[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. You think this Reader has little to do with human rights? Think again as you read on]. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever. The pattern is so consistent that it is almost funny if it were not so terrifying. Every single time it goes like this: Conservatives panic about socialism or progressives or whatever. They ally with fascists as the ‘lesser evil’. Fascists take power. Fascists immediately purge the conservatives who helped them. Then it is years more of dictatorship.
2. Want to know how many times conservatives successfully ‘controlled’ the fascists they allied with? Zero. Fascists use violence while claiming to be victims. They create chaos that, they tell you, ‘requires’ their authoritarian solution. Then they purge anyone who opposes them. Meanwhile, self-confessed democrats keep insisting on following rules that fascists completely ignore. They file lawsuits; they write editorials; they vote on resolutions. And fascists just laugh and keep consolidating power.
3. We like to say: “We can control him”. It is being said right now, in 2025, by people who apparently never cracked a history book. But we already missed our chance. The window is not closing; it is closed. So let us stop pretending we are in the prevention phase and start talking about what to do when fascists already control the institutions, but have not fully consolidated power yet.
4. We are in unprecedented territory. Can millions simply ignore laws and executive orders they find illegitimate? Don’t protest? Don’t riot? Just comply? What if millions of people simultaneously decide to simply stop paying taxes overwhelming the tax authority making enforcement impossible? Can doctors ignore abortion restrictions, teachers ignore curriculum and reading lists mandates? Make every single act of authoritarian control difficult to enforce? The mere serious threat might be enough to force structural changes.
5. The fascists already won round one. They control the institutions; they have their judges; they have their media ecosystem; they have their army of true believers who will excuse anything. But they do not have the young. And most importantly, they do not have legitimacy in the eyes of the majority. The opposition controls most of the (small) economy, the technology, and the cultural production. All this means we simply need to come up with unprecedented responses.
6. The question is not whether these options are extreme. They are. The question is whether we are ready to admit that normal is already gone. The window to prevent fascism closed. But the opportunity for something else, something unprecedented, might just be opening. The question is: Are we going to be the first generation that finds a new way out, or are we going to be another cautionary tale future historians write about?
7. To complement the above, I am sharing with you here a bold (cheeky?) political dictionary to facilitate the understanding of concepts that in many cases are given very different, and even contradictory, names and definitions. (A bit facetiously, offered by Politika)
- Far right: Term used to describe the experiences of fascism and Nazism. Today, far-right politics includes neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, white supremacy, and other ideologies or organizations that proclaim xenophobic, racist, homophobic, sexist, theocratic, or reactionary positions.
- Extreme (political): Extremism is essentially a political term that refers to activities that do not conform to state norms, are totally intolerant of others, reject democracy as a means of government and problem solving, and equally reject the prevailing social order.
- Communist: A supporter of a society characterized by social ownership of the means of production, which lacks social classes, implying the end of wage labor, because workers will be the owners of the means of production. It is also characterized by the absence or end of the state, an organ serving the interests of capitalists.
- Republic: The Republic is “the nurses who work at night, the cleaning ladies we pass by without ever saying hello, the workers who are replaced by machines, the primary school teachers who buy their students’ notebooks themselves, the farmers who get up at four in the morning to sell their milk at a discount, the workers who go on strike, the bicycle delivery workers in the rain, the garbage collectors to whom no one says ‘Thank you!’, and the invisible, all the invisible ones, those who clean, who carry, who fold, who fall and who are called ‘Nobody’.” (Jean-Luc Mélenchon)
- Republican (not USA): A politician who promotes the Republic.
- Center-left: The center-left opposes the far right, as well as far-left ideologies and positions. The most common center-left ideologies in the West are progressivism, social democracy, and social liberalism. (Synonym: traitors to their own ideals?) The best definition of the ‘Center’ was given by François Mitterrand: “The center, that flabby variety of the right.”
- Democratic socialism: See previous definition
- People: People, from the Latin ‘genus’, a term for people who have no rights. Those who have rights and duties are called citizens (I add: or claim holders…). We have many countries full of people…
- Radicals: Those who seek to act on the root cause of what they want to change. A doctor who removes a tumor is a radical. (Those who seek to obtain more of the same are centrists).
- Trumpism: Followers of the aforementioned (…a fascist?), furious guardian of the petty interests of the US conservatives.
- Former dictator: As a concept, it does not exist for the simple reason that whoever was a dictator will remain so until their death and even beyond.
- Humanist: In a generic sense, any doctrine that affirms the sublime dignity of humanity, the rational and purposeful nature of man, emphasizing his autonomy, freedom, and capacity to transform history and society, is called humanist.
- Government program: List of promises established by the candidate’s advisors. The candidate is not obliged to know their own program, thanks to which they can later reject what was promised, claiming that they did not know about it, or that it was a ‘mistake’.
- Anarchism: Anarchism is a philosophy and political movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion or hierarchy, focusing primarily on the state under Capitalism. Anarchism advocates the replacement of the state with stateless societies and free, voluntary associations.
8. Are we finally going to ask the right questions and act commensurately…?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com