Fascism is Impossible Without Active Denial

The key to survival is awareness. Harnessing our natural instincts to take survey of conditions as they are and as they develop. We are imbued with generations upon generations of experience that has prepared us for almost every situation. It can get in the way. Sure. Anxiety and trauma can immobilize us, lead us astray, but we know when we are in danger.

We are in danger.

The Trump Administration’s actions over the past seven months have represented an existential threat to our safety, our freedoms, and liberal democracy. We’ve seen it. We’ve felt it. And it isn’t just instinct. We have overwhelming evidence and the fascists have told us, in their own words, what they intend to do.

I have talked about how this works in cycles. We began this wretched presidency with a blitzkrieg of actions intended to overwhelm us and establish dominance from the start. From there, it has waxed and waned predictably. Moments of escalation and moments of resistance. Right now what you feel is an engine beginning to fire.

All around us are signs of escalation. Washington, D.C. is occupied by federal troops. We are told more cities are next. ICE is growing in size and in violence. The authoritarian takeover of institutions continues, as does the attack on reality itself. They’ve shredded the social safety net. They’ve set their eyes on free and fair elections.

It’s bad enough that this is the case, that we are living under this crooked, cruel regime. It’s something else to live in a society that is split between recognizing the threat, cheering it on, and denying it altogether.

What we are experiencing now is something incredibly uncomfortable and off-putting. As As we live our lives, we try desperately to put our affairs in order in a way that feels, at least in moments, like they’re healthy and nourishing or sustainable. We succeed and we fail, but there is a hope there, a striving. And, as we do it, we encounter so many different people. Some seemingly have it together and others struggle so mightily it affects everything and everyone around them.

Over time, our ability to adapt can do us so many favors and can also harm us in so many ways. This normalcy bias is another survival mechanism intended to prevent panic, but in an authoritarian takeover it blunts our awareness and our ability to act in self-preservation. We hear them tell us what they’re planning, and some convince themselves it isn’t literal. We watch them seize power and brutalize and some tell themselves it will pass in time, like a predator in the brush.

In reading accounts from witnesses to past dictatorial powergrabs, what comes through the clearest is not necessarily their terror at the violence or seizure of state. We know people are capable of these things. We are inundated with stories of murders and abuse and cruelty. We are routinely warned to steer clear of areas and people. In order to survive we have heeded these warnings and kept a watchful eye for threats. When this emerged, those of us paying attention knew what it was immediately, and what we saw it could become. We knew, without a doubt, this was something we needed to steer clear of.

What these documenters were more disturbed by was the ability of their friends and neighbors to continue functioning as if the world had not fundamentally changed. The nightmare of day-to-day life came into full fruition for them with the backdrop of normality having vanished.

How can people live like this?

How did any of us ever live like this?

It was more than an affront to those suffering, but this insistence on denial ultimately enabled the crisis to worsen and the authoritarians to solidify control. What’s more, fascistic takeover is not possible without this capitulation. It is unpopular. It is repulsive. The only means of taking control is to take advantage of denial and then, as the creep accelerates, the feeling of inevitability that gradually taints perception.

That is what this present chapter is about and how it will unfold. Occupying cities, disappearing people, operating with impunity and terrorizing the population, is a clear setting of a terrible standard. We are supposed to get used to this. We are supposed to numb to it. All of it is designed to slip state violence and control into our lives in order to convince us that this is all so normal as to not be alarmed. And then, with that accomplished, the true horror begins.

We must shift our own perceptions. The fascists deserve our disdain and contempt, but to fully grasp our situation we must start seeing the cycle for what it is. Capitulation and collaboration have become watchwords of the moment, and appropriately so, but denial is just as essential to the fascistic cycle as air and fuel to building and growing a fire. We must begin to see this active denial as our forebears who survived and fought authoritarians did.

It is disturbing. It is chilling. And it is a threat that accompanies the louder threat of over fascism. Those who are still lost in denial, those who still refuse to take this seriously, are not our allies and we cannot depend on them. They, along with the fascist ideologues, the Trump cultists, and the controllers within the wealth and oligarchical classes, are essential to the spread of authoritarianism.

We have these instincts for a reason. They have served us well and brought us here, to this moment, where we must fight yet again.