In July 2019, President Donald Trump tweeted that the late Representative Elijah Cummings’ (D-MD) majority-Black district, which included the city of Baltimore, was “a disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess.” The insult made headlines, as Trump surely knew it would. As chair of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings had been
Thank you so much, Ruth (Professor Ben-Ghiat). Your “big picture” view on our national and global movements as such a respected and informed scholar on authoritarianism, etc. is so needed and appreciated! Many of us activists and policy advocates who are resisters and earth protectors have had to persevere since the Great Recession and our first major social justice, racial justice and climate action movements since 2011 through so many ongoing and accelerating losses that became even worse than imagined these last few years under Trump and through even more racial violence and violent extremist threats to multi-movement-supported candidates and Democrats in our U.S. states; more national and global weather crises; more losses of wildlife and nature worldwide; the global pandemic made purposely worse by authoritarians; continued elite criminal impunity and harm to resisters and vulnerable people by corrupted government officials and their emboldened followers; outrageous voter suppression in so many states; the Capitol insurrection, etc. Between all our actions of continued resistance, we and our fellow citizens and residents have truly been suffering immensely and also too often dying painfully and unnecessarily or mourning in disbelief and horror along with so many others worldwide.
It’s been agonizing, heartbreaking, bewildering and disheartening. Yet, our hard-fought wins for a pro-democracy U.S. President & a groundbreaking new VP through the election victory of the Joe Biden & Kamala Harris ticket with crucial wins in Georgia to flip the U.S. Senate as volunteers with many great organizations all feel like they were achieved just in the nick of time to renew us. Seeing our international alliances begin anew along with sanctions on Russia and major, new bills in Congress moving (including to Expand the Supreme Court today) along with the new Stimulus Relief Bill passing — with other more important bills on the way — add to the much-needed relief and the sense of our major public reckoning continuing to be delivered.
While we work to overcome obstructionists in Congress far more to secure more major executive actions and to keep pushing for rapid progress through more public organizing, multilateral government coalitions, and the UN to protect so many threatened human rights and also fulfill the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, your Lucid publication with its timely information along with messages of hope and solidarity have helped remind me that our victories are actually also WITHIN all of our continued actions of resistance and perseverance themselves, not just in the beneficial results that we have managed to achieve so far in order to protect everything we love and all that we naturally and properly feel a responsibility for as ethical human beings.
I will look forward to your new resource of Lucid with its ongoing frequency to help prepare and carry many of us through the inevitable and large-scale ups and downs ahead that will likely be magnificent and democracy-affirming in some ways, but also very disruptive and grief-striking in others. So glad that you are making this commitment of time and attention to continue to be closely-available to us because I have appreciated your insights over the last year so much since I started following you on Twitter — including hearing your points and interviews on your very important book “Strongmen” — and began looking up your writings in other publications. Too many have simply wanted to normalize and gaslight us on all that we are going through, but not you and other experts on authoritarianism who have helped us see and navigate the dangers we are in and that we have been feeling all along with increasing worry and a sense of justifiable terror.
Bodies are crucial to resistance in many different forms. I'm reminded of the AIDS activists who gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1992 to protest government neglect at the height of the epidemic. Protesters held hands around the White House and sprinkled the ashes of friends and loved ones on the White House lawn. (For reference: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-aids-victims-on-the-white-house-lawn-matter). A few years later, activists held an open-casket funeral for Steve Michael, founder of ACT UP/Washington D.C., in front of the White House. These actions rendered visible the link between government silence and the overwhelming suffering that it caused. To this day, ACT UP is masterful at deploying the aesthetics of anger to generate a political response. Love this post on resistance, Ruth!
I appreciate this perspective as an antidote or interruption to pessimism in the face a totalizing insistence that "it is what it is" (the autocrats version of reality) as you said in the recent gaslit podcast.
There was tremendous push back of Trump on social media by those of us who saw the danger of Trump's proto-fascism and sociopathy. It is unfortunate that 74 million Americans embraced this authoritarian as the answer to our problems. There is such allure of fascism in its infancy, when nations are in trouble. His voters are still in denial that Trump is dangerous, even after being given evidence that shows that he is. In Social Psychology, this is known as the Backfire Effect.
Fantastic account of the power of protest and civil disobedience, @Ruth! Protesting with the Women’s March in DC in 2017, the day after the inauguration, really gave me the sensation of taking ground back with feet on the ground, as we asserted ourselves. That was on my 60th birthday and the beginning of my own journey of protest-
Now I’m 64, and since 2017 have been arrested 5 times—with hundreds and hundreds of others in DC - fighting for healthcare, DACA, against the tax scam-and more.
This is such an important ball to keep eyes on - thanks again for directing our gaze toward it!
Thank you so much, Ruth (Professor Ben-Ghiat). Your “big picture” view on our national and global movements as such a respected and informed scholar on authoritarianism, etc. is so needed and appreciated! Many of us activists and policy advocates who are resisters and earth protectors have had to persevere since the Great Recession and our first major social justice, racial justice and climate action movements since 2011 through so many ongoing and accelerating losses that became even worse than imagined these last few years under Trump and through even more racial violence and violent extremist threats to multi-movement-supported candidates and Democrats in our U.S. states; more national and global weather crises; more losses of wildlife and nature worldwide; the global pandemic made purposely worse by authoritarians; continued elite criminal impunity and harm to resisters and vulnerable people by corrupted government officials and their emboldened followers; outrageous voter suppression in so many states; the Capitol insurrection, etc. Between all our actions of continued resistance, we and our fellow citizens and residents have truly been suffering immensely and also too often dying painfully and unnecessarily or mourning in disbelief and horror along with so many others worldwide.
It’s been agonizing, heartbreaking, bewildering and disheartening. Yet, our hard-fought wins for a pro-democracy U.S. President & a groundbreaking new VP through the election victory of the Joe Biden & Kamala Harris ticket with crucial wins in Georgia to flip the U.S. Senate as volunteers with many great organizations all feel like they were achieved just in the nick of time to renew us. Seeing our international alliances begin anew along with sanctions on Russia and major, new bills in Congress moving (including to Expand the Supreme Court today) along with the new Stimulus Relief Bill passing — with other more important bills on the way — add to the much-needed relief and the sense of our major public reckoning continuing to be delivered.
While we work to overcome obstructionists in Congress far more to secure more major executive actions and to keep pushing for rapid progress through more public organizing, multilateral government coalitions, and the UN to protect so many threatened human rights and also fulfill the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, your Lucid publication with its timely information along with messages of hope and solidarity have helped remind me that our victories are actually also WITHIN all of our continued actions of resistance and perseverance themselves, not just in the beneficial results that we have managed to achieve so far in order to protect everything we love and all that we naturally and properly feel a responsibility for as ethical human beings.
I will look forward to your new resource of Lucid with its ongoing frequency to help prepare and carry many of us through the inevitable and large-scale ups and downs ahead that will likely be magnificent and democracy-affirming in some ways, but also very disruptive and grief-striking in others. So glad that you are making this commitment of time and attention to continue to be closely-available to us because I have appreciated your insights over the last year so much since I started following you on Twitter — including hearing your points and interviews on your very important book “Strongmen” — and began looking up your writings in other publications. Too many have simply wanted to normalize and gaslight us on all that we are going through, but not you and other experts on authoritarianism who have helped us see and navigate the dangers we are in and that we have been feeling all along with increasing worry and a sense of justifiable terror.
Thank you again.
Bodies are crucial to resistance in many different forms. I'm reminded of the AIDS activists who gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1992 to protest government neglect at the height of the epidemic. Protesters held hands around the White House and sprinkled the ashes of friends and loved ones on the White House lawn. (For reference: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-aids-victims-on-the-white-house-lawn-matter). A few years later, activists held an open-casket funeral for Steve Michael, founder of ACT UP/Washington D.C., in front of the White House. These actions rendered visible the link between government silence and the overwhelming suffering that it caused. To this day, ACT UP is masterful at deploying the aesthetics of anger to generate a political response. Love this post on resistance, Ruth!
Great summation of a necessarily productive year in protest. Totally agree as long as social justice remain in lower case...
I appreciate this perspective as an antidote or interruption to pessimism in the face a totalizing insistence that "it is what it is" (the autocrats version of reality) as you said in the recent gaslit podcast.
There was tremendous push back of Trump on social media by those of us who saw the danger of Trump's proto-fascism and sociopathy. It is unfortunate that 74 million Americans embraced this authoritarian as the answer to our problems. There is such allure of fascism in its infancy, when nations are in trouble. His voters are still in denial that Trump is dangerous, even after being given evidence that shows that he is. In Social Psychology, this is known as the Backfire Effect.
Fantastic account of the power of protest and civil disobedience, @Ruth! Protesting with the Women’s March in DC in 2017, the day after the inauguration, really gave me the sensation of taking ground back with feet on the ground, as we asserted ourselves. That was on my 60th birthday and the beginning of my own journey of protest-
Now I’m 64, and since 2017 have been arrested 5 times—with hundreds and hundreds of others in DC - fighting for healthcare, DACA, against the tax scam-and more.
This is such an important ball to keep eyes on - thanks again for directing our gaze toward it!