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   Cindy Milstein (cbmilstein@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 29-Sep-2023 19:32:23 JST Cindy Milstein

   Yesterday I heard a seasoned, marxist-leaning, purportedly radical organizer say that we had to do such-and-such intervention so as to avoid falling into fascism in the so-called United States. Even then, twenty-four hours ago, it rung hollow to me, or more accurately, dangerously naive and almost willfully ignorant.

   Today, a US-style fascist shot an Indigenous person in so-called New Mexico at a prayer+demo against the reinstallation of a monument to colonizer Juan De Oñate, dethroned three summers ago during a time of uprising. Back then, in 2020, another US-style fascist shot an antifascist in so-called New Mexico at a demo to tear down a monument to colonizer Juan De Oñate.

   It’s not just that an Oñate statue has now twice inspired fascists to try to murder people, as if the ghost of this colonizer was pulling the trigger too. Nor is it simply that some of the same anticolonial and antifascist folks were there both times, in person, or in close geographic proximity, likely intimately feeling the reverberations of trauma in their bodies, minds, and hearts. It is that, yes, of course. Whether fascism or not, no one should have to live through (or die for) this, even once.

   But it is fascism. Not “falling toward” fascism, but an in-place Christo-fascism that has a long lineage of colonizer, slave trade, white supremacist, antisemitic, capitalist, racist, homo+transphobic, and patriarchal ancestors, among other killer kin like police. This US-brand fascism—in league with fascist allies around the globe—may not have fully taken hold, but it’s already here, banning books and surgeries, using a pandemic and prisons as testing grounds for even wider genocidal aims, and tossing out rules (such as they were) of law, elections, and Supreme Court, to name a few glaring “hints.”

   It’s hard enough, to put it mildly, that liberals and progressives can’t see fascism, and thus become its willing executioners, even if passively. But it feels horrifyingly enraging that non-anarchistic radicals still believe we’re in pre-fascist times and thus do too little.

   #FuckFascism
   #FightFascism
   #AbolishFascism
   #WhichSideAreYouOn

   (photo: DIY sticker seen in summer 2023 in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal)

   • Embed this notice
     Wherz Demloots (makberberovic@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 29-Sep-2023 19:32:22 JST Wherz Demloots

     in reply to

     @cbmilstein
     The republican party has publicly drafted a plan to destroy the administrative state and seize control of the executive branch. Fruition of this plan will result in the USA being a dictatorship under control of fascists. Does this not count as 'falling to fascism' regardless of the amount of fascism currently going on?

     Of course the USA is full of fascists already but if this person is suggesting shit to fight that instead of minimizing the issue then what's the fucking problem here?

   • Embed this notice
     Municipal Adhesives (municipaladhesives@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 29-Sep-2023 21:05:05 JST Municipal Adhesives

     in reply to

     • Wherz Demloots

     @MakBerberovic @cbmilstein
     "A likeness of Oñate among a caravan of Spanish colonists set in bronze outside an Albuquerque city museum also drew protests in 2020 that resulted in it being taken down.

     Rio Arriba County Commission Chairman Alex Naranjo, a Democratic former magistrate judge and school board member, said he is still committed to returning the statue to public display. He said the bronze likeness and companion cultural center in the nearby community of Alcalde was commissioned at a cost of more than $1 million in county, state and federal funding, in a project championed by his uncle Emilio Naranjo as a state senator and public figures including former Gov. Bill Richardson.

     He blamed Thursday’s confrontations on “disrespectful” protesters from beyond the Española Valley, though many protesters Thursday cited local Native American ties."
     https://www.wistv.com/2023/09/29/man-is-wounded-tempers-flare-new-mexico-over-statue-spanish-conquistador/

     This is your opposition party. They built this statue, are actively attempting to replace it, and when you get shot protesting it they call you disrespectful. The shooter may or may not have been a part of your opposition party, it's hard to tell.