Tag: authoritarianism

We Should All Be Worried About The State Of Feminist Infrastructure

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

“The initial Trumpean protests were largely unfocused and self-satisfied. They had limited structure and deficient leaders–if they possessed leaders at all. The Women’s March crumbled away. Black Lives Matter devolved. Serious organizers sat at the helm of the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and material change was won. The upsurges of the 2010s and 2020, when George Floyd was killed, amounted to spectacle and little else. Some laws did change on the criminal justice front, and progressive prosecutors were swept into office, but there was little thought given to the long term, to building durable organizations that would outlive the boom times. Movements cannot rise on froth alone.” – Ross Barkan, “Facism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics”

In these waning days of 2025, there is much to be worried about. I am not advocating unmitigated despair: There is also much to be joyous about in the confines of our own lives, if we are willing to look for those reasons to smile, to love, to be (and we should!). But if we’re talking about the republic of the United States, the democracy we are at least on paper supposed to be, we are not doing too well. An authoritarian is president; Congress has all but abdicated its authority; the judiciary, stacked by that same authoritarian in his first term, seems to consider itself along for the ride.

I am a lifelong feminist, and a feminist organizer along with being a writer, duh. And so, I take an explicitly feminist lens. When I lay the facts side by side that feminist infrastructure is weak, and that we are in this authoritarian moment, I grow very concerned.

Because women’s movements are one of the chief tools we have to fight against autocracy. The reason why repressive governments crack down on women and sexual minorities first is not just culture wars, it’s a mechanism of control. For organized women are very powerful.

Do you know it might be a crime to look up and watch Pussy Riot videos in Russia? This is not some random thing. Dictators hate feminist women. They are terrified of us.

Recently, a friend who I respect very much, who participates in organized feminist work, and writes, but what is unique about her is her willingness to take radical direct action whether or not people support her, this friend posted on social media about the weakness of the feminist movement. She is right to be concerned. I had replied at the time that I saw it, too. That we are weaker today than we were ten years ago, when there were people marching in the streets, when there was a cultural feminist moment. We are in the midst of a cultural backlash with trad wives and super skinny heroin chic all back. Hell, we can’t even teach women’s studies in a number of the universities anymore (and of course these attacks are quadrupled on DEI, and women of color–Black women in particular have been disproportionately fired from the federal workforce by unqualified Elon Musk backpack dudes).

But also, we are in a time where are organizations have dwindled greatly. Root causes include a variety of issues, including but not limited to infighting, lack of sustained investment, and the false mirage of so-called ‘leaderless organizing’ (which is never as egalitarian as it professes to be, since when there is no leader, the unspoken power that is wicked powerful takes the wheel, but everyone denies it at the same time). What’s more, we now have a president who wants to decimate the primary sector that supports structured feminist organizing, which is 501(c)3s.

To be very clear, I don’t think a non-profit or a set of bylaws is what makes a movement, but I also think we unabashedly need structures. I want women in particular to get serious about tending to and building our feminist structures. If we’re going to fight, we need to methodically build capacity.

Some are doing this work.

But as of right now, it’s not enough to break through. Given the overwhelming power of organized women in fighting back against autocracy, that makes the low-infrastructure state of feminism everyone’s problem.

In Praise Of The Elderly White Hippies

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Following the Trump takeover of Washington, D.C., my regular morning runs have become an inventory of the missing unhoused people, gone from their usual places.

She’s gone. She was by the Washington Monument.

He’s gone. He sat in a wheelchair, by the Metro.

Gone, gone, gone. So many gone. Have they been shipped to El Salvador? Sudan? Louisiana? They have committed no crime, no crime but homelessness. Poverty. Mental illness. In no true reading of a law book are these actually crimes. They simply have nowhere else to go.

Until the troops came. God, the troops are so young. I see them on my runs, early in the morning. I study their faces. Do they know what this country was, not so long ago? A democracy. An imperfect democracy where you could work on making it more of a democracy.

So this is the context in which White House hatelord Stephen Miller sneered at pro-democracy protesters shouting down his press conference as “elderly hippies,” “stupid white hippies,” who “all need to go home and take a nap because they’re over 90 years old.”

My dear elderly white hippies, please keep it going. We love you so much. Take all the naps you need, friends. We all should. This will be a long fight and we’re best served by people willing to take care of themselves and fight to the end.

And if you think calling us names is going to make us go away? You’re wrong.

What Does It Mean To Be A Writer In The Trump Era?

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

I’ve been thinking on what it means to be a writer in the Trump era.

It means nothing good.

The latest salvo in the assault on the press out of the dictator-elect looks like a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and others for publishing a poll that suggested Kamala Harris would win the state on election day (she didn’t).

This comes on the heels of a $15 million settlement payment from ABC to Donald Trump following a defamation lawsuit he filed regarding George Stephanopoulos’ characterization of E. Jean Carroll v. Trump, a civil suit in which Trump was found liable for sexual abuse.

To wind it back, so what does this mean for writers?

The next phase of Trumpism hasn’t even taken the reins yet, and it’s clear that speech is out for punishment.

As a hobby I study authoritarian governments and their effects on societies, and I think an instructive example is to look toward Russia, the country that gave literature Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol … and then,

nothing.

There is nothing like a vindictive, hostile state demanding obedience to kill the publication of creativity.

I’ve also been thinking about the disturbing trend of book bans, and the edict in Project 2025 that school librarians be registered as sex offenders if the censors deem they have been providing sexually explicit material.

And I’ve also been thinking about trends within the left that also hamper free speech. I’ve noticed a definite uptick among colleagues and friends with concern that speaking out of turn will lead to getting cancelled. This is quite frightening at a time when the left needs to robustly champion open and free debate. The right is sure as hell not going to do it.

I’ve heard it said before, “reading is thinking on the page.” So, too, is writing.

So here’s what I think: To be a writer in the Trump era–a writer, not a sycophant–is going to require taking creative risks at even greater levels than before. It is an audacious thing to believe one has something to contribute. Only growing moreso.

The Anti-DEI Crusade

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Let’s call the anti-DEI crusade what it is:

  • A mechanism for forcibly removing women of color from leadership positions
  • An attack on non-government power structures — the academy and the corporation — during a moment of consolidating government power within the hands of anti-democracy forces
  • Racist butt hurt

The concerted attack on former Harvard president Claudine Gay did not merely arise in a congressional hearing, and unfurl from there. Rather, her enemies (and enemies of DEI) had been waiting patiently for a flashpoint in order to demonstrate control over the academy.

DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is a series of efforts that organizations may make in order to increase diversity, advance equity, and promote inclusive atmospheres for everyone. DEI is not, as radical reactionaries would have you believe, a zero-sum game where white people are victimized. In fact, embracing and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just the right thing to do (yes, I subscribe to the theory of the late Senator Paul Wellstone that “we all do better when we all do better”), it is also a strategic advantage. In The Journal of Infectious Diseases article “The Science and Value of Diversity: Closing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Inclusion and Diversity” on scientific research, for example:

The benefits of engaging individuals with a wide swath of perspectives have great potential to improve our capacity to innovate. Why? Overwhelming evidence suggests that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogeneous groups on complex tasks, including improved problem solving, increased innovation, and more-accurate predictions—all of which lead to better performance and results when a diverse team is tasked to approach a given problem.

This isn’t rocket science, though. Kids are better equipped for the real world if they were part of a diverse student body in school. Workplaces are better equipped to meet the demands of the market if they reflect the diverse communities within the market. And our civic institutions are most responsive and make their best decisions when there are a diversity of identities and perspectives represented.

I noticed over the past week both an op-ed in Washington Post calling for the resignation of Vice President Kamala Harris (because, supposedly, she is unpopular, though … isn’t it Biden whose unpopularity is the issue most of interest to the upcoming election), and another urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to go. For the good of the country, supposedly. Naw. This is the same crap as all the other anti-DEI crap swirling around. There are organized conservatives who want to see all the women of color in leadership resign or be forced out.

Another piece of this anti-DEI crusade involves steps being taken to minimize, delegitimize, and take control over corporations and academic institutions, which in aggregate overwhelmingly do take steps toward DEI (because it is good for their bottom lines, and for the education they provide). Right-wing actors like Christopher Rufo. In his op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, “How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out,” Rufo writes:

While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning. If America is to reform its academic institutions, the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci called this approach the “war of position,” a grueling form of trench warfare in which each concept, structure and institution must be challenged to change the culture.

Let’s back up. The world is experiencing a shift toward authoritarian models, and the United States is no exception. There is currently a man leading in the polls for the presidency who has promised to be a dictator on day one, who has promised a “bloodbath” if he loses, and recently claimed immigrants are not human. In other words our own home-grown fascist leader. Democracy and the individual freedoms that imperfect model helps advance have never been in this level of peril in the history of the United States.

We cannot consider the anti-DEI crusade in a vacuum, as somehow divorced from the threat to authoritarianism in the United States. Rather, Trump-friendly forces are seeking to simultaneously gut higher learning and take control of the private workings of businesses. Seen in this light, the efforts become scarier still. This is about consolidation of right-wing authoritarian power.

The anti-DEI crusade taps into racist butt hurt as a pretext for kicking non-white men, and especially women of color, out of leadership positions and gutting our institutions at a perilous moment for our democracy. It’s terrifying.