The Huntington Woods Peace Group has a Reading Group each summer/fall. Last year we read fiction and non-fiction on the theme of fascism coming to the United States*. Certainly fear and hatred of “the Other” whether Jews, Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, gay people, trans people, female people, or Democrats, is rampant in the U.S., and is being relentlessly weaponized by the ultra-extremist far right; or, as they were formerly known, the Republican Party. All that is necessary for the strong currents of fascism in many states to become our national reality is that people of good will do nothing. Or not enough. Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively about how fascism arose in European nations (“On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”), and has remarked that a significant difference between the United States and those nations is that we have their example before us; and if forewarned, we can be forearmed. Nat Pernick’s short pieces on this theme are to the point, and should be more widely read. You can help by sharing Nat’s writings on the very real peril to democracy posed by the MAGA Party with your friends and colleagues. Every right we have, including all those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, can be abridged or lost as easily as women’s rights to reproductive freedom have been lost. Speech such as Nat’s blog and my and comments can and will be banned and punished if the MAGA Party takes the helm. It can happen here, and it is happening here. Do more than you are doing now to beat back the tide of fascism! MAGA fascism threatens to overwhelm freedom here as soon as the upcoming elections. To wait and see if our freedoms will survive is to assure that they will not.
* The Plot Against America, It Can’t Happen Here, Listen Liberal, and American Psychosis
The Huntington Woods Peace Group has a Reading Group each summer/fall. Last year we read fiction and non-fiction on the theme of fascism coming to the United States*. Certainly fear and hatred of “the Other” whether Jews, Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, gay people, trans people, female people, or Democrats, is rampant in the U.S., and is being relentlessly weaponized by the ultra-extremist far right; or, as they were formerly known, the Republican Party. All that is necessary for the strong currents of fascism in many states to become our national reality is that people of good will do nothing. Or not enough. Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively about how fascism arose in European nations (“On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”), and has remarked that a significant difference between the United States and those nations is that we have their example before us; and if forewarned, we can be forearmed. Nat Pernick’s short pieces on this theme are to the point, and should be more widely read. You can help by sharing Nat’s writings on the very real peril to democracy posed by the MAGA Party with your friends and colleagues. Every right we have, including all those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, can be abridged or lost as easily as women’s rights to reproductive freedom have been lost. Speech such as Nat’s blog and my and comments can and will be banned and punished if the MAGA Party takes the helm. It can happen here, and it is happening here. Do more than you are doing now to beat back the tide of fascism! MAGA fascism threatens to overwhelm freedom here as soon as the upcoming elections. To wait and see if our freedoms will survive is to assure that they will not.
* The Plot Against America, It Can’t Happen Here, Listen Liberal, and American Psychosis