Deborah Johnstone

Just saw a documentary: Hannah Arendt: “Facing Tyranny” [PBS] Arendt observes how Hitler’s rhetoric emboldened followers, normalizing prejudice and granting license for open hatred—a pattern echoed in how authoritarian leaders like Trump (and his sycophants) empower their base.

Bill Clinton was actually impeached - for a lousy blow job. Trump has literally destroyed democratic institutions supporting Americans in a few weeks and no one is blinking an eye.

bsky.app/profile/brac...

Sarah McBride denied the use of a bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity on Capitol Hill. Republicans are so worried about trans people using the “right” restroom but have no compunction about a convicted felon and pedophile roaming the White house.

To be a Fool in Desperate Times The Revolution is Coming

To be a Fool in Desperate Times
open.substack.com/pub/deborahj...

2025:
Union Square, New York City February 17. There were thousands of people but no media coverage. Protesters kept arriving ...The Resistance marched downtown on Broadway and turned West on 9th Street. Crowd was peaceful but clearly resisting the fascist regime in Washington.

February 15, 2025 After World War II, the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—agreed that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructur...

February 15, 2025
open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Fear is not just a byproduct; it is the fuel that keeps Totalitarian regimes in power
Political theorist Hannah Arendt warned us of this long ago:
“Gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts…”

Codifying a fascist regime has proved easier than we imagined. Trump has successfully criminalized non-compliance through fear. Parallels to the Nazis are clear:
deborahjohnstone.com/2025/01/26/w...

bsky.app/profile/niki... Two of my favourite writers/poets

OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

From Mary Oliver

Seedy, reliable life... in this thankless morass of “Enshittification” [a phrase coined by the transcendent, partially Canadian, Cory Doctorow].

My latest at Marrow Magazine -
"Depredation and Transcendence"
marrowmagazine.com/depredation-...

The New Fascist Right Has Arrived “The next wave of fascism will come not with cattle cars and camps. It will come with a friendly face.” – Bertram Gross, “Friendly Fascism” I came to New York in the e…

The New Fascist Right Has Arrived
I wrote this in November 2016. Here we are again.

...Fascism is not designed to be obvious. It's a carefully woven tapestry of clandestine signals comprised of hatred, deceit and fear...
Read the entire article:
tinyurl.com/yc5c4m9a