Author: Everett Acorn
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The Proud Boys of 2021 and the Potempa Murder of 1932
The following article was originally published in June 2022 on the eve of the January 6th congressional hearings. In the United States, the events of 6 January 2021 are fresh again, with live hearings scheduled to be broadcast on several networks later today. Earlier this week, the Department of Justice brought sedition charges against Enrique…
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Trump is a Logical Consequence
Authoritarianism Goes Hand-in-hand with Late-stage Capitalism “Something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be…
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There Will be an Incident, and that Incident Will Likely be a Massacre
The Insurrection Act and the Dilemma of Protest While authoritarian regimes can take office both through elections or insurrections, in history there have often been additional incidents that authoritarians use to further catalyze and solidify power. Back when Trump was president the first time around, many talked about a “Reichstag Moment” – an event that…
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On the Street: US Paramilitaries after a Harris Victory
“They’ve been pretty docile this year” -Jared Holt, senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, October 2024 “They might pop up somewhere else, but I have to say: militias in the last year or so have been relatively inactive compared to earlier eras.” -Heidi Beirich, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, October 2024…
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Should Fascism Come to Power, it Will Ride Over Your Skulls
Lessons from the colossal failure of the 1930s German Left “…to the leading Nazis it suggested something more sinister: the Communists were preparing in secret for a nationwide uprising. The fears of civil war that had plagued German politics in late 1932 and early 1933 did not vanish overnight… The more they waited, the more…
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Extremism, violence, and the false equivalency between white hate groups and antifascists
The word “extremism,” much like the terms “common-sense gun control” or “assault weapon,” is a term thrown around quite causally these days, with a lot of assumptions about its meaning. I spent some time online looking for definitions of “extremism” and at first didn’t have much luck; Merriam Webster defined extremism as: “the quality or…
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Mutual Aid: A Service by Any Other Name
“Mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit.” – Wikipedia “Mutual aid… is [to embrace] the idea that we can cooperatively reason with one another, and thereby instantiate our common inclination to build a society that benefits all without instituting any sort of hierarchy that functions to enforce such…
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The headlights shine and a hypnotized deer looks back
Mainstream US culture’s ability to see fascism stops at the 2024 elections “This is it, comrades[…] after today, everything changes.” So warned a prescient friend about the looming escalation of events by the far right on August 11th 2017, the day before Heather Heyer was killed by fascists at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. …
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The Proud Boys of 2021 and the Potempa Murder of 1932
In the United States, the events of 6 January 2021 are fresh again, with live hearings scheduled to be broadcast on several networks later today. Earlier this week, the Department of Justice brought sedition charges against Enrique Tarrio and 4 other Proud Boys, which, along with charges brought against Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers,…
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Fragile Beings in Winter
In our work with the homeless, we see people daily who carry their entire worldly belongings in backpacks and plastic bags. There are perils during the warmer months for sure–infection, injury, overdose, and accidents by traffic or even by drowning; but the dangers of living rough are brought into fine focus in winter, when the…