A.R. Moxon: I think those differentiators could help us have these necessary conversations and even necessary fights without them devolving into the sort of fights that split coalitions. And if you’re thinking “too late,” well, maybe, but I hope not, and I also hope you can forgive me for hoping that.

I'd like everybody to yell at me, so I wrote about the upcoming election. Or, to put it more specifically, I wrote about what an anti-fascist coalition might look like and how it might fall apart, using the election as a context. www.the-reframe.com/binaries-and...

Binaries and Illusions of Binarieswww.the-reframe.com What I talk about when I talk about the election. Building an anti-fascist coalition that knows how to fight fascists and each other. Differentiators: Part 1 of whatever.

We’re dealing with rising fascism both globally and domestically, as I might have mentioned once or twice recently—“domestically” for me meaning the United States, though maybe you find it is true in your part of the old cosmic blueball, too.

I think there are a lot of people who realize this and agree that it should be stopped, and that’s good for people who want to stop fascism’s rise—people who I am going to assume includes you, the reader of this. Isn’t that nice of me?

1) Fascism is on the rise. 2) It should be stopped. Two points of agreement. I feel like political coalitions have been built on less. For example, here in the U.S., the fascist coalition is built on two basic beliefs.

The fascist coalition's two basic beliefs are worship of its own supremacy over others, and a national myth of purification that desires ever-accelerating eliminationist violence against those it demonizes and marginalizes and menaces and kills, which it frames as self-defense and law and order.

The fascist coalition has differences on what types of supremacy and exactly how the violence should look and how brutal it should be, and who should receive what share of the profit from all of that, but those two core beliefs have formed a powerful adhesive that nobody and nothing has broken yet.

I think an anti-fascism coalition would be bad for fascism, by and large. I think if an anti-fascism coalition fell apart it would be good for fascism. I think that this might mean that fascists are trying to make an anti-fascism coalition fall apart.

So, there are a lot of us who agree that fascism is on the rise, and that it should be stopped. However, I notice there’s quite a lot of disagreement past those points of agreement. I should be clear, I don’t think these points of disagreement are immaterial, nor do I think they should be ignored.

Not everyone is equally right and wrong within these arguments, and some points of disagreement even involve ways many of us in the anti-fascist coalition are actually aligning ourselves with supremacist beliefs in ways that align us at least partially with rising fascism instead of against it.

So it’s actually going to be important for us to have these arguments with each other, both to see if we can free ourselves of supremacist beliefs, both so that we can become more effectively anti-fascist as a coalition, and also become more spiritually healed and generative individuals.

It shouldn’t surprise us, incidentally, to find many people in an anti-fascist coalition aligned at least partially with supremacist beliefs. Supremacy and its unsustainable foundational lies are inherent to my nation—present at its very founding, threaded through all its self-aggrandizing myths.

Maybe you live in a similar nation, or maybe you don’t—but we marinated in those supremacist myths since birth, did most of us United-Staters; little wonder our grey matter took on at least some of that supremacist flavor. But we don't want it to stay that way. So the conversation must continue.

Additionally, fascists act in fathomless bad faith, so we should expect to find fascists secreted within an anti-fascist coalition, posing as something other than they are, to better effect fissures and splits between different factions of that coalition.

I think we can observe fascists trying to fool people into holding eliminationist supremacist beliefs by arguing for them from an anti-fascist position, and peeling away from the coalition the support of those still fooling themselves, clinging still (often unconsciously) to old supremacist beliefs.

An anti-fascist coalition is bad for fascists, after all. We should expect to see fascists getting simultaneously sly and brutal, to try to bust it up.

I think it would be good if we could figure out how to differentiate, both between our truly anti-fascist beliefs and our stubborn supremacist beliefs, and also differentiate between good faith (if often flawed) anti-fascism and bad faith fascists posing as some flavor or another of anti-fascist.

I think that would be good, because I think anti-fascist coalitions are bad for fascism. As I am anti-fascist, I would like to see the anti-fascist coalition hold together for that reason, and I would rather it not split over its differences, even if those differences are significant and important.

And I'd like us to create differentiators that allow us to continue the conversation we're having over these differences, because I think that conversation is vital to us becoming better people and also more effective anti-fascists, even if it often turns into a fight.

I think those differentiators could help us have these necessary conversations and even necessary fights without them devolving into the sort of fights that split coalitions. And if you’re thinking “too late,” well, maybe, but I hope not, and I also hope you can forgive me for hoping that.

Put another way: I’m not against fights. I just want to fight fascism first, and I want us fighting the most fascism we can, the hardest we can, the best we can. And so I’ve been thinking about what that looks like. This is my best try.

I guess what I’m saying is, what I’d really like more than anything is to get everyone yelling at me and I suppose each other in the comments, so let’s do something really fun. Let’s talk about the upcoming election in the United States. Wheeeee!

“The presidential election” is how it’s going to be framed, although there are going to be a lot of other things on the ballot, too, and we might think about that a bit as we think about how you intend to interact—for the very last time, maybe—with something that we in the U.S. call “democracy.”

Why discuss the election? Isn’t everybody else doing enough talking about the goddamn election for our taste? Good question. Essay Continues: www.the-reframe.com/binaries-and...

Binaries and Illusions of Binarieswww.the-reframe.com What I talk about when I talk about the election. Building an anti-fascist coalition that knows how to fight fascists and each other. Differentiators: Part 1 of whatever.

…two common thoughts among fascist aligned… it can’t happen to me… it will fuck the people i don’t care about more than it fucks me… history of fascism… everyone gets fucked…

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