It has become impossible not to notice the trend. Whether it is banning the word “gay,” or banning books that contain topics related to human sexuality, or the Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federal right to an abortion, the war on human sexuality and those who are sexually divergent is ramping up on multiple fronts. Even I’ve been a target of this war. Because of my outspoken advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth, I have been labeled a “groomer” by a few figures on the far right.

To be called a “groomer” in our society carries a specific weight. When the far right brands someone with this moniker it is intended to associate them with pedophiles and child abusers. A “groomer” in this context refers to a person who conditions and accustoms children to accept or normalize abuse or exploitation. The term comes from actual instances of child abuse, but recently it has been used against virtually anyone who is LGBTQ+ or an ally. And there has been an uptick in its use since the antigay legislation passed by far-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The intent is to terrify and silence those who dissent from a very narrow understanding of human sexuality. And this smear tactic has been employed against a wide spectrum of people, from teachers, to librarians, to healthcare providers, to drag queens.

Real child abuse is a serious and corrosive societal malady that needs to be addressed with empathy and well-funded structures of support and protection. Most of it occurs in the home by someone well known to the child. Much of it has been perpetrated by religious figures, such as priests or pastors. But this recent war on human sexuality has nothing to do with protecting children. In fact, thanks to conservative governance, many of the social supports for victims of abuse have been systematically cut and consistently underfunded or under-staffed. This has one reason: rigid social control.

There are many fronts in this war on human sexuality. Some are in the classroom, others are in the doctor’s office. Whether it is in the censoring of certain words or terms or in the legislation of transgender or women’s healthcare, the far-right is tapping into an old American angst related to ludicrous and impossible notions of purity and deviance. And the anti-porn crusade has appeared to capture that angst in an relatively easy way.

Ever since the dissemination of pornography in the modern era, there have been efforts to censor or ban it completely. Along with religious fundamentalists and evangelicals, there have also be several radical feminists, the late Andrea Dworkin being one, who sought the legal end to the production and distribution of porn. To those particular feminists, the objection was primarily due to the dehumanization and denigration of women rife within the industry. Their argument, although flawed in many ways, was understandable. Misogyny is rife in the porn industry because it is rife in society in general. But the bulk of the anti-porn crusade has been dominated by ultra-conservative evangelicals whose animus toward pornography is based solely on an extremely narrow understanding of human sexuality and its expression. And they wish to impose that worldview on everyone else in society, by any means necessary.

In a society which was founded on rigid social and religious doctrines and mores, this subject was bound to continually cause friction. And not only within religious circles. There are some who consider themselves “material realists” who reject any new understanding of our sexual diversity. But this has all too often become an excuse for bigotry, discrimination and cruelty. It is also a poor application and understanding of how science actually works. The more we discover about a certain thing, the more our understanding of what is “materially real” changes as a result. These “materialists” have often become unwitting allies to racists, anti-Semites and fascists.

A popular conspiracy theory in many white supremacist circles is that the porn industry is a Jewish plot to weaken white men and exploit white women through the normalization of interracial intercourse. The infamous white supremacist David Duke said that Jews “see pornography as a weapon of revenge for real or imagined European wrongs against Jews from the time of Romans to the modern day.” In addition to this, the anti-masturbation campaign, which is apparently a thing, is of a piece with the broader anti-porn crusade. And it, too, has links to white supremacy. In fact, sex panic among racists is no small thing. The Proud Boys, for instance, demand its members eliminate viewing porn completely and limit masturbating to once a month.

The current sex panic must be understood as a legacy of American puritanism. And the supposed protection of white women and children’s “purity” is at its core. There are many examples of how that legacy has played out over the centuries, from the Jim Crow demonization of Black men as “sexual brutes” to the persecution of homosexuals during the Red Scare. In 1977, beauty contest winner and orange juice spokesperson Anita Bryant came right out saying what it was about when she launched the “Save Our Children” campaign, which aimed at discriminating against LGBTQ+ people in housing and employment.

Today, the panic is most often reflected in chatrooms, Bible studies, camp meetings and political rallies. Many have been ensnared by the unhinged QAnon cult which elevates this all to another level of conspiratorial insanity, one where Satanic pedophile rings in the top echelons of the Democratic Party are trafficking children for abuse and to extract a “life-prolonging” chemical known as “adrenochrome.” But it has also become mainstream, with ultra-conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Candace Owens using their platforms to peddle odious and misleading tropes and stereotypes about queer people.

It cannot be understated that sexual minorities have bore the brunt of this puritanical cudgel. In connecting with other far-right fascists like Orban from Hungary, Bolsonaro from Brazil, or Putin in Russia, ultra-conservative evangelicals are hoping for wider global movement to purify and purge the world of everything and anyone they consider “sexually deviant or perverse.” It is the reason queer theory evokes such rage among them and galvanizes their animosity. And that brings me to the controversy over Maia Kobabe’s award winning book “Gender Queer.”

“Gender Queer” is an honest and intimate memoir by the author about the journey from adolescence to adulthood. It explores the complex feelings one has as they go through these often difficult periods, but from a queer perspective. Unsurprisingly, it has been cast as sexually explicit or even pornographic by ultra-conservatives because it contained some graphic imagery. It was never intended for young children, but for older teens and young adults who may be struggling with their identity and sexuality. None of this mattered. The rallying cry against the supposed “sexualization of children” has become a popular motto for censoring discussion of human sexual development. And instead of empowering young people with knowledge and agency over their own bodies, it is creating a culture of fear and repression that will undoubtedly lead to even more abuse, exploitation and self-harm.

As an adolescent and teenager, I know I would have appreciated Kobabe’s book as I was traversing those confusing times, especially since I grew up in a religiously conservative environment where human sexuality was seldom discussed. And queer sexuality never addressed at all. I knew I was different from the age of 7, and I wasn’t “groomed” or abused. I had loving parents. But my growth and development would have been so much easier if I had been given access to queer-affirming literature and adults who I could have been open and honest with.

And that is another reason why the smear of “groomer” is so loathsome and infuriating. Queer kids need adults with whom they can be comfortable with, now more than ever. But the current puritanical crusade is creating an atmosphere that will only alienate vulnerable youth from a society which is lurching backward to the dark ages every day. They deserve better. They deserve a safe, affirming and supportive culture provided by queer adults and their allies. The one which I never had.

Kenn Orphan, August 2022

Here on the coastal barrens of Nova Scotia the morning fog blankets the bramble and the sun struggles to pierce its cottony thickness. It does, though not without a struggle. Heated grass and pine unleash a rush of scent. The evening light, full of spindly arms of weightless colour. Then night falls and the galaxy lays out its spiral path in the sky over my meadow.

The air, the grasses, under rocks, atop trees, everywhere life is teeming. Blue Jays shatter my morning sleep with their deafening screech. Mice scurry and snakes lace their sinewy bodies through the tall grasses. My skin reflects all this life too. Red welts dot its landscape, the surreptitious kisses of tiny, unwelcome visitors I seldom see.

August, in its rushed laziness. One might miss the minutiae of it all.

And me, I am all too reminded of the coming end. Of season’s end. Of life’s end. My melancholic genes persuade me to contemplate those things whenever I get too high or dance too close to ecstasy. It puts a halt to my reverie, and in no uncertain terms.

And I think. I think of the earth, now endlessly battered and beleaguered, deforested and commodified. Of ocean, with its calcified coral cities now draped with suffocating algae. Of humankind, in endless enmity with “the other.” Locked in ignorant-borne hatred, until their hearts transmogrify into icy granite. Of the cloaks of privilege I don each day sewn from skin, and gender, and religion, and geography. A patchwork map of luck, banality and misfortune. I think of those beloved, now gone from the sphere I inhabit. Some lost recently. Some lost long ago. Their faces bless me, haunt me, elude me. Fortunate, perhaps, to no longer be locked in this orbit of birth and destruction and rebirth and annihilation.

Then, between stinging tears and slumber, the moon lifts its bloated face above the horizon. First slow, orange and blurred. Then open, and bold, and the colour of new snow. Lifted out of that prison cell of my forgetting. Like it vanished for half a day and then was re-created of salt, and stone, and God dreaming. Another dance of celestial distance repeated, as if scripted.

And I feel this ethereal flight of mine, sucking the wind out of my lungs. Frightened to catch that breath; as if doing so might shatter all of this to pieces.

Kenn Orphan, August, original prose written in 2017.

*Photo is of the evening skies over the coastal barrens and forest and out toward the Atlantic Ocean near our home in Prospect, Nova Scotia.

“We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality.”- Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977), anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer.

I was just reminded of this marvelous quote by Eiseley and I will try to remember it the next time I see or hear some essentialist rhetoric regarding gender or sexuality or “race” or class or any other human made identifier that is usually designed to judge us and separate us into cut and dried categories for easier elevation or subjugation, inclusion or exclusion, praise or persecution. Identity is fleeting, but the use of it is has been an effective tool of division for the ruling class for centuries.

There is more to us than what we present as right now. We are more than our appearance, or our body parts, or our biological functions, or our feelings, or knowledge, or status, or pedigree, or faults. Yes, our identities are important, but not so much as our common ancestry or our shared trajectory.

We are a staggering amalgamation of billions of iterations over billions of years, iterations that emanate from the stars themselves. Countless expressions of one thing: life.

This isn’t “woo woo”, it is the science of nature and the history of this earth. And if that isn’t the best description of the Divine within us, I don’t know what is.

Kenn Orphan, August 2022

The only moment that matters regarding the Pope’s visit to Canada to apologize to Indigenous people for the Church’s enormous role in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of First Nations, was an unscripted one. It was when an Indigenous woman stood up and sang the Canadian anthem in Cree, with tears streaming down her face.

Much of the media has been reporting this moment as if she were singing as a sign of respect. This is nonsense. You can see the righteous defiance in her face and hear it in her voice. Women, after all, have been excluded in most of the official ceremonies. They have not been granted an audience with the Pope. But this woman got his attention anyway, not only defying a legacy of colonial oppression, but the patriarchy itself. “She was telling him that this (land) was a pure place – a clean place – prior to the settlements,” said Ermineskin Nation, Chief Randy Ermineskin. She basically told the Pope and his priests to go home until real, substantive reparation to Indigenous peoples is enacted.

Sometime after the Pope was finished with his apology, another unidentified woman yelled: “Repudiate the doctrine of discovery! Renounce the papal bulls!” The papal bulls were 15th-century edicts that the Catholic Church and colonial settlers used to justify the violent theft of Indigenous land and centuries of genocide. This, and the odious “Doctrine of Discovery,” have not yet been rescinded by the Church.

The Indigenous response to the Pope’s visit and apology has been mixed. Some have expressed that it has brought healing, while others have said that it merely ripped open old wounds. For more than a century, the residential school system in Canada, which was essentially run by the Church, forcibly separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families. Thousands suffered unspeakable horror, from beatings to starvation to sexual abuse, at the hands of priests and nuns.

So, this one woman’s defiance is the only moment worth paying attention to in this charade of contrition. Until the Church addresses the emotional, mental and material consequences of its murderous legacy, these words will remain as hollow as the trunk of a dead tree.

Kenn Orphan, July 2022

*Photo is of this remarkably courageous woman standing up to the Pope. Source: Reuters.

What is it about this photograph that is so intriguing? This is the Carina Nebula taken by the James Webb Telescope (NASA). We are looking at a nursery of stars, many far bigger than our own sun. And we are also looking back in time. Deep time. Yet there’s something intimate about it, even though there aren’t any pareidolic references for us to easily latch on to.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this image. Perhaps it has such power to so many because we can imagine our souls being birthed alongside these behemoths of condensed energy in great flashes of light. And even with all that bombast in expression, the colourful gasses appear as a gossamer veil that comforts new skin. Any birth is both violent and caressing at the same time, after all. Maybe, therefore, so many of us can relate.

And I keep thinking of where I am viewing it. The living crust of a tiny world, in a tiny solar system, on the edge of a tremendously vast galaxy. A tiny world whose thin, life-giving and sustaining ribbon of air and water is imperiled by the supposed “apex species” that resides upon it. Where the sea and the atmosphere are boiling and seething ever greater with each passing year thanks to the excesses and greed of just a segment of our kind. And for what gain? Power? Status? Access to luxury? Nationalism and flags? Celebrity? Religious dominance?

I think about the video of an orangutan attempting to fend off a bulldozer from her home with only her arms. Being knocked to the forest floor, broken and bloodied. Her home to be razed to the ground likely to become a piece of disposable furniture to be sold in some big box store thousands of miles away, then to be set out on the curb a year later after the trend has run its course. Or maybe to extract palm oil to be used in some overpriced latte at a Star Bucks in LA, where rich people complain about the homeless.

And then I think about that photograph taken in 1946. The one with the military generals and the lady with the atomic bomb hat, slicing into an atomic bomb shaped cake. This was barely a year after hundreds of thousands of human beings were incinerated in two cities by similar bombs. It was celebrating the beginning of years of nuclear detonations on a once pristine atoll in the Pacific, forever polluting the waters and the people who called it home. Celebrating it all, with cake. And I remember how that chapter of madness in history did not end. That the world stands at the precipice of nuclear annihilation again.

I keep thinking of what I would tell a future generation about us on this tiny world. But I’m less and less certain there will be future generations to tell. At least, not of our kind. Perhaps, in deep time, there will be another sentient race of beings who evolve on this celestial stone to create a powerful mirror to see back in time, into the heavens, like we have. Perhaps crows or ants or hydra. Will they be in awe of it too, enough to pause the great wheel of self-destruction that is consuming us now, even just for a moment?

If a nebula can tell us of our beginning, can it tell us how we will end?

Kenn Orphan, July 2022

Image Credit: The Carina Nebula taken by the James Webb Telescope.

It is shocking to hear of the assassination of Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan. But while we should condemn political violence, we should also not whitewash his legacy.

Abe was arguably the most far-right leader of Japan. Under his leadership, the country took a more reactionary turn toward aggressive, militaristic policies. Relations with South Korea and China suffered, since Abe made historical revisionism part of his policy. And corruption scandals plagued his government.

Abe denied the Japanese government’s role in forcing Korean women into sexual slavery, as “comfort women,” during WW2, only to mildly roll back that statement later by acknowledging a report made in 1993 by his party that admitted such involvement. He visited the controversial Yasakuni Shrine, a site where nationalistic, historical revisionists cast Japanese war criminals in WW2 as martyrs and liberators. Even the Emperor, himself, refused to visit this place.

It is telling that Abe gained praise from far-right, fascists like Steve Bannon, who called him “a great hero to the grassroots, the populist, and the nationalist movement throughout the world.” Some even said Abe was Japan’s Trump, an accolade that should make any sane person of conscience cringe.

So, as the Western press lavishes endless homages to Shinzo Abe, we should be careful not to gloss over his legacy. His assassination is tragic because political violence is loathsome and should be condemned, especially with the world in its current tenuous and fragile state. But not because he was a great man.

Kenn Orphan, July 2022

*Photo is of Shinzo Abe. Reuters.

Author’s note: this essay is an updated and expanded upon version of one published in May of this year.

There was a part of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, that is perhaps the most unsettling to me. The protagonist, Offred, is walking past the notorious Wall in the Republic of Gilead. This Wall, once part of a prestigious university in Cambridge Massachusetts, is now being used as a place of public execution, where corpses are left hanging for days to send a message of compliance and terror to the citizens of this authoritarian, theocratic state. Defy “God’s law” and you will suffer the punishment for doing so.

When Atwood penned her famous book in 1985, she could not have imagined just how prescient it would be seen decades later. Then the Hulu series was produced. It differed in many significant ways from the book. The character of Offred, for instance, did not have the same agency or defiance as the one in the television series. She was a witness to the brutality of the Republic of Gilead, but she didn’t actively participate in resisting it as Elizabeth Moss’ portrayal did. Although the series was powerful, well written and well acted, the book presents us with a more universal experience of a person living under authoritarian cruelty.

But it came in the time of Trump. A time of unmasked misogyny. Resistance, or even the facsimile of it, became a popular rallying call. Now, we watch stupefied at the continuing resurgence of fascism, dressed up in the guise of Christianity, in the same nation that would eventually become Atwood’s fictional Gilead. The decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade may be one of those prophecies foretold.

With the admission of some of the most far-right, religiously conservative justices, the writing was on the wall for the SCOTUS to eventually overturn the historic Roe v Wade case. When it did this, the national right to abortion for women ended and several states automatically made abortion illegal. Many others will follow. It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine an eventual national ban on all abortions coming down the pike relatively soon, and the reversal of other landmark cases, including marriage equality.

To reduce this all to only one or two issues would be missing the broader picture. To be sure, the war on women’s rights, primarily the right of a woman to control her own body, is a fundamental feature of fascism. Misogyny is a central tenet. But this Supreme Court has wasted no time in bolstering other elements of fascist terror. Now gun owners and the police state, thanks to the neutering of Miranda rights, have more rights than women.

These decisions aren’t mismatched. They are intentionally placed obstructions to democracy. When a public is terrorized by armed gunmen in ordinary settings like a grocery store, a school or a parade, they often become paralyzed by fear. And this plays into the hands of any authoritarian government.

American fascism isn’t following the same course as in pre-World War 2 Germany. It is more akin to Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile, where far-right mobs were emboldened with the task of terrorizing the general public, while the church and the state worked hand in hand to design a framework of oppression; culturally, legislatively and judicially. From both above and below, Americans are being subjected to an unprecedented attack on their basic freedoms, liberties and civil rights.

Without a doubt, fascism has always been a current running just under the surface in American culture, religion and politics. As anywhere it surfaces, fascism has characteristics unique to the society it rises in. And American fascism has always cloaked itself in white supremacy and Calvinistic theology. It is an ideology grounded in racism, exclusion, rigid gender roles and fear.

When Offred saw the bodies on the notorious execution Wall she remembered something her brutal overseer Aunt Lydia once said: “Ordinary, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” This speaks to the things we come to accept as just part of ones day in the society in which we live. The normalization of things we might once have thought inconceivable, or even horrifying.

The US isn’t at this point yet. But it is worth taking into account Offred’s thoughts on how life was before this reign of terror began, and the feelings of complacency many of us share with her, even as the world around us rapidly morphs into something unimaginable:

“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantly: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”

Offred reflects on her complacency often. She thinks about not attending rallies or marches. And of her mother who did. But, like so many of us, she simply wanted to get her and her family through life hoping it would all work itself out. Our place in history, however, doesn’t function like that. We are participants in it whether we like it or not. And the biggest danger we face is our apathy in the face of authoritarian brutality and violent repression.

Fascism is intentional. It is intentional in its obsession with a fictional and romanticized past. A sentimental vision of a history that never happened. An addiction to the glorification of nationalistic militarism. It is intentional in its drive to silence voices that criticize its narrow understanding of history or the place and treatment of women or of minorities. It is intentional in its misogyny, its racism, its homophobia, its xenophobia, its violence. And given the right circumstances, like economic disparity, ecological crises or institutional rot, it can sweep through any society like a flood. And it can create a new normal in the blink of an eye, leaving us grieving for the life we once thought was simply ordinary.

Kenn Orphan, July 2022

A father hid his young son in a dumpster as he searched for the rest of his family amid rapid gun fire…

A war zone? No. Just another day in the US. Independence Day, in a nation whose Supreme Court is intent on demolishing independence for half the population, while granting even more rights to those who want to terrorize it.

Even from abroad, I know many of my American friends are feeling anxious. Many are grieving. With each civil liberty being chipped away, they feel helpless as they watch their country slipping steadily down a steep hill toward a Christo-fascist nightmare. Holidays like the 4th of July only make this grief more acute. The absurdity of flags and anthems extolling “freedom” and “liberty” all while those very terms are denuded of any value they may have once had. And now, yet another mass shooting to add to an ever growing list.

In truth, there have always been times in the States where Americans sought to escape their republic. But I’ve definitely noticed an uptick over the past five years. And I’ve had many reach out to me inquiring on how to flee successfully. Yet, I still see so many Americans doing everything they can to prop up the cadaver of American democracy while slapping makeup and perfume on it so as to mask its putrescence. A kind of kabuki theatre of democracy with all the appropriate props for the charade. Regardless of the effort, the writing seems to be on the wall. The US is a failed state where democracy is essentially dead in all but appearance.

If we are to be honest, it was inevitable that the misery the American Empire brought to millions in the Global South would eventually come home. How many democratically elected leaders have been overthrown by the US? How many coups and plots fomented by the CIA? Lumumba? Mosaddegh? Allende? How many Americans have even heard of these people? How many killing fields have been drenched in the blood of innocents thanks to American wars of conquest? Korea? Vietnam? Cambodia? Laos? Panama? Guatemala? Iraq? Libya?

And in reality, the Global South also includes millions of Americans who have been relegated to capitalism’s sacrifice zones. Those who reside on the margins of empire. Forgotten and ridiculed for being poor. Shot by militarized police in the streets or in their homes or incarcerated for being Black. Brutalized, erased and disenfranchised for being Indigenous. Caged and whipped by jackbooted thugs for being undocumented. Maligned and criminalized for being houseless.

None of this is new. After all, the US was built on the soil of a mass grave. Its powdered wig, ethnic cleansing, slave-owning, founders designed the farce that would become the “American Experiment.” White supremacy permeated its roots since its “revolution” was only intended to maintain an economy of slavery and genocide. In fact, its governing houses were constructed by forced labour. A bloody war had to be fought to end slavery, and even after the war was over, it codified racism in segregation while terrorizing Black people with the threat of lynching for decades. Starting with the decimation of the bison, its ecological diversity has been relentlessly raped for material gain. Capitalist exploitation is the sacrosanct religion of the land. In fact, the only thing that has made America “exceptional” has been its ability to convince so many of its subjects that its cruelty is virtuous and ordained by the benevolent hand of the Divine.

Yet even with this rancid past, ordinary people rose up against such tyrannical oppression. Workers protested their exploitation, often falling to the slaughter of federal and state troops. Slaves revolted, often suffering horrifically for doing so. Women, Black and Brown people, Indigenous, Queer and other marginalized segments of society united in solidarity to demand their human rights. People from all walks of life banded together to demand environmental protections. And many times, they succeeded in forcing the hand of power.

But over the last few years these hard won battles have come under brutal attack by a far right that has felt simultaneously threatened as it feels emboldened. As civil rights and liberties are rendered inert, guns proliferate. Mass shootings have become normalized. Membership in white militias is growing. Housing and healthcare are being increasingly allocated toward the rich as a luxury. The demographics of the state are shifting, all while the levers of power in that state are being sequestered by an ever shrinking minority in the ruling class. And this is the essence of fascism: the human, the living and the earth are nothing, the weapon, wealth and power are everything. With the only opposition seeming to lie in the inept, corporate-owned, and thoroughly ineffectual Democratic Party, it is no wonder there are so many feeling disempowered in the face of such blatant, unabashed authoritarianism.

Many liberal, white Americans are feeling anxious today because they are finally experiencing a taste of the brutality their ruling class, with the capitulation of the bourgeoisie, have delivered to millions of people for decades. They are grieving and that can be a positive catalyst. It has the power of uniting people in solidarity against injustice. But it can also be paralyzing. By all accounts, the rise of an even bolder fascism in the US is inevitable. One can only hope that the rise of its nemesis is equally so.

Kenn Orphan, July 2022

*Photo is of Patriot Front at Boston 4th of July celebration. AP.

The overturning of the landmark Roe v Wade case providing federal protection for a woman’s right to choose is both appalling and enraging. Now, several conservative states have already begun outlawing abortion rights. It is undeniable that women’s rights have taken an enormous blow, and the effect will have repercussions around the world.

But if anyone thinks it will stop there, they are deluding themselves. In just 24 hours, the SCOTUS has also weakened the rights of citizens who are arrested by police, in a country that houses the biggest prison population in the world and suffers from enormous police brutality, especially against communities of colour. And right now, they are targeting privacy rights and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

As I and many others on the left have been warning for years, this appears to be the beginning of a massive shift toward a bolder and more abusive fascist trend. And the corporate, “centrist” Democrats have only enabled its rise. For instance, just recently pro-Life Texas Democratic Rep Henry Cuellar won in elections, and he garnered the lavish support of non-other than the Speaker of the House herself, Nancy Pelosi.

It should be remembered that fascism has never needed a majority to create a hell-scape in the nations where it rises. A majority of Americans support the right of a woman to choose, but it mattered little because those who control the levers of power have the last say. It seems that Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead has been a sort of template for them. We can only hope for a mass movement that will upend this repressive arrangement of power before it is too late.

Kenn Orphan, June 2022

*Photo is of members of the SCOTUS who openly lied to the public about their intentions.

If you’ve never traveled around the state of Texas, you won’t really get an accurate picture of this odd land of extremes. The cities, especially Austin and Houston, are islands of relative sanity surrounded by a sea of crazy. All this considered, the unveiling of the Texas GOP’s platform should come as no surprise. They have merely tapped into the paranoid, hyper-nationalist, fascist zeitgeist so prevalent among a large swath of its white, Christian population.

In addition to the over the top, antigay/anti-trans rhetoric, the platform also attacks women’s reproductive rights, unions, climate change initiatives, the poor, the Endangered Species Act, gun control legislation (in a state that just witnessed the slaughter of elementary school children), immigrants and refugees (this is where Haitian refugees were recently whipped by officers on horseback), and public health measures to stem the spread of a pandemic. It also ramps up anti-China sentiments, advocates a withdrawal from the United Nations, and dehumanizes the Palestinians and their struggle for human rights (referring to the Bible as a reference for this discrimination and alignment with an apartheid regime). In addition to all of this, the platform employed QAnon conspiracies in questioning the legitimacy of the presidency of Joe Biden. And it reaffirmed the state’s right of secession from the union.

But one thread ran through everything: Christo-fascism. In fact, a narrow interpretation of the Christian Bible is referred to more than once as a justification for bigotry and discrimination. The pathology of theocratic obsession is embedded within Texas culture. And it is worth mentioning a recent town meeting in Arlington, Texas, where an evangelical Christian pastor took to the floor to call for the execution of gay people as “mandated” by the Holy Scripture. His unhinged lust for blood was echoed by many others there who uttered “amen” after every vile point he made.

I traveled across Texas several times years ago. I witnessed extremes in so many bizarre manifestations. Once, while driving down the interstate, I passed by an exit that had a billboard of a Bible verse with the image of a fetus. Obviously, a pro-life proclamation, one of many across the south. Under it was a sign that pointed across the way to a gun shop that boasted little to no background checks for customers. And next to the gun shop was an adult bookstore. This was Texas in a nutshell. At odds with itself and incapable of grasping the pathological contradictions.

Texas, and much of the south for that matter, has never reconciled with its violent, racist and theocratically authoritarian past. And while the north of the country has a rancid history of racism and other forms of social hatreds, violence and discrimination, it is undeniable that the south is consistently choked by some of the most reactionary and fascist cultural miasma in the Western world. The spirit of supremacist hatred is woven tightly into the very fabric of its present. Texas is a state that may come to resemble Margaret Atwood’s Gilead more than any other state in the US, and be proud in doing so.

Now, this essay might appear harsh to some. And I apologize for offending those Texans, some of whom I love, who continue to live there and love their state. To be sure, there positive aspects to the culture and there are welcome changes that have come. For instance, the state’s demographics have been changing, much to the chagrin of many white, heterosexual, Christian Republicans. But the hold this group has on power in the state cannot be denied. It is an entrenched grip on the very levers of control and it is not going to give any of that up easily. Now that the GOP has openly embraced unhinged conspiracy theories and unbridled social hatred, its trajectory toward a more blatant fascism appears all but guaranteed.

Kenn Orphan, June 2022

Photo: A man wears a face covering that reads “secede” outside the Texas state capitol on January 16, 2021 in Austin, Texas. (Sergio Flores/Getty Images). I remember seeing similar protests when I was in Austin several years ago.