In this inaugural episode of the Fascism Barometer, host Ejeris Dixon welcomes the incredible Ash-lee Woodard to discuss how fascists manipulate emergencies and use elections to increase power.
In this inaugural episode of the Fascism Barometer, the incredible Ash-lee Woodard Henderson joins Ejeris to discuss how fascists manipulate emergencies and use them to make large jumps in power. They discuss Ejeris's Fascist Emergency Playbook and think through how it connects today. Ash-lee discusses how she's used the framework, what emergencies and power grabs could be on the horizon, how fascists use elections as power grabs, and what we can do to stop them.
You can find the tools you need to fight fascism at our Resource Hub.
Connect with Ash-lee Woodard Henderson
Connect with Ejeris Dixon
And when you feel the pressure, share this pod, and visit fascismbarometer.org
Podcast production by Phil Surkis
Intro Music by Meklit Hadero
The Fascism Barometer Podcast is an Ejerie Labs Project. Thank you for joining the movement.
Ejeris Dixon: Hi, friends. Welcome to the Fascism Barometer. I'm Ejeris Dixon, your movement meteorologist. And the barometer is an educational project where we will learn together what fascism is, how to stay safe, and how to increase democracy and liberation for us all.
I started research and education on fascism in 2016. And it was a time when journalists and researchers were debating kind of what was happening with far right movements in the U. S. They [00:01:00] were debating, well, should we call them fascist? Should we call them authoritarian? Are they increasing their power?
And this debate kind of went back and forth, back and forth. And Beyond the debate, I really craved a conversation around what fascism is, how we stop it, and how safe are all of us who are in targeted communities. I will admit that definitions are important. And in that vein, I understand fascism as a far right movement that seeks to take over the government and society as a whole.
Fascists seek to eliminate all people that they consider undesirable, and to also eliminate democratic processes through violence. Fascists often see themselves as victims, wanting to return to this fictitious past where things were better. And the people keeping them from that past are A community that they scapegoat [00:02:00] and they say it's these people that are keeping you down.
It's these people that are preventing you from having a life that is happier, more prosperity, et cetera, et cetera. Fascism also shapeshifts. So, it looks different in different countries and places, and many people think of it as more of a process than a static belief system. However, in the U. S., fascism is a patriarchal, anti immigrant, anti Black, anti queer and trans, and anti communities of color movement that's seeking to eliminate.
So many of us. Now, as a Black queer feminist, I exist at the intersections of communities that fascists see as the enemy. And for that reason, I want a way for us to understand and measure the threat so we know how we stay safe, how we organize, and how we build to what we want under the pressure that they create.[00:03:00]
So that's what we'll do each episode. As barometers measure pressure, we'll work to unpack the pressure that fascism puts on all of us. We'll learn what fascism is from the perspectives of each of our incredible guests. So I'm looking at the fascism barometer today, and its reading is increasing and unstable.
But don't worry. We can navigate the storm together, and I believe that we can come out the other side. Fascism is best fought with massive amounts of people power. And that's what we're building here. And by listening, you're joining the movement.
Welcome to the Fascism Roundup. In this segment, we talk about current trends in fascism in the United States. At the time of this taping, Hurricane Milton has caused massive amounts of damage, power outages, and a rising death toll, [00:04:00] and it's on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which killed over 200 people.
In this episode, we talk about the ways that fascist movements can manipulate emergencies to gain power, including climate emergencies. Well, Trump has spread rumors about the Biden administration withholding FEMA aid to areas with Republican majorities. Trump has also misstated that the FEMA budget was drained and the funds were used for migrant housing instead.
These are both untrue, and in fact, FEMA has responded to Trump's claims with a dedicated fact check page. What's ridiculous is Is that news reports have emerged that in 2018, Trump's staff had to convince him to send wildfire disaster aid to California because he didn't want to send aid to a blue state.
Come on now. In our second trend, we're less than a month away from the presidential election and there's a concern about a reoccurrence in violence. The [00:05:00] World Justice Report recently released its 2024 report, which highlights that nearly half of Republican respondents, 46 percent, said they would not accept election results as legitimate if the other party's candidate won.
In addition, 14 percent said that they would take action to overturn election results. While the researchers aren't sure what take action means, it doesn't sound good. Declining faith in elections and other democratic processes is a hallmark in the rise of authoritarianism and fascism. For our third trend, the organization Pregnancy Justice reported the highest number of pregnancy related prosecutions documented in a single year.
In the 12 months between June 2022 and June 2023, More than 200 people face charges related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, abortion, or birth. And the majority of those charged were You [00:06:00] named it. Low income and many were people of color. Well, this occurred in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v.
Wade. The reduction in bodily autonomy is an indicator of the fascist capture of governmental institutions. In our fourth trend, Trump has long touted mass deportation plans for undocumented migrants, which would impact over 11 million people. According to the Huffington Post, Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump advisor, has spoken of the need to construct camps at the Texas border to house and deport migrants.
And in the last week, Trump, while discussing immigrants, mentioned a lot of them have bad genes. So let me get it clear. We're talking about mass deportation, camps, and bad genes. Fascists love racist genetic pseudoscience to justify [00:07:00] eliminating communities. And when we have that combination, just think about where you've heard that combination before, and how much work we have to do to oppose this.
In our last trend, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Assembly and Association has warned that the brutal repression of the university based protest movement is a profound threat to democratic systems and institutions. It's over a year since the October 7th attack, where over a thousand Israelis were killed.
A genocide against the Palestinian people is ongoing, with the official death toll close to 42, 000 people, and this war is expanding to Lebanon. There's no ceasefire in sight, and the U. S. continues to send funding for weapons. For Basically, there's a lot to protest here, and I'm concerned that we will continue to see the curtailing of a right to protest on campuses and beyond.
The [00:08:00] reduction in the freedom of assembly often occurs as fascist movements grow in power. Y'all, with these trends We have a lot of work to do.
So as we've discussed, barometers measure pressure and today's guest understands the pressure on our communities and holds it with grace, wit, and tenacity. Please welcome Ashley Woodard Henderson. Ash is an Afro Latchin, Black Appalachian woman from the working class, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee.
She was the first Black woman to serve as co executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center in Newmarket, Tennessee. As a member of multiple teams in the Movement for Black Lives and for BL, [00:09:00] Ashley is thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. She's a long time activist who's done work in movements fighting for workers, reproductive justice, for LGBTQ UIA plus folks, for environmental justice, and more.
But also, Ash is one of my favorite collaborators. Ash understands and cares about the fundamentals. That you can't have movements without people, and that we can't have people without speaking to them in plain, everyday language. So that's my hope for today. A talk about fascism that would fit in the family reunion.
Are you up for the challenge, friend? I'm so hyped about this. Thanks for having me, Ejeris. Yes. So I'm starting with asking everyone this question. How would you define fascism? So if I was talking about
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: fascism at the cookout, I would say that it is both a movement. Fascism is a movement of people. Fascism is a way of thinking, like a state of being [00:10:00] where folks who think that they should be the all powerful leaders of a country just made for them at the expense of everyone else concentrating their power not only in ways that sometimes are, include tactics like armed struggle, but also include governance.
Who, at least most of my political learnings, tends to trend on the far right. So, I'm not just talking about the folks that conservatives, that my kinfolk might not like. I'm talking about, like, folks even further to the right than them. I'm not talking about the Ronald Reagans of the world, though some of the things that he did, certainly,
I'm talking about folks like, not to bring up the devil in such a holy space as a, as a family barbecue, but like Netanyahu, right? Like Donald Trump. And frankly, even less about Trump and more about the political, uh, backing and social and economic backing [00:11:00] that makes Trumpism a reality in this country in a 21st century context.
So, to me, academics would use words like autocratic and ultra nationalist and what do I, and all of that is, I, I agree with, but I'd also just, talk to people regularly about what those words actually mean. And then, you know, as a Southerner, I'd be remiss not to mention that, like, it doesn't have to just have an expression on the national level, right?
Like, it's not just about capture of the federal government in the United States, like the presidency or Congress or the administrative aspects of the federal government, like the Department of Justice or the Pentagon. It also can manifest in ways on the state and municipal, the local level. So, as a Southerner, I think when people would tell us like, Oh, fascism isn't here yet.
Don't be hyperbolic. Maybe it's like pre or proto fascism, kind of fascistic. Um, I think we would say that many Black people, Indigenous [00:12:00] people, folks that are from marginalized and targeted communities in the South have actually been the guinea pigs for the fascists. That have been building and executing strategy and tactical plans, basically just like thinking about a goal and then coming up with the ways to then get to the goal on the local and state level in the South for centuries.
And now the fascists of the 21st century in this country are building up to, to take federal power. So yeah, fascism to me is like really super scary, conservative. Folks, like far right folks, who believe that all power should be centralized in the hand of the small number of people, maybe even one person, at the expense of all the rest of us, because they believe that this country actually just belongs to them.
Ejeris Dixon: No, I think it's so important because there's a way that sometimes it becomes this intellectual exercise around. Defining it, what word do we use, but really, like, [00:13:00] fascism, as you're saying, it's a far right mass movement, and then there is the leader.
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: That's right.
Ejeris Dixon: And, it doesn't have to be a consistent experience across people, localities, countries, identities.
Because the idea is that fascists are scapegoating people. Fascists decide and define who the enemy are, and however you fit into their definition, it of the people that are the problem people, right, are the lesser people, then you're going to have a heightened experience of fascism. And one of the reasons that I wanted this conversation, this podcast, this project was because targeted communities, communities of color, queer and trans people, low income people, folks in the South, Black people, we have a different experience of it.
And I wanted a chance to talk about what fascism means to us. What it means for us because I wanted a barometer because I wanted to know how safe are we? [00:14:00] How long are we safe? And how do we make the appropriate choices within that? You work on so many things. And so, so many issues that are really critical, but you've been really going hard around fascism, around authoritarianism, around the far right.
Why does it matter to you and the communities that you're from?
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: It's really quite simple. It is a matter of life and death to me and to the communities that I feel accountable to and come out of. You know, it's one of the things that you've written often is about the communities that tend to be targeted and wedged for the sake of the community.
Consolidation of wealth and power of the fascist right. It tends to be LGBTQ plus people like me. It tends to be black people like me. It tends to be black people who look like me, but we're not born in this country and are undocumented. We, I mean, we see the consistent othering of already marginalized and targeted communities for the sake of the consolidation and [00:15:00] power of the, of the white Christian nationalist right towards their fascist agenda.
And, you know, it's easy to talk about Trump and the threats that he's made about being a dictator on day one, about the threats that he's made to retaliate against his political opposition. You know, we could go all day on Project 2025, that's probably a podcast in and of itself. But folks will often forget about the ways that it's manifested on the local and the state level, right?
Like, where the literal right to protest has been criminalized. where the literal right to vote is being swiped away from people, um, while also being told that they should be blamed for not using the electoral system to so called consolidate their own best interests, right? Um, the very people that are the most, Subjugated by the sort of suppression of the vote are then also blamed for the results of said [00:16:00] vote, whether that's on the local state or federal level.
So lives literally depend on it is why I care about fascism. And, until I know something that is better than democracy in my lived experience, um, not just my prefigurative vision, prefigurative like, the world that I want, and the world that we deserve, that doesn't exist yet, but like if we practiced it, we could, we could call it into being, we could build it, and live it, and practice it, um, but in the right now, the best thing I know to, to fight for is democracy, and, you know, people actually getting to.
collectively govern themselves and make individual choices that are for the common good. And I think that fascism is the absolute threat to that. We are seeing it liven and live in color. This year, it's not the first time either. You know, this has been a centuries old experiment by Neo Nazis and folks that are anti Semitic, by white supremacists, by Christian nationalists, [00:17:00] by really far right actors who have been willing to Use every tactic in the toolbox, every, every way that they could think of to, at the expense of marginalized and targeted communities, consolidate their wealth and power.
So to me, I have been ringing the alarm trying to be a canary in the coal mine about fascism because one, we've lived the experience of what it means for them to be consolidating that power successfully on the local and state level. Because if it happens on the federal level, it's not even just a problem that's going to impact lots and lots of people in the United States, but it's going to, it's going to be even worse for global communities.
And so, yeah, why is a really easy answer. It's because I think lives depend on it, mine included.
Ejeris Dixon: The Fascist Emergency Playbook is something I wrote. as part [00:18:00] of a longer article four years ago. At that time we were in the height of the COVID pandemic and I was looking for a short and clear way to talk about how fascist movements in history have used emergencies as a way to understand how the MAGA movement was and could use these same tactics in creating forms of fascist oppression here.
So the first part of the playbook is that fascists use the emergency to restrict civil liberties, such as movement, protest, freedom of the press, a right to trial, and freedom to gather. For example, in Germany, as the Nazis were growing in power, there was this fire on the Reichstag, which is a building that housed the German parliament.
Hitler, who was chancellor at the time, used that fire to to pass multiple laws that suspended a series of civil liberties in Germany, including [00:19:00] freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, rights to privacy and mail and telephone. While there's a lot that was contested about who caused the fire, communists were definitely blamed.
And it was spun as Nazis as an attack on government that therefore could not allow for the same form of freedoms to citizens as they had before. So number two, fascists use the emergency to spend governmental institutions, consolidate power, reduce institutional checks and balances, and reduce access to elections and other forms of participatory governance.
So sometimes fascists create the emergency, or they enhance it. And in under fascist Italy, Mussolini led tens of thousands of armed fascists to march on Rome, demanding that he be named the prime minister. And this caused a crisis in Rome, [00:20:00] where Italy's king, Victor Emmanuel the Third, In response to this crisis, dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one, in which Mussolini then became both prime minister and interior minister.
And one day gaining power over both the army and the police. So it's definitely something to watch out for when an emergency can say, Oh, we actually are going to reduce access to democratic institutions. The third part of the fascist emergency playbook is that fascists work to promote a sense of fear and individual helplessness.
particularly in relationship to the government, to reduce outcry, and to create a culture where people consent to the power of the fascist state. So there is this Yale professor and researcher on fascism and authoritarianism called Timothy Snyder, who wrote an incredibly powerful book. accessible book [00:21:00] called On Tyranny that kind of outlines a series of points about how fascism and authoritarianism operate.
One of its points says don't obey in advance, and this is a direct quote, much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and start to do it without being asked. So it's actually this third point that says This sense of fear, individual helplessness, this desire to survive, where people start to think, maybe actually we can't oppose this.
Maybe it's not safe to oppose this. This is not that bad. I'll let this slide and maybe we will make it. So it's something to kind of watch out for, particularly as it's connected to the sorts of instability, uncertainty, fear that can happen around actual emergencies. [00:22:00] The fourth point of the fascist emergency playbook is that fascists work to replace democratic institutions with autocratic institutions, using the emergency as a justification.
So autocratic, autocracy, that's just a catch all phrase for non democratic governments. It can be a dictatorship, it can be But what kind of happens is that, Oh, this emergency means we're going to temporarily suspend Parliament or Congress. Or this one leader will be temporarily ruling. Even, it can be a form of martial law that is declared, but never removed.
There was a lot of fear during the Trump administration, where he threatened to use the Insurrection Act, and fear that that was going to happen in connection to either protests, and particularly Black Lives Matter protests. So, it's a thing to keep an eye on, where the emergency is used to [00:23:00] justify. even a further reduction in democratic policies.
And so the last part of the fascist emergency playbook is that fascists create scapegoats for the emergency, such as immigrants, people of color, disabled people, ethnic and religious minorities, queer and trans people, and so many of us, to distract public attention away from the failures of the state and the loss of civil liberties.
So whether it was Jews in Germany and also communists in Germany, fascists often scapegoat communists. And you can see some of that coming out with a lot of Trump's messaging around Comrade Harris.[00:24:00]
So Ash, as a member of the praise team for this framework, I'm wondering how you've used it and if you have any other thoughts you want to share.
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: Yeah, I mean, this article, If I remember right, it came out in Truthout during the height of the first wave of the pandemic. Helped me not feel like I was losing my mind, quite frankly, when many folks on the left were still gaslighting us to say, Oh no, fascism is not happening.
And I was like, Well, gosh, they're scapegoating trans and undocumented folks. They are allowing secretaries of state to track birthing people's movements outside of state borders and banning reproductive health. They aren't expanding Medicaid. And I'm seeing folks literally dying of preventable health [00:25:00] crises.
It's not only because of then the uptick in COVID, but because there's also fewer hospitals in rural communities. There's fewer doctors and nurses because they went to places where they could actually practice medicine. You know, it was just like too many of these things that DeSantis, that Bill Lee, that Greg Abbott, and so many other, uh, people.
Republican governors were doing, and there were so many consequences of the first Trump administration, and, and, and, and certainly things that then afterward would be projected about what they would do, like Project 2025 says, and other things, that even before that, seeing this document was like, these things are happening, y'all, and Ejeris and so many other historians and movement practitioners have been warning us.
to be paying attention to because another huge part of how fascists rise to power is the normalization of their hatred.
Ejeris Dixon: Yes.
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: Right. And so it was very, very clear to me that we needed to [00:26:00] be shouting out that there was this incubation of this barometer that was telling us what time it was on the clock of the fascist movement in the United States and frankly, our movements to prevent it.
So, you know, I think your historic examples internationally are really right, but I want to be super duper clear with folks at the barbecue that this is not a new thing here. Um, and I don't even just mean like the kind of given ways that folks in the South that are Black or Indigenous or working class have been consistently targeted by the far right.
Either to recruit them as pawns and scape, you know, to scapegoat them in a, in a different direction, right? To manipulate them in ways to execute some of the most violent proponents of their plans. Uh, without getting much of the privilege that they would then get, but also, uh, real harm, real harm, especially for, you know, you can't talk about like the fight for Blair Mountain and not talk about the fact that there were far right actors that were attempting to [00:27:00] stop a multiracial people of color led union fight in West Virginia.
Then the state bombed, right? But I'm not even talking about that stuff. I mean, like, legit people going from the United States to have conversations with Adolf Hitler and coming back and attempting to start Nazi parties in the United States. And I'm not talking about, like, some little fringe thing. I'm talking about enough people to fill Madison Square Garden, if you ask me how I know.
It's because you can literally listen to some of the speeches. They They threw a party, essentially, a rally. They got LaGuardia to sign off for them to use it under the auspices that they would not use anti Semitic paraphernalia at their rally. Well, of course they get there and they're in stormtrooper uniforms.
They've got swastika flags. They are. Clearly Nazi apologists and sympathizers that are trying to build under the guise of German [00:28:00] American cultural organizations, an American Nazi party, right? You talked about the scapegoating of communists. You cannot talk about the rise of fascists and not talk about McCarthy, right?
There's so many resources right now, including Ejeric's. articles and this new project, like Rachel Maddow's incredible podcast, Ultra. It is so good. Two seasons and the second season really speaks a lot about what you just mentioned about like, uh, you know, the, the rise of, of the red scare, particularly as it pertained to Joe McCarthy.
And then like the first season is even, even more examples of white nationalists. Christian nationalist, uh, Nazis who attempted to take over the federal government and frankly had support from members of Congress, right? I think that there's a thing that's happening in the U. S. where people are grieving, a thing that they couldn't, they didn't think could happen here, that actually has been [00:29:00] attempted here many, many, many times over the last several hundred years.
There's another great podcast that I would encourage people to listen to called Star Spangled Fascism that talks about some of these things in depth as well. So if you don't believe me because we wrote it and we've been building movement for a few decades, listen to the history of just this country and its fight to protect itself and its semblance, at least semblance, of democracy and a, and a never ending contestation for power between.
Frankly, the sort of more moderate Republicans or maybe back in the day, moderate Democrats, because you know, the parties flipped, um, but more moderate folks than far right conservatives to anarchists and communists and socialists, or people that got accused of it just because they believed in racial justice and economic justice and, and it's all the, all the good things for all the good people, right?
Ejeris Dixon: Yes, yes. No, there's so much in the history of, like, [00:30:00] fascist organizing in the U, in the U. S., like, in history and in the present, which is why we're here, that, that people don't know, and there's also the sense of, like, of not wanting to know. Because it is, it can be scary, it can be frightening, but it's necessary.
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: Yeah.
Ejeris Dixon: I'm curious around the sense of are there emergencies or power grabs that you're concerned about that you're anticipating?
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: I mean, I would be lying if I said anything, but yeah, I'm concerned. I'm concerned, like, five alarm fire concern. I'm concerned, like, what time is it on the clock of the world? is as dark as maybe, not even, it's not as dark.
It could, it certainly could get darker, but it's pretty bleak. Like the impact that, that fascists are, and far right conservatives, white nationalists, Christian nationalists are already having on this country. is just inarguable, [00:31:00] inarguable if you're paying attention to what's happening to the people who suffer the most in this country.
And the two party system puts us in a situation where the people that we're then dependent on aren't just Cori Bush, but it's like corporate Democrats who, with friends like these, we will still be And a world of hurt and trouble, um, and we're building alternatives that are amazing, but not at the scale and scope that is currently contendable with those factions of political ideology in this country.
And Donald Trump didn't waste time in his first year. You know, when he got power, he used it and he brought in people, whether they had government experience or not. who did have a plan for what it would look like to consolidate power in the fascist right. So, let's just talk about the election alone. I'm not even going to talk about like white supremacists and like white nationalists, Christian nationalists violence that is happening regardless of the election.
The Nazis marching in [00:32:00] downtown Nashville. All day, every day, or the white supremacist that blew himself up in Nashville a few years ago that knocked out 9 1 1 call centers in like a tri state area, or, you know, the attacks that we've seen on black led organizations. You know, we don't even have to, or the current attack that we're seeing on Palestinian Muslim and Arab organizations.
Yes. But, you know, we don't even have to get in the weeds with those realities. Let's just talk about the election. The fact that It is very possible that Kamala Harris could win the popular vote, which should lead, outside of the electoral college, should lead to her becoming the first Black woman and South Asian woman to ever serve as a president of this imperial project.
But We've already seen in Georgia, Georgia, which is the reason Joe Biden became president be moved so far to the right in relationship to the interventions [00:33:00] around who gets to vote that even Brian Kemp has been like, Whoa, guys, like, I don't think that's legal. Like, step too far, friends, right? People that, He generally is ideologically in agreement with our choosing to make interventions around how the ballots get counted in Georgia that very well could put them in a situation where they miss the deadline to certify the vote.
Right? Mm hmm. But let's say that's not true. Let's say everything in Georgia was peachy keen. The likelihood that they're going to contest it is high, especially if we're within the margin of error. Right? What does that mean? It just means like, if there's not enough votes to say that it was a blowout and Kamala Harris won, if it's close, then they'll be like, well, it could be off by a vote or two.
We should recount this, right? Just to be sure. And when they do that, it would go to the courts. Well, guess who's captured the courts? The far right has captured the courts. And let's say they're smart enough to be like, we [00:34:00] don't want to mess with this. Y'all should, we should just throw this to the Supreme Court because we don't want to be the ones.
They stole an election, right? And they throw it to the Supreme Court. Well, guess who we find there? A supermajority of far right fascists who have been unapologetic about it. Right? They're not even hiding it. It's not a covert operation. Clarence Thomas, Alito, they have all said very clearly that they are in alignment with the right wing ideology and the right wing movement that is calling for fascism in this time.
So, if we are not expecting that it is possible that the right is going to steal this election. then we're not paying attention. And I'm not a person that believes that the vote is the end all be all to liberation, but I do believe that people will be negatively impacted in a way that causes great and grave suffering.
If we allow Donald Trump to have a second term, um, I'm a person who is [00:35:00] also a materialist. And though I have, you know, I'm sure if you look at my FBI file, it might say otherwise, but I'm, I'm pretty sure that every presidential election I've been old enough to legally vote in, I've voted for the green party.
I voted for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente because I love them. I voted for Rosa Clemente twice, I think I got to vote for Rosa Clemente because she ran two times. Um, I think I did vote for Jill Stein once and if not I probably like wrote Fannie Lou Hamer in or something. But the, the reality is that in the state that I live in, they're not going to win.
And probably Kamala isn't either, just to be real, Vice President Harris probably isn't either. But if I lived in a place like Georgia, or I lived in a place like North Carolina, or I lived in a place like Pennsylvania or Michigan, I would vote like my life and the lives of the people I love depended on it.
Not just what I personally value and deserve and desire, because nobody's running that I actually feel about. 100 percent aligned with. And when we [00:36:00] build that kind of power, I'm going to vote my gut. You know what I mean? I'm going to vote my heart. I'm going to vote in a way that doesn't put me in a struggle between my brain, my heart, and my gut.
But in these, these here conditions that we both inherited and we created, it is doing time. Um, and so for those of us that can stomach the harm reduction work of the intervention that I think must be made in this season. I encourage you to do it. If you can't do that, I encourage you to vote down ballot.
If you can't do that and you believe like an accelerationist strategy or a strategy to prove to the Democrats that we're not beholden to them or whatever is timely right now when fascism is actually the consequence, I would say you damn sure better have a plan to keep me alive and my family. And the families that I feel accountable to, because that's, that's actually what time it is.
Our mutual aid needs to be at a different level if that's the direction that we're going. Our community safety plans and defense needs to be much clearer if that's the direction we're going. And if it's not that, then you better [00:37:00] pray like hell that I actually win. That we actually somehow pull this off and we, Do today what makes tomorrow more possible, both in the living and the abundance and the joy that'll be possible, but also in the resistance that we'll be able to continue to build to fight corporate Democrats and really Democrats altogether.
We shouldn't be in a society where a Cori Bush and some of the Democrats in name only are in the same political party. Right? It just doesn't make sense. Um, and so, it's our job, if we're going to continue to have a state, to do the work that's required to, to change that. Okay, it's not going to be easy to do that under fascism.
Yeah. Ain't no holding a fascist accountable. So, you know, I think it's, I, I feel concerned. And I think the time is now to like actually combat our liberalism and our purity politics and save some
Ejeris Dixon: lives. I mean, one of the things that people don't always talk about or know is electoral fascism, right? And there's this connection between the emergency [00:38:00] playbook and it.
You create a crisis that creates a level of concern in people. You do this level of scapegoating and it actually fuels the movement that elects the fascist into power. Hitler was elected. Mussolini was elected. Many people talk about Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, as a fascist or, you know, whatever the debate is around proto fascist, fascist, but Viktor Orban elected, um, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil elected.
So there is this piece where elections are a part of the picture, whether they are manipulated, whether there is tons of misinformation, whether there's a ton of scapegoating, that is a part of the context. And then when they're in power, that, The goal of most fascists is to either make sure that they are continuously elected, or that there are no more elections.
Like, one of the two is the pathway. So there is this piece around what we're all going to do, and not everyone needs to have the same [00:39:00] path. Like, you can be on team safety plan, you can be on team mutual aid, you can be doing voter registration, you could be doing all three. But you gotta be doing something.
You gotta be doing something, because team ignoring fascism. Like, you can ignore it, but it's going to come to you, especially, especially people like us. I mean, and just
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: to prove that, like, double down on your point, Trump has also already said, like, if you get this one right, you'll never have to vote again.
Yes. He literally said that. He's literally telling you, yes, he's literally telling us, yes, what he intends to do. And so, you know, we can pretend that our power analysis of the left is that we will all survive it or that the work won't really shift. I mean, I'm hearing so many movement practitioners talk about their, their plans for 2025.
Like it's a given that. will be in the conditions that we're in right now. And that is just, our people deserve better than that from us if we are to call ourselves leaders. And so I agree with you, like it's a multi tactical [00:40:00] movement, ecosystem wide strategy to defeat fascism. Um, it's going to require a populism that many of us have not gotten to see yet exercised in this country, uh, in alignment with our politics and values.
But, you know, the thing that gives me solace is that. I think the people are on our side here. Um, you know, the vast majority of our folks don't vote at all. But that doesn't mean that they don't care about the issues that we care about. We've seen it. We've seen people say that they agree that it's messed up, that the government is making decisions about what people can and cannot do with their bodies, who they can and cannot love, how and where and if they can get access to medications that keep them alive, if they can get living wage jobs with a pension and a union, if they, can, you know, literally survive on this planet because of the manmade climate crisis that we're surviving.
If they can move, literally be in different places while also being forced to move by the economic conditions that those very same elected [00:41:00] officials are controlling. So it's just, we're seeing the playbook live and in living color. And if you feel like people are telling you otherwise, that's probably true.
There's lots of misinformation. There's lots of Disinformation. There's lots of people of goodwill that are getting manipulated by both disinformation and misinformation. And a lot of really good sounding folks that are killing us by getting, you know, a, a slow death of a thousand bad sound bites Mm.
That aren't actually rooted in, in a praxis or, or a theory at all, really, just like a feeling. And so now is the time not to, to question yourself. Now is the time to be like, what am I responsible for? To stop fascism from literally becoming the name of the game in the federal government here. That's what time it is, and so I feel very, very concerned.
But it's not here yet, and we actually still have five Tuesdays. to say no, no,
Ejeris Dixon: not gonna happen here. Um, this conversation has been [00:42:00] incredible and I'm so grateful to you, Ash. So as we've talked about, we have electoral fascism on the horizon. There's a deep concern about what form of crisis will happen around the election, around like the counting of the votes or the manipulation of the vote, and then what types of power grabs and also forms of political violence could happen.
Closing out Ash. What's your playbook? What are you telling the people to do?
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: I'm telling people to do a lot. And just to be real, crisis is here, right? I'm not saying that because fascism isn't happening on the federal level yet that people aren't in crisis, right? I know many of us are mourning literally right now because Missouri killed an innocent man, uh, for a crime that he very obviously did not commit.
And even if he had, the state should not be deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. We are grieving and mourning because two black women are dead. Like, because of preventable interventions, or lack thereof, of the healthcare industrial [00:43:00] complex that has its hands tied, good people, doctors and nurses that would have treated people and kept them alive, but couldn't because they were afraid they would go to jail because of abortion bans.
We are already suffering. I get that. But we will suffer on a whole completely different level under a fascist and authoritarian government. I know it because we're seeing it. Part of the reason people are suffering is because of the far right shift in the what they call the Overton window of what is possible in this country electorally and via policy.
So my playbook is to channel that grief, channel that rage, not to pretend like it isn't happening, but also to do everything in my power to prevent it. Part of that is grieving and being honest about those feelings. It's also about finding joy, and I find joy in winning and beating back fascism, right? I find joy in building community power.
I find joy in building worker power. I find joy [00:44:00] in doing what I can to be in right relationship with this planet. The land that sustains me and has made me who I am, right? I find joy in principled struggle because it makes me smarter, even when I have to admit that I was wrong about a thing. I find joy in building community power.
Being in difference with people that I love about what tactics, what choices they're going to make, and they are a choice, right? There is no neutrality here. You are either choosing to do something that is going to stop fascism and build our power, or you're choosing to do something that's going to allow for fascism and totally disrupt our power.
And so I find joy in the many different tactics that I can say yes to, I can choose yes to, that increase our power, decentralize the power of fascists, and corporate Democrats. That does look like supporting mutual aid efforts. That does look like thinking about safety right now. That does look like participating in voting.
That does look like hitting the streets and protesting and being ungovernable when I need to be. That does look like talking to [00:45:00] my neighbors and base building. That does look like thinking about policies and writing laws ourselves for ourselves, right? It does look like what my elders, your elders, and ancestors always said that.
By any means necessary. And what I know they meant, the subtext, the completion of that sentence, is that that means by all the means.
Ejeris Dixon: Yes.
Ash-lee Woodard Henderson: Building power by all the means. I find joy in that. So, Our playbook is to, to not let the fascist playbook be something that we're not actively talking about. Right?
That people should know about it, but not being evangelist for the fascist right. Like having actually an alternative that people can get down with is, is I think the, the role that we have to be playing right now. We have to be talking about it. We have to be normalizing what. What we actually do agree on.
And that's the common good. Yes. And letting people see their power to build it themselves. I think that's, that's the work right
Ejeris Dixon: now. Well, Ash, I think you just gave people at least, [00:46:00] at least seven or eight tasks that they could do right now to stop fascism and to kind of increase liberatory governance and increase all of our safety.
I am deeply grateful for you. I know that you could be so many places and I'm grateful for your walking this path of like how we're educating people about fascism and how we oppose it and how we build into joyful and safe and liberated communities. Thank you, love. Love you so much.
We have had so much good information in today's episode. And one question that I'm leaving with you as we think about how to apply today's lessons and conversation is for you to think about what emergencies impact you and to outline how could fascists use the emergency playbook in ways that it affects you, your loved ones, your communities.[00:47:00]
I'd love to hear from you on what you're thinking about. You can let us know on Instagram, you can let us know on Twitter. On Instagram we're at the Fascism Barometer, on Twitter we're at Fascism Info, and you can also contact us on the website fascismbarometer. org. So yeah, thank you.
So we've reached the end of today's episode, but I feel the pressure lighting up a bit. And I hope you do too. And did you know? You help fight fascism by listening to the barometer and sharing it with folks. If you want to know more about the fascist emergency playbook, electoral fascism, and some ways to take action, please check out our website.
We appreciate you joining us, and we're hard at work monitoring the fascism barometer. And together we can keep fascism at bay. Watch the skies. Keep monitoring the pressure. And [00:48:00] subscribe to this feed as more episodes are coming your way. And when you share the show with a friend, you got it. You are joining the fight against fascism.
Our producer is Phil Circus. Our theme is by Maclete Hedero. This podcast is supported by Ejeri Labs and I am your movement meteorologist, Ejeri Stixson. See you next time on the Fascism [00:49:00] Barometer.