The precursor to Fascism is poverty.
You know the statistics.
- The 1% have more wealth than the bottom 90%.
- Median wages haven’t risen significantly since the 1970’s while the cost of living and price of goods has continued to increase.
- Trump has promised to increase taxes on the rich but has instead made policies that benefit the rich.
- Since the financial crash of 2008, the American economy has risen, but wages have still not increased.
This poverty is created by institutionalized greed.
Americans love the idea that if you work hard enough, you can become rich.
When this hard work no equals wealth, when no matter how hard we try, our car keeps breaking down, we can’t get promotions or raises, we can barely afford the mortgage or rent on our homes, or we can never build a serious savings… we get angry.
Every tool, every idea, everything we’ve ever been told just isn’t working.
We love the idea of being rich. We fantasize about it. When we aren’t, we feel worthless.
It’s easier to look at someone else and blame them. Those feelings of self-hate, shame, doubt, not owning the right clothes, having a house that is too small, struggling financially, even after the age of 30, that can turn to hate.
In my city, people hate the Ivy league students and people hate the immigrants. Each group taking both the lower and upper income bracket jobs. In my city, people also love our 2 time elected, 2 time jailed mayor who violently beat a man with a fireplace log and embezzled pension funds from public service workers.
In my city, people want less taxes while complaining about the bad shape the roads are in and lack of police presence. Ironically, this city has better roads and safer streets than the city I grew up in where people complained significantly less.
In my city, we are on a sea border, and the immigrant population is constantly worried about ICE randomly imprisoning family members (children sometimes) indefinitely without due process.
In my city, some of the non-immigrant population loves random deportation. They see it as justice, the rule of law being enacted. Government protecting the opportunity that is rightfully owed to native born U.S. citizens.
But we all know where the money is. We know who is really preventing the wealth from trickling down.
If you had 100 billion dollars, would 50 billion less really be a problem?
The rest of us survive on $18–40,000. The rest of us work two to three jobs. The rest of us embarrassedly hide from our friends the government assistance we take because we think it makes us deplorable.
When we don’t take a step back and look at who we love and who we hate, our public discourse gets very twisted.
Again:
- Trump has promised to increase taxes on the rich but has instead enacted policies that benefit the rich.
And:
Fascism turns poverty in to racial hatred. Fascism is a systematic misdirection of hate.
Hitler published crimes committed by Jews to incite hatred.
Trump published crimes commeted by Mexicans to incite hatred. (here is the fact checking on that ad.)
When there is abundant hatred, caused by decades old poverty, caused by politicians and oligarchs, they need a fascist leader, someone completely shameless, to blame it on foreigners.
If we really looked at what was going on, if we really investigated the business practices and the fairness of what was happening financially on a global scale, there would be a completely different kind of outrage.
Republicans love to hate George Soros. Democrats love to hate the Koch brothers, but neither party will unite to hate them both.
Fascism doesn’t want you to speak up
“The President condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence against an individual,” and yet is shown here, inciting his own political party and the local police/security presence to forcibly remove citizens who are invoking their right to free speech under the United States Constitution.
“If someone has done something illegal and wrong, they should go to jail.”
-Donald Trump
Go to jail Mr. Trump.
Give us our country back.
You must vote today. And tomorrow, after the ballots are counted, you must continue to resist oppression, engage, speak up, support your neighbors, unionize, and demand equality.
There is no rest for the wicked.
If they bar you from voting, protest.
