Right

“Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.”
— Marianne Williamson

The big 1-2-5.

That’s right, 125 years ago, 1894, Labor Day was marked on mental calendars of the working class for the first time. Class consciousness has been beaten out of us since then however, so if you’re unfamiliar with the international struggle, this is a refresh.

Labor 411: Union Workers Told To Attend Trump Rally Or Lose Pay
Labor 411: NLRB Investigating CEO Who Tweeted “I will fire you on the spot” To Employees If They Tried To Unionize
Liberation School: The Marxist understanding of the roots of LGBTQ oppression

Fascism doesn’t take kindly to freedom. A controllable society, one built on hierarchies, the one we live in, has been keeping its fascist face behind a mask. The capitalist class, and their war of division and hate, has been called out before by Marianne Williamson, an author, activist, public speaker, and Democratic candidate for President.

Bread & Roses

You’ll see it in many places. It comes from a rich socialist history. Bread for the fruits of our labor and roses for the peace to enjoy it. Today, we have neither.

“A New Jersey town was forced to cancel its Labor Day parade Monday after multiple small explosive devices were found near the route where Gov. Phil Murphy was set to march, officials said.”
New York Daily News, Sept. 2, 2019.

“The images of children crying after their parents were arrested in a massive immigration raid in Mississippi revived a longstanding complaint: Unauthorized workers are jailed or deported, while the managers and business owners who profit from their labor often go unprosecuted.”
AP, Aug. 14, 2019.

“There’s a very common lie… the lies they scare in you… the lies they use to control you…”
— Camp Cope, Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steal Beams

Not Without Struggle

Biden Is Betting on Unions. They Might Bet on Someone Else.

“This Labor Day weekend, thousands of Muslim Americans descended on Houston, Texas, for the annual three-day Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention. This year’s ISNACON featured many well-known figures, such as Trevor Noah, who shared his story of growing up in South Africa and joked about the ups and downs of “The Daily Show.”

Noah wasn’t the only draw. Well-known Muslim Americans, including Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, spoke to large crowds. The most popular person, however, was a 77-year-old Jewish man born and bred in Brooklyn. I’m speaking of 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, of course. While Noah, Tlaib and Sarsour attracted the attention of many, Sanders packed the venue that held nearly 7,000 — receiving several standing ovations.”
Dean Obeillah, CNN | Opinion

Earlier this year, Democratic candidate for President, Senator, and activist, Bernie Sanders announced his inspiration to see the progress of FDR’s New Deal continued today. After a rocky and violent three years of an unapologetic President — of a country — landlord, mob Don, con artist, white nationalist, misogynist, and fascist.

Labor is “the last line of defense,” Sanders said as he accepted his first major labor union endorsement. Following several other endorsements this one is mentionable for its size and name recognition. Especially today.

Mother Jones

“Bankruptcy exposes the economic vulnerability and insecurity of middle class women.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Women’s labor has a noticeable history, not just in the forming of revolutions in France or Russia, but in the successful organizing of labor. From the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, to Lucy Parsons, let’s embrace women 100 years after winning the vote and 125 years to today: Labor Day.

That’s why women have been leading this movement from airlines to schools to factories. Women have been speaking up. So when you celebrate Labor Day every day, celebrate with unionized women close to you.

“If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout Freedom for the working class!”
— Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

#ACAB

“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s about time the working class won that war.”
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Following law as a tool to protect property, and estate, the mercantilism of earlier capitalism is revived in the class warfare of today. The police enforce the law; the law of property becomes protected by force. Prisons become the place where those unwilling to labor, or those who threaten property, if they must remain alive, are kept. Especially following slavery, sheriffs became the tool for enforcing property laws, while the slave-catching role falls onto the average officer.

This is a part of the struggle. A part of the class struggle. Increasingly militant and militarized, this spells class war. Why haven’t unions brought roses to this front in the war for bread?

Progress

There’s a lot of ground to cover for making up for labor rights and frankly other basic and human rights that have been shorted out by corporate corruption of government and policy. For trans folx in the United States we see this, for migrants this is most prevalent to mind right now, but there is still quite a lot blocking progress for everyone equally under the law which historically has affected Black communities across the country not only first, but worst.

Not to say there isn’t progress, there is. It’s just hard-fought. Slowly we’ll see a major change in labor in the United States, and I don’t mean automation.

Worker power is on the rise. Different industries have had more successes unionizing or organizing, from those in media, education, retail such as Amazon, Walmart, and fast food, the new and booming marijuana industry. Part of that power is coming from a younger generation, and also one which is less familiar with unions due to their nationwide victimhood in the past hundred years.

“So much of what we take for granted each and every day – the 40-hour workweek, weekends off, a minimum wage – is the result of the blood, sweat, tears, and in some cases even lives of those who fought to give American workers a better life.

If labor unions weren’t so uniquely effective, the coordinated, heavily-financed campaign to decimate them wouldn’t exist. Unfortunately, the campaign is working – union membership is less than half of what it was 40 years ago. Recent decisions from the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, such as Janus v. AFSCME last year, threaten to worsen this trend.

It’s no surprise that income inequality has increased dramatically over the same period.

With labor battles still taking place all over our nation – such as the #RedforEd movement to earn higher wages for teachers across the country – I hope you’ll take a moment this Labor Day to reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.”
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)

Americans Are Starting to Love Unions Again

Even progressive political campaigns for Sanders, Warren, Booker, and Castro, are unionizing. It’s not only good for the working class that workers the country over unionize, but great for the capitalist class. If collectives negotiate wins for the working class, there’s no reason for capitalists, in and out of government, to be concerned of an imminent general strike.

Ironically, a nationwide Walmart strike would likely be just as fatal to the capitalist engine against the working poor and that’s a single corporation. For instance, earlier strikes over Walmart’s gun sales have recently proved fruitful, maybe even pressuring one of the country’s other largest retailers to act as well, Kroger. Dick’s Sporting Goods also followed suit.

Sanders is ahead of the curve on this issue. He’s been speaking out for unions before he ever reached Congress, so it comes as no surprise that he has a powerful Workplace Democracy Plan. Or as Vox put it, Unions for All, and a campaign that Labor 411 called “a rapid action tool to support striking workers.”

His plans to empower the press, the working class, and every student and healthcare professional are revolutionary. Yet, regardless of support from workers’-revolution-minded organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, he’s the candidate everyone takes seriously when he says “Not Me. Us.“

“In Times of Tragedy, Labor Steps Up”

With seldom talk of white nationalism as it relates to Neo-Nazis, a fascist movement, and its relation to its namesake, the epitome of fascists, it can become easy for those that don’t identify as any of the above to still become indoctrinated in the authoritarian political philosophy. We jump in there.

Pokemon Feebas leads in the above image of the trans flag over-layed with the transgender symbol and “You can change.” overlaying that. Milotic, Feebas’s evolution, closes the image.

First, for journalists reading this:

Coverage of right-wing violence invariably addresses the outlets that aid young men in their radicalization, whether it is neo-Nazi news and discussion groups like Stormfront or simply message board chatter on 8chan, 4chan, Gab, and Reddit.
[YouTube’s] policies are not lax by accident, Vice’s Tess Owen pointed out at the event. “If they crack down on white nationalists, they’d have to crack down on Republican lawmakers, because white nationalists are talking like Republicans, and Republican lawmakers are talking like white nationalists,” she said. “We might hesitate to call a politician a racist because of the implications, and that’s a challenge for journalists as well.”
Sam Thielman, Columbia Journalism Review; May 9, 2019.

For more information on what sites are distinctly radicalizing, please read the above article by Columbia Journalism Review completely. Not only will you find those sites to avoid, but there’s also information regarding the propagators of these fascist ideologies. It’s an informative read, especially when read beside my own article discussing the spread of propaganda.

“… he didn’t necessarily agree with [the bigot] but found him “interesting and controversial.”

It’s a common occurrence on the internet, but the above quote came from a director of a journalism program that was found to be very supportive of anti-Semitic views. More than 70 years since the end of World War II, the period most commonly associated with fascism, this should be a red flag. In fact, these views, are almost literally a red flag “because white nationalists are talking like Republicans, and Republican lawmakers are talking like white nationalists,” according to reporters with the Columbia Journalism Review.

White supremacists, nationalists, separatists, the alt-right, Neo-Nazis, whatever you call them, fascists are out in force. Violent force.

Research widely publicized by the New York Times, suggests that not only are those promoting violence hanging out with each other in similar Internet circles, but they are also referencing each other. They’re making jokes and manifestos citing their jokes, their hate, and their past violence. These groups ultimately goad members along their version of the continuum of force, against each other and especially against those seen as the out-group.

By acting as gatekeepers, Internet trolls and those in the in-groups of the Internet not only falsely inflate an appearance of prestige and authority but reproduce the social ladder for which many seek refuge on the Internet from. This becomes most evident on platforms that offer ratings or reward systems such as Reactions on Facebook, or Upvotes on Reddit or Imgur. These tools would otherwise be useful to those feeling abandoned by their communities or wholly alone in a world full of varying opinions and fandoms. And perhaps that’s the poison.

Does everyone want a world of their own? That quintessential group of friends like some 90’s rerun? Perhaps, but it seems a lot more like Mean Girls.

“You can’t sit with us.”

Back to authoritarianism. That ultimate control has two faces: the meme group gatekeepers and Trump’s vicious anti-immigrant messaging and policies. Falling in line with either of these faces, in any way, defers some decision-making power to these fascists.

Everyone knows total power corrupts totally, right? Well, since when does an authoritarian, a fascist, cede any of that power? Never. Don’t give yours away either.

So while you’re seeking a sense of community online, there isn’t a replacement for the real thing. Unfortunately, the alt-right, for one example, also realizes this, and that’s how you end up with events such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia which left one progressive protester, Heather Heyer, dead. It’s one example of how memes and actual fascists were able to co-opt others into their mission of hate.

The Plastics

“The Plastics” in this context aren’t those that would actually commit murder and violence. Here, they are those that simply crib the “humor” and the rhetoric in order to feel at home. Those people that Trump calls his base.

The Plastics are people looking for a shelter for what they believe is their identity. This is populist nationalism when the identity is a broad stroking brush. According to American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, “[o]ther contemporary leaders who could be put in this [populist nationalism] category are Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.”

Basically, every world leader Trump has invited to the White House has been a fascist. They compliment his brand of populist nationalism, Trumpism, as an equal adjacent. Fukuyama, in his book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, describes this brand succinctly “as patriots who seek to protect traditional national identity, an identity that is often explicitly connected to race, ethnicity, or religion.”

Blissfully unaware of the harm in their identity, the Plastics are lead down the dark path of Right-wing identity politics where violent extremism grows. All the while these views are harvested by racists and bigots in power, in the United States and around the world.

The Plastics become the free for soldiers and cudgel of oppressors. First menacingly, can then verbally, and then violently all the way to murder.

The worst part? The Plastics, for the most part, no not what they do. However, it’s a slippery slope if there ever was one.

While it may not be obvious how these views effect others, such as women and marginalized communities, ignorance isn’t always present. Sometimes it’s feigned.

Some, unfortunately, and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, get their sick jollies from the thought that they have so much — authoritarian — control over another person’s life. Even if that control is only pushing someone to suicide. That is the ultimate danger in the bullying and threats from extremists besides the aforementioned mass shootings.

Dead End

The Plastics aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they won’t go anywhere at all. Even if they become President of the United States, that’s where the roller coaster ends for them.

If you’re distancing yourself from those “friends,” seeking guidance after being attacked by trolls, or just sick of the hate, here’s a pro tip:

Block them and move on. Reach out to your real-life community for support. And remember what I mentioned above, they aren’t going anywhere with their lives, and anyone willing to put the work into themselves will.

Empower yourself. They may be teachers, policemen, and doctors, but you’re valuable in whatever way you choose to be. Fascism’s days are numbered and you’re not alone.

Anyone can go from protecting their identity to pressing for a fascist movement. However, please learn more in this post regarding how to be more critical of the communities you’re already engaged in. Echo chambers are one thing, but the FOX News’s that throw fuel on these dumpster fires are not far from reach for any media network. A post about the history of fascism in America is forthcoming.

Important note:

If you’re still an asshole in the above ways, and don’t want to actively change that, you’re probably stupid. A fascist. Or both!

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brienna Parsons

Twitch.TV/BriezyBee

Every Day is Labor Day