Tag: politics

When Fascism Stumbles and Falls

Published on by Nicole WalkerLeave a comment

People say we’re not doing enough enmadden me. “We,” my fellow engaged Americans, are standing on street corners, calling their congresspeople, filing lawsuits, boycotting businesses, talking and waiting for people who have gone Maga to come back, making jokes, making art, writing songs, sending postcards, getting out the vote, sending money. It’s nearly a full time job working against the regime and it’s insulting to say that we’re not doing enough. Of course, if you me “we,” the unengaged Americans, well that’s true, but they’re not getting your admonitions either.

Writing things on bullets—unverifiable nonsense coming from the FBI, and nothing come from other  from job numbers, from climate

Fasicsm so fast that they’ll trip and we’ll gather up the failed system and push not for a return to normal but a reach toward better. Big social changes with a new democratic party, lowercase letters, that might even change its name to democratic socialist (although that’s probably too charged) or Worker’s Party (which is too Marxily charged), but maybe like the Everyone Party. Everyone including the animals, rivers and trees! Or The Party of Everyone Except Billionaires. PEEB for Short!

How could this happen? I have heard great stories of people turning against the fascism one by one. Often, it’s by having someone not ideologically bound, but open-minded, to listen to someone who has questions about the direction the country is going. The wall of die-hard MAGA people can be splintered by one right-directed postcard, saying, or question. The more splinters, the weaker the wall.

Big ideas like general strikes and massive protests are hard to organize. Not so much because we don’t have the will but because we are such a huge country—it’s one of the things that will save us. We don’t have to be ideologically pure. We can just keep our many, varied mouths moving and our many, varied ears listening. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her author’s note at the end of her new book Dream Count wrote, “Ideology blocks different ways of seeing and art requires many eyes.”

There is a reason teachers, artists, writers, journalists are silenced. It’s not only because we talk and put our work and words into the world—it’s because we also listen to the people and the world. As we listen and make and do, we lift someone up, change someone’s mind, save someone’s life, one by one. I don’t know if paying attention to the tiny details counts as a philosophy. William Blake’s there is a world in every grain of sand though resonates. One postcard, one FB post, one conversation at the grocery store, one meal, one instance of pointing to another person as a hawk lifts off from a tree branch whether you’re in Central Park or Mobile, Alabama.

On one of my attempts to get people to send postcards of facts to random people in red states, I noted that it would just take 100,000 of us to send 1,000 post cards to reach the 100,000,000 or so who voted for Trump. When my book, How to Plant a Billion Trees was on submission, Harper Collins wanted to publish it, but marketing came back and said “we really need her to have 100,000 followers.” (Not that everyone needs 100,000—just that this book and I would need a big following). But my point is, 100,000 people could be inspired to send 1,000 postcards. We don’t need all hundred million people to change their minds, but if we can note that health care, food, housing, clean air and water, renewable energy, no genocide, Universal Basic Income, natural resource preservation to enough people, a small percentage will join PEEB! (exclamation point required). We have to be ready when the fascism falls to pick everyone up and in so lifting them, we will become the country we deserve to be.

Edited to note: In my latest blog post, I wrote about the new party, The Party of Everyone Except Billionaires.” When I told Andrea Askowitz about it, she said, “PEEB? PEEB sounds ridiculous.” But hearing the word upon her lips, I recognized the incipient future. PLEEB! As in we Plebeians versus the Billionaires. Now I just have to make the L stand for something. I thought of Love but you all already think I’m a cheesemeister. So far, we’ve crowd sourced Party of Liberty for Everyone Except Billionaires.”

The Guns The Guns The Guns

Published on by Nicole WalkerLeave a comment

After Trump’s election in November, 2024, I started a group called Coalescing 2025 as a response to Project 2025. I emailed all the women, transfriends, and non-binary folks in my contact list and invited them to Zoom with me to express their worries, frustrations, and concerns and to share ideas on how to resist the coming authoritarianism. One made stickers that read FelOn with the O as a swastika. Another made a poster of Elon Musk looking like a scrotum. Another protested in her neighborhood—they gave me a recent update that that group of 10 has grown to 100 where they protest every week. One compiled all the readings about how to resist fascism into a Google folder. At first, I suggested we all send books to random people in low-information counties random books. But that was kind of expensive. We began to send postcards instead that just listed facts. Facts are neither red nor blue. They just are. For this week, I’m going to send this simple fact. “As of September 16, 2025, the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) reports 10,560 gun-related homicides and unintentional deaths in the U.S. this year.” My hope is that these postcards will not alert everyone to the truth of what’s happening in this country, but they may pierce through the misinformation, false information, wished-were-true information, that we all fall victim to in our over-algorithmed social media.

Tyler Robinson’s roommate has shared a text thread that may prove Robinson did plan and mean to kill Charlie Kirk. While our countries polarization increases, it’s hard to get a sense of what the facts were. Utah’s Governor Cox said Robinson was a liberal. My newsfeed said he was a Groyper, a follower of Nick Fuentes, and that he shot Kirk because he wasn’t right wing enough. In the text thread, it sounds like Robinson was alarmed at the violence Charlie Kirk spread—which is neither a right or left attribute—just a face. What rings truer to me is that through online messaging, backdooring through games, titillating with memes, and providing a sounding board for general complaints, many young men don’t have a political ideology so much as a lot of concerns, problems, and frustrations.

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It is crushing that so many of these concerns, problems, and frustrations fester in the young men and become amplified by zealous groups. Tyler Robinson has been charged with murder and obstruction of justice. The DA is seeking the death penalty. This is also crushing. He is, if we now judge adulthood as the time the prefrontal cortex is fully developed at age 25, just a 22 year old kid.

Charlie Kirk said terrible things, but that didn’t justify his murder. Kirk said terrible things about women, Islam, and Black people. But that didn’t justify his murder. Kirk said terrible and stupid things about gun violence, but that didn’t justify his murder.

The Guardian Reported Kirk’s hateful statements.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

On debate

We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.

– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

Prove me wrong.

– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘A Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic’ – video

On gun violence

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

On Islam

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

On religion

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

Dani Anguiano contributed reporting.

but even all of these put together did not mean he deserved to get shot. But Tyler Robinson didn’t deserve to be the shooter either. A young, frustrated, angry, confused kid should not have access to the rifle that shot Charlie Kirk. If Tyler Robinson had a slingshot, Kirk would still be alive. Kids probably shouldn’t even have slingshots but to allow these young, confused, white, frustrated males to have access to semi-automatic weapons shouldn’t be a polarizing issue. Tyler Robinson’s family loved guns. He borrowed his grandpa’s gun for the shooting. He posed with his mother in social media with guns.

As of September 16, 2025, the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) reports 10,560 gun-related homicides and unintentional deaths in the U.S. this year. The organization also reports 304 mass shootings within the same time frame, but 304 mass shootings includes every kind of shooting where two or more people were killed—not the kind of scene we think of mass shootings where a gun man (or two) besiege a building (or a stadium) filled with unsuspecting people (often students).

Mother Jones has compiled a list of those kind of mass shootings.

· Austin parking lot shooting

· Montana bar shooting

· NYC Park Avenue shooting

· Reno casino shooting

· Apalachee High School shooting

· Arkansas grocery store shooting

· UNLV shooting

· Maine bowling alley and bar shootings

· Jacksonville Dollar General store shooting

· Orange County biker bar shooting

· Philidelphia neighborhood shooting

· New Mexico neighborhood shooting

· Texas outlet mall shooting

· Louisville bank shooting

· Nashville Christian school shooting

· Michigan State University shooting

· Half Moon Bay spree shooting

· LA dance studio mass shooting

· Virginia Walmart shooting

· LGBTQ club shooting

· University of Virginia shooting

· Raleigh spree shooting

· Greenwood Park Mall shooting

· Highland Park July 4 parade shooting

· Church potluck dinner shooting

· Concrete company shooting

· Tulsa medical center shooting

· Robb Elementary School massacre

· Buffalo supermarket massacre

· Sacramento County church shooting

· Oxford High School shooting

· San Jose VTA shooting

· FedEx warehouse shooting

· Orange office complex shooting

· Boulder supermarket shooting

· Atlanta massage parlor shootings

· Springfield convenience store shooting

· Molson Coors shooting

· Jersey City kosher market shooting

· Pensacola Naval base shooting

· Odessa-Midland shooting spree

· Dayton entertainment district shooting

· El Paso Walmart mass shooting

· Gilroy garlic festival shooting

· Virginia Beach municipal building shooting

· Harry Pratt Co. warehouse shooting

· Pennsylvania hotel bar shooting

· SunTrust bank shooting

· Mercy Hospital shooting

· Thousand Oaks nightclub shooting

· Tree of Life synagogue shooting

· Rite Aid warehouse shooting

· T&T Trucking shooting

· Fifth Third Center shooting

· Capital Gazette shooting

· Santa Fe High School shooting

· Waffle House shooting

· Yountville veterans home shooting

· Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

· Pennsylvania carwash shooting

· Rancho Tehama shooting spree

· Texas First Baptist Church massacre

· Walmart shooting in suburban Denver

· Edgewood businees park shooting

· Las Vegas Strip massacre

· San Francisco UPS shooting

· Pennsylvania supermarket shooting

· Florida awning manufacturer shooting

· Rural Ohio nursing home shooting

· Fresno downtown shooting

· Fort Lauderdale airport shooting

· Cascade Mall shooting

· Baton Rouge police shooting

· Dallas police shooting

· Orlando nightclub massacre

· Excel Industries mass shooting

· Kalamazoo shooting spree

· San Bernardino mass shooting

· Planned Parenthood clinic

· Colorado Springs shooting rampage

· Umpqua Community College shooting

· Chattanooga military recruitment center

· Charleston Church Shooting

· Trestle Trail bridge shooting

· Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting

· Isla Vista mass murder

· Fort Hood shooting 2

· Alturas tribal shooting

· Washington Navy Yard shooting

· Hialeah apartment shooting

· Santa Monica rampage

· Pinewood Village Apartment shooting

· Mohawk Valley shootings

· Sandy Hook Elementary massacre

· Accent Signage Systems shooting

· Sikh temple shooting

· Aurora theater shooting

· Seattle cafe shooting

· Oikos University killings

· Su Jung Health Sauna shooting

· Seal Beach shooting

· IHOP shooting

· Tucson shooting

· Hartford Beer Distributor shooting

· Coffee shop police killings

· Fort Hood massacre

· Binghamton shootings

· Carthage nursing home shooting

· Atlantis Plastics shooting

· Northern Illinois University shooting

· Kirkwood City Council shooting

· Westroads Mall shooting

· Crandon shooting

· Virginia Tech massacre

· Trolley Square shooting

· Amish school shooting

· Capitol Hill massacre

· Goleta postal shootings

· Red Lake massacre

· Living Church of God shooting

· Damageplan show shooting

· Lockheed Martin shooting

· Navistar shooting

· Wakefield massacre

· Hotel shooting

· Xerox killings

· Wedgwood Baptist Church shooting

· Atlanta day trading spree killings

· Columbine High School massacre

· Thurston High School shooting

· Westside Middle School killings

· Connecticut Lottery shooting

· Caltrans maintenance yard shooting

· R.E. Phelon Company shooting

· Fort Lauderdale revenge shooting

· Walter Rossler Company massacre

· Air Force base shooting

· Chuck E. Cheese’s killings

· Long Island Rail Road massacre

· Luigi’s shooting

· 101 California Street shootings

· Watkins Glen killings

· Lindhurst High School shooting

· Royal Oak postal shootings

· University of Iowa shooting

· Luby’s massacre

· GMAC massacre

· Standard Gravure shooting

· Stockton schoolyard shooting

· ESL shooting

· Shopping centers spree killings

· United States Postal Service shooting

· San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre

· Dallas nightclub shooting

· Welding shop shooting

156 mass shootings since 1982. Most of these were inflicted by a semi-automatic rifle. Since the US Government prohibits the Center for Disease Control from collecting data, it’s hard to know how many people die per year from semi-automatic rifles. In 2023, it’s estimated at 47,000 people died of gun injuries.