Monthly Archives: April 2025

Fascists Love Registries

Last week, US Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., gave his first address to the public in that role. His focus was autism. In his speech, which has received enormous backlash, he said people with autism “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date.” He also made unfounded speculations as to the cause.

From chemtrails to HIV denialism to raw milk to anti-vax quackery, RFK is no stranger to conspiracy theories. And they are far from harmless. Over 70 people died in Samoa thanks to his disinformation about the measles vaccine. He also speculated that Covid-19 was engineered and that Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews were mostly immune.

There is something about RFK that chills the soul. A deadness behind his eyes. An icy countenance that betrays any compassionate words he might utter. It is hard to put ones finger on what it is exactly, but if you could you would probably have to scrub it with bleach.

Stories from family members about his penchant for mutilating dead animals abound, from grinding up chicks and mice in a blender for his pet falcon to beheading a beached whale and tying it to the roof of his car. The stories lend credence to those uneasy, unsettling feelings one gets when you see him on a stage talking about health and wellness.

RFK’s new role appears to be in keeping with this lifelong legacy. And he is keeping pace with the general madness and misanthropy of the regime. His idea for “wellness farms” and “reparenting” for people who deal with drug addiction or who are taking psychiatric medications unsurprisingly sparked controversy for its similarity to communist “reeducation camps.” Now, RFK is planning a new registry to track people with autism.

What makes this all so chilling was the ease in which RFK diminished the value of human beings. These disabled people are “deficient.” They cannot work and pay taxes. By characterizing autistic people as unproductive members of society, he has already set them up as a problem. A drain on resources. A burden. A registry will only industrialize this otherization and make it easier for experimentation, institutionalization and disposal.

Fascists adore registries. They relish in categories and lists for people. Especially people who do not conform to their idea of normal. Whom they deem weak and that make them feel uncomfortable. Like the others in this diabolical regime, he is merely copying a dark page from history verbatim.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

Fascism is a boot.

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This cannot be overstated. The myth of American democracy is now officially dead. The Trump regime openly and boldly defied the federal courts to return a person they disappeared to El Salvador. A person with the legal right to live in the United States. An action they agreed was an “administrative error.” Checks and balances, the safety valve to prevent authoritarian overreach, have been effectively rendered irrelevant.

This is not merely a “constitutional crisis” or even a coup. This open defiance to the rule of law is the establishment of a fascist dictatorship. And we don’t have to see it completely take over all aspects of society to understand how grave this moment is.

In addition to this, the regime has openly stated that it intends to disappear American citizens and send them to foreign gulags. It has already done so with legal residents, visa and green card holders, asylum seekers. Now, literally anyone is at the mercy of ICE thugs.

If you speak Spanish in public or have a tattoo, it can say you are a gang member or criminal. Don’t like the economic turmoil caused by Trump’s erratic tariff policy, and it can label you a “Marxist” (a term it views as derogatory). If the regime dislikes your political opinions, the protests you attend, your criticism of Israel, or for merely posting a funny meme making fun of Trump, it can deem you a “radical leftist,” antisemitic or a terrorist threat. Trump has said repeatedly that he believes the biggest threat is the “enemy from within.” With the dissolving of due process as a safeguard, he can make good on his promise to deal with that so-called enemy.

Of course, the regime is not going to arrest everyone who differs from them. The point is the fear it generates. By promoting this in conjunction with defying the courts, the regime is trying to create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. It knows that a people who are afraid will be easier to manipulate. They will comply in advance.

Already universities are towing the line by ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Media companies are paying out huge settlements to Trump to the avoid legal costs of a trial. Lawyers are refusing some cases that may raise the ire of the regime. Comedians are rewriting their acts. And people are purging their social media accounts of anything that might draw unwanted attention. This is how it begins.

Fascism is the end of societies. The final iteration of late capitalism. Its goal is the protection of wealth for a tiny minority of oligarchs through sheer violence and endless intimidation. It not only stamps out dissent. It can plunge entire communities into perpetual fear and dread.

Fascism strips education of its curiosity, the arts of its colour, journalism of its pen and spirituality of its wonder. And it replaces it all with mindless nationalism. It exalts bigotry by scapegoating and dehumanizing the vulnerable. It disdains the intellectual and the scientist with ethics. It cannot be reasoned with. You cannot have a dinner party with it and think it was moved by your polite banter. Fascism is a boot. And its only reason for existing is to stand on the neck of decency, empathy and kindness.

This is not to promote defeatism. But there is no benefit in participating in a Pollyanna-like fantasy where the Democrats, after sucking up to corporations for years and cheering on a genocide, will somehow become courageous avengers and “save American democracy.” The most they will do is post a terse scolding on social media, give 25 hour speeches that block nothing and amount to little more than political spectacle, or listen to focus groups for their strategy to win the midterms.

The only hope now is for ordinary people to see things for what they are. To see this regime for the fascist death cult it is. For vulnerable people to take immediate action to protect themselves and their families. To leave the country, if possible, or make contingency plans. And for everyone else to do what they can to protect those people, while throwing wrenches into the gears of its machinery at every turn.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

*Photos are of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele with Donald Trump at the White House (top) and the concentration camp Bukele runs in his country with US dollars (bottom).

Palestine existed. Palestine exists. And the Palestinians will not be erased

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Apartheid and genocide apologists are fond of repeating the lie that “Palestine never existed” or that there is no such thing as Palestinians. But in “Palestine: a Four Thousand Year History” by historian Nur Masalha, the long history of the region is detailed. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a district in Syria. It was called Palaistinê and it was between Phoenicia (modern day Lebanon) and Egypt in the 5th century BCE. From the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, the Romans referred to it as a province called Roman Palestine. The Ottoman and British Empires also called the region Palestine. Even early Zionists referred to it as Palestine when discussing plans to colonize it.

The insatiable colonial impulse to purge Indigenous history isn’t anything new. We have seen this in the Americas, where white European settlers attempted to eradicate Indigenous cultural identity and history. The Spaniards razed temples to the ground to build cathedrals on top of them. The British burned villages. The Americans and the Canadians forbade Native peoples speaking their languages and practicing their religions.

The erasure of Indigenous history is key to justifying a project of violent subjugation, ethnic cleansing and annihilation. In this new narrative, the settlers are cast as the true victims. A “civilized” people trying to tame a wild land. A “villa in the jungle” surrounded by rapacious beasts. It must tell itself and the world this lie in order to rationalize its actions.

This is why Gaza has been systematically leveled. Why its historic landmarks, buildings, ancient mosaics and markets, museums, libraries and universities have been blown up or burned down. It isn’t fighting a war, it is demoralizing a people by attempting to nullify their identity. Like the people who live there, these buildings and places represent historical truth. And the colonial settler cannot tolerate the existence of those damning reminders.

No matter how much destruction it causes, the historical record is clear. Palestine existed. Palestine exists. And the Palestinians will not be erased, even though this genocidal campaign is trying its hardest to do just that.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

A Network of Torture Camps

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Ahmed Manasrah was 13 when he was convicted by the Israeli High Court of attempted murder. He was, in fact, with his 16 year old cousin Hassan who killed an Israeli teenager and stabbed another man in the illegal settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in occupied East Jerusalem on that tragic day in 2015. Hassan was fatally shot by a member of that illegal settlement.

Ahmed was run over by a car, beaten by settlers, and filmed while he lay bleeding in the street, taunted by onlookers. He was arrested and convicted even though he never stabbed anyone and even as the High Court admitted Ahmed had nothing to do with the incident.

Ahmed was sent to prison for 9 and half years. Human rights organizations documented torture and depravation of the boy while he was in custody. He was harshly interrogated without the presence of his lawyer or his parents. And while in prison, he was put in solitary confinement for a majority of the time. This led to him developing schizophrenia. He attempted suicide several times.

In a related case, a teenager from the occupied West Bank recently died in an Israeli prison after being held for six months without charge. In fact, scores of other Palestinians detained without charge have come out shaking, gaunt, injured, with signs of torture and needing prompt medical attention. One had a star of David carved into his back.

And there have been many documented incidents of rape and sexual torture. One resulted in the death of the highly respected surgeon and head of orthopaedics at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. According to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, prison guards dragged Al-Bursh and dumped him in the prison yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand. He died in agony a short time after.

This past August, the Israeli media outlet Channel 12 released a video showing soldiers at a notorious prison in the Negev desert gang-raping a Palestinian detainee. There have been instances of soldiers using dogs as well. “They don’t care if you’re from Gaza or Jerusalem, whether you’re a doctor or a labourer – if you’re a Palestinian, you’re the enemy, ” Shai Parness of the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said. “It’s brutal and it’s systematic.” B’Tselem’s August report, Welcome To Hell, called these prisons “a network of torture camps.”

There were protests in Israel, but not to object to these rapes. They were in defense of the perpetrators. All of this has gone on with little to no denunciation, let alone acknowledgement, from Western politicians and most media.

For Ahmed, his horrendous treatment underscores the widespread devaluing of Palestinian children by the Israeli occupation. As tens of thousands of children have been slaughtered, sniped and starved in Gaza over the past year and a half, this case provides a window into an apartheid system that has been meticulously designed and constructed to crush an entire people over many years. A dehumanization where even children aren’t spared the full boot of the state. And the result of all of this has laid out a bloody path to genocide.

According to the Jerusalem Prisoners’ Families Committee: “The Israeli occupation deliberately released Ahmad away from the prison, while his family waited at the prison gates to welcome him upon his release. A Bedouin man from the Negev (Naqab) received Ahmad and called his family to inform them that their son had been freed.“

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

The Charade of Death

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This is the man given dozens of standing ovations in the US Congress. The man welcomed in the White House with open arms. And not just by Trump. Biden was enraptured by that bromance too. This isn’t because this man controls the American Empire. It is because Israel is the empire’s last true colony. It is its last major investment.

Beheading children with airstrikes. Starving infants and sniping toddlers. Raping doctors to death and shooting nurses. Burning journalists alive and burying medics in their ambulances. Leveling everything in sight, from shelters to bakeries to universities to water treatment facilities. All of this is simply the business of American Empire. It is the collateral damage that allows the dollars to keep flowing upward.

Now, as the annihilation of an entire people has entered its final chapter, it has become impossible to deny what the United States is: a sham. The myth of its fabled democracy hobbled along with empty promises and hollow platitudes as crutches for a long time. Even as its institutions became sepulchers that housed barely conscious old, rich, white men. Fortresses that protected their capital investments. But the shroud that covered their moldering corpses has been ripped off for all to see. The myth of American democracy has finally died in the streets of Gaza.

We need to look at it. We need to see it for what it is. Otherwise, we will continue to delude ourselves that there is something worth saving. When the reality is that everything must be rebuilt from the ground up for us to be worthy of saving. Everything. Because to save any of what is left is to ensure that there will just be more of the people-killing, planet-killing, soul-killing same. And I, for one, want no part in that charade of death.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

Bodies flying through the air

Fascism has Arrived

Stay Woke

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Many Americans are planning to go to protests tomorrow. And I applaud their desire to do something, anything, in a time of growing barbarism. But I would also caution those who think they are “saving democracy” by attending these events.

The American Empire is dying. Like all empires, its descent is not linear. It is erratic and may take a few decades for its final dissolution. But its prognosis is terminal. And the Trump regime is speeding this process up with idiotic tariffs and blind imperialistic fever dreams. It may be difficult, if not impossible, for many Americans to realize this. After all, the US has one of the most propagandized populations on the planet. But the signs are glaring.

For years, most white Americans have been drunk on a false shibboleth of supremacy. Believing that they live in the “greatest nation on earth” despite not having healthcare or basic labour protections. Most who espouse this notion haven’t traveled beyond the borders of their state, let alone country. Few possess a passport. But this delusion has permeated every cell, every fibre of the culture. Facts to the contrary (and there is a mountain of them) be damned.

They have been inured to the rot that has been allowed to spread through the halls of power. Fed a steady diet of Hollywood pablum where impoverished people have a chance to rise to riches. Where white heroes save Black and Brown people in the Global South. When the reality is that their leaders have been raping, pillaging and bombing them to smithereens for over 80 years. There is always a meticulously scripted “happy ending” to every unnecessary nightmare. Those who don’t fit in that narrative are disappeared, both figuratively and literally.

As the edifice of empire crumbles, its true nature is revealed. Standing there for everyone to see is a sepulcher filled with the bones of the innocent, the vulnerable. Anyone who stood in the way of capital. The tomb is ceremoniously draped in a red, white and blue shroud, but even those threads are beginning to fray. The tatters of nationalism cannot withstand the hard fist of betrayal.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, “there is no flag big enough to cover the crime of killing innocent people.” After more than a year and a half of supporting, funding and arming a genocide, the worst crime of this century, the US has demolished its reputation forever. The world understands this, even if most Americans do not. This one thing stands firmly in the way of any meaningful change. Unless it is reckoned with, platitudes and promises will continue to ring hollow.

You cannot save a democracy that no longer exists. And this is due to decades of political chicanery, where billionaires and corporations hold more sway than ordinary citizens. A protest is powerless unless it disrupts this arrangement of power. Not on a weekend, but during the week. When the gears of the machine are at full speed. The event planned for tomorrow will act as a vent. Letting off the steam of frustration, despair and hopelessness. And that is a good thing. But it would be foolish to think it will stop a regime that cannot be negotiated with.

Rallies and 25 hour speeches that do not block fascist legislation or executive orders, or stand non-violently in the path of the regime’s thugs, represent little more than political spectacle which can create the dangerous illusion of a mass movement. A kabuki theatre of clever signs and merchandise. But in the end, far more is needed. We are literally staring down the barrel of a gun. Our angry climate cares not about pithy speeches and signs. It requires a wrench thrown into the gears of death while there is still time.

If you go to the protests, consider these things. And instead of believing that Democratic politicians will save the republic, connect with real people. Build relationships that foster mutual aid and protection at the local level and outside of the institutions that are under attack. Above all, be careful. This regime has demonstrated it has no intention of listening to or working with anyone not in its cult of death. Knowing this might just save your life or the life of someone in a community that is now being ruthlessly targeted.

As Black residents of the American south once said to each other to encourage vigilance when faced with the violence of racist authoritarians, “stay woke.”

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

*Art is Hope by Syrian street artist Abu Malik al Shami.

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