Tag Archives: fascism

A Glimmer of Hope in Very Dark Times: a Personal Reflection

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As someone who has dual citizenship, watching the unraveling of my country to the south has been incredibly saddening and horrifying.

This regime, which is undeniably fascist, is headed by some of the most overtly sadistic people in its history. One which tells lies so often that it has become its only consistent policy

The United States was founded on Indigenous genocide and 400 years of the enslaved labour of Africans. Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, immigrant communities, women and queer people have always been the target of the brutality of the state. And the US has always been vicious in its imperialistic wars and covert actions throughout the Global South. But now, as the empire declines, the violence is widening. All of the pretenses and platitudes have been shattered.

In truth, this happened long before Trump. If a government can support, fund and defend a genocide, the very worst crime against humanity, it can justify anything. Gaza was screaming out to us, and so many Americans turned their heads.

But I cannot view this only from the lens of analysis. This was my country. One I had always criticized. One that I opposed for its wars and violence abroad. One whose social hatreds, racism and obsession with money I have always been appalled by.

It is also the cradle of most of my childhood memories. Where I first felt a sense of awe as a little boy when looking out at the Statue of Liberty or over the Grand Canyon. Where I marched with friends and comrades with the hope of change. Where I worked with dying and grieving people for over 20 years. Where my Canadian mother came to when she was just 18 years old. Where my Greek immigrant grandparents are buried. Where my father is buried. Where I attended elementary and high school and university. Where I first fell in love. Where I was married. Where so many family and friends still live.

So, to watch what is unfolding dispassionately while living in my other beloved country is an impossibility.

I would be lying if I said I had optimism for the United States right now. I don’t. I have fear. As a sociologist and student of history, particularly fascist movements, I know this is only going to get far worse before there is any light at the end of the tunnel.

But I am also encouraged to see the people of Minneapolis right now. The ones defending and protecting and assisting their neighbours. The ones showing up in the freezing cold to film and oppose the ICE death squads. The ones providing food and shelter and warmth. The ones who risk being murdered by the state for merely being out on their street and who will then be called “domestic terrorists” by a regime whose entire raison d’etre is terror.

What you are up against is no different than every other murderous tyranny in every other place on earth. But your unwavering humanity is what gives me a glimmer of light to focus on in these very dark times.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

The ‘Rules Based Order’ Has Always Been a Farce

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Let’s be clear about this thing called “international law.” There are laws and treaties and agreements on the books which are designed to hold power to account. The contradiction lies within its application. In this supposed “rules based order” that we have been told is now in tatters, the powerful have always manipulated the terms and conditions.

This is no more apparent than in the genocide in Gaza. Without a doubt, there have been other atrocities and genocides committed. But this one was completely funded and supported by the United States and other Western nations. They are the engine of this project of annihilation. And in no other case is the hypocrisy more glaring.

Now that the Trump regime is in power, the same aggression meted out on the Global South is turning inward toward the states that have long been in the political and economic orbit of the United States. Remember, most European countries were not perturbed by the “rupturing” of international law when it was being shredded by bombs and drones in Gaza. They are only upset now when those threats and belligerence are being aimed at them.

This is not to excuse the Trump regime and its Hitlerian aspirations. It is not an excuse for imperialistic, oppressive or violent regimes outside the American Empire either.

But it underscores the truth about the arrangement of power throughout most of the 20th century, most especially following the second world war. Where was this order when the US carpet bombed Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia? When it overthrew democratically elected governments or subverted democratic movements, from Iran to Chile and beyond? Where was it when the US invaded Iraq based on a lie?

NATO did not “keep the peace,” as some neoliberal politicians opine. It managed American imperialism and largely carried out its wishes, while handsomely profiting multinational corporations. It is an organization set up to ensure white, northern countries would always dominate the Global South. Now, that alliance is falling to pieces. But after watching it destroy Libya and turn it into the biggest, modern-day slave trading region on earth, it would be ghoulish to grieve the demise of what amounts to a consortium of white supremacy and violence.

If international law was ever to be evenly applied, it would not only condemn despotic leaders like Vladimir Putin or the brutal, clerical theocracy in Iran. It would have every US president, many Western leaders and every billionaire apprehended and taken to the Hague for crimes against humanity and the planet.

The unwillingness for so many in the West to see their leadership as fundamentally corrupt and deserving of criminal prosecution is not merely hypocritical. It is grounded in a racism that sees Western leaders and billionaires as somehow above the law. As flawed, but redeemable when they speak well or present themselves as stately. Essentially, as too white to be in the same league as some murderous tyrant from Africa, Central America, the Middle-East or Asia. And this racism has been the underpinning foundation for the farce of the “rules based order” for centuries.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

The World Will Never Forget (or forgive) What the Trump Regime has Done

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Last night, while most people in Washington DC were asleep, Trump shared a post that had an AI-altered map with a US flag covering Canada, Venezuela and Greenland, depicting these nations as US territories.

In the photo, Trump can be seen sitting in a meeting with European leaders, including UK’s Keir Starmer, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, with the US map in the background. Just a few minutes later, he posted another AI generated meme showing him planting a US flag on Greenland.

While what is left of his MAGA cult snickers at Trump’s Hitlerian fever dreams, the rest of the world isn’t laughing. They understand that Trump is incapable of joking. He is only capable of mockery, ridicule and threats. But as his mental and physical health wane, he becomes more and more unhinged.

Only days ago, he sent a bizarre message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, which sounded more like it came from a grade school bully than a president. In it, he expressed frustration with Norway for not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming that he no longer feels obligated to prioritize peace after not receiving it.

All of this happened after far-right, Venezuelan sycophant, Maria Corina Machado, gifted her Nobel prize to Trump in what amounted to one of the biggest suck-ups in the award’s history.

This week, as Danish and other European troops landed in Greenland, he announced plans to impose tariffs on Denmark and other nations if they continue to resist his acquisition efforts of the world’s biggest island (2,166,086 square kilometers).

Trump’s use of tariffs as a punishment will cause more pain for working class Americans than they will the nations he is targeting. American industry simply isn’t capable of producing all of the goods it is getting from trading partners. They will pay a hefty price thanks to Trump’s belligerence, as most of the world rapidly moves beyond US hegemony, signing trade deals and strategies well outside its orbit.

Of course, the Trump regime has no interest in what the people of Greenland want. Thousands flooded the streets of Nuuk, the capital, in the freezing cold of an arctic winter to reject Trump’s aggressive, imperialist ambitions. The whole country has only about 55,745 citizens, so this was a major event in its history.

And why would Greenlandic people want to be a part of the US when they have universal healthcare, free education and other social welfare policies? The US has none of those things. Why would any nation want to be a part of an empire in steep decline, one which is unleashing a reign of terror on its own people?

No matter what happens now, the world order has been forever altered. Alliances and trust between nations takes decades, sometimes centuries to build. But they can be decimated in just months or a few years. And this is where Trump has succeeded.

Even if he is voted out (a prospect that becomes more and more unlikely) or removed from power, the damage is done. This is because Trump isn’t the problem. He is the symptom. It took millions of Americans to put him into power and a cadre of fascists to prop him up. And even if Americans eventually move on, the rest of the world will never forget.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

The Democrats Will Not Defeat Fascism

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ICE has harassed and arrested random people on the street because they were Black, Brown or had an accent. They have sexually assaulted people in their custody. They choked a man to death in one of their concentration camps. They have dragged children from cars, homes, schools and workplaces. They have abducted and interred members of the Oglala Sioux nation. They have beaten, gassed and disappeared protestors. They shot a woman in the face who presented no danger to them whatsoever.

But Cory Booker doesn’t want them abolished. And he isn’t alone. In fact, Democrats have voted to continue funding ICE. Of course, with some strings attached, such as more training and body cameras. One wonders if this “training” will be by the IDF in Israel, as it has in the past.

Booker and establishment Democrats aren’t interested in opposing fascism. They are interested in managing it. In curating its image. In polishing its rough edges so that they can pretend that they are doing something constructive.

This isn’t realpolitik. It isn’t a pragmatic approach. It is cowardice.

The Trump regime isn’t conducting the American Empire like it has been conducted in the past. They have no interest appearing measured in their brutality. To this regime, sadism is policy.

But Democrats like Booker, who refused to correctly call what Israel is doing a genocide, hasn’t caught up with this historic moment. He is living in a comfortable past where American dominance was administered with empty platitudes about “accountability” or “the rule of law.” Where the veneer of respectability mattered more than actions.

Not once in the history of fascist regimes has this worked. That Booker and the other Democrats who agree with him think it will, only underscores the blindness that comes with proximity to power.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

The Trump Regime is Ushering in the New World Order

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Thanks to the rapid and belligerent posturing of the Trump regime in the US, we are witnessing a total rearrangement of power in the world. Mark Carney’s trip to Beijing this week isn’t just a ‘run of the mill’ diplomatic visit. It was Canada signaling to the US that the old alliances are finished.

Even if Trump doesn’t invade Greenland, the trust is forever broken between the US and the rest of the Western countries. Some leaders, like Keir Starmer, will probably not admit this. But the people of these nations know. They have quietly changed their plans for ever visiting a police state that routinely brutalizes foreigners and citizens alike. And a new leader of the US won’t alter this.

As Trump begins to battle his own people through ICE’s sustained and brutal reign of terror, he has threatened dozens of countries with military strikes and invasions, accelerating the factors that have led most empires to their downfall: domestic strife, foreign forays, severed allyships and an economy which is no longer providing for the basic needs of its citizenry. This is a recipe for collapse.

The American Empire has been hobbling toward its demise for decades. The steady hollowing out of its institutions by an oligarchy drunk on cupidity, the rampant corruption of its politicians from both sides of the aisle, the rise of white, Christian nationalist fascism, the gutting of education for all but the rich, a people fed a diet of hyper-processed food while enjoying no universal healthcare to counter its dire affects, a culture riven by pettiness, distracted by consumerism and mesmerized by the ultra-wealthy, economic cruelty so absurd it boggles the mind, endless wars for capital and the channeling of billions of dollars to fund a genocide. It was destined to arrive at the place it is now.

And in its chaos and decay, China rises.

There is a hope that ordinary Americans will rise up. Many are. But no matter what happens now, the Trump regime has already set in motion a cascade of change that will make our world look drastically different for decades to come.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

Civil War or General Strike? Americans must choose wisely.

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If there are still Americans that think they can wait for the midterm elections in November or 2029, they are deluding themselves. You cannot vote your way out of an authoritarian state.

The Trump regime is actively building a police state and ICE’s reign of terror in Minneapolis is a portent for what is coming. They are kicking in doors without a warrant. Abducting kids from school or their workplace. Disappearing people, mostly Black and Brown people, off the street in broad daylight.

The regime is sending a clear message that they will not tolerate opposition. In fact, all opposition will eventually be viewed as being “radical left” domestic terrorism. That slogan on Kristi Noem’s podium which read “One of Ours, All of Yours” wasn’t just a threat. It was policy.

And the Democratic Party will not offer any meaningful dissent as they capitulate and appease the fascist regime. Indeed, liberal intellectuals like Ezra Klein are encouraging the party to go even more toward the right than they already are.

Does anyone really think “we stand with Israel” Chuck Schumer will stand up against the brutality of the American state when he won’t even say if he would abolish ICE or reduce its funding, even after it committed murder in plain site? Or Hakeem Jeffries who supported a genocidal state? Or liberal darling, Gavin Newsom, who is opposing a tax on billionaires in his own state?

This is the nascent stage of open fascism. It isn’t even full blown yet, since most Americans are still able to express their frustrations online. But that, too, will eventually be suppressed.

I once encouraged Americans to get out if they could, especially if they are Black, Brown, an immigrant or queer. Or to move to blue states. But even those states will be under siege, as we see in Minnesota.

Right now, more and more Americans are posting their frustration and rage online. More Americans than ever before are saying that civil war is inevitable. And they are preparing. Whether or not they are right, we should all be shocked that so many are saying these things out loud in a country awash in guns. And because words are often the precursor to action.

The only things that will stop this is for white Americans to look to Black, Brown and Indigenous movements. To learn from their oppression by the racist American state and their struggle against it, which goes back centuries. To learn how to build movements, community and sustained resistance. To understand that the powerful are not omnipotent, and a people united are the biggest foil to a brutal ruling class and regime.

Another is to strike. Not a small strike. A nationwide, general strike. The only thing that will force change is to hit the regime economically. Grind its financial machine to a halt. Make its parasitic billionaire class squirm. This is not without tremendous risk. We all know how violent the regime is. But there are limits to every power. And money is their god and their drug.

Will Americans do this? Right now, many are. Every day, thousands of ordinary people are getting out on the street to oppose ICE in Minneapolis. They are organizing and assisting those targeted. They are putting their bodies on the line, even after they murdered Renee Nicole Good in cold blood.

As the cost of living continues to rise exponentially and more Americans are crushed by state violence, more and more will look for solutions. Channeling this rage into non-violent, collective action can turn things around. But the window for that is closing rapidly. And once it is shut, it could take years or decades to pry it open again.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

The Glee You See From Fascists about State Violence is a Sexual Fetish

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There is a psychology at the root of what we are seeing behind the behavior MAGA fascists and far-right media these past few weeks that isn’t being addressed. One which is behind how they so openly defend the murder of an unarmed woman. Or how they cheer on the Trump regime’s imperialistic fever dreams. And all of this, while none of it improves their own life circumstances in the least.

If these people were to be transported back in time to when slavery was the law of the land, they would have adored the overseers and the bounty hunters and applauded any violence against runaway enslaved people or abolitionists. If they were transported back to 1930’s Germany, they would have cheered the Geheime Staatspolizei as they beat and rounded up communists, Roma, queer people and Jews in the streets. It isn’t a new script. It is the same story of grievance played out in a new setting.

The people who are most susceptible to this are notorious for suppressing sexual desires. And thus, there is an enormous amount of repressed fetishism happening within the celebration of ICE violence. They find unchecked, unaccountable power enticing. Its sadism is intoxicating because it allows them to disassociate from the crushing weight of their own inner turmoil. And because virtually none of them have ever taken the time to examine their own shadows, they project them onto everyone and everything.

This psychology of sadomasochism is not the kind one finds in consensual BDSM relationships or communities. Quite the opposite. The people who participate in consensual BDSM do it because it is cathartic. Because it is fun. Because they trust their partner.

But the kind we see among far-right and fascist groups is solely about demeaning those who have not submitted to the state or to a mob. This is a dynamic that extols an arrangement of power based solely upon punishment and cruelty against a dehumanized other. In this way, the supporters of ICE violence or the Trump regime’s cruelty are positioned as the voyeur, and thus derive pleasure from observing the pain meted out on a scapegoated and dehumanized other, on those who dissent, or anyone who gets in the way of power.

This plays out most especially in misogynistic terms. Patriarchal authoritarianism serves as the foundation for fascist psychopathology. Conservative patriarchal religion provides a framework for both the repression of sexual desire and human sexuality in general, and the oppression of women. And violence, from the burning or witches to the denial of reproductive rights, has often been the result. Fascism merely draws on this dark history of misogyny.

We see this clearly in the murder of Renee Nicole Good. A woman stood in the way of a man’s power. Her wife mocked him. Although they presented no danger to his life, they signified that they did not recognize his dominance. Thus, Good had to be punished. Shot in the face, which is the most intimate form of murder. That Good was later revealed to be in a lesbian relationship provided more ammunition for MAGA fascists. She was swiftly painted by far-right media as a traitor to her gender.

Wilhelm Reich wrote more about this in his book The Psychology of Fascism:

“More than economic dependency of the wife and children on the husband and father is needed to preserve the institution of the authoritarian family [and its support of the authoritarian state]. For the suppressed classes, this dependency is endurable only on condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is suspended as completely as possible in women and in children. The wife must not figure as a sexual being, but solely as a child-bearer. Essentially, the idealization and deification of motherhood, which are so flagrantly at variance with the brutality with which the mothers of the toiling masses are actually treated, serve as means of preventing women from gaining a sexual consciousness, of preventing the imposed sexual repression from breaking through and of preventing sexual anxiety and sexual guilt-feelings from losing their hold. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

White supremacist, Nick Fuentes, said: “You should not seek sex because if you seek sex you will become gay because sex is a gay act.” He elaborated on this thought with: “the straightest thing you could do is to never have sex.” The homophobia and sheer absurdity of these statements aside, it underscores the sexual repression at the heart of fascist thinking. It is a belief that sexual pleasure itself is to be rejected. It may appear contradictory, but it goes hand in hand with the notion that the only role women play in society is to bear and raise children. It is also why transgender people are so often a target of far-right malice. Their very existence is a challenge to an order that they see as essential and God-ordained.

The contradictory nature of fascist thinking is a primary feature. It is how many of them could express anger about the Epstein Files, while ignoring that their leader, Donald Trump, figures large in their pages. It is how they can express devotion to religious institutions which have covered up child abuse for decades, while condemning drag queens. In sum, fascism is more about optics, than facts. It is about upholding traditional mores and myths, and strict gender roles, than human equality. It is about charismatic heterosexual male strongmen rather than things that are considered feminine, like empathy and kindness.

The seduction of state violence is nothing new. And it will always attract a segment of the population, mostly disaffected men. But the American project, with its characteristic predatory capitalism and Calvinist Christian patriarchal roots, has allowed it to grow and become emboldened. Racialized, Indigenous and queer women have known this violence since the first European set foot in North America, often meted out to them by white women who enjoyed a certain measure of privilege in a racist society. This is not to say white women were not also brutalized or treated as property, they were. But racialized and queer women have never enjoyed the same privilege.

As we see more and more incidents of ICE violence and the subsequent praise it receives from fascists, primarily fascist men, we should take time to understand the corrosive pathology at the root of it all. Fascism channels its sexual repression into aggression and absolute submission to charismatic male leaders and grand narratives about nationalistic glory. It thrives on the denigration, humiliation, torture and murder of dehumanized others. And it targets young men.

Understanding this may help us realize where it is coming from, how to oppose it effectively, and how to help a new generation of boys escape a similar fate.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

Renee Nicole Good was Murdered by the State

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There is another video which has been going around, allegedly taken by the killer himself, showing Renee Good’s wife verbally challenging ICE officers at a distance, but she had no weapon. Good was ordered to move her car by one officer and get out of the car by another. As Jeffrey St Clair of CounterPunch said, “These contradictory instructions are a frequent tactic, since, however you respond, you violate one of the orders, and offer an excuse for escalation.”

As Good tried to comply with the one order to move, she was shot in the face and head several times by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. Before she was murdered, Good can be heard saying “that’s ok dude, I’m not mad at you.” Seconds later, Ross fired directly into the car from the drivers side window and through the windshield. After that, Ross could be heard saying “fucking bitch” as Good’s car sped uncontrollably into an electrical pole.

At no point was Good’s car facing any ICE officer. In fact, it was pointed away from them as she attempted to follow orders to move the car. She likely panicked when one of the officers lunged at her through the car window.

But it appears that these ICE thugs did not like being challenged. They especially did not like being challenged by two women. But the challenge was no threat to anyone’s life. There was no reason or justification for using deadly force. None.

Anyone telling you otherwise is lying. They are repeating the regime’s lies about “domestic terrorism” because it justifies an immoral narrative about power always being in the right. And they will use this justification every single time they kill in the future.

Just as we have seen in the genocide in Gaza, there will always be a rationalization for brutality. There will always be an officer, or a soldier, or a settler who “feared for their life” when they use deadly force against unarmed people who dare to speak out or to peacefully protest or obstruct an injustice.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026

I Sat Next to Brigitte Bardot Once on a Bus in Nice

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Okay, no. I actually did NOT sit next to the late French actress, Brigette Bardot. But it very easily could have been her.

I was there on holiday with a group which included my partner, family and friends. After an excursion we took to a monastery in the back country, we decided to take a local bus back down to the city. As it was crowded, I took a seat in the back and I happened to sit next to an elegant, elderly white French lady.

In my mind’s memory, she resembled Lauren Bacall as she appeared in her late 70’s. Stylish, poised, cultured and monied, the latter being something of the distant past since she was condemned to taking a bus with all of us rubes and sunblock slathered tourists.

She spoke impeccable French. And, for some reason, she took a shine to me. Even after I told her in my egregious French that I was not fluent in any way, she began a conversation with me that spanned the hour and a half ride down through the lush hills of the south of France.

She spoke of her childhood. The post-war struggles and sacrifices. Something about living in a one room flat in Marseille with either her lover or a really close friend. Honestly, I was having great difficulty translating the details. I covered for that by giving the wry smile many French often do as if to say we know what you are saying. Essentially, “ah, mais oui.”

As the bus neared Nice, more passengers got on and off respectively. And many of them, based on clothing and language, seemed to be of either an Asian, Sub-Saharan African or Middle-Eastern culture. And this is when I noticed the change. The lovely white French lady sitting next to me, the same one who had been telling me stories about her life in France, changed. Her demeanor. Her cadence. Her eyes.

Even with my poor French, I could hear the disdain. These people were “not French” according to her. And they were allegedly ruining French culture. “France devient un mauvais pays à cause d’eux,” or something like that. And I knew where this conversation was going.

For the remaining journey on that bus I had to listen to her mock and dehumanize any non-white passenger that came aboard. As she spoke, I remembered how the French brutalized Algeria. How thousands were tortured and killed during the occupation. French colonialism has often been romanticized to a degree unlike British and other European colonial projects. But it was no less horrendous than any of them. And in her I saw the face of French imperialism. Pretty, elegant, condescending and cruel.

When we finally reached our destination, she bid me au revoir and I stepped out onto the crowded promenade along the Mediterranean in Nice. I was grateful that journey was finally over. But I have thought about her in recent days since hearing about the death of the French actress, Brigette Bardot.

Bardot was known for her animal advocacy and activism. But she is also infamous for her loathsome fascist politics. She was friends with Jean-Marie Le Pen and other far-right nationalists. In fact, her husband was one of Le Pen’s top advisors. And she was convicted and fined at least six times for inciting racial hatred. In addition to her Islamophobia and racism, Bardot dehumanized queer people, calling them “fairground freaks,” and mocked the women who came forward to expose the abuse they experienced by powerful men in the Hollywood film industry.

Unlike the lady I sat next to on that bus in Nice, Bardot had enormous influence. And she used that influence every chance she could to peddle in social hatred. Now that she is dead, she is being lionized in social media as a champion of sexual liberation and a tireless advocate for animal rights. In much the same way as Charlie Kirk, her own legacy is being sanitized by those who choose to see her as “complicated” rather than an odious person who dehumanized marginalized people throughout her long life.

None of this is to say that we should expect anyone to be flawless. Far from it. We are all human and we all say or do things that harm others, whether intentionally or not. But this is about lifelong patterns. About making it a point (whether in books or public engagement) to double down on social hatred, racism, bigotry and fascist ideology. There is a difference between being human and making your life a billboard of hatred.

I didn’t sit next to Brigitte Bardot on that bus in Nice several years ago. But she could have easily been her based solely on the bigotry, the racism and the poised French elegance that thinly masked it all.

Kenn Orfanos, January 2026

Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro and the Disintegration of MAGA

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It is hard not to notice the civil war unfolding within MAGA world. Some say it began with the murder of the notorious far-right bigot, Charlie Kirk. Others say it began long before this. But one thing is undeniable. The war is reaching epic proportions now.

On one side are the establishment hacks. The ones who have used their access to power in order to promote an ideology of authoritarianism. On the other are the monsters largely created by the establishment hacks. Those who use their skills with social media manipulation and grift to stoke old stereotypes and social hatreds. Neither are traditionally conservative. But both have captured the conservative mind.

This has reached its most visible example in the battle between social media grifters, Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens. Shapiro, who is Jewish, is known for his vile dehumanization of transgender people, Muslims and immigrants. Owens, who is Black, also participated in these bigotries. But since the murder of Kirk, she has taken it a step further in peddling odious antisemitic conspiracy theories and demonization.

Ben Shapiro has always supported the ethnostate of Israel. He has rationalized its apartheid, championed its most brutal policies and whitewashed its genocide of the Palestinians. Anyone who opposes Israel or Zionism is cast as antisemitic by the far right ideologue. But Owens, who was fired by Shapiro from the far right outlet The Daily Wire, has not only come out against Israel, she has used her platform with millions of followers to attack Jews as a whole, regurgitating ahistorical and debunked myths.

Whether it is the supposed notion that Jews were responsible for the Atlantic Slave Trade or that they believe all non-Jews are inferior to them, the story is an old one which has its roots in the antisemitic Protocols of Zion. This was a collection of fabricated conversations supposedly between Jewish elders in Russia. One which characterizes Jews as the cunning creators of a secret cabal whose aim was global domination.

The Protocols of Zion is not just an innocuous fiction. It was used by the Nazis and contributed to the persecution of Jewish communities in Germany and throughout Europe and to the Holocaust which claimed millions of Jewish lives and millions of other marginalized groups, including Roma, communists and queer people.

It may be mildly entertaining to watch this mostly online war between two grifters on the far right. But there is far more at stake. Both figures have captured a huge following in their own right. Shapiro’s camp is not only okay with US support for Israel as it commits genocide, it is cheering it on. They revel in the demonization of Palestinians and their supporters, including anti-Zionist Jews, tarring all as antisemitic for opposing the political ideology of Zionism and the apartheid and genocide it has fostered.

Owen’s may speak about genocide being wrong in any instance, but she has no real solidarity with the Palestinian people. Her new found hatred of Israel is not rooted in a principled approach to equality or collective liberation either. It comes from a deep hatred of Jews as a people and a pernicious delusion about them being some menacing, all powerful monolith.

Both Shapiro and Owens represent the darkest underbelly of far right politics in the United States. A toxic brew of white grievance and paranoid social hatred. That Owens is Black does not take away from this reality. In fact, she is the perfect token for peddling it to a population that has been conditioned to feel like they are under attack. They easily jettison facts for fantasy. Her irrational and incongruent conspiracy theories, whether it be that the moon landing was fake or that Brigitte Macron is actually a man, play to an audience which has been largely denuded of critical thinking skills.

Shapiro, who now has the devotion of professional widow Erika Kirk, is using his platform to whip Christian Zionists into a frenzy. Their support of Israel and his do not come from the same place. Evangelicals are not so concerned about Jews as they are in the fulfillment of an unhinged, eschatological opera. But both go hand in hand with American Empire and its goals.

And Shapiro helped create the culture of moral decay we see amongst US conservatives. One that easily dehumanizes and scapegoats minorities and champions the most sadistic policies of the Trump regime. They may all have different motivations, but the result is the same fascist dystopia.

Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens are visual aid to where MAGA was always destined. The deceitful and hateful rhetoric routinely employed by Donald Trump has fed into a miasma of confusion and paranoia. His disdain for intellectual discourse, informed dissent and moral curiosity created a cesspit of vicious hatefulness that has fostered racism, misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia. It is a poisonous brew that led to the rise of some of the most odious figures of this century, which include Shapiro and Owens.

Perhaps this civil war signals the end of MAGA as a movement. But it is best understood as a death cult. And cults rarely, if ever, dissipate peacefully. It remains to be seen whether this one will fade quickly, or cast a long, dark shadow on the American psyche for generations to come.

Kenn Orfanos, December 2025