Why are things like this?
A kind of absurdist fatalism has taken over discussion of "the current moment". In the last 22 months of genocide and reenergized fascism, the simple question "how are you?" has gone from almost dreadfully inappropriate, to a bit of a comic punchline in and of itself, back again to a basic question, with the simple caveat that after answering you make a shrugging gesture or apologetic sigh or say "you know, despite the horrors".
But in this creeping normalization of the increasingly unacceptable, a question that we often see on social media is: "why are things like this?" Why do things only get worse? Does it really have to be this way?
This question is meant to express frustration with and rejection of this world, but the question itself is actually a propaganda victory for the fascist movement, which wants to appear as though it stands outside of history, emerging as naturally and inevitably as a sunrise.
But there is an answer to why things are like this. It's because we are living through a counterrevolution.
And it's important to insist that it's a counterrevolution, because one of the foremost tasks of the counterrevolution is to make everyone forget that something like a revolution ever seemed possible.
We are living through a counterrevolution. 2011-2020 saw a series of uprisings, insurrections and revolutions globally, and an upswell of organizing, resistance, and working class power here in the USA, that matched that of the 60s. "Things are like this" because we got damn close to getting free from their systems, because many of their favorite regimes and political systems collapsed under the blows of the people, because here in the US the Black Revolution had the POTUS hiding in a bunker under the white house while rioters stormed the gates.
Occasionally, especially during the 2024 presidential campaign, I would see a snarky or dismissive claim about Trumpsim that "this is fascism without a revolution" or "without a left", that this is somehow a reaction without any action. The leftists arguing this are cowards. They demand that revolution look only the way they envision it (a repeat of 20th century left and workers' movements), and that anything else is just sparkling liberalism.
These theoreticians somehow see in the opening up of a new era of struggle, in experimentation, rebellion and transformation on a global scale, with tactics jumping from Cairo to Barcelona to New York City, from Istanbul to Sao Paolo, from Hong Kong to Minneapolis, as a sign of defeat, of spontaneity without real power, of a lack of organizing or internationalism. If only there were a mass political party at the head of these movements, if only unions had started these struggles, maybe something would have been won, they sigh. They are as nostalgic as MAGA, though perhaps less attuned to the current moment.
The total fascism ascendant in the US and around the globe has emerged because the liberal order has nothing left to offer. In the decade following the Cold War liberalism promised human rights, prosperity and democracy, and while that usually only meant installing US hegemony while stripping the post-socialist world for parts, there was a real material drive to keep up appearances, to cast the USA in the light of leadership and freedom. As the Millenium turned, after the Brooks Brothers rioted and the towers fell, the liberal order began revealing its true face, but still it promised the people in the heartlands economic stability, even if that economy was one of ballooning inequality and rampant precarity.
Since the collapse of 2008, the liberal compromise in the US has shrunk even further, to simple guaranteed consumption, expanding access to purchasing power through an economy driven by real estate speculation and Chinese construction-boom debt-financing. Unlike the post 60s moment, this debt solution couldn't actually improve quality of life even for most USians, never mind the rest of the world: the ride on the back of the emergent Chinese middle classes only lasted a few years.
