It’s Monday morning. You roll out of bed with a grunt and sluggishly get ready for work. You listen to part of a podcast on your commute and arrive a few minutes early. Before you get settled for the day, you stop by the breakroom for a cup of coffee. It’s bitter and burnt and the creamer in the communal fridge has expired, but oh well. It is what it is. Some of your coworkers trickle in. They put their lunch in the fridge, grab their own cups of coffee and for a moment you are all standing under the fluorescent lights, waiting for the day to start. Everyone is still waking up, but the silence becomes too much. The space must be filled. Small talk must be made. You clear your throat:
“So, how about those El Salvador Death Camps?”
It’s hard for me to talk about what our government is up to these days without sounding like I’m screaming fire. Because, well… I am. I truly believe the situation is that urgent. The problem is that for some people it isn’t. When I point to the smoke they either think it’s only steam, or that smoke isn’t an indicator that anything bad is happening. What’s really frustrating is that now the actual fire is visible and there are still some that are saying, “well it’s only a small fire,” or “it’s only a temporary fire,” or worse still “I’m glad it’s on fire”. It’s hard to find the right words for it all. Words are important to me! I think a lot about their use—and misuse. I don’t like to bandy about terms like “fascism” or “secret police” or “death camp” without some forethought.
But I also like to call a spade a spade.
So what makes me an expert in spade identification? Well, I should admit: I learned the word “fascist” from the Coen Brothers.
In their 1998 film The Big Lebowski, the Malibu Chief of Police lists all the ways that he does not like The Dude and then asks him, “Do I make myself clear?” The Dude stares blankly. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.” The Police Chief—a real reactionary, hurls his coffee mug at The Dude’s head who yells, “Ow! Fucking fascist!”
It’s still one of the funniest moments of the movie to me, even now, on my umpteenth watch. But why is it a punchline? Here is The Dude, his drink spiked by a rich asshole who turns him over to the police who then insult and savagely beat him because they don't want people like him in their “nice, quiet, little beach community.”
Sounds like fascism to me.
But it’s funny right? The words came from The Dude. A deadbeat. A hippy. Someone not to be taken seriously, like all the others who wield that kind of sensationalist language; Anarchists, radicals, and angsty teenage idealists who don’t know anything about the real world. You know the ones. People who are always playing the Hitler card.
Sure, sometimes that language gets misused. Not everyone who gets called a nazi really deserves it. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
This is my point:
No matter how much it’s misused, we cannot fail to use these words in the face of what they represent. Whether or not it was appropriate then, it’s appropriate now. Today.
Maybe it was okay to laugh at the Dudes of the world when police were beholden to due process. Maybe it was okay to roll our eyes at people accusing others of being Nazis when CEOs weren’t flashing Nazi salutes. Maybe it was okay to ignore people comparing prisons to Auschwitz when human beings weren’t being disappeared from our streets. But unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in anymore. We must be blunt. No euphemisms. If we’re going to tell the truth, there are some words we may need to dust off. There are some words we can no longer dismiss.
So let me be clear. This administration is a fascist one. ICE is our secret police. And a prison that no prisoner ever leaves alive is a death camp. There may come a day when our political leaders feel emboldened enough to come out and say it (and on that day they will say it proudly) but by then it will be too late. We cannot recognize these things for what they are in retrospect.
I heard a question the other day: “You say you would go back in time to kill Hitler, but what would you do if you lived at the same time as him?”
That resonated.
Bill Maher shamed Larry David for comparing Trump to Hitler because Trump hasn’t killed six million jews.
But if we wait until he does, what’s the fucking point.