Praxis of Evil: Words As Weapons

NinaIllingworth November 7, 2018November 5, 2022 a new mainfesto for the end of the world, activism, American fascism, Amerikan Musik, anti-imperialism, anticapitalism, Bigotry, capitalism vs the climate, climate catastrophe, climate disaster, Corporatism, Essays, Evil, FA1, fascism, Fascism Ascendant in the USA, global deregulated capitalism, Imperialism, Jair Bolsonaro, Media, Naomi Klein, NATO, neoliberalism, Observations from Outside the Death Star, oligarchy, OODS, Que Se Vayan Todos, rhetoric, ST2, Steve Bannon, TADMZ, Tales from the American DMZ, Theory, they must all go, Trump, Trump Administration, war, western Europe, Western fascism

Editor’s Note: I have spent many nights over the past five months ruminating on just how I would explain my absence once I returned to this website, but now that the moment is here, I find myself at a loss for words that seem worth communicating. The short and simple truth is that for both personal reasons and because of the sheer terrifying nature of my work, I fell into a very dark, depressing hole and have only just now been able to come up for air. Furthermore, if I’m being honest I must admit that this is not the essay I sat down to write; these thoughts and ideas have been bubbling on the surface of my brain for several months now – so long that the earnest, eternal optimist inside my head finally forced them out on to paper.

As always please be reminded that the links provided in the article below are in fact part of the work; it is not necessary for you to click on all of them to enjoy this piece, but your comprehension will undoubtedly improve if you at least read the headlines behind the hotlinks.

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Evil, as we have been oft-reminded by “very respectable” politicians, journalists and academics, is not a word to be used lightly. It is, they will rightfully tell you, a subjective, judgmental and inflammatory term with quasi-religious overtones that has been used to justify terrifying violence and oppression of the eternal “other” in our society. To those who walk in the rarefied air of the Washington neoliberal consensus and its myriad shades of grey ideology, a black and white word like “evil” represents a divisive appeal to simplistic, superstitious hayseeds who can only perceive reality through the lens of a titanic struggle between good and bad, us and them, our team and the enemy.

Of course, those “reasonable” centrist and “conservative” thought-leaders will rarely mention the fact that this same dichotomic worldview drives virtually every aspect of the Pig Empire’s foreign policy or indeed, the bought and paid for two-party system of American electoral politics; two “pragmatic” realities that billionaires, bagmen and boot-lickers on both sides of the American establishment wholeheartedly embrace when it suits their purpose. Nor will the best and brightest of our mainstream American intelligentsia be keen to acknowledge that refusing to repudiate evil and malfeasance has helped create an environment of zero accountability for powerful sociopaths in our society. After all, only in a world where wickedness struts in broad daylight as the voice of reason can a war criminal become Secretary of Defense, an acknowledged torturer become the head of the CIA and a self-admitted sexual abuser become President; all in no less than the most powerful nation on earth.

Despite these failings, there is certainly some truth to the idea that one shouldn’t hurl demonizing invective about willy-nilly as a synonym for “those who disagree with my politics.” When former Westchester County District Attorney turned screeching Fox News propagandist Jeanine Pirro refers to Democrats as “demon rats” on national television, is it really all that surprising that a fanatical supporter of America’s swine emperor would attempt to terrorize more than a dozen prominent figures in liberal politics with packages containing pipe bombs; or that Trump’s slavish, increasingly abhorrent defenders in right wing media would declare the whole terrible saga a politically motivated “false flag” event? Can any rational, nonpartisan observer deny the obvious connection between an anti-migrant, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic conspiracy theory (presented as fact by national conservative media, former US military leaders and even the White House) and the horrifying terrorist attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue by a neo-nazi murderer who publicly professed to be motivated by that very same conspiracy right before he started shooting? In an environment where hateful “political rhetoric” can have a growing body count, it is perhaps a wise idea to choose one’s words with extreme care.

Naming the Beast

There are however, times when it is not only appropriate but indeed necessary to call evil out for what it is; times of right wing extremist terror, times of shocking street violence, times when the powers that be not only refuse to stand up to organized reactionary tyranny but instead appear to be openly enabling it. What is evil but greed, cruelty, a desire for dominance and the worship of power, each willfully and meticulously taken to its final extreme? Would anyone but a fascist argue that it’s not fair and appropriate to call fascism evil? Can anyone watch the Pig Empire’s own ongoing descent into overt fascism and fail to identify “evil” translated into public policy? Is there a more accurate word for a political party that demonizes its opposition as a dangerous mob while simultaneously running neo-nazis for public office and encouraging its supporters to vote for a child molester? How else would you describe a white nationalist infested administration holding thousands of children in tent city concentration camps on behalf of private prison complex campaign donors? By what other term should we know a misogynist, racist, authoritarian President who happily emboldens right wing paramilitary gangs, seeks to revive the terror of nuclear holocaust and seems disturbingly comfortable with the possibility of presiding over the end of the world? After all, if imposing nuclear tyranny over a boiling planet in the service of obscenely wealthy western fascists is not on its very face evil, then the word itself has no right to exist.

As history has demonstrated time and time again, it is in wretched days such as these when calling out and combating evil truly becomes a moral imperative. One of the few ways a society can resist the influence of a fascist movement that has a firm grip on the levers of power is to ostracize, repudiate and shame those who would collaborate with evil for personal or political gain. Yet in the past, as well as our present, it is at these precise moments when our elitist, conformist and cowardly “liberal” establishment often fails to join the fight against reactionary tyranny, even rhetorically. When even highly-respected figures on the political left are busy blaming the wrong people for the rise of American fascism, there would appear to be little profit in waiting for the cavalry to ride to our rescue. So it is then that these duties fall to us, the common observers who stand in the line of fire as revanchism envelops much of the so-called western world, because open collaboration and waiting for all the nazis to go away isn’t an option when you’re poor and marginalized in the Pig Empire. When our captains of industry seek to work with crypto-fascists for profit, when the sycophant lackeys who populate our media and democratic institutions cower behind “both sides” mythology or calls for civility and bipartisan compromise, naming the beast as it stalks among us becomes a matter of vital importance – to both ourselves and our rapidly deteriorating “liberal democratic” society.

After two and a half years of writing about the chaos, cruelty and corruption of this administration, I have no problem writing that I sincerely believe Donald Trump, the global fascist movement he has helped inspire and the rich revanchists who put him into power represent a very real evil in our society; perhaps indeed, the greatest evil of our time. In light of the available evidence that these people mean to destroy the world, I believe that identifying and resisting this evil by whatever nonviolent means each of us is able, is in fact an inescapable survival imperative. That is not hyperbole, those are simply the facts.

The Enemy Within

Yet, even in the act of “naming the devil” without, I find myself confronted with several uncomfortable realities that strike far closer to home. The simple truth is that healthy societies do not elect fascists and we as a people cannot return to a golden past that never existed. The mere act of speaking truth to power is not enough to halt our collective slide into oblivion and even if Trump were to choke on a Big Mac tomorrow, the nation that put him in command of the whole Pig Empire will remain. America, the birthplace and main source of power for this global brand of fascism, is still a country founded on a forgotten genocide, fighting a Civil War that has never really ended. We are still, all of us, the children of Mammon and drunk on power, wealth and the paranoia of a Cold War that altered the very dynamic of what it means to be human, we have exported the cult of deregulated capitalism across the whole of earth, often at bayonet point. Lost in endless rivers of money, blood and oil is the objective reality that America itself is the “Evil Empire” we’ve been taught to fear. We are locusts, we are violence, we are death incarnate.

The ingredients that brought forth an unhinged fascist like Trump are still all around us; colonialism still exists, slavery still exists, we still murder poor people in slow motion for pennies on the dollar. These crimes against our fellow man and the very planet we inhabit have continued unabated throughout the rise of modern “western civilization” and indeed, the only reason we’re starting to notice them now is because the slaughter and exploitation have finally returned home. This is bigger than the Trump administration, it’s bigger than a nightmare, totalitarian agenda supported by wealthy elites who wish to control and survive the coming cataclysm; we have roughly twelve years to prevent billions of deaths, to defeat fascism, to save life as we know it on this planet and that goal stands in direct opposition to humanity’s one, truly global religion – capitalism.

You cannot effectively fight the enemy without, until you have at least recognized the enemy within; we must first topple the tiny fascist inside ourselves and repudiate a leadership caste that has encouraged us to give that monster free reign. You cannot fight fascism with imperialism. You cannot fight colonialism with neo-feudalism. You cannot fight evil with lesser-evilism. You don’t resist a would-be dictator by voting in his racist flunkies, affirming his unlimited right to wage war and praising him for bombing our “enemies.” Like a heroin junkie who has been sick for so long they no longer remember what it means to be well, it may be impossible for many of us to comprehend the degree of change we must undertake. Poisoned by hate, driven to frenzy by fear and enthralled at the cursed alter of the almighty dollar, the act of reprogramming ourselves to value cooperation over competition, community over capital and sustainable life over profitable death, will not be easy or painless. Yet do this we must, because if we are to resist fascism, if we are to fight evil, if we are to leave behind a world our children can survive in, it will be necessary for us to radically alter our perceptions, assumptions and relationships with the world around us.

And if those changes are too radical for our esteemed neoliberal elites, and I assure you that they will be, then they too must go. If sharing is too bitter of a pill to swallow for the imperialist opposition to reactionary “populism” in the West, they too must go. If cooperation and mutual aid are too much to endure for an aristocratic, “center-left” political structure that abandoned the fight against fascism in favor of a McCarthyist conspiracy theory, they too, must go. If sustainability and the end of artificially imposed scarcity for profit represent a bridge too far for the “liberal” Masters of the Universe, for the obscenely rich maggots who pretend to be our allies against the right while waging an undeclared, but objectively genocidal class war against the poor, then they too must go. For far too long, we have allowed ourselves to be led by those who would collaborate with fascism while punching left, because they have offered us a more subtle, more diverse rebranding of our foundational capitalist-war machine-death cult. If our leaders, on either side of the political spectrum, continue to choose fascism, to choose evil, to chose death, then we, the billions of people who will suffer for their folly, must choose new leaders.

This is not a moment to wallow in despair, but rather a time for hope, resolve and audacity. In a society where up is down, wrong is right and greed is good, confronting a stark naked emperor and opposing his court of disingenuous sycophants is a terrifying act of dissent, but it is also liberating and empowering. Although the road before us lies broken and unknowable, we can be secure in the knowledge that one way, or another, something has got to give. Time is short, but the ability to save ourselves and change our society for the better remains firmly within our collective grasp. Truly, it is the end of the world as we know it – and I choose life.