The real monster is the white supremacy we found along the way

When I was a kid in the early 80s, I read a ton of books. And a fair proportion of those books were about the rise of the Nazis. I remember being horrified at what had happened and being relieved that I didn’t have to ever deal with anything like that. Not in America.

But like the monster in a horror movie, unless you eliminate a harmful idea, it rises again in a scarier form to menace you once more. And America, unfortunately, was founded by white supremacists. And also run by white supremacists up until the Civil War. Haha, just kidding. Both sides were racist.

The Northerners were slightly less racist than their Southern neighbors, and their solution to the end of chattel slavery (well, most chattel slavery) was basically more slavery, but with a longer leash. They passed a ton of racist, restrictive laws that we call The Black Codes.

The Black Codes were a patchwork of laws that kept Black Americans oppressed and in poverty while the Jim Crow South took shape. White supremacy didn't end. It simply adapted with the times.

What we see from the MAGA fascists is just oppression, painted in bright colors and sold as a new innovation with the showmanship that only America could provide.

And now instead of the kid reading about the distant past (or, you know, distant to a ten year old), I'm a man facing the collapse of systems that I had assumed were untouchable.

The thing about fascism that lets it succeed is that people are afraid to speak up. And the people that do speak up are punished, harshly. That fear is what enables our real-life horror villain to keep murdering its victims with impunity, one newly-legal process at a time.

It's wrong. It has to stop. And it won't stop unless we the people demand it. One radicalized individual at a time.