[Content warning: mention of holocaust]
I’ve written before about what to do about feeling like the world is burning around us. Through the beginnings of Trump’s US, of transcending terror, of how to get through when the world is rough, and some unedited rambling about gardening and feeling inadequate.
And I’ve been quiet for the last couple of weeks, watching, as the empire that was the US collapses. Wondering if we’ll all be taken down as collateral damage.
Wondering, yet again, how we as individual humans can make a tangible difference to the fate of any of us. The sinking feeling hasn’t gone away. Yet since my outpouring of feeling on November 6th 2024, I’ve been waiting for the rise, waiting for the rallying call to arms that I usually feel as an energy signature on the wind.
And it’s not come.
I’ve poked at the ground, wondering if this time it’s sunk too far to retrieve. If it’s just not possible to survive the fall of the richest nation on earth. And each time, I’ve head a gentle message, almost imperceptible: just wait.
Then one day as I was giving a workshop, I realised I was speaking from an energy that was rising.
I was talking about the need for our writing and stories now, more than ever. How in hard times, it’s stories that help us survive. Humans need tales and stories, inspiration and a life-raft, in order to fettle ourselves to survive.
The phrase that landed for my workshop participants was:
“We need to save each other.”
Then a few days later I was meeting with someone in my network, and our conversation was different than usual. He pointed out that we’d not yet spoken about politics, when that’s what our connection is all about, usually.
It was at this point that I put the pieces together, and they make a lot of sense, even if they’re also chilling.
I realised that as someone who has grandparents who survived both Nazi labour camps and concentration camps, I had moved beyond the idea that fighting the rise of fascism is imperative, and on to the next stage: surviving it.
As I took a long step back to get an overview of my progression through this thinking, I could see that we’d moved from ‘never again’ through ‘fight the rise of fascism’ to ‘fight fascism and try to survive’.
Never again
This was a somewhat naive thought that we collectively believed in. Anyone who’s studied history knows where fascism leads, and we were so certain it wouldn’t – couldn’t – happen again.
Wrong!! How wrong we’ve been.
Fight the rise of fascism
This is where we spoke of being glad our elders who fought fascism last time were dead. So they didn’t have to see how close we were to having it happen again.
We honestly still didn’t think it would actually happen after Trump 1.0, the glimpse we’d had of the horrors in store.
Unfortunately, we were waiting for a hero to come and save us rather than being the hero ourselves.
Fight fascism + try to survive
The fight against the rise of fascism is over.
It’s here. We failed that particular fight.
It’s now a fight AGAINST fascism itself. This takes many forms, but it’s different to fighting its rise.
Fighting fascism itself is a matter of attacking in any way, from every direction possible. Making things difficult for the administrators of the regime with intentional obedience to every letter of their demands (ie: doing EXACTLY what they say, and nothing more, asking questions about every single step. It slows the advancement of the beast), marching in the streets, doing things you don’t tell anyone about because now, everyone could be an informer.
Survival? That’s up to us.
One thing fascists don’t care about is anyone but themselves.
The more they can dehumanise everyone else, the stronger they feel.
My grandfather Boris was in Bergen Belsen concentration camp for 3 years. He survived because he and his friends looked out for each other.
One day, his friends saved his life. Boris had the flu, couldn’t stand, and was delirious. Morning roll call attendance was mandatory, and anyone too sick to stand was shot. His friends dragged him to roll call, held him up by his belt loops so he was counted as present, then hid him in the sheds so he could rest.
Without them, he would have been shot, and I would not be here.
Survival against fascism is up to us, we must look after and look out for each other and help wherever we can.
What does this have to do with creativity?
Creativity is at its core rebellious, and taking time for it is active rebellion.
Lifting each other up with our writing, songs, poems and art is a function of resistance.
Yes, being active in community, knowing your neighbours and caring for them is incredibly important. Offering help when you can is 100% needed. But so is entertaining, inspiring and taking breaks to remember our humanity together.
That’s where you come in. Look after your people; make your art; be someone who knows the value of your humanity, creativity and spark.
It’s that which we’re fighting for.
And it’s that which will save us.
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