it's an open-book test

massive content warning for discussion of distressing and traumatic histories.

the cliff notes takeaway of the painfully and criminally long history of fascism in american politics is this: we've always been a fascist state.

perhaps this is not a popular take — some truly believe our fascism started ten years ago — but not because it is uncommon for people to see the truth of our history; rather, because it is unacceptable. it is a belief that, if held, situates one firmly in opposition to the protections of normative whiteness and white supremacy, the beast at the helm of our sadistic social machinery.

understanding that our political and social frameworks hinge on the creation and oppression of an "Other," as opposed to them existing to support and defend the conveniently pre-existing and independently formed "hard-knocks" individuals of our country and world, opens one to all manner of violence, whether it be verbal or physical. it doesn't matter that the obvious question is hanging low, ripe for plucking: what social mechanisms influenced this individual's positionality and keep them firmly rooted in that place? some would still rather ask what the individual did to put themself there.

when a country is built on a legacy of profit gained from the fabrication and exploitation of social hierarchies with whiteness at the peak, when that country maintains the systems and structures developed to enforce this mechanism of governance, or, at best, only reforms them, you can be certain that social mechanisms are indeed working hard to limit the social and economic mobility of certain people.

state-sanctioned violence carried out under every administration has looked like imprisoning, exploiting, or slaughtering indigenous, Black, Brown, and all "non-white" peoples for centuries. the goal has been to accumulate land by theft and wealth for the state through the exploitation of free and cheap labor.

for the first inhabitants of this land, gruesomely murdered and displaced, or the people kidnapped from their land, forced to labor on this stolen land all while facing torture and death themselves, the truth has always been known: america is a colonial power and maintains its power through fascist policy. the progenies of these and so many others know this truth, too. they have had no choice but to know it and to feel it. they are forced to bear the burden of a danger created by the tension of living at odds with normative whiteness.

that being said...

no one truly defying state propaganda or effectively fighting state-sanctioned violence and oppression has ever been safe in our "democracy."

the possibility of mass belief that our government has betrayed its people and the people of the world on a structural and systematic basis since its inception, hardly guarantees a revolution will occur, but it is a threat. it is so existentially threatening to the power structure of our state that, yes, even "white" people who believe this or any fragment of this and act accordingly could be targeted or killed. it doesn't often need to get to this point, however. it is simpler to maintain the status quo and feed the illusion that only "bad people" suffer state-sanctioned political violence. by obscuring the reality of our shared oppression as exploited laborers, diluting the history of our collective struggle, and enforcing an elite in-group status of whiteness that outweighs any other social identity to which one might ascribe, the likelihood that one might explore any inkling of social disparity or economic dispossession rapidly diminishes.

defining distinct identities by their deviance from this "standard" or normative whiteness creates the all-encompassing "Other." once this creation occurs, social mores and taboos work to reinforce the stratified categories, ensuring things like "professionalism," and "manners," or "hygienic," and "sane" become loaded terms meant to limit access to whiteness and stifle free cultural, religious, and authentic emotional expression. once every "different" or "undesirable" trait, belief, or behavior is criminalized, diminished, and pathologized, the work of dehumanizing "Other" becomes quite easy. it becomes a matter of framing policy, institutions, and infrastructure as tools to control, manage, and contain the problematic and dangerous "Other." this is presented as the most effective means to protect the "good" or "upstanding citizen;" this "us-versus-them" mentality allows compliance to become the highest moral good, and the death penalty without due process to become commonplace for disobedience.

it is important to note that the earlier-mentioned state-sanctioned racial violence that has been enacted for centuries has not been, for the most part, enacted against those deemed white. it is when one deviates from the normative expectations of whiteness that one becomes a target. it must also be noted that the requirements for that label of "whiteness" change fluidly as social and political needs dictate. however, its violence remains the same:

whiteness serves to protect whiteness,

and the interests of those married to whiteness...

that's it.

whiteness is a cultural wipe. it demands conformity, while preaching inclusion, freedom, and individualism.

we all can play a role in the persistence of white supremacy, even if we don't see it that way. whether it be a narrative internalized by those deemed "Other," or one perpetuated by those in-group members who have adopted the values and reap the rewards of whiteness. our world is so entrenched that we all must actively work to unlearn and dismantle the tools and structures of white supremacy.

the story of viola liuzzo hadn't come up in my formal studies at all. i saw her name listed on a protest sign in detroit back in 2016, urging people to carry forth the conviction and legacies of those invoked. prominent detroit activists like grace lee boggs, rosa parks, and rev. c.l. franklin were some notable and recognizable names, but i had to look viola up. i'm slightly embarrassed to say that the rabbit hole it led me down was a treasure trove of history about resistance in this country that i had not known before. despite my many years spent studying global and domestic politics through a critical race lens, i realized there was so much more that i still needed to learn that had been forgotten, reworked, or hidden entirely.

viola is the white mother of five from detroit killed by klansmen in alabama in 1965, shuttling marchers between selma and montgomery. while driving, she and her passenger, leroy moton, were ambushed by the kkk, who fired several shots into their moving vehicle. viola was shot in the head and died instantly. leroy was not hit, but when the attackers approached the vehicle, he survived by playing dead.

when the news broke, j. edgar hoover launched a massive and sexist smear campaign against viola to discredit her, delegitimize the movement, and distract from the fact that an fbi informant had helped kill her.

sound like a familiar playbook?

i watched recently while people reacted with shock when renee good was murdered; the unarmed, white, queer woman defying the state. i saw more surprise when alex pretti was gunned down; an armed, white, male veteran doing the same. the responses, in essence, "they're killing white people now," showed me that many self-identifying white people know that the violence of the state exists against "Other," but don't fully grasp the shifting borders and constraints of that term.

all manner of people have always been killed or had their livelihoods destroyed when they didn't fit into, subscribe to, or follow the rules of whiteness. that's not a new feature of this country. it's not some especially heinous and previously unrecorded phenomenon indicating an exacerbated condition. in fact, i found that it is recorded that about 1,300 white people are known to have been lynched in america just between 1882 and 1968 for "race treachery." it is important to express that in the same span, 3,445 Black people were lynched just for being Black.

julian, the civil rights organization founded in 2020 by jill colleen jefferson, works to end modern-day lynchings in america by changing the way suspicious deaths are treated in this country, cracking down on lax techniques that violate the integrity of investigations, and exposing corruption in the judicial process. the group knows what many refuse to admit: the sinister practice of lynching never stopped; it just changed its face, and we need to address the root cause.

death and the threat of it are part and parcel to the experience of "Other" in this country, and pale skin does not ensure you will not be "Othered."

which takes me back to my main point: america has always been fascist.

maybe not from where you're standing, but that hardly means that it hasn't been there at all.

fascist and oppressive laws and policies have shifted over the years, they look different from how they did in the 1800s and 1900s. for example, assimilatory boarding schools may have closed, but the brutal and murderous conditions children lived under have only recently been brought to light and acknowledged (although no reparations have been paid), and the practice of stripping culture, language, and beliefs from children persists in broader yet far more subtle and inconspicuous ways.

similarly, the international slave trade may have been outlawed in 1807, but the domestic trade remained intact until finally, in 1865, when the burden of unpaid labor while living in untenable conditions shifted to incarcerated individuals.

yes, you read that correctly. the thirteenth amendment did not end slavery in the united states, it transformed it and the mechanisms feeding it (if a moment ago, you wanted an example of how we strip culture, language, and beliefs from children, you need only consider one of the mechanisms feeding modern-day slavery: the school-to-prison pipeline, particularly in our most underfunded and vulnerable districts.).

"neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the united states, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

that's the first line of the thirteenth amendment, passed in 1865,

and it legitimizes the over 6,000 incarceration facilities across the united states and its territories imprisoning and extracting free labor to this day. this includes military prisons, immigrant internment camps, and state-run psychiatric hospitals.

when thinking of immigrant internment camps, we're perhaps most familiar with roosevelt's fascist policies in 1942. the post-pearl harbor executive order 9066, which opened the door to public proclamation no. 4 and led to the forced detention of 122,000 people of japanese descent, 70,000 of whom were american citizens.

but immigrant detention centers and anti-immigration policy are a well-practiced necessity in these united states (the reference for this entire incoming paragraph can be found here.). detention centers have been operating in some capacity since 1892, with the first one in the world opening in new jersey: the ellis island immigration station. guards sent by the department of commerce and labor began patrolling the u.s.-mexico border in 1904, and in 1910 the second immigrant detention center opened in california. the u.s. border patrol officially formed in 1924. in 1954, eisenhower launched a wildly racist deportation campaign against mexicans, an operation with a name i shant repeat. in the 80s, the cubans were targeted by similar detention policies as reagan focused his efforts on deterring latin migration. several populations suffered repeated blows as this focus ultimately resulted in increased efforts in the "war on drugs." this meant both intensified border enforcement and harsher punishments for individuals caught using or selling. private prisons formed at this time, too, skyrocketing already growing incarceration rates. in 1985, the first detention facility intended to hold children and infants opened in texas. in 1994, clinton started building a wall along the u.s.-mexico border in california and added fencing in arizona, strategically placed to make the journey for those on foot more treacherous and ultimately more lethal. meanwhile, there were multiple uprisings in for-profit immigrant detention centers across the country. the set of laws known as the 1996 laws, though, expanded what crimes were punishable with detention and deportation to include non-violent crimes, dramatically increasing deportation rates. and in 2001, #neverforget guantanamo bay, previously an immigrant detention facility for cubans and haitians, becoming the military prison holding and torturing primarily arab men "suspected of being al-qaeda."

bush jr. issued several executive orders after the september 11th attacks in an effort to fortify national security. one such effort, executive order 13228, established the office of homeland security with three branches, one of which is immigration and customs enforcement, or as we know them best, ice. the military order of november 13, 2001 ignored due process and authorized the indefinite detention of non-citizens "suspected of terrorism against the united states" with just a military trial. can you guess where they ended up?

he didn't stop with immigration policy after 9/11, though.

the patriot act, which drastically expanded the surveillance capacity of the state while also sidestepping civil liberties, ensured our descent into an even more heavily militarized and surveilled police state was codified.

these gradual normalizations of penal measures, the expanding nature of surveillance and imprisonment, and the punitive culture of our social, academic, and corporate structures all work with this process of "Othering," dehumanization, and exploitation. they have paved the way for our current political climate. without these mechanisms in place, people might not have been so ready to see mere difference as a justifiable enough reason for our government to target, police, imprison, and oppress on both domestic and global scales. but it all becomes an easier pill to swallow when the government has done the work of criminalizing "Other" throughout the whole of our history. our policies have created the image of the morally superior and upstanding citizen, the one deserving of america, its dream, and the limitless earning potential that entails. all up for grabs, provided you are the true patriot. the true american.

and while white supremacy has maintained its death grip on our imaginations with its promise of profit and safety, we fail to see the diminishing returns of such fascist allegiance.