us all back to sleep; it's not like they can keep it a secret anymore. If that's the case however, the folks around me sure are acting funny for people who know their leaders intend to murder their families for capitalism.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”