Fascists don’t all walk around in armbands these days. We must remain vigilant to the foot soldiers that march in our streets to terrorize our communities, and we must meet them with unequivocal force. Sometimes a punch is not enough.

But the bigger threat is the respectable fascist. The one that emboldens those foot soldiers. The one that uses dog whistles, or maintains plausible denaibility. The one that wears suits and presents themself as a pseudo-intellectual. That is the greater enemy to our freedom.

The foot soldier is typically just an angry and impressionable person, indoctrinated into violence and hatred because their fears are manipulated, and they’ve been made to feel weak and powerless and think that their fascist ideology will empower them… “restore them to glory.” You should meet them with compassion and reason if the opportunity presents itself. But that opportunity is not when they are hanging banners across overpasses or marching through the streets in a show of force and intimidation.

In those moments, you shut them the fuck down. You chase them clear out of your city, and you make them realize just how powerless they actually are. You make them rethink showing their fascist-ass faces around your community again.

Then you turn your attention back to the suits. The “charismatic” “thought leaders” that refuse to actually throw up a sig heil, but they will defend and excuse it. The double-speaking fuckers that imply calls for violence against the “others” while feigning outrage when they are met with violence in return. The slick mouthpieces that spew obvious bullshit as facts, that foment hatred against their preferred boogeyman without ever actually using a racial slur or naming the minority. The power-hungry zealots that lead groups with wholesome, patriotic names. The ones that say vile things and then claim they were quoted out of context or misrepresented.

They are the real threat. They are the ones that have to go first.

Extremism must be met with extremism. When their actions look like they are dismantling the government and further consolidating wealth and power to the ruling class, it is fair to assume that it’s because that’s what they are doing. When their statement could be taken to be benign or harmful, assume they meant the harmful one no matter how disingenuously they deny it. Whether you think they’re true believers, or they’re grifting conmen, or they’re simply trolling, you take it as a serious threat.

And you shut that shit down even faster.