[image description: Collage of streets, crosswalks, trees, and flowers at night in background. Text reads “Making The Most Of What We’ve Got @abolish_time”]

Making The Most Of What We’ve Got

Estelle Ellison
11 min readJul 19, 2024

--

No leaders are coming to save americans from themselves. Those of us who make up a small inconsolable minority in the midst of dire circumstances are determined to survive fascism and bring about its end. We exist in stark contrast with the majority of americans who’ve become experts at silencing and rejecting any and all criticism that would come between them and the life of comfort they feel entitled to at the expense of the planet. The millions of lives lost within and outside of america’s alarmingly militarized borders do nothing to deter liberals and their encyclopedic knowledge of co-opted leftist language from believing they are beyond reproach.

Everyone who chastised us for correctly stating elections would not save us from a rising tide of fascism are in freefall now as the farce of capitalist elections preventing oppressive violence has been laid bare. In their privileged despair, they cannot help but further expose the class disparity between their own beliefs and self-assured “progressivism” as they loudly proclaim it is time to move out of the country as if the fascism we face here is not part of a global trend of fascist violence. Without any self-awareness they panic, acting as if working-class people forced to hold down public-facing jobs are not bearing the brunt of eugenicist normalcy. Most workers are unable to leave the country, and far less likely to receive the care needed to sustain the perpetual covid infections america has made a prerequisite for living here.

The rest of us understand that these mental gymnastics will not keep us alive and they won’t get us free. The capacity we can spare aside from surviving capitalism during a fascist period goes to collective efforts by other marginalized folks engaging in fights that need fighting. In our efforts to stop oppressive violence, we’re encountering other obstacles and hurdles, many of which are placed down by opportunists using our language out of context. Liberals hide their class privileges as they engage in a reductive commodified notion of mutual aid, carefully managing to never answer for their actions when they impede our liberatory work, leaving us to navigate even more precarity.

Apart from the spheres of our work that liberals have had some success infiltrating and disrupting, we have the familiar national leftist organizations, each with lineages tracing back to the 70s, 60s, or as far back as the 1910s. Given the gravity of the fascist threats we face today, it is clear that the vanguardist vision of a cadre-led mass movement is nowhere to be found. Every moment there is an upswell of americans who lose the stomach for business as usual, there are orgs prepared to recruit youth and newly radicalized people from class-privileged backgrounds.

Those of us who’ve been combating reactionary developments for years, if not, decades, recognize exactly who is being replaced in these recruitment drives. For many such organizations, the “need for a mass movement” is merely a perfect cover for the fact that they are simply trying to recuperate the heavy loss of membership they’ve sustained due to their own failings. Their inaccessibility, ableism, anti-survivorship, anti-Blackness, and their being unanswerable to the people who’ve been harmed within their orgs or kettled and arrested during their parades disguised as protests.

Following a recent wave of student protests, many have taken note of the fact that a significant number of youth rejected these organizations that have typically primarily recruited from their age demographic for multiple generations. This year, when students went along with the leadership of these organizations, we saw student occupations end with symbolic-at-best agreements made with institutions that continue to have inextricable ties to the state, the funding class, and the forces of imperialism.

As we continue struggling to survive this fascist period, brainstorming how best we can combat what’s coming so that we can end fascism in our lifetimes, we easily find a mountain of work that needs doing. Taking stock of our collective capacity now, we find folks suffering from long-covid, many of whom either brought covid to or got covid from protests led by people who insisted these demonstrations remain unmasked in the name of “bravery.” Many americans who believe themselves to be radicals have entirely bought into eugenicist normalcy, engaging in cyclical reinfections and cyclically reinfecting others in exchange for all of the perks of settlers living within the imperial core. All of this is taking place during the biggest fascist period in the past few decades and it leaves us with admittedly demoralizing odds of successfully ending fascism for good.

So much work awaits us, and surviving worsening precarity continues to get harder and harder. More and more folks are becoming unhoused as the state intensifies its criminalization of homeless folks. In the midst of this ongoing pandemic, the demands of living within capitalism today take a far higher toll on our bodies than most of us have ever lived through and this means we are all facing an unprecedented risk of becoming unhoused in large part due to these mass cyclical reinfections. Yet, most americans remain callously apathetic to the grim truths of who exactly is left to suffer most from collapsing “public” health while also facing the worst from fascist mobilizations. Pacifists and liberals alike speak up about these matters only to say they’d like to be addressed more politely before they’ll even consider whether they should even be thinking about mitigating this ongoing pandemic.

Multiple forms of apologism have been on the rise, be it trying to rationalize the fascistic nature of the state, excusing abuse in the name of pacifism, or trying to convince people covid denialism is okay. Following liberal abolitionism’s moment in the limelight in 2020, intracommunal rifts and conflicts continue to be felt, as the consequences of pacifist approaches to abuse have completely forsaken left survivors and those who engage in anti-abuse actions. And still, we have bad actors consistently working hard to create the latest disguise for anti-survivorship. Whatever form these reactionary trends take, they all clearly demonstrate americans’ willingness to place their comfort over the lives of those of us who are the primary targets of fascism’s oppressive arsenal of violence.

Mask blocs working to combat the consequences of privatized healthcare and the deliberate sabotage of public health resources fight an uphill battle as the sheer scale of eugenicist normalcy seems to overwhelm the collective capacity of small crews. Internally, many of these same formations are having to grapple with their own class disparities between members, anti-Blackness, and other reactionary dynamics fascism has made us more susceptible to. Immunocompromised folks determined to survive this ongoing pandemic navigate the callousness of eugenicist normalcy while also bearing witness to friends, comrades, and loved ones abandoning them for the privileges of settler-colonialism. Immunocompromised folks are also left to mourn their own as covid continues to take people from us, as americans insist on playing make believe that we live in a post-covid world that isn’t fascist just yet.

On a fundamental level, this fascist historical period is a test of our ability to resist its creeping influence. Alongside fascism’s military enforcement of capitalism, imperialism, and the sum total of its reactionary values, it also aims to incentivize compromise, spreading the narrative that only those who deserve to survive do survive. Americans look at their immediate surroundings and a so-called public health system that has failed to justify its own existence and they come to the conclusion that they are the lucky ones. Liberals, whether they like it or not, have become foot soldiers for today’s fascism by insisting that they bear no responsibility for the millions dead and the millions more whose lives have become acutely precarious at the worst possible time.

In anticipation of the next major flashpoint in our struggle to end fascism in our lifetimes, it is safe to assume that it will not resemble past parades nor genuine uprisings we’ve seen in recent years. This is taking into account how many currents of leftism in america have failed to deliver on their own objectives, in many cases working to hasten the arrival of the fascism staring us down today. If not through explicit compromise with the state, many leftists have developed and stubbornly stand by dubious ideological justifications for their own reactionary tendencies. Endless attempts to rationalize ableism, authoritarianism, anti-Blackness, and anti-survivorship have all contributed to fascism possessing uncontested influence over everyday life in the imperial core. Just as liberals must accept that their legacy in this historical period is that of inaction, apologism, and outright capitulation to fascism, many leftist organizations must concede that their actions have also helped accomplish this result.

This is how the stage has been set and it is for these reasons that those of us who remain determined not to become our oppressors find ourselves largely atomized and isolated from broader community. Those of us who let our deeds speak for our politics are increasingly operating in decentralized ways. It has become more rare for us to find others we’d consider our comrades, but it has also become much easier for us to recognize those of us who are fighting the same fight when we do happen to cross paths.

“Join an org, any org” has never been this questionable a slogan than it is now, and this has major implications for recruitment efforts we’ve become accustomed to seeing during major flashpoints in struggle. Vanguardist and hierarchical organizations may look at this moment as evidence they are the only radicals left and that this is why their numbers have shrunk. However; the truth is that many of us have become too radical to settle for their organizational disciplines when so much more work can be done forming our own crews and blocs, assembling to do what needs doing rather than parrot party lines and get signs in media photographs. They had plenty of opportunities to show us what good their centralized resources could do for us in the margins struggling to get free and they squandered them all.

Perhaps counterintuitively, this unfortunate development has also brought us closer to erasing the distinction between care and militancy. Combatting fascism in this historical context necessarily includes participating in care work and guarding against ableism that has become a defining characteristic of today’s eugenicist normalcy. Given that it’s especially easy to succumb to reactionary influences right now without practicing vigilant discernment, those of us who insist on mitigating the spread of an ongoing pandemic stand out in our daily lives and not just during public protests. Because we’ve been abandoned by would-be comrades, we stand out so much that we have become the newest target of the state’s perpetual militarization efforts. The fact that opposition to these policies is a minority position is evidence that liberals complaining about being reminded of this ongoing pandemic all take no issue with the increased likelihood of masked folks facing fines and imprisonment.

Grappling with the socio-economic forces that make one-way masking even less effective at workplaces that were all but too eager to drop covid precautions requires us to have compassion and clarity about who is most at risk. While mask blocs and covid information networks are appreciably impactful spheres of work, they alone cannot upend the capitalist institutions that have enshrined cyclical reinfections in everyday life and made accessing healthcare far more difficult. This upcoming flashpoint will likely ask the most of folks operating within smaller formations such as these and other blocs engaging in a diversity of tactics.

Capitalism has created a global climate that grows more severe and lethal every year with people outside of the imperial core sustaining the heaviest and most brutal losses from increasingly catastrophic weather events. While democratic centralism and other hierarchical methods of organizing have not come to our aid, it is important that our decentralized autonomous efforts remain clear on our shared enemies and guard against the many reactionary behaviors fascism seeks to normalize. The task of bringing about the end of capitalism, abolishing scarcity, and defeating fascism for good falls to us as we navigate the numerous disadvantages we hoped to fight with more co-conspirators and comrades by our side.

Despite having so many years and opportunities to get clear on our opposition to reactionary behaviors and oppressive power dynamics, the bulk of the left in america insisted on purging everyone who refused to pretend tolerating these pillars of fascism would get us free. Just in time for a presidential election, hoarded centralized resources have been reserved for whoever the funding class deems respectable and pliable enough to fly under the state’s radar. Instead of bolstering our collective capacity for militant care and insurrectionary survival by identifying and rejecting co-optation and expertly disguised apologism in all its forms, most chose instead to squander chances to erode the foundations of this fascist state and end a pandemic we’re now expected to face indefinitely.

For these reasons, those of us who rejected these reactionary compromises are just now finding people and formations with whom we share affinity. Many of us are for the first time learning what it means to organize with compassion and consideration for the sheer volume of threats those of us in the margins have to deal with on a daily basis. The truth of how unsustainable it is to struggle against genocides at home and abroad while embracing covid-denialism has become clearer than ever. This increased clarity is evident when we look at how many people are only recently accepting that they should not have stopped masking and are choosing to mask again during a pandemic that should have been ended years ago.

In this historical context, we are getting our first glimpse at what it means to organize with urgency without thinking urgency means accepting inaccessibility and capitulation to fascism. This is the first time in many years that so many people have come to accept that organizing a little bit more slowly is worth ensuring that we will still be here and ready to fight for as long as we need to continue fighting.

While this development is encouraging given that we’ve gone through so many years of stubborn insistence on preserving the same vices and compromises with the systems we claim to want to end, it is unfortunate that so many are coming to these realizations now, just before another major flashpoint in our struggle to end oppression for good. It is very likely that our response to what’s on the horizon will not exactly resemble the last, nor will it exactly resemble what classic communist and anarchist texts imagined this upcoming moment would look like. But we will respond, regardless of how robust or unequipped we may be to surmount the obstacles to our survival and freedom coming our way.

And yet, given the reality of this situation, there remains a cruel insistence that it is each of our individual responsibility to commit to an org, group, or formation. This sentiment is entirely backward. It’s on those of us who have found people we can vouch for and trust in the face of great systemic violence to make clear that we can be trusted, and that we make good on our goals of providing care that take into consideration the unique combinations of oppressive violence we each face. It is on us to prove that care and imperiling the state go hand in hand, with direct actions that embrace a level of accessibility and planned political aftercare appropriate for the nature of their work. We do not want to hastily convince everyone to drop their guard and rush to embrace the nearest formation they can find. This is because intensifying scarcity and fascist retaliatory violence will simply entrap those of us in the margins within groups that make compromises with those same oppressive forces.

During a historical period of severe repression and increasingly lethal normalcy, we do not wish for all of us fighting the same fight to make peace with abusive “comrades,” community neglect, classism, eugenics, anti-Blackness, and settler violence. We want us to be absolutely certain we have somewhere to go and people to be with who do not replicate the violences fascism would have us submit to.

If neoliberal fascism’s eugenicist normalcy would have us become unavoidably complicit in the death and disablement of billions, we will create our own normalcy wherein we relate to, care for, and work with each other so that we are undeniably responsible for each other’s survival and our collective victory over a fascism that threatens to consume the planet whole.

--

--

Estelle Ellison

Time dissuades us from getting free... Black Trans Disabled Writer (She/They)