As we write this, federal agents occupy U.S. cities, snatching our neighbors off the street and throwing them into unmarked cars. It’s terrifying, but not everyone has accepted the intrusion of out-and-out fascism into their daily lives: Activists are tailing ICE, impeding arrests, defending their communities. The government is shutting off SNAP and other critical benefits — how might people organize to get (or take!) what they need? This is a time to get creative, to get combative, and this issue comes from that spirit; it takes aim at our moment from the many angles our battered minds require. To borrow a line that Pier Paolo Pasolini (who makes a cameo in this issue) himself borrowed from the Black Panthers: “I would like to express myself through examples. / To throw my body into the struggle.”
For a while, we’ve been kicking around Dorothy Thompson’s famous 1941 essay “Who Goes Nazi?” and for this issue we remade it for our era. Which personalities embrace authoritarian leadership in the 2020s? Writing these little portraits forced us to think through the social factors that move politics today. And answer crucial questions, such as, are all influencers fascists? Many people tipping into far-right politics are less grotesque than the “angel moms” we also cover in this issue, but maybe no less dangerous.
On the side of justice, we have the comrade hornets of South Korea. Young female and queer activists gained the nickname when they descended en masse on labor protests to show their support. Youbin Kang’s report is a study in surprising alliances and sits alongside historian Jeanelle K. Hope’s essay on Black American women who joined the struggle against fascism in Europe because they recognized it from their experience of home.
Read on for all this, and also the weird stuff that you can count on us for — a personal essay about picking Gerber babies, a history of political shoplifting, books that are gay gay gay, Covid as surrealism, and much more.
See you out there,
The Editors