Against the Fascist Creep

This text leaves me with the distinct impression that it was written rapidly in the wake of the election of Trump—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it /is/ a /lot/ of information to take in: names, organizations, ideas, movements. If you're not familiar with many of these things in advance, it can be difficult to distinguish between the "blink and you'll miss them" fascist actors and movements, and the ones that have had a deep and lasting impact. Sincerely, it's something of a 300-page infodump.

That said, i still think it's very much a text worth reading. I didn't try especially hard to remember every last detail that i was reading; it was more an impressionistic read-through, but even this was really valuable to me. It makes a few things clear: fascists are /everywhere/, trying at all times to find entry points into other movements in order to recruit and swell their own ranks; fascism is not a single, monolithic entity: there are many distinct currents and flavours of fascism, all of which are in at best uneasy alliances with one another, but just as often at war; fascism tries very hard to be "neither left nor right", as is to be expected from a movement whose chief aim is to gain and wield power over all other considerations (including consistency or cohesion); and, perhaps most important for those of us on what could broadly be called "the left": we are not immune. There is no ideology that is safe from fascist entryism. Given a chance, given space to act, fascists will pull from our ranks, will find ways of seducing us. Fascists and fascism must be actively considered and resisted.

Given its title, i thought this text was going to contain more analysis, more discussion of tactics and strategy, and i'm a little disappointed that it didn't. But its length, even as a fairly shallow dive into the complete history of a movement with so much breadth, variation, and nuance, makes clear that this could not really have been possible; it must be left to others.