Nina-Bytes: California Über Alles

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Fascist Is as Fascist Does

Stand back, gentle reader, because I have an awkward and unprofessional confession to make to you here: I’m beginning to genuinely hate Gavin Newsom with every fiber of my being. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’m starting to hate Gavin almost as much as Newsom clearly hates unhoused people in the state he presides over. At this point, and after more than a month of watching Newsom gleefully target some of the most vulnerable people in our society simply because they’re unhoused, it is actually difficult for me to adequately describe what a loathsome reactionary piece of human dogshit the California Governor is. And yet that monstrous bastard is apparently working full time to force me to keep coming up with new and inventive ways to express my disdain for this little pig-fucking shit-weasel. In today’s example of why fascism and fascist repression is not restricted to Republicans in American political life, the Democrat leader and potential presidential nominee of the future is now threatening to cut funding to California counties that refuse to enact the dystopian homeless encampment sweep policies he recently legalized in the state by executive order.

 

Newsom Threatens to Defund California Counties That Don’t Clear Homeless Encampments

“Buoyed by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court’s recent City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson ruling—which was welcomed by Newsom and other Democratic leaders like San Francisco Mayor London Breed who filed amicus briefs in the case—the governor issued an executive order last month directing officials to clear out homeless encampments, which have proliferated amid rampant economic inequality and stratospheric housing prices in the nation’s most populous state.

After taking part in a Thursday sweep of an encampment in Mission Hills in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, Newsom declared: “I want to see results… If we don’t see demonstrable results, I’ll start to redirect money.”

At this point I’m not rightly sure what it will take to make people realize that Gavin Newsom is objectively a fascist shitbag who doesn’t view unhoused people as human beings worthy of dignity, respect, or even life for that matter. We’re talking about a man who actively championed and cheered on a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS ruling that criminalized the existence of homeless people; folks victimized, through no real fault of their own, by a larger housing crisis caused by capitalist predation and hoarding. Furthermore, this same man then used that fascist ruling to enact an executive order authorizing cruel and inhumane homeless encampment sweeps that don’t solve any problems and just destroy the lives of some of the most marginalized people in our society; that sick son of a bitch is even directly participating in the homeless sweeps himself and turning that participation into photo-ops for a broader (yes, fascist) political campaign. Not satisfied with merely enabling and encouraging fascism however, Newsom is now using his control of the California state budget to literally force communities to comply with his dystopian and inhumane policies targeting unhoused people, or risk losing state funding for their refusal to do so.

Please keep in mind that this is all happening in California, a state with a Democratic Party supermajority where politicians, including Gavin Newsom, frequently decry the GOP’s descent into overt (instead of covert) fascist ideology and policy positions. And for what purpose is Newsom targeting the unhoused in his state? It’s certainly not about solving the housing crisis in California. Both the entire history of state anti-homeless repression, and literally every single credible study of the housing crisis indicates that homeless encampment sweeps and criminalizing the unhoused does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of homelessness in our society whatsoever; in fact, all these draconian policies rooted in fascist ideology about worthy and unworthy human beings in our communities do is immiserate and even kill unhoused people. Newsom is actively enacting cruelty and carceral punishment, even forcing fascist policy on California communities, simply for some photo-ops and so bougie pricks can feel that “something is being done” to “clean up” their streets – as if unhoused people are simply human refuse to be “swept” away by murderpigs with garbage trucks.

The inarguable truth here is that the only state-level solution for these problems is to provide direct financial support for unhoused people, pass laws that prevent the hoarding of housing by rich people and corporate entities, and to build more affordable housing in California; indeed these measures are the only real solution to the housing crisis literally anywhere else in the Pig Empire for that matter. It also wouldn’t hurt to address the predations of capitalist society that are working overtime to reduce so many labor class people to poverty for the profit of an already rich ruling class that really doesn’t need any more money, either. But those solutions are unpopular with rich people hoarding houses;, they cost money, and they require some degree of human decency and compassion, so Newsom would rather just “sweep” unhoused people under the rug while directing state funds to the carceral machine he’s using to crush marginalized homeless people and destroy their lives. Why? I don’t know. Quite frankly you’d have to ask Governor Newsom why he prefers the cruelest, most inhumane, and least effective option here but what I can tell you is that fascists are people who enact fascist policies to enforce unequal hierarchies that benefit the powerful few, at the cost of the disempowered many. If it walks like a duck, it probably is a duck, and that means it’s not unfair at all to call Governor Newsom a fucking fascist.

 

 

– Nina Illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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