Martyr, of course, and you know this, means witness. And Ashley Babbitt did die a witness to her cause. She's a martyr. I mean, she's a martyr by any definition. Her cause is false and fake makes it no less true. And if we want to do that, then we basically get rid of the word martyr altogether.

Yeah, and then January 6, 2021, we enter this age of martyrs, and Ashley becomes the first martyr, and she's an ideal martyr for that movement, partly because she's a white woman and a vet. So she's gendered both, right? The veteran is stabbed in the back, a male, but she's a white woman who they instantly start aging backwards.

And the man who shoots her is an ever larger black. Right. And so this is the old lynching story, the old white, innocent white woman.

But now, martyr means anyone who suffers for the cause, which in Trumpism, in the Trumpist imagination, is anyone who believes in the cause. To believe in the cause is to suffer for the cause, is to have a Soros-backed...

There were some who would see her as the first death of this new American Revolution. She is our Crispus Attucks, killed in 1776. And, of course, Crispus Attucks is a black Wampanoag man killed, I think, in 1771.

Because no, that was not probably... We'll never know, because there was no real investigation. That was probably not a legitimate killing.

Because no, that was not probably... We'll never know, because there was no real investigation. That was probably not a legitimate killing. I talked to a man named Seth Stoughton, literally wrote the book on police use of force. A former cop became a law scholar. Former cop, well, of course, he's on their side. He was the expert witness in the conviction of Derek Chauvin. He was the guy who said, let me explain to you in every little nuanced way why this was not legitimate use of force. That's usually the side he is on. He is usually testifying as an expert witness in trials against cops saying, no, they crossed the line. He looks at the video and he says, look, this isn't a court. We can't do this. But yeah, this does not look legitimate.

So the Republicans have said, how come there's not justice for Ashley? Because they rigged the laws so that there can't be. Right. They rigged the laws to protect the police.

No, I'm going to say, go further than that. Definitively, it is happening.

The earliest contribution, you know, you had the Nazis studying Jim Crow laws. And then, this is actually true, Nazi jurists. Looking at Jim Crow laws in one drop of blood and saying, that's a little too much. We can't go that far.

The center didn't hold, right? The center is gone. Well, I mean, the system is... The system is there, but the center is gone, right?

The Montana state legislature, that's a Trump rally. The Tennessee state legislature, that's a Trump rally. And when I say it's a rally, it means that they're no longer interested in, you know, even the veneer of governing. It's the performative rejection. Of the other.

The Montana state legislature, that's a Trump rally. The Tennessee state legislature, that's a Trump rally. And when I say it's a rally, it means that they're no longer interested in, you know, even the veneer of governing. It's the performative rejection.

The black legislators in Tennessee, the trans legislators in Montana. And I think there's another one in Iowa has been silenced.

But I'm also, I mean, another lesson we can draw from the 1930s and the fact that the United States didn't get a fascist regime and people don't realize that it was much closer to that potential. Oh, it was right there. Yeah, it was right there. And what did the United States have that Germany didn't have? All kinds of complicated things. But one thing was on the left, something called the Popular Front. The popular front was all hands on deck, people that I do not agree with.

What's making fascism powerful now? Proud Boys working with pious evangelicals, right-wing Catholics working with right-wing Protestants. These are people who don't normally talk to one another. Joe Rogan fans lining up with the Family Research Council. A convergence of movements, right?

There's 393 million guns in civilian hands in America and lefties.

So Dee Snider, Twisted Sister, that 80s rock band. Remember, we're not... Oh, I'm well aware of Twisted Sister. Yes, indeed. We're not going to take it. And has, in the Trump years, sort of emerged as a surprising kind of left ally, partly because so many Trumpists assume that, like, 80s metal was all in for them.

Ryan is not a fascist. He enabled it, but he's not.

These old establishment guys, they're not maintaining a place in the room. If they're in the room, now they're a fascist.

And that's the story of Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt was not always a fascist. A lot of the people who celebrate her killing just like, you know, and usually in very misogynistic terms say she was always that.

No, she was getting a kind of a neoliberal governance system that wasn't taking care of homeless people. Weird that her favorite president was Obama. She was getting a neoliberal government system that wasn't regulating banking so that she could get... A loan because she didn't know what she's trying to do for her pool business. It would suddenly put her in incredible interest that there's literally, I mean, it's a mafia loan. There's no way for her ever to pay. She was getting, yeah, misogyny all the way through.

I wrote about a movement called Battle Cry. And what Battle Cry would do in the early 2000s is they would have these three-day rock festivals for evangelical teens, 70,000 folks. They would go out there, and I remember there was one schtick they would have. They would have a cattle hide, and they would talk about, and they'd be projecting on the screen. They said, you know what corporations are doing to you? They're branding you. They would brand the hide, and they would put up on the screen Oakley or Coca-Cola. They're branding you. They're branding you. They're branding you, right? This could be ad busters. This is a leftist critique. And yet then they swoop them up. And Battlecry, you can hear it in the name, Some of the other stage, the one thing they did is they'd bring a mannequin on, and each part of the mannequin would be labeled like pornography or some other thing that they didn't. And then they would take this biblical story about a concubine who was given by a figure to the mob to be torn up, and that this is somehow the good thing. Which story was that? There's too many of those. But they lead the thousands of kids in chanting... Tear up the concubine. Tear up the concubine. And they rip an arm off and throw it to the crowd. And the kids are all screaming. And who wants, you know, I want a hand. I want this and so on. This is fascism. This is it. I love people who think that we didn't evolve behaving exactly like a giant shit ton of apes. Yes. But this is fascism. But look at what they've just done. They've taken like, hey, kids, I bet you hate that you're fucking corporate branded. And they do. And the left isn't saying that, right? Not at that time. There is a left that's saying that, but it's not visible enough. Adbusters is saying it, but these kids in Texas aren't getting adbusters. They're getting battle cry, right? And they're becoming Trumpers.

And the accelerationists who say it's time to give up democracy doesn't do enough. What fools? We haven't had it yet.

And the accelerationists who say it's time to give up democracy doesn't do enough.

In a purple state, and Waukesha is one of the counties that used to be the most right-wing counties in America. It is the purest white flight.

And in Waukesha now, there's a, I mean, the school board, we have school board people there saying we should just not teach science. Science is of the devil.

In fact, this man lacks any ideological principle. He is a domestic violence guy and he's fleeing from the cops. And he's just like, he is the absolute narcissism. People are my way. I'm driving through them and he kills them, right?

Two 12-year-old girls lure their third friend into the woods to kill her. For Slenderman, who they have read about online.

Yes, said the fascist intellectuals. Adapting the concept to their own ends. Yes, let's leave democracy behind. The new fascists like the idea of hastening the end of a liberal order, right?

That worked out for fucking Mao. The left didn't win there. The left didn't win in the Soviet Union. It didn't win. We haven't won yet, right?

The American Revolution, I'm not going to say that was wrong. World War II, I'm definitely not going to say that was wrong.

The American exceptionalism of believing that this is somehow a uniquely American thing, as if there is not a Trump of Turkey named Erdogan, a Trump of Brazil named Bolsonaro, and Myanmar, a self-described trunk of Myanmar, a Buddhist monk who leads... A genocidal mob of Buddhist monks to massacre the Rohingya Muslims, as if there are not the Philippines, as if there is not Indonesia, which has been fascist since the American-supported coup in the 1960s, which to this day celebrates its genocide. Fascism is a global moment, and what is different now than in the past is in the 1930s, you had contending powers.

China is a fascist regime. Fuck this state, communism, whatever. It's a cult of reality around Xi. It wasn't always, but it has become one.

Russia is. And we can quibble over details, but Russia is. And I would say they are fascist regimes of the moment, right?

Uganda is a fascist regime.

And if we come to the real fear that I think is there, and that you're seeing generals say, and, you know, not all generals, but right. The military is not monolithic. If we come to a real chain of command dispute in 2024, the fear is not the militias and the resistance is not the John Brown gun club. It's an Air Force base in one state that believes that Trump is president and an Air Force base in another state that believes that Biden is president and follows the orders.

So I think like that state, the state and the people, those terms meant something at one time and we should recognize that they mean something now because of fascism is different now. And the key difference is it is a global movement without a significant countervailing force. And when by significant, I don't mean like the people. I mean like the industrial base. Of the United States or the Soviet Union, right?

I mean, this is why, like, no one's going to believe this, but this book, which really reads like a doom scroll, doesn't not. It's a hope book.

My bright spot was the look of delight on my 13-year-old and my 9-year-old's faces. When they heard that Trump had been indicted and they had this sense, they learned of it from their mother who yelled, "Yes, motherfucker!" Oh, that's a good day. And it was licensed for them to curse, which I think is, I mean, that's what cursing is actually for, right? Like, we're trying to teach them, like, cursing is real. So, like, you want to curse Trump, you can. And just to get the sense that even though, look, we know this arrest may end up helping him, it may amount to nothing, whatever. But in this little moment, my kids have grown up with this vile, vile creature, had a sense that perhaps sometimes the bullies get theirs.

I have. And I confessed this right before this, and I was like, oh, God, I've got to tell you. And then I was like, I don't want to tell anybody. I don't want anyone to know. But this is not like I'm a convert or anything. And my views on this have changed, actually. You might know. Did you look it up? So you might know when it was? It was 2009? It was 2003.

I don't hold it anymore, actually. I think the times... I also partly I don't hold it because I think back then I would not have said we... I would say there are spots of fascism in America, but I wouldn't say there is a... And, you know, there's more than one kind of bad under the sun, right? And this is the sort of thing, like, whenever we describe, you know, of course, Trump is fascist, Bush was fascist, Clinton was fascist, Reagan was fascist. Now, there's more than one kind of bad under the sun. And, in fact, those presidents committed incredible harm. But this is fascism and no now. I mean, like, if, not that it would, but if Alex Jones asked me on now. I would not do it.

And that was about a kind of Christian fundamentalism. They're the oldest. Christian conservative political organization Washington dating back to 1935 when they were formed as businessmen who hated the New Deal and saw it as satanic and they wanted to work against organized labor. And they weren't a conspiracy.

Fascism is a word that means something. And they didn't have a cult of personality, partly because Jesus occupied that space. And while this kind of American power always sort of supported violence, there's always been a paradox of it. You know, we declare ourselves a city on a hill. We don't openly fetishize the violence to the point of pleasure. Trump changed that. He brought those two elements of classical fascism. Now I think it is a fair descriptor.

I mean, it was a radical song. If I had a hammer, I would smash capitalism, is what he meant.

Daylight Come, We Want to Go Home. Also a radical song. Learned it on the docks in Jamaica.

The Civil Rights Movement did not achieve all that it wanted or nearly enough.

And what he did with it, when he, in 1956, he was the first guy to sell a million records. Not Elvis. Which, you know, he points out. It was me. It was a black man. It was a black immigrant, was the first person to sell a million records.

He says, it's a minstrel act, you know, corked up blackface. The whole country is a minstrel act.

Strong people, she says, don't need strong leaders.