Adolf Hitler, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (front row, center) and other officers inspecting fortifications. Image: Wiki Commons
Adolf Hitler, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (front row, center) and other officers inspecting fortifications. Image: Wiki Commons
A show of brutality isn’t the opening salvo of a war on Democracy, it’s the victory lap that tells the people that the war for their freedom is over.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
You can go out today in your local community, and everything looks perfectly normal: the sun is shining, pickleball courts are packed, people are out on restaurant patios having lunch, and kids are playing in elementary school playgrounds.
It doesn’t look like a fascist dictatorship, it doesn’t feel like a failing democracy, which is why we’re in such trouble right now.
Too many people here are waiting for some horrific, visible marker that tells them authoritarianism is here: a declaration of Martial Law, tanks rolling down city streets, a violent display of military force against citizens.
They’re looking for some shocking or violent moment to signal to them that now it’s actually bad, that this is the time to panic. Short of these things, the perception of normalcy is sedating tens of millions of people into denial, complacency, and inaction.
Our family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers refuse to acknowledge or even believe how much we’ve lost in the last 100 days: the dismantling of 250-year old systems of governance, the reversal of human and civil rights that took generations to secure, the erosion of safeguards and protections for people and the land, and the suffocation of agency of citizens.
Authoritarian regimes aren’t going to use military force unless they have to, and more likely, they’re only go to once they know that the hard work is already finished. A show of brutality isn’t the opening salvo of a war on Democracy, it’s the victory lap that tells the people that the war for their freedom is over.
The battle is being lost right now. It’s happening in the purposeful crashing of the Stock Market. It’s happening in mass deportations without due process. It’s happening in ignored Supreme Court rulings. It’s happening in mass layoffs at Federal agencies. It’s happening in the firing of journalists. It’s happening in the severing of ties with our allies in the global community.
And for those of us who’ve been paying attention for the past decade, who’ve alerted people to every red flag, who’ve screamed from social media rooftops at every act of lawlessness, and who have been accused of overreacting—this is the very disaster we exhausted ourselves trying to avoid.
Friends, the rise of fascism here isn’t going to look like a jittery, blurry, black and white newsreel. It won’t (at least initially) come dressed in military parades or bloodbaths in the streets, or in mass graves marking unthinkable inhumanity discovered after the fact.
It’s going to come far more quietly and carefully: made of canceled DEI programs, of exploratory mistreatment of marginalized people to test others’ resolve, of legislative attacks hidden in the minutia of bills passed in the middle of the night, and in a slow but deliberate subtraction of liberties that are easily stolen if the targets are distracted.
And this is where we are: everything does look perfectly normal, the sun is shining, pickleball courts are packed, people are out on restaurant patios having lunch, kids are playing in elementary school playgrounds—and we are simultaneously losing our Republic as far too many of us wait for sign that makes our peace impossible.
It’s time we stopped looking for some sickening, terrifying moment to confirm we are in danger, and realize that the danger is here and it is in how normal it still all feels… for now.
Are you experiencing frustration or outright anger at people’s inability to see what’s happening here in America? Why are people in such denial? Ignorance? Self-deception? Toxic positivity? Tribal loyalty? American exceptionalism? Let me know in the comments.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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