A War Against the People: Fascism will Steal Everything From Us

42 million Americans will lose food assistance this week. This is a crime against the people.

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On Sunday, federal assistance for 40 plus million Americans, over ten percent of the population, will cease. This isn’t a sexy topic. It doesn’t involve personalities or any of the divisive wedge issues that have been manufactured by the wealth class to hide broad consensus. It is simply something brutal that will happen to living, breathing human beings.

I struggle sometimes to communicate the anger that this fascist regimes inspires within me. Every day is a new indignity and it is always mixed with gross incompetence and pathetic posturing. That we can be ruled and abused by some of the most inferior and self-seeking people this country has ever belched forth is an insult, but adding the casual cruelty and real damage to it makes the whole thing unbearable and increasingly infuriating. We can talk about the physical representations of this injustice - say, the East Wing of the White House being demolished to make room for an opulent and repellent ballroom - but the true human suffering is often invisible to those who are not bearing the brunt of it.

Already we have seen this. The Trump Administration and DOGE’s elimination of the USAID program, which served as one of the largest international aid programs in the world, left millions without sustenance or assistance, causing the type of tragedies that have still not been documented but are, doubtlessly, historically significant. Foreign aid was, in and of itself, a tax the United States of America paid after so thoroughly rigging the world’s economy and conditions. It was the meager price for empire, insultingly meager at that, and should have never had to exist in the first place. For that aid to be cut was not only a cruel affront, but a signal that these symbolic and impotent gestures weren’t even necessary anymore. The hegemony wasn’t benevolent. It simply could do whatever it wanted, to anyone it wanted, at any time of its choosing.

The creation of the social safety net within the U.S. worked similarly. Our economy has always served the interests of the wealth class, but, following the collapse of capitalism in the 1920’s, it became obvious that social order and capitalism itself could not survive if there was no reform. The wealthy could still enjoy their riches, still consolidate and hoard wealth, but the system required intervention if things were to at least function and the country itself would not fall into chaos and, eventually, fascism. Since, the functioning of a social safety net, which has, similar to USAID, been insultingly meager and not nearly enough, was the solution, the way to keep the economy working while the wealthy continued consolidation and the way to keep a semblance of order. It was, once more, a meager tax. And, like the elimination of USAID, the cutting of programs and elimination of assistance is yet another signal that there is no need to pretend anymore.

Despite the endless propaganda from Neoliberals that has been forced on us for years, people do not receive assistance because they’ve done something wrong or because they’re lazy. They live in an unfair system that has become increasingly more unfair with each passing year. The economy has been rigged even further, the wealth class skirting the line of what will wreck the economy and what will increase their profits, the political class, which they thoroughly own, whittling away at the programs that made things continue to function while changing the tax code and legal system to incentivize predation and exploitation. That the ranks of those requiring assistance has grown isn’t the story. The story is that even more of us would be receiving assistance if the political class had not continued to “reform” these programs to keep more and more people from necessary help.

Fascism is theft. Once the consolidation of power and hoarding of resources creates instability the only choices are reform or using state-sponsored violence and oppression to continue the process. Following the Crash of 1929, fascism grew around the world in response to this choice. Now, faced with the growing obviousness that our historic inequality can not function in accordance with liberal democracy, the creation of a surveillance state and a state apparatus of terror ensures the project will continue even if, following the break of the social contract, the people will not have the ability to challenge the status quo. In this arrangement, the cost of continuing to fund increasingly violent law enforcement and expanding ICE, which functions as a secret police, is a better and cheaper investment than ensuring citizens can afford food or the necessities of life.

The set-up for this stage was the looting of social programs and anything the government did to benefit its citizens and the rigged economy that brought people closer and closer to the edge. Now, in order for it to go on uninterrupted and expedited, violence and oppression will ensure that the cessation of these programs and the deterioration of whatever remains of the standard of living will be carried out without disorder, violence, or rebellion.

It is abominable.

What we must do now is to close ranks. Donate to your local food pantries because people will need help. In essence, this is the outsourcing of assistance to communities, and we must meet that need. Donate money, clothes, food, toiletries, and supplies for pets. Now that SNAP recipients will have to cover the shortfall, and not to mention food prices are continuing to rise, other purchases and needs will give way to what is necessary for survival. Never mind, of course, that this will also crater consumer spending and hurt the economy. None of this is thought out and none of this is intended to make anything stronger than the power of the wealthy.

As I mentioned in Part I of my A Crisis of Meaning and Purpose series, it wasn’t just the economic and political ramifications of Neoliberalism that brought us here, it was also the atomization of our lives. We were told not to worry about others. That anyone who needed assistance was a failure and worthy of our contempt. I imagine you can see now, as conditions have worsened, that this system fails all of us, and we all feel closer to the cutting edge. We must take care of one another and through this we will heal that atomization and our loneliness and began to forge the beginnings of a movement that recognizes our interdependence and stands against this fascist threat.

Times are hard and they’re about to get harder. Keep your eye on what matters. If we band together, we will get through this. We’ll link arms and keep the full realization of the fascist project from happening. But this is an integral moment. I know you’re tired and I know you’re scared. This will not be easy, but I promise it will be worth it.