Be Like Water: Why I'm Re-Activating this Blog

 

In light of the recent and astronomically stupid decision by Facebook to ban antifascist and anarchist pages as well as fascist and far right terror group accounts, I now find myself in something of a pickle as a writer. I still need my Facebook page to reach my audience, but I'm also completely paranoid about putting unique content up there anymore because at any given moment they might decide to ban my page - I am after all, both an anarchist and an antifascist, even if I'm not a protest or direct action organizer.

In the interests of keeping a permanent record of my work even if Facebook decides to nuke my account, here is a reprint of the August 22nd update I posted about the issue, including a link to a post on "It's Going Down" (a website I highly recommend to readers) to discuss the larger reasons for and implications of the ban:

"Ok, so if you're keeping up with the social media censorship battle at all, by now you have become aware that Facebook is suspending the pages and accounts of anti-fascists and anarchists, along with right wing extremists. This is of course an absurd false equivalency designed to appease right wing agitators in public intellectual life, while still answering the mainstream centrist call to "do something about all the nazis on social media."

Since I've had this discussion essentially infinite times before, I'll skip the fine print and focus on what this means for my writing. While I am certainly an anti-fascist and an anarcho-syndicalist, I am not a left wing organizer who is engaging in direct action so it's entirely possible Facebook doesn't care about my page. More realistically however, those of you reading me on this service are almost certainly on borrowed time. Since I expect this page to be deleted at some point soon, I think it's safe to say I shouldn't be posting any more unique content here - indeed, I actually now have to go back through my posts and find any unique content I've already posted here to migrate it to a site I control in case I get deleted.

I'm still going to write journals, I just haven't figured out where on my array of websites. Furthermore, I'm not going to delete my Facebook page in protest (although I'm tempted, this is not the first time Mark Zuckerberg has signaled his open support for fascists) so for as long as I'm allowed to have one, either I or my skilled hype-assistant will continue to post links to my work from *other sites* here on Facebook.

I would however advise those of you who rely exclusively on Facebook to find my new work to follow the Twitter account at @ASNinaWrites instead. None of this is my choice lads, I'm just rolling with the punches and a Cassandra complex in a world increasingly going fascist.

For more information on the actions Facebook appears to be taking against anarchist and antifascist accounts, check out this link:

On Facebook Banning Anarchist And Antifascist Pages & The Digital Censorship To Come

- nina illingworth"

After some deliberation, I've decided that Facebook's loss will be my other blogs' gain and I'm going to split up the two major unique types of content I produce on Zuckerberg's god forsaken social network between here (Media Madness) and my Can't You Read page on Tumblr. While I don't feel that my informal journal writing fits in well with the theme of this site, the My Little Leftist homework assignments I've been posting probably should have always been on this site since they feature both links to articles in the media I want people to read, and snippets of analysis about those articles.

While these posts are hardly great works of scholarship, they have started to form an ongoing educational discussion I'm having with my readers, and since it's been quite a little while since I had time (or any desire) to break down a full length article - it's not like I was using this blog for much else.

Although I never really wrote an entire post about these "Homework Assignments", I did mention them in a rather emo return announcement I posted (again) on Facebook; it's kind of an embarrassing piece of drivel to be honest with you but it always takes me a few posts to get back into the swing of things when I've been on a long and unexpected break. I'll post that notice here too simply for completeness:

"Author’s update: I’ve been away for quite some time due to extremely trying personal reasons that I will explain in greater detail at a later date. Unfortunately in my efforts to get back into the swing of things, I’m finding a horrifying amount of truth in the spiteful prophecy of ambitious Lindo Jong to her willful daughter Waverly in Joy Luck Club when she says: “You think it is so easy. One day quit, next day play. Everything for you is this way: so smart, so easy, so fast. Not so easy anymore.” 

I’m struggling and even though I have rather a lot to say, the content isn’t exactly flowing from either my microphone or my fingertips at the moment. I’ve got a three page script for a 45+ minute solo podcast written and I’ve recorded precisely twelve minutes of it. I’ve also got enough great recent Twitter threads for three new editions of the Skinny and I haven’t finished cleaning them up. To boot, I’ve also started and not completed several short-burst analysis pieces for Facebook and I’m tinkering with a website update that’s become necessary since my host migration to a more secure server, but I haven’t finished that either. As you can see, focus and resiliency has been a recent problem.

Furthermore this issue is exacerbated by the fact that I’m once again (and obviously so) writing about the rise of overt fascism in America; which has again put me in the awkward position of repeatedly explaining to apologists and the ignorant both what fascism is and why the things that are happening in America right now definitely represent a rapid acceleration and perhaps even a terminal stage of the fascist creep. Finally, I’m finding the time I *do* spend on social media to be utterly exhausting because I keep having to explain that the things I’m saying about Trump, fascism and this upcoming election are not hyperbole but rather logical conclusions drawn from primarily mainstream reporting; and I have to explain this because literally nobody clicks on the hundreds of source links I put in almost every single article I write about such an incendiary subject that clearly demonstrate I’m not a freaking bus loony. 

In an effort to both at once stay engaged and try to remind people of the mainstream and quasi-mainstream reporting that clearly supports the conclusions behind my work, I’m going to start posting a daily teaser and link to one of the numerous and extremely credible pieces of journalism that have underpinned my writing about the rise of overt fascism in America, as facilitated by (but certainly not begun by) Donald Trump – think of reading these articles as homework assignments if you will because I’m definitely not going to keep wasting all my energy explaining the same pieces of evidence over and over while Trump deploys his private Gestapo to snatch protesters off the street and openly talks about rigging the election and refusing to accept any result that isn’t a Downmarket Mussolini victory. The first one should go up either later today, or tomorrow.

Finally I should mention that I have found someone to help me advertise my work and maintain activity on two of my social media accounts (Facebook and Mastodon) because trying to keep up with them actively harms my ability to work on new content and as you can see – I don’t have much energy to spare because my creative process is scattershot and utterly garbage sometimes. 

This person shall remain anonymous (at their leisure) but has already started a professional-style Twitter account to advertise my writing and constantly post archived stories I’ve written that resonate with the current news cycle. You can find the account at @ASNinaWrites on Twitter and professional inquiries are to be directed there; please understand that this is not my Twitter account, I don’t post there and while the person running it is empowered to address questions or problems on my behalf, you’re not talking to me if you post at that account – you’re talking to some kindly soul who has agreed to put up with complaints and all the people I blocked on Twitter, just to get my work out there; so please, be civilized. 

At the moment they’re working exclusively on Twitter but once that account is properly set up and running, I gather they’ll be taking over archival posting here and on Mastodon – new work will primarily be posted by myself but in a pinch, I may take advantage of the helping hand and let my newfound hype manager handle it, we’ll see.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and swing heil Thomas, swing heil.
- nina Illingworth"

Finally I should of course mention that I'm going to have to re-post the first two homework assignments from Facebook to here at some point (likely later today) - so you'll have to forgive me if you've already read them; I've got a third one finished that I'll post after I'm done re-posting the first two and then we'll go on like Facebook was never involved.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

- nina illingworth

PS - yes, in all this I have been writing as well but most of the content is on ninaillingworth.com. You can find my most recent essays: Stop Making Excuses: Trump is Definitely a Fascist And Here is the Evidence, Thought-Crimes and Appeasement, as well as Stasis: Surviving the Pork Reich With A Cassandra Complex on my main site. You can also find No Fugazi Episode 10: Millions of Lives Are At Stake on the SoundCloud account I share with my podcast partner, Nick Galea.

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

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