Nightly reminder that the fascists, white supremecists, and other godless people who were riled by Trump’s presence in the election and exposed themselves will still be here after Trump loses the election.

Voting can potentially stop the fascists from reaching office, but never the fascists that’re already in our communities. For stopping them, i suggest baseball bats.

Okay, look. I’m a pacifist by nature. And I used to be a pretty dedicated one. I have sat there and fucking taken a beating that sent me to the fucking hospital, from bigots I had reason to believe were armed with lethal weapons. And that wasn’t the only such beating by a long fucking shot, just the worst one.

I know nonviolence, I’ve practiced nonviolence, is what I’m trying to say here.

But— here’s the thing. You know what happened? They learned that they could beat on me with impunity (and I learned I couldn’t trust authorities to keep me safe). The beatings kept escalating. The next one, in all likelihood, would have killed me - I was lucky to escape that environment before it came.

You know the one thing I have ever seen that shut down violent bigots? When the fucking Heritage Front - actual, literal flesh-and-blood Nazis with a history of violence - held a rally in my city, and a bunch of angry young antiracist punks declared “not in our fuckin’ town” and broke it up. And, to my knowledge, they never tried anything here again.

It worked. It actively reduced the amount of racist violence my city was exposed to.

(I’m pretty sure I remember reading an article about an antifa group somewhere in Scandinavia that did similar things to extremely effective results; if anyone remembers, can they link it?)

So yeah. It works. It actually is how we make a better world, if “better” includes “people who aren’t white not having to live in fear and being subjected to violence.”

I know people right now who are prepared to flee depending on how things go. Not “haha I’m gonna move to Canada,” but “I have a go-bag packed and a mental list of what I can afford to leave behind if I have to disappear quietly in the night and run for the border.” Because their families have been through this and it really is that fucking scary out there.

You can fight speech with more speech - I heartily recommend this! But fascism isn’t just speech. It is violence. It is founded on and built from the dead and broken bodies of everybody who is insufficiently white and loyal. And the only thing - the only thing - that I have ever seen deter bigoted violence is direct action and violent defense of the targets.

So yeah, if you want to do something about it, bring a fuckin’ bat. If you don’t, get out of the way of the people who do.