2025 was a rough year for the world. Here on the west coast of the U.S. it began with fires ravaging Los Angeles and ended with massive flooding across western Washington. This climatic upheaval mirrored what was happening in our collective body: the destruction unleashed by the second Trump administration both within the federal government (the dismantling of USAID, e.g.) and targeting the most vulnerable among us (immigrants and trans people in particular) and an increasingly militarized foreign policy: closing the year with escalating violence against Venezuela. This against a global backdrop of continued fraying of the world order: still no end to the Russian incursion in Ukraine, Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (and increasingly in the West Bank as well), and renewed mass violence in Sudan. Sigh.

But for all the darkness… there was also light. I have drawn inspiration from the large-scale mobilizations here in the U.S. to resist fascism, both protests (like No Kings Day) but even more importantly the deep solidarity in refusing to allow our neighbors to be kidnapped, and the proliferation of mutual aid efforts across the country: Chicago’s efforts to resist ICE provided a great template for the rest of us. A broad movement-led coalition successfully elected Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City, over the furious efforts of the plutocratic Democratic establishment. Globally a wave of what have been dubbed “Gen Z” protests led to regime change in Nepal, Madagascar, and Bulgaria, and continue today in Iran and beyond. I hear echoes of the 2019 wave of movements… this time with more sophistication and greater recognition of the need for transformation, not just revolution.

I’ve become more drawn to the Chinese Zodiac in recent years: I like the idea of cycles, and listening to the different energies of the elements. In 2025 I resonated deeply with the year of the Wood Snake: a time for shedding what no longer serves, for outgrowing what now constrains us, and for listening deeply to what wants to emerge. The Snake is Yin fire: quiet intensity, inward-directed. 2026 brings us the Fire Horse, a rare once-every-60-years co-incidence of double-fire. The Horse already represents Yang fire; the Fire element amplifies that impulse: a year of creative destruction, of energy, of passion, of new beginnings. Ready or not… here it comes.

We’ve already seen Trump’s brand of fire-horse: I’m writing this in the days after his regime kidnapped a sitting head of state in Venezuela. It would be stunning if it weren’t so archetypally him. I see Trump as our Shadow manifest, our exiled and unhealed parts returning to haunt us. This isn’t the first time the U.S. has launched unilateral illegal regime change in Latin America (ahem, Panama), but it is the first time it’s been so brazen… and in the globalized digital media age.

Our fire horse must be more grounded, more disciplined, more directed: in service of building belonging, not only destroying.

Integrating 2024… and practicing 2025

2025 for me ended up being a year of Shadow Integration. Following Carl Jung’s work, this is about trying to bring into the conscious those hidden parts of ourselves that we have exiled to our unconscious (and which can drive our behavior without our full awareness). Like many called to social justice, I am a light worker: I thrive in the positive, the hopeful, the glass-half-full-ness of life, and it fuels my creativity. But: it can also lead me to ignore or suppress the darkness, and those aspects of myself or the world that don’t fit neatly into my hopeful narrative.

I worked on integrating my key lessons from 2024, and give myself… a B minus. I continue to struggle with “detaching with love”: it’s so hard for me to give up on someone’s potential. And I’m understanding in a deeper way the need to create more space between my “yes” and my “and”… but it’s so tied to my wounding that it still feels very effortful. I am getting much better at caring for myself and I’m proud of that, and I found a lot of utility in the “how-to-give-Brian-feedback” framework I arrived at in 2024.

As for my 2025 intentions… maybe a gentleman’s B. I’m proud of myself for my deep collaboration, particularly with core Building Belonging team member Christina, and for incipient explorations with Belonging @ Scale partners Kai Cheng Thom, Rajkumari Neogy, and Pat McCabe. I still struggled to express my feelings externally and allow others to feel my vulnerability… and I fear I didn’t do a great job of letting go of my need for others to recognize my light. Ongoing work that I’ll carry into 2026.

Key learnings from 2025

Almost everything fits under the broad heading of Shadow Integration. I spent the first half of the year exploring my relationship to control and surrender… and closed the year with a deep inquiry into my relationship (or lack thereof) with the “dark” emotions: grief, anger, and shame, and their more extreme manifestations in despair, rage, and hatred.

One frame I used for the work: becoming “right-sized.” Where in my childhood I took on more than was appropriate (too big in too small a self), in my adulthood I fear I’ve swung to the opposite pole: shrinking my bigness for fear of the impact on others. Shadow integration for me has been a process of discernment in reclaiming my appropriate “size” (and yes, I am large :-) This also corresponded to relational work, right-sizing my relationships to where we can best thrive… slow, ongoing, and both beautiful and painful at the same time.

But without further ado, key learnings (which I will spend 2026 trying to integrate!):

1. I am neurodivergent.

The biggest mistake I have made (and, sadly, continue to make) in my life is assuming that other people will think/react the way I do. I fear I have caused lots of avoidable harm (to myself and others!) with that mistaken assumption. While I have long known/accepted that I am different, I just wrote it off as a personality thing: we’re all different, and this is just my unique brand of weirdness. But this year my partner Leela encouraged me to look into it through the lens of neurodiversity, and I learned that many of the ways I think and process the world in my nervous system are very different from most people. I will write a separate post on this, but I am coming to understand that the core feature of my neurodivergence in childhood is what the literature calls “asynchronous development” (which, though different from other expressions of neurodiversity like autism or ADHD, shares “atypical neurological development” as its distinguishing feature):

Advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm.

In my case, I have always seen the world in systems and patterns, and think and perceive and feel at all scales simultaneously (I, We, and World). Where most people develop physically, emotionally, and cognitively at the same pace, my intellectual and empathic capacities (I resonate with some of the discourse around “highly sensitive person”) far exceeded my nervous system’s ability to hold them at a young age.

I was recognized/tracked for my intellectual “gifts” while largely unseen/unsupported in my emotional/existential grappling. This has been a profound shift in my self-understanding around my sense of loneliness and alienation, an “aha” that I am still sitting with. It is also giving me a lot more compassion for others, and helping me replace my self-protective judgement with more curiosity. Instead of an angry “why can’t you see?!” I’m trying for a curious “what do you see?”

2. I have shame.

This is one of those things that most people would react to with “no shit, Sherlock” but for neurodivergent me it felt significant: I can be a little slow sometimes. I was hung up on Brené Brown’s definition of shame as “I am bad” and associations with low self-worth, which I don’t resonate with. And I struggled to differentiate my adaptive trauma response (which I acknowledge) from the feeling of “shame.”

But a long session with ChatGPT helped me name the specific form of shame I struggle with: what I am accepting as “relational capacity shame.” This is the adaptive mechanism downstream from my trauma, and shows up as me not trusting others to be able to hold all of me… so I hold back and don’t share my full complexity / humanity / emotionality / bigness. I found it helpful to distinguish between my trauma response (which shows up as bodily activation—think fight/flight/freeze/fawn etc), whereas my shame shows up as subtle armoring, withdrawal, hypervigilance, and attempting to manage other people’s reactions/emotions (more in the cognitive/emotional realm). Thus they require different approaches for healing.

Sticking with our Jungian theme, this looks like me projecting onto others before they can project onto me… a self-protective strategy I would very much like to let go of.

3. Once I embrace my light… it’s much easier to take accountability for my shadow.

Last summer I finally welcomed in an exiled piece of my Light: what the Enneagram calls “the Challenger.” This too will land with those who know me as not-at-all-surprising… like I said, I can be slow. For years I’ve hidden behind my primary Enneagram type of “the Enthusiast,” finding it more palatable in social justice circles, where the Challenger is viewed with suspicion and even hostility, especially expressed in bodies that looks like mine/dominant culture.

But it turns out: I’m definitely ALSO a Challenger, and once I acknowledged that I found myself much more able (to the great relief of my collaborators) to take accountability for the Shadow dimensions of that gift. As Xavier Dagba notes: the brightest light casts the darkest shadow 😬.

4. I aspire to credibility, not legibility.

After one challenging professional episode last Fall, I made this vow: I will let go of my commitment to being misunderstood. It was this realization: my shadow finds safety in being misunderstood 😬. If a funder chooses not to support my work, I can say “well, they just didn’t get it.” This saves me from the vulnerability of rejection, or the possibility that maybe they did understand… and there’s something I’m missing. But I want to face that fear, and to take on the responsibility of communicating across the divide.

I fear that I am actually not legible: that my ideas and my neurodiversity—the way my brain works and the way I move through the world—are actually not understandable to the kinds of progressive funders I’m interested in inviting into transformative philanthropy. As a trusted friend told me: “Brian, your ideas aren’t credible. They’re just too far out there for most people… especially in the context of a short 45-minute pitch session. But: you are credible.”

So I’m going to try something different: instead of asking/insisting that others understand (or if I’m being honest: not believing that they will and so not giving them a chance)… I’m going to ask them to believe in me. Not to understand cognitively, but to trust somatically. I won’t ask you to understand my ideas (though I would love that!); I will ask you to trust in my competence, commitment, and capacity. (This in the context of fundraising, but it has broader applicability for how I try to connect with others—including my parents, e.g.—around my work).

One helpful dimension here for me that I’m still sitting with. My parenting partner Jennifer also introduced me to Human Design work this year (speaking of things I don’t cognitively understand but nonetheless can deeply appreciate), and got me a session that I found really powerful. Part of what it revealed—which feels consonant with my emerging self-understanding in the context of neurodivergence—is that things which feel intuitive/obvious/true to me do NOT feel that way to most people. Which leaves a credibility gap that at best leaves my interlocutors feeling confused; at worst mistrustful. Understanding this difference in our design (or our neurotypes, if you prefer) feels like a powerful unlock for learning how to communicate across that gap: if I know something is likely to be met with skepticism, I can acknowledge that pre-emptively and support my interlocutors in meeting me in my difference.

As with 2024’s lessons, these feel like insights that I have intellectually grasped but will take lots of work to actually integrate into my body and change my behavior: very much work-in-progress for the year ahead.

I’m not sure where to capture this, but I did want to celebrate another major victory this year: I did some incredible work on my jaw, which I recognize as the central axis of my trauma and tension, the hinge between my head and my heart, between my calm external presentation and my often-intense/existential interior/emotional life. During my psychedelic journey in late September, I was able to recognize some of my jaw tension as ancestral pain and trauma. It was stunning: I worked up my matrilineal line and gained consent to let go of a burden that many of us had held for far too long… and it was like flipping a switch. My jaw has been SO much lighter since then. It’s still an early warning sign that I’m approaching the limits of my capacity (when it starts firing, I need to pay attention!), but it is no longer a constant tension.

Some choice quotes to capture for posterity (from therapists, partners, and insights that all landed in me with the “oof” of truth and helped me arrive at these core lessons):

• “Brian: he who holds space for everyone except himself”

• “Stop tolerating abuse to get to love”

• “You’ve been living in other people’s projections your whole life”

• “What gets exiled comes back hostile” (Martin Shaw, quoted by Tim Merry)

• “Healing is about becoming better at feeling” (this one via Afsa Rosette)

• “I wasn’t emotionally developed enough to handle you with the care you need” (also Afsa)

• “The more you feel your emotions, the more others will be able to feel you”

• “I didn’t deserve that” (my personal unlock to access grief)

• “What is the sensation in my body of giving or receiving love?” (my self-love practice)

• “Belonging is the antidote to shame” (hat-tip to Rajkumari for this one)

2026 intentions

My intentions are efforts to act on and integrate my learnings, in the direction of my calling. Back in February I arrived at a new commitment, building on my intentions for 2025:

I am a commitment to embodying power without domination. I will bridge across differences, shining my light without insisting that others see it.

This still feels right, and I’ll carry it with me into 2026. Here are the four intentions I’ll be working with this year:

1. Listen to the darkness.

This is a subtle but important shift from my 2025 work. Last year I focused relentlessly on integration: naming and reclaiming my gifts and my light, in order to take more accountability for my shadow… and bring it into my consciousness where I could work with it. But I still saw darkness as something to be overcome, integrated, rendered in service of light. This year I’m leaning into something that feels very edgy for me: just accepting the darkness, and listening to its wisdom without trying to transform it. Darkness and light are different energies; they are a polarity that work together. What if the work isn’t to integrate, but to respect the difference?

Soul-friend Lindley Mease introduced me this year to the indigenous Aymara concept of Ch’ixi, which I find very challenging to my natural disposition toward integration and higher synthesis. Ch’ixi asks us to hold polarities without trying to integrate them. Here’s Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui:

The notion of ch’ixi… reflects the Aymara idea of something that is and is not at the same time. It is the logic of the included third. A ch’ixi color gray is white but is not white at the same time; it is both white and its opposite, black… The potential of undifferentiation is what joins opposites… ch’ixi combines the Indian world and its opposite without ever mixing them.

As a natural bridger/connector/integrator… this cosmology is provocative for me. I’ve always been drawn to difference, but my instinct is always “to include and transcend”, always seeking a higher synthesis. What if… I didn’t? This points to my work for the year: can I listen to the darkness… without insisting that it become integrated with the light?

2. Explore my relationship to grief… and anger.

This is related to the above: I’m aware that I don’t have much relationship to the “dark” emotions. I can access the full range of “light” emotions: happiness and joy, curiosity and awe, e.g. But sadness takes intentionality for me to drop into… and I don’t have any relationship with despair. Anger takes effort… and I don’t feel connected to rage. This matters for two reasons: one, I want to reclaim my full humanity. And two: I see all my work as fractal, and I understand that the energies driving fascism and this moment are ones that I can’t locate in my own body. I fear that I won’t be able to respond effectively to dynamics that I can’t understand/feel in myself.

I want to bring in an update to my 2024 lesson on “detaching with love” and re-work last year’s intention around “naming the ouch” (it turns out, I’m still not very good at that). I’ve learned that when I feel pain or am hurt, the first thing I do is humanize/empathize with the perpetrator. There is Light in this: I refuse to fight fire with fire, and I recognize the wounding that is driving their behavior. And there is Shadow: I tolerate harm—and even abuse—in an often-vain effort to encourage their healing… telling myself that on the other side of their healing genuine love awaits. Ouch. Instead this year I want to try this practice:

• Feel my own pain first: name harm (to myself!) and allow my nervous system to feel the injury.

• State my boundary clearly: “This behavior hurts me. It’s not okay.”

• Hold compassion second, not first: compassion as truth, not bypass: sit with their experience AFTER I sit with my own (ugh so hard for me).

• Let their healing be their responsibility: instead of my relational labor. Check in with myself about my own willingness, what the relationship means to me, an honest assessment of their capacity… and ask their consent (both to do the healing work, and to accept support). Absent those conditions… it is time to detach with love.

3. Experiment with the Embodied Exemplar.

I first named this archetype last January in Borikén… and this year I want to lean into it. What if in addition to my work as a Bridger, connecting people… I also practiced the role of the Beacon, shining a light to invite people back home? There are a couple components here: the first is practicing what I preach, which is acknowledging that we trust people first, and ideas second. Am I willing to be more vulnerable and make myself the thing I am asking people to invest in? I’ve long sought more examples of the embodiment I aspire to: power without domination. Collaboration without coercion. Could I begin to share my own embodiment as one example in that direction? Not as answer, but as invitation? Instead of seeking others to follow, or asking others to follow me… to invite mutual accompaniment on a difficult and lonely journey? After all, as Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us: the bridge is made by walking.

The second is to lean more into story, as part of my commitment to letting go of being misunderstood. Yes my theory of global systems transformation is complex, of necessity. And: it is my responsibility to find a way to communicate and connect with others if I want to be successful (both fundraising and in inviting people to join this vision). Story is the bridge… I want to practice telling my story, seeking credibility rather than legibility. Connection first; transformation only occurs in relationship.

4. I want to be more gentle… and playful.

Especially within myself. One of my main takeaways from my psychedelic immersion in early October was discovering that my inner monologue is a relentless taskmaster: not unkind per se, but constantly speaking the language of urgency, of need, of imperative. And: I really do NOT like that. It feels coercive. So instead I want to work on shifting that internal monologue into invitations. It was this conclusion: there is no healing without consent.

I’m pairing “play” here, which was another takeaway from my psychedelic journey: I long for more ease and playfulness in my life. I’ve carried a (largely self-imposed) weight of responsibility since early childhood, and while I don’t want to put it down… I also don't want it to crush me. I think of this as integrating “exceptional Brian” (the brain-forward meta-thinking and future-oriented neurodivergent me) with “playful Brian” (the heart- and body-centered flamboyant unicorn me that delights in the present): I’m coming to understand that both are different ways to answer the call my soul feels summoned to.

Since high school I’ve resonated with the quandary expressed in this E.B. White quote: “I arise each morning torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy it. This makes it difficult to plan the day.” Recently it occurred to me for the first time: what if those aren’t in opposition? What if one way to improve the world… is by deeply reveling in it? Not as hedonistic escape, but as reverent appreciation? What if play is the highest expression of aliveness? What if Eros and Logos are not opposed… but different paths to the same end? I’ve long been good at “fun”: at its best, I derive great enjoyment from my work. But that is a different energy from play. The paradox: I am coming to believe that play is one way to change the world… and for it to be “play” I have to relinquish that intention and give myself over to the experience. I’d like to do more of that this year.

Domains for practice

No healing without consent… and no transformation without practice. Working with darkness is not for the faint of heart, and I know myself well enough to know that I will need well-held containers and trusted confidantes… including those who can tell me hard things in ways that I can hear. I will continue to look to my close partners for support and accountability, as well as the Belonging @ Scale crew as a container for practice with kindred spirits.

A few intentional practice grounds I’m considering:

1. The Light Dark Institute. This was one of my most powerful immersions last year, and continues to reverberate in me. I’m hoping to return to deepen my exploration of power, control, and surrender.

2. Collective containers for grief. I’m not sure what form this will take yet, but I’ve been slowly wading into these waters, principally through the work of Francis Weller. I am eager to explore collective spaces, and probably men-only spaces. I’m considering the next Men’s Jam through YES, and am asking support from friends like Jordan Lyon who are more familiar with this edgy terrain.

3. Return to sport. It’s been over a year since reconstructive surgery to repair my torn ACL and meniscus; I’m been really missing team sports. I’m actively doing physical therapy now to get back to full-contact: I intend to try basketball this winter, and to return to Ultimate in the spring/summer. I miss camaraderie, competition, and the delight of play with diverse humans.

4. Podcasts and conferences: I want to challenge myself this year to share more about what I’ve learned, and to convene and engage in more public spaces. My sister Trina and I are talking about launching a podcast. I’d love to present/workshop at convenings/conferences with kindred spirits, and challenge myself to communicate complexity through story, to connect without requiring shared understanding.

5. Fundraising. I’ve never liked fundraising, because I see it as the dominant culture I’m trying to transcend/let go of: it reminds me of my lawyer/debate background, and the energy of “selling” and “convincing” that I find so draining. But: the revolution must be funded, and I’m challenging myself this year to share my story, to invite partners to join us in resourcing this important work, and to take a chance on something bold. This is a fractal domain that will test all of my intentions and learnings: it feels hard, vulnerable, and necessary. I will need support to help me hold myself accountable.

2025 Top 10 list

Finally, for those who’ve made it this far, a parting gift :-)

I used to do a very labor-intensive “best of” list each year… but now I hope you’ll accept in its stead my top-10 list of podcasts and articles that influenced my thinking and perspective last year.

Regular readers will see their influence in my 12 newsletter posts this year. The thread I spent most of my energy on was trying to understand fascism: its roots in victimhood, its present political manifestation in the United States, and the unprocessed grief and shame that animates it.

Without further ado:

1. Grief Is the Healing: Malkia Devich-Cyril on Organizing Through Loss, Fascism Barometer Podcast with Ejeris Dixon, 2025.

2. The Long Dark, with Francis Weller. How to Survive the End of the World Podcast, with adrienne maree and Autumn Brown, 2025.

3. Money is a Claim on Energy, with Nate Hagens. The Regeneration will be Funded podcast, 2024.

4. When toxic polarization becomes a civil war–and what we can do about it, with John Paul Lederach. Nonviolence Radio podcast, 2025.

5. Mariame Kaba, Love in a F*cked up World podcast, with Dean Spade, 2025.

6. For Those Who See What Others Don’t Yet, by Anna Branten. Substack: 2025.

7. How I Journeyed Through the Darkness of Collapse, by Ernesto van Peborgh Substack: 2025.

8. The Inner Work of Systems Change, by Adrian Röbke. Network Weaver: 2025.

9. Donnie Maclurcan on Post-Growth Economics & the Future Beyond Capitalism, Better Future with Michael Mezz podcast, 2025.

10. Inner and Outer Democracy: The Practice of True Inclusion. Tara Brach podcast, 2024.

Best wishes to all for a fruitful and generative year of the Fire Horse. Onward, together.

In community,

Brian

As I discussed in a recent post, fascism is a movement driven by emotions. Understanding and addressing those emotions (and where they come from) is essential to our ability to respond effectively, and ultimately to prevent fascism from rising again.

French-Israeli scholar Eva Illouz identifies four primary emotions driving populist authoritarian movements: fear, resentment, disgust… and love (of country, a nationalist framing). That resonates with my own understanding and reading of history, and feels explanatory of the emergence of the authoritarian movements currently ascendant around the world (Hungary, Israel, India, Brazil, and beyond).

But fascism is different. In my view it activates and is animated by different emotions. Specifically, I think it comes down to a sense of loss and wounded pride, which left ungrieved metastasizes into shame… which is finally compounded by humiliation.

I want to explore this argument through the lens of the postbellum period following the U.S. Civil War (the last time we had a fascist movement in the United States), in the hope that some distance from our present moment can make things easier to see.

Here’s where I’m coming out (TL;DR): I think fascism’s appeal turns on emotions, and in particular how unprocessed grief can metastasize into shame, and feed a sense of victimhood and grievance in the face of humiliation. Fascism thus becomes a way to avoid shame by directing it onto those deemed “others” as scapegoats for violence.

The implications for our movements are profound:
1. We must acknowledge loss.
2. We must create and support spaces for processing collective grief.
3. We must avoid the use of shaming and “othering” in our communications and tactics.
4. We must actively invest in co-creating new aspirational identities for people to embrace as they shed those which no longer serve.

5. There is radical potential in organizing our movements around Belonging.

For the purpose of exploring this idea—which is essential to our ability to effectively combat fascism—I am going to center the emotional experience of those people who find themselves seduced by fascism. To be clear: my primary sympathies are with those who do NOT choose fascism, and who are victimized by those choosing fascism. It is admittedly a bitter pill to hold space for and try to understand the emotional experience of the perpetrators.

In a future post I will devote attention to the untended and undischarged emotional experience (primarily grief and rage) of those who are targeted by oppression and fascism. Today I find myself called to try to understand what is motivating the perpetrators; if we do not, I believe we will be unable to effectively respond and prevent fascism’s rise. If you are not in a space today to empathize/humanize with the “other,” that’s okay: I invite you to care for yourself, listen to your body, and return if/when you feel ready. Otherwise, please join me in a journey to try to understand.

From loss to shame to violence: the emotional arc of fascism

Here’s how I understand the sequencing:

1. A sense of loss… and “wounded pride”

This loss is usually both material (objective) and subjective… it is the felt sense of loss that is far more important than the actual loss. In the case of many southern White people after the Civil War, this is the material loss of the war itself, and the emancipation of formerly enslaved people (for enslavers, the loss of wealth and “property”).

But the deeper loss is psychic: the loss of their position in society, their claim to honor (both wealthy enslavers as well as poor White people who benefited from the “psychic wages” of the system of white supremacy). They experience a sense of what Arlie Hochschild evocatively calls wounded or “stolen pride.”

2. Shame

The healthy response to loss is grief. But that grief is made more difficult by the concurrent emergence of shame, which I see at two levels.

1. The first is the sense of shame most correlated with the emotion of embarrassment: a feeling that “we should not have lost.” This is the sting of defeat… which on its own hurts, but can be overcome.

2. The second source of shame is deeper, and harder to confront: this is the reckoning that perhaps the loss is justified; perhaps the South should have lost. Perhaps the source of pride (dominant position in society over enslaved Black people) was itself actually a source of shame. For southern Whites, both enslavers and those who benefited from a racialized caste system alike, this is confronting the painful possibility of finding themselves on the wrong side of history. It is the sting of a moral failing, and can be experienced by the perpetrator as “moral injury” (especially for the vast majority of Southern people and soldiers who did not actually own enslaved people).

These are deep emotions, and too identity-shattering to confront alone. Shame and grief are both social emotions and experiences: they are too big to hold alone. This is a fraught and potentially dangerous stew of emotions that require careful and collective tending to navigate, to process as grief and move to repair (righting the wrong — reparations) and healing.

I think here of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation process—which rightly centered those harmed by apartheid and allowed them to be seen for all they had suffered. But an important and under-appreciated (by outsiders) part of Truth and Reconciliation was that it also offered a way for perpetrators to atone, to take accountability, to repair, and therefore to process their shame as grief before it metastasized into violence. We have never had such a process in the United States.

3. Humiliation

This is the all-important step: the pivot that paves the way to fascism. Humans cannot tolerate the feeling of shame: we experience it (correctly) as a threat to belonging. It feels unbearable. We MUST find a way to get rid of it. Generally there are two paths: grief, repair, and healing (accountability)… or externalizing the shame by blaming it on someone else (impunity).

After the Civil War the victorious North engineered and implemented a process known as Reconstruction: an ambitious and necessary project to remake and rehabilitate the South, and to grant political voice to disenfranchised Black people who had been oppressed under the system of enslavement. To many southern Whites, this had two important psychological/emotional impacts (acknowledging that I am speaking as a non-expert in broad generalizations; the best treatment of Reconstruction I’ve found is David Blight’s Race and Reunion):

1. First, it felt like imposition and coercion: the North exerting its will over the defeated. Many southern Whites experienced this as unjust and unfair.

2. Second, the dominant narrative in the North (during the war and after) adopted a posture of moral superiority: which many southern Whites experienced as hypocritical, shaming, and insulting.

The impact of these two experiences allowed many southern Whites to make an important—and dangerous—shift. It allowed them to experience themselves as victims. They were already resentful (pre-war); feeling unfairly punished gave them a sense of self-righteousness.

[Again, I’m speaking here only to the subjective experience of some southern White people: I happen to believe that the intentions and ambitions of Reconstruction were an equitable and necessary corrective to the degradation of enslavement… and that the South did in fact behavior immorally (not to exempt the North from its also racist and immoral beliefs/behaviors).]

4. Victimhood

Now the locus has shifted: where before they were primarily focused on the sting of their own internal experience (loss, wounded pride, and shame)... the introduction of humiliation shifts the focus to the “other”: the group seen as responsible for causing the humiliation. By blaming the North, southern Whites can avoid the uncomfortable sting of shame. No longer do they have to contemplate how they are perpetrators; instead they can take refuge in victimhood, and the soothing balm of self-righteousness.

Here’s the thing: there is an element of truth to their experience. The North did speak from a place of hypocrisy, by denying their own complicity in the system of enslavement and the (ongoing) oppression of Black people. The North’s effort to avoid its own reckoning (itself motivated in part by shame/denial) left it vulnerable to being named the oppressor. It allowed the South to see and name that hypocrisy, to deflect and avoid confronting their own culpability and feelings of shame.

(This is related to the form of victimhood I discussed here… that analysis helps explain the paradox of perpetrators feeling like victims, especially when they hold objective power).

5. Redemptive violence

This is why fascism is so dangerous, and fundamentally different from other forms of authoritarianism: it demands violence. I previously talked about “aggrieved entitlement,” the predominantly-male phenomenon that paves the way to violence: I think this animated the authoritarianism of Trump’s first term. That grievance comes from a place of not getting something “promised.” The animating force is resentment. The redemptive violence of fascism, by contrast, is motivated by a sense of loss, of something stolen (rather than something denied). The animating force is shame and humiliation. A wrong has been done, and demands satisfaction: the “stop the steal” campaign that led to the violent insurrection of January 6th to me represents this shift from resentment to humiliation, and to me was the threshold from authoritarianism to fascism in America.

In the post-war South, this was the birth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK): America’s first fascist movement. While we (rightly) see them as domestic terrorists, many Klan members saw themselves as righteous defenders of something sacred (invoking God and defending Christianity, a precursor to today’s Christian Nationalist movements).

As with today’s reactionary movements, these movements were led by elites primarily focused on reclaiming power and imposing racial hierarchy (the self-proclaimed “Redeemers”), and they successfully organized many southern Whites around this sense of victimhood. They justified their violence and terror as a necessary and appropriate response to their feeling of victimhood and humiliation: this was the essence of the “lost cause” mythology that the “Redeemers” so successfully cultivated after the war (leading Reconstruction scholars like Blight to observe that the South “lost the war but won the peace” with this revisionist history).

Implications for movements for justice

I want to be clear that this is not a linear inevitable path: many southern Whites did NOT support the KKK, and found healthier ways to metabolize their loss and confront their shame. Roughly 20% of southern White people opposed slavery and supported Reconstruction governments, and formed the largest percentage of delegates in those governments (derided by “Redeemers” as “scalawags”). Indeed, successful bi-racial governance emerged in several states.

This is also not the full story: many other factors contributed to the rise of the KKK in the post-war period. I’m deliberately focusing today on the emotional dimension, because I think it’s a misunderstood piece of the fascist puzzle.

I’m reminded of Naomi Klein’s great line about conspiracy theorists, which feels equally applicable here to leaders of fascist movements like Trump: they “get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right.” If we hope to respond effectively to fascism, we too need to get the feelings right… if we want anyone to listen to our facts.

Returning to our present moment, I’m sure readers will be drawing parallels. I want to emphasize two things: this is NOT a uniquely American phenomenon (or a Trump phenomenon), and we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring the broader context. And it is NOT inevitable. The benefit of an emotions-focused analysis illuminates the possibility for change. Unlike explanations which turn narrowly on identity, class position, ideology, or racism/xenophobia, recognizing instead that people are responding to universal emotional experiences (and similar conditions) gives us a sense of agency and potential to invite different choices.

For social movements committed to responding to (and ultimately preventing the re-emergence of!) fascism, I draw three key lessons:

1. We must acknowledge the sense of loss. This is the essential first step: to help people feel seen for their suffering. Right now Trump and the far-right have a near-monopoly on speaking to the pain of people with historically privileged identities and helping them make sense of their loss. In a brilliant essay, Amahra Spence explains (talking about the UK context, though I trust U.S. readers will see obvious parallels):

They take the very real grief of poor and working-class white communities—towns gutted by deindustrialisation, families destabilised by precarity, health and futures eroded by austerity—and redirect it into grievance against migrants, Black people, queer people, Muslims, anyone who can be made scapegoat. And because grief carries a deep desire for connection and belonging, these narratives are working. The far right is providing coherence, ritual and story where the Left too often offers distance, ridicule, or silence.

2. We must support the process of collective grieving. Let me be clear: this work is not for everyone (particularly those targeted by oppressive systems)… but it must be for someone. I’m deeply inspired by Malkia Devich Cyril’s work on “radical loss,” which they define as “the ability to move grief in the direction of justice.” Here BIPOC-led movements for justice are (as usual) charting the course, helping marginalized people metabolize their own suffering and rage and transmute it into justice. We need to develop similar containers and movements to support radical loss for White communities and others with historically privileged identities.

3. We must decline the temptation to wield shame or humiliation. bell hooks reminds us that these are the master’s tools; they cannot lead us to liberation. Healing justice practitioner Prentis Hemphill summarizes the literature on this: “shame impedes change.” Particularly for the kinds of people we are talking about here, they are already feeling stuck in shame: if we compound that by introducing humiliation we inadvertently interrupt any potential for grief and transformation, and instead push them toward victimhood (and the dangerous path to redemptive violence).

From revolution to transformation

As I was thinking about this post (and working on a “pitch deck” for Building Belonging, as we prepare for our fundraising drive to continue our work next year), I came up with a little framework that I think might be helpful for the last point I want to make here.

It describes how I understand the dynamic relationship between the status quo and its defenders, the social justice movements arising to challenge the status quo, and the reactionary movements emerging in response. It also mirrors my own lived experience. Let me present the framework, then unpack it:

The basic idea is that we are all seeking belonging, in response to conditions of alienation. But because our present systems can’t offer belonging, we try for the next best thing. Here’s how I understand the relationship/flow:

1. The status quo cannot offer belonging: belonging is not possible inside a domination system with a hierarchy that privileges some over others. Instead it offers power to those who are privileged in the hierarchy (as compensation for giving up on belonging), and offers the possibility of fitting in to everyone else (always conditional upon pledging allegiance to the power structure, and only in subservient roles). It masks the violence of the domination system by presenting it as a meritocracy, suggesting that those on top deserve to be there (and vice versa).

2. In response, Revolutionary Movements emerge to challenge the status quo, and to demand inclusion for those who have been marginalized and excluded. They correctly identify the flaws of the status quo, but there is a risk in conflating the problem as those privileged by the system rather than the whole system itself. (I personally think that all Revolutionary Movements contain a transformative impulse that is usually present in the leaders, but it is easily hijacked to serve revolutionary rather than transformative aims, because we are all conditioned into the logic of domination hierarchies. It is incredibly difficult to build liberatory movements that don’t replicate the thing we are fighting against). These movements offer at last the possibility of power to those who were excluded in the status quo, but can only offer fitting in to those who were privileged: belonging is still conditional.

3. The success of Revolutionary Movements in challenging the status quo produces a backlash in the form of Reactionary Movements. These movements are usually led by people who benefited the most from the status quo ante, but the rank and file are those who suffered under the status quo… but now feel threatened by Revolutionary Movements. People who didn’t have power in the status quo find that they also don’t have power in Revolutionary Movements… and stand to lose their role in “fitting in” or in their privileged position along an identity hierarchy: it provokes a fear of loss. Instead these movements retrench in the worst aspects of the status quo, offering the false promise of belonging contingent on “othering.” Instead of dressing up the domination hierarchy as meritocracy, they dispense with the pretense and embrace “othering” and domination as the core logic of the system: I belong because you don’t.

Of course, none of these movements can offer genuine belonging. This is the radical potential and promise of Transformative Movements, which explicitly reject the logic of domination and hierarchy, refuse to “other,” decline to contort ourselves to “fit in,” and instead invite us to practice interdependence, reciprocity, and relationships that honor everyone’s dignity.

This has been my life journey: feeling acutely the status quo’s false promise of belonging; feeling excited at the emergence of revolutionary movements that named injustice, and disappointed to encounter only conditional belonging; and feeling alarm at the reactionary movements that weaponized alienation into exclusion and doubled down on domination. None offered a home where I could bring my full self.

I finally found kin among those building transformative movements. Building Belonging is my effort to create the political home I’ve been longing for: for my kindred spirits committed to embodying belonging beyond hierarchy and domination.

Tread softly with identity: loss can trigger shame

I want to unpack one more complex idea here before I close. This is about the relationship between collective loss, shame, and identity. Here’s how I understand the logic flow:

1. All of the losses I am discussing today are systemic (not individual). There are two categories of loss for the people I am talking about today. The primary causes I consider material: loss of jobs and general economic precarity, as a consequence of the ravages of neoliberalism. These losses are a threat to core identities that give meaning and status based on what people do: provider, worker, middle-class, etc. They threaten one’s sense of self and place in society, and are on their own deeply destabilizing. I think of this as a loss of dignity: this is the failure of the status quo.

   1. If I’m not a provider for my family… who am I? This is the loss that can breed resentment and become aggrieved entitlement: a promise not kept.

   2. But even in this instability there is a path out: we can create new identities, new sources of status and belonging. I can provide in a different way, perhaps I can be a parent and caregiver rather than an economic provider.

2. But there is a secondary set of losses as well that are more cultural. As social movements rightfully challenge dominant systems, there is a risk that these critiques can land as targeting people rather than systems: blaming White people rather than white supremacy, blaming men rather than patriarchy, blaming Americans rather than imperialism. This is a much deeper identity threat: it targets who people are. I think of this as a loss of identity. This is the limitation (experienced as threat) of revolutionary movements.

   1. If the problem is my core identities as a White American man, and those are seen to be immutable… then there is no escape. What was a stable identity and source of pride now becomes a source of shame. This is the dangerous form of loss that is experienced as something stolen… and demanding a response.

3. Thus the people most susceptible to fascism are experiencing what I think of as a form of “double grief” that directly threatens identities that were presumed stable and positive. They experience alienation both from the status quo, AND from the revolutionary movements emerging to challenge the status quo. This combination of material loss of dignity and cultural/psychic loss of identity is profoundly destabilizing: taken together it represents an existential disorientation around their sense of belonging in the social order.

   1. It’s this sentiment: I don’t know who I am or what my role is in society… and I feel powerless in the face of forces beyond my control.

   2. This is a deeply vulnerable and intolerable state for most of us; it is doubly so for men socialized into a form of masculinity that doesn’t admit room for vulnerability, and who do not have strong social networks/sources of support.

This is the fertile recruiting ground for fascism, and the context within which we are working.

Reparation… and creation

As always, I fear I’ve overloaded the tree with ornaments here and it’s going to topple under its own weight. I think these ideas are in relationship with each other:

1. Understanding unmetabolized grief and its internalization as shame as core to the fascist phenomenon.

2. Recognizing the interplay between movements for justice and reactionary movements, and the “double grief” (or compounded shame) that makes people more susceptible to fascism.

I think there is powerful potential for solidarity here. What transformative movements recognize is that ALL of us suffer under our current systems, and that ALL of us have a stake in transforming them. We all yearn for belonging: not the conditional belonging of fitting in, nor the false belonging of othering, but the genuine thing. THAT is what we can offer.

So yes, there must be a component of grief and reparations work that seeks to heal what has been harmed. That is essential. AND: the promise of transformative movements makes the invitation to transformation (and the crushing vulnerability of confronting shame and doing deep grief work) worth it.

The bridge, I think, is deep and tender work around identities:

1. The future-oriented work of co-creating new aspirational identities, which must of necessity be post-racial and post-nationalist (giving people something to transform into)

2. And the past-oriented work of grieving the identities we are shedding… and the harms those identities have caused.

I’ll leave it here for today; this post has been percolating in me for a long time, and more lies ahead. A deeper exploration of grief that I feel sure will be part of my personal 2026 journey, ongoing work to interrogate where shame lives in me (I see all of this as fractal… between the world and me)… and more.

I would love reactions/thoughts/constructive engagement: is this helpful? What lands, what doesn’t? Is the revolutionary/reactionary/transformative framework useful?

Our last subscriber gathering of the year (with gratitude for your patience!) will be Wednesday, December 17th, @8:30am PT / 11:30am ET / 4:30pm UK / 5:30pm CET/CAT. I’m inclined to open this one to any subscriber who may wish to join; please RSVP here if interested.

In community,

Brian

It’s hard being a progressive (or as I prefer to call myself, a liberationist) in the United States: we’ve had our hopes crushed too often.

So it was a relief to wake up this morning to the first elections of the Trump 2.0 era and see that finally we have elected a candidate we can be happy about: member of the Democratic Socialist Party Zohran Mamdani’s emphatic victory in the New York City Mayor’s race, over another neoliberal money-backed establishment old-guard Democrat candidate.

That enthusiasm was tempered by early results in the mayoral election here in Seattle, where I live, where the neoliberal money-backed candidate is up in early returns (though there’s still hope that Katie Wilson, the progressive candidate I’m supporting, will pull through in late ballot returns).

This to me is the stakes of this election: there is no hope for the political future of the United States as long as old-school money-backed establishment Democrats cling to power. Our only hope is for progressive liberationists to take over the party, just as MAGA and Trump took over the Republicans.

Some thoughts:

It’s the Belonging (in community, together!)

Regular readers will not be surprised that this is my primary takeaway. What Mamdani did best was bring people together around an inspiring message. He united over 100,000 (!!!) volunteers, en route to amassing over 1,000,000 votes… an astonishing feat for an off-year election. As Anand Giridharadas put it:

The profound insight of the Zohran Mamdani campaign was that people want to be summoned to do more, not less; they want to get together, not lurk on screens alone; they want to belong in hope, not just commiserate in anger; they want to organize, not agonize.

He did this with a bold vision, a relentlessly positive message (yes we can!), an inclusive politics (reaching out to Trump voters without pathologizing their choice, including/especially in communities of color), and by actually doing the street-level work of organizing.

He also represents the next Gen in his embodiment: unapologetically multi-racial/multi-ethnic, social media savvy, and on the right side of history on the major issues of the day (including staunchly opposing the Israeli-led genocide in Gaza).

Framing this as Democrats vs Republicans misses the point

There are two things we need to understand about the shape of party politics in the United States in November 2025.

First, we need to understand that the national Republican party as we have historically understood it no longer exists: Trump executed a complete takeover, and it is now the MAGA party… with some minority holdouts who occasionally offer tepid resistance. We do ourselves a cognitive disservice in referring to it as the Republican party: the party of Abraham Lincoln (and indeed, even Ronald Reagan) is long dead.

Instead we need to view the Republican party for what it is: an autocratic party committed to strongman rule, that is actively supporting fascist takeover. (It’s important to note: not every Republican member of Congress sees themselves as doing this: but in this case, impact matters more than intent). It is also true that in the states, counties, and municipalities outside of the DC Beltway there are still pockets of more traditional Republicanism (though at any level of national prominence they are a dying breed).

Second, we need to understand that the Democratic party is reviled by large swaths of the population… including most of its base. It’s no accident that the most popular figures in Democratic politics in the last decade… are NOT actually Democrats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose to power as a Democratic Socialist… in direct challenge to an old-school money-backed neoliberal Democrat. “The Squad” that got elected in 2018 largely did so by distancing themselves from the traditional Democratic party. Bernie Sanders is an Independent.

This is not a “blue wave”: this is an anti-Trump wave, led by liberationists with a vision that rejects the dead-ends of Trumpism and mainstream Democratic politics. The energy in the Democratic party… is not in the Democratic party. Rather, it’s among Leftist political pragmatists who understand that in a two-party system we need to leverage the Democratic party as a tool to claim power… and to reshape the party in our image.

Credit where it’s due: in NYC to the Working Families Party, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and all those organizers and canvassers who door-knocked Mamdani to victory… AGAINST a mainstream establishment Democrat.

Abundance (progressive liberalism) vs Liberation (liberationism)

Yes this election is a profound rejection of Trump and what he stands for… thank the deities for that. But I don’t think 2024 was an endorsement of Trump and what he stands for: to me the clearer message was a rejection of the Democratic Party and what IT stands for. The plutocratic gerontocracy at the top of the party (Schumer, Biden et al) did not get the message in 2020, when we held our noses because we understood that the imperative was to get Trump out of power. Consequently, many voters understandably turned their backs: if you won’t stand up for us, why should we stand up for you? (To be clear: I still think defeating Trump was/is imperative, but I empathize with those who made different choices).

There will be those (read: New York Times) who will do their best to refuse to acknowledge the obvious to their rich readers, so let me be clear: the American people (and the base of the Democratic party) have repeatedly and profoundly rejected neoliberalism. Let it die. Our task: defeat establishment Democrats, and follow the Mamdani playbook.

Instead the debate worth paying attention to I think of as Abundance (after Ezra Klein’s new book) vs Liberation. I think there are actually two things going on here, and they get conflated: one is a theory of change about how you win power, and one is about the content/policy platform of what’s needed to respond to this moment. I’ll get to theory of change in a moment (they’re related, of course), but for now let’s focus on content.

In Abundance Klein offers a profoundly reformist agenda, arguing for how we can make government work better for people. I think of it as progressive liberalism: what we might call the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. It accepts the boundaries/core tenets of liberalism (as both a political and economic ethos) and tries to implement the economic ethos. It sees the core problem as liberalism failing to deliver on its promises… and seeks to deliver through technocratic efficiency.

Mamdani, by contrast, campaigned on a Democratic Socialist agenda (what I think of as a more liberationist agenda). It’s a much bolder and more ambitious vision that agrees that liberalism has failed to deliver… and instead of trying to salvage it offers to replace it with a democratic socialist vision. It understands—correctly, in my view—that it is liberalism that is producing the crisis, and therefore cannot be the antidote.

In last night’s most important election, Mamdani’s vision won.

Of course the actual answer is to reject the false binary here and focus on what I call visionary strategy: delivering material gains inside the current reality, while orienting relentlessly toward a bold vision for the future. How we integrate this polarity (visionary future vs pragmatic present) is one of the central quandaries of the moment, and one most pundits continue to misunderstand.

Big tent vs rally the base: theories of change

Here’s another false binary, but one with profound implications for how we organize. In an important conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Klein argued that we need a big tent/broad coalition to defend democracy in the United States. While the conversation was ultimately frustrating and degenerated into false binaries and straw men (I agreed with Anand Giridharadas’ take here), I think it speaks to an important debate in how we think about building power. The other traditional model (which Trump rode to power in taking over the Republican party) is to rally the base.

This debate also played out in a recent conversation between movement strategist Tynesha McHarris and Inside Philanthropy editor David Callahan. This too I found a frustrating exercise in false binaries and straw men: I see these discussions as about balancing (and integrating!) polarities rather than trying to persuasively “win” one side. David argued for a broader tent (expanding from what he sees as an overly narrow focus on “identity politics”); Tynesha argued for centering those most marginalized and building political coalitions around those intersectional interests.

The answer, of course, is to integrate the polarity: they’re both right. Tynesha is right that we do need to continue to center the needs of our base, and to reject the false binary that sees issues of class or economics (so-called “bread and butter” issues) as separate from issues of identity (race, gender, LGBT). And David is right that we do need to be thoughtful about our messaging and our audiences, and how an over-emphasis on identity can play into divide-and-conquer us/them politics.

I think Mamdani got it right: focusing relentlessly on issues that affect everyone (making affordability the centerpiece of his campaign) without shying away from an intersectional analysis that understands how some are disproportionately affected (e.g. offering a three-point plan protecting LGBT rights).

What do we do about rich people?

This is the thing I’m struggling with, especially here in Seattle (but also New York). I’m deeply disappointed in the wealthy voting narrowly to defend their economic interests, and their apparent willingness to throw the rest of the city under the bus. To me it follows logically that those who have the most privilege have an obligation to share that bounty with those who have less; I find it infuriating that those who have the most seek not only to cling to their (usually ill-gotten) gains, but also to deny others the same opportunities (Trump’s big tax break to the wealthy is funded by stealing from those with less wealth).

That said: our (left/progressive) current way of organizing with regard to the wealthy also bothers me. One of my biggest frustrations with current progressive organizing is the willingness to create an “other” for the purposes of creating a “we.” The current bogeyman we all agree on is blaming the billionaire class. I happen to agree that billionaires shouldn’t exist… but I see them as the symptom of the problem, not the problem. And tactically I think making an enemy of those with the most power in the current system is unsound: we need to encourage them to join us, not push them away.

In this I disagree with conventional wisdom in campaigning, which tends to follow Anat Shenker-Osorio’s maxim:

For a message to be successful, it must engage the base, persuade the middle, and alienate the opposition.

For the purposes of winning a campaign, I’m sure she’s right (she’s the comms professional, not me). But I’m not interested only in winning campaigns: I’m interesting in transforming culture and politics, and I don’t think alienating the “opposition” is the path to victory. I don’t actually think billionaires are the opposition: I think our system is the opposition, and it would be great if billionaires would join us in dismantling it, or at least improving it (many do lots of good via their philanthropy, e.g.: George Soros, the Omidyars, Peter Buffett, etc.)

Anyway… I’ll die on this hill another day, just naming something I’m sitting with.

I do want to close on a positive note: this was an unquestionably good electoral outcome for the United States. Yet we know elections are only part of the battle: they matter, but governance and narrative do too. Let’s take the win… and the work continues. As narrative strategist and friend Shanelle Matthews wrote:

After nearly 300 days under a regressive, reactionary, and harmful regime, this victory represents a beacon of hope—much like other victories. It reflects a rejection of Trumpism and a desire for a new era in politics.
The challenging work of addressing the needs of New Yorkers now begins for the mayor-elect, but we should take a moment to appreciate the story this win tells.
We do not have to settle for the lesser of two evils, a spineless Democratic Party, war criminals, poverty wages, mass suffering, cruelty, or exclusionary politics. We have the power to make real change.
Our work continues as well. As Lumumba Bandele recently said, “I organized yesterday, voted today, and without any doubt, regardless of the outcome, I will be organizing tomorrow. Voting is a tool, not the objective.”

I’d love to hear what sense others are making!

Finally, please accept my apologies for the long gap between posts: a busy time of life here, juggling all the things. I’ve been writing a post on the emotional life of fascism, which is sending me down all kinds of rabbit-holes… fascinating, but slow-going. More to share there soon.

I just returned from Cyprus, for the inaugural convening of my Building Belonging colleague Christina’s Belonging Beyond Borders network. Such a gorgeous gathering of wonderful humans… I’m continuing to integrate. A glimpse of beauty and potential:

In community,

Brian

I’ve been avoiding this reckoning. I fear fascism is one of those words that polarizes: it obfuscates more than it clarifies. Instead I’ve used the term authoritarianism, which contains within it its own definition; it’s more intuitive. But there’s a deeper reason: I’ve been afraid of what I might find if I look.

Yet as the Trump regime has ravaged Washington, the U.S., and the world, I’ve found myself called to deepen my understanding of fascism. I’ve been sensing that this moment is different; that an important Rubicon has been crossed. I suspect many of you feel the same way: masked ICE agents pulling people into unmarked vans without bothering to show their credentials… it’s scary. It’s not normal.

So today I want—with some trepidation—to talk about fascism. As Baldwin reminds us: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So deep breath… let’s face it.

Here’s where I’m coming out (TL;DR):

We are facing fascism: the Trump regime is following a playbook that intentionally seeks to consolidate power by undermining democracy and the rule of law. This knowledge is both deeply unsettling… and it empowers us to act. The first step must be to resist: both passive refusal to consent, and active pushback. We must also empathize: respond to the feelings that are causing people to support or allow fascism, and encourage them to defect and withdraw consent. Fascism as a movement is animated primarily by a sense of victimhood, wounded pride, and loss: we MUST respond to those emotions. Finally, we must invite people to join us in building a better world, one that works for everyone.

What is fascism?

The term originated in Italy under Mussolini, when he named his political party/movement “fascismo,” derived from the Latin term fasces (a military symbol from ancient Rome). Fascism defies easy definition. While there is a fascist playbook (a program of activities that together comprise fascism), it’s less about the specific activities than it is about the intended goal and what motivates them (e.g. there is not a linear relationship between feelings, ideology, and program).

Robert Paxton, the world’s pre-eminent scholar on fascism, offers a working definition in his foundational 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. (emphasis mine)

For a more accessible read check out his 1998 article “The Five Stages of Fascism,” where he elaborates on seven core features/characteristics of fascism. I want to highlight five that stand out to me as core to understanding this zeitgeist and its present incarnation (parenthetical notes are mine; rest verbatim from Paxton):

1. The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group's enemies, internal as well as external. (victimhood and redemptive violence)

2. Dread of the group's decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism. (obsession with purity)

3. An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem. (yearning for belonging achieved through othering, importance of loyalty)

4. Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny. (patriarchal authoritarianism)

5. The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group's success in a Darwinian struggle. (militarism and nationalism, zero sum worldview, scarcity mindset)

Readers will already be seeing obviously parallels and drawing alarming conclusions.

How is it different from authoritarianism or populism, and why does the distinction matter?

Though the same conditions can spawn fascism and other movements that look similar (principally authoritarianism or right-wing populism), to me what distinguishes fascism is its emotional appeal and its stated goals. Here’s how I understand the distinctions:

Populism is about privileging people over corrupt elites, and as such can emerge on the Right or the Left (I don’t think these terms are particularly useful anymore, but you get the idea: could be Trump or Bernie). At its best it can be powerfully democratic: Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor is a fundamentally progressive populist vision.

Authoritarianism is a strategy to centralize power in the strongman (often justified as speaking/acting “for the people”). As a strategy it rejects traditional democracy, and can exist on a spectrum that on one hand seeks to preserve the veneer of democracy (this is Viktor Orban’s contradiction-in-terms of “illiberal democracy” in Hungary) and on the other can be outright dictatorship (think Mubarak in Egypt or Assad in Syria before they were ousted).

Fascism is a different beast, and necessitates a different response. Like authoritarianism it relies on wielding the power of the state (and often paramilitaries) to repress dissent and consolidate power, but unlike authoritarianism its goal is not only power for the sake of power. Instead it is animated by a purity politics rooted in a sense of victimhood (as I discussed here) that justifies and even necessitates the use of violence to destroy the “other.” It has always been ethno-nationalist in its expression (this is the “blood and soil” slogan at the heart of Nazi fascism). Fascism is more about feelings than thoughts; is is more a cultural movement than a coherent political ideology.

Authoritarianism in theory can be defeated by replacing the authoritarian (in practice this is more difficult, as Libya, Egypt, and Syria amply demonstrate). Fascism is not so easy to uproot, because the grievances that create fertile conditions for its emergence go much deeper. It is not only about elite capture and corruption (the core grievance of populism); it is also about victimhood, humiliation, and purity: it takes on an almost-religious fervor.

The bad news: we are facing fascism

Let me start by stating the obvious: as with the term genocide, anytime we find ourselves debating whether we are living under fascism we’ve clearly crossed into very dangerous territory. I do think the distinction matters (is this fascistic or fascism) but the alarm bells should already be ringing loudly.

Here is my inescapable conclusion: in the United States, we are confronting fascism. The current Trump regime is fascist (fascist as adjective, not noun). I use the term “regime” to include both the formal Administration as well as the associated cronies and enablers: Musk, Bannon, etc. as well as Republican politicians aiding and abetting at various levels of government, as with the blatant off-census attempt to further gerrymander Texas. Important messaging here (credit to Anat Shenker-Osorio): refer to the “regime,” not the “government.” The government is not the problem; the hostile takeover of the government is the problem.

But don’t take it from me: Paxton himself reached the same conclusion. If you’re still not persuaded, I highly recommend the latest episode of Ejeris Dixon’s essential Fascism Barometer podcast. She interviews Tarso Ramos, an expert on authoritarianism and fascism, who outlines the key features of this regime that have crossed that red line from authoritarianism to fascism. To enumerate a few just in the first six months of Trump 2.0 (here’s a partial list compiled by Rolling Stone back in March… only two months into his presidency!):

• kidnapping lawful U.S. residents, without proper identification, just cause, or due process

• violating court orders prohibiting unlawful deportations

• arresting people solely for opinions the government doesn’t like (e.g. pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist sentiment)

• targeting academic institutions, law firms, and other institutions, withholding funds and threatening retribution for disagreeing with the administration

• deploying Marines on U.S. soil without state consent/invitation

• firing civil servants for telling the truth (e.g. head of Bureau and Labor Statistics)

• the illegal firing/shuttering of Agencies without Congressional approval (USAID), and the hostile takeover/occupation of buildings that do not belong to the Executive (e.g. the U.S. Institute of Peace)

• appointing loyalists to key positions in government, without relevant qualifications for the job

• pardoning January 6th rioters who were found criminally liable for a variety of offenses relating to the insurrection

• cutting funding for public broadcasting (NPR and PBS) and pressuring private actors (e.g. cancelling the Colbert Show) in an attempt to silence critique

• banning books, including on U.S. military bases

There is of course some historical precedent for many of these activities from ignominious parts of our history (as a recent Ezra Klein podcast reminds us: see e.g. President Jackson flouting the Supreme Court; FDR enabling Japanese internment; Johnson deploying the National Guard in the civil rights era); and many examples at the state and local level. We have never faced a fascist regime in full control of the federal government; we are in uncharted (and dangerous) waters.

I imagine you are resisting this diagnosis at some level, at whatever stage of grief you find yourself: denial (no, it’s not that bad), bargaining (well, sure, but we still have some checks and balances!), depression (we’re all fucked). That’s okay. Keep breathing. Let’s take a moment to let it land: this is heavy stuff.

Breathe, and center: it’s bad, but it’s not inevitable

I’m going to spend the rest of this post accepting the premise that we are living under fascism here in the United States. You are free to reach your own conclusions; even if you disagree with my assessment I trust you will agree that our current situation is sufficiently grave to be worth taking this very seriously.

Either way, this is a big fucking deal. We are right to feel scared, to feel overwhelmed.

The fascist playbook is designed and intended to provoke those feelings in us, to keep us stuck in fear and overwhelm so we can’t organize and resist. As you are reading this, if you are American and are allowing yourself to acknowledge for the first time that we are living under fascism… I invite you to join me in a centering practice. (More on this here from a previous post on surviving the speed of catastrophe). Four steps to take right now, even as you’re reading this post:

1. Feel your feelings. Validate them. You are right to feel scared. Of course your nervous system feels on high alert. Those feelings are valid: your body has wisdom—including ancestral wisdom—that often our minds are slow to acknowledge. Allow yourself to feel your feelings, and listen to your body. We can’t respond effectively when we are activated. The first step MUST be to feel, and to allow our nervous systems to calm down.

2. Remind yourself: we can overcome fascism. This is not inevitable. Our actions matter, and our actions can defeat fascism. We have succeeded in the past in different contexts across history, and we can succeed again.

3. Choose agency. Most people right now are choosing to look away, to numb out. That’s understandable. But you can make a different choice. We’ll talk more below about what to do. What’s important here is to choose to engage. To commit to standing on the right side of history, without yet knowing exactly what that means.

4. Listen to those who saw this coming. Many activists and social movement leaders—often/usually BIPOC, women, and queer folks—have been trying to warn us. The New York Times and mainstream media (to include social media) have consistently both gotten this wrong (Trump won’t win, Roe is safe, surely it won’t be that bad…) AND have actively enabled his rise to power (Bezos refusing to endorse at the Washington Post; Zuckerberg allowing disinformation, etc.) Diversify your news sources: consistently the most accurate reporting and analysis I’ve seen is coming from places like Truthout, Democracy Now, The Laura Flanders Show, as well as places tracking/responding to fascism in particular, like Ejeris Dixon’s Fascism Barometer and Scot Nakagawa’s Anti-Authoritarian Playbook.

Act where you have agency: choose your audience

I think it’s enough for one post just to call the question; but I also want to offer some guidance on how to respond to this moment (itself subject of a longer post, forthcoming). For now, I think there are three primary responses to this moment corresponding to different audiences. All three are essential, and must take place concurrently.

In my first post of the Trump 2.0 era I called for a three-pronged approach: refuse, repair, create. While I think that’s still directionally accurate, in light of the fascist threat I think a more specific, assertive, and targeted response is needed. I’ll call this Resist, Empathize, Invite. I’m not sure if these are quite the right words, but I’ll flesh out the sentiment I’m trying to convey, and which audiences are being targeted.

I’m a big fan of the “spectrum of allies” tool for movement strategy:

I personally would replace “radical left” with “liberationists”, but you get the gist. For the purposes of this moment/post, I see three key audiences corresponding to the three key interventions; I’ll name them here and then elaborate.

1. Resist is responding to the regime and its apparatchiks: those leading the fascist charge who must be strenuously opposed. In the diagram this is “our targets” (the Trump regime) and “active opponents” (hardcore MAGA).

2. Empathize: the target audiences here are those who are currently passively against us or skeptical about us. People who support or supported Trump, but don’t want to think of themselves as supporting fascism. They are more moveable.

3. Invite: the target audience here is the vast middle: those who are undecided but turned off by “both sides”, or who are passively with us but not yet stepping into action. We need to mobilize them into action.

I will say more about each of these interventions below. But what’s critical: everything we do must be in “fractal integrity” (credit to Kai Cheng Thom for this coinage which I love). It’s this idea: everything we do—whether in vigorous opposition or loving invitation—must be embodying the world we want to create. We are asking people to do something scary: to oppose a dangerous regime, and to join us in the uncertain task of building a better world. We must make that invitation appealing.

The goal is to move EVERYONE closer to us (including ultimately those we are strenuously opposing). This is the radical work of belonging: it must include everyone.

1. Resist: the time to act is now

Experts generally identify a 12-18 month window to prevent the consolidation of fascist power. Hungarian theorist and former politician Bálint Magyar identifies three stages of autocracy (a useful parallel to the fascist phenomenon based on European experience): attempt > breakthrough > consolidation. Writer and scholar on authoritarianism Masha Gessen contends that January 6th was the clear attempt, and Trump’s election and first 100 days of his second term are the breakthrough. We are in dangerous territory, and time is of the essence.

The way fascism works: the cost of resistance increases exponentially with time. It will become harder and more dangerous to push back as the regime consolidates power. Three first principles I invite you to internalize and operationalize as a mantra of resistance:

1. The time to act is now.

2. Resistance is our civic responsibility.

3. Solidarity is the only path to safety.

The easiest metaphor to use: think of Trump and his ilk as bullies. Bullies are deeply insecure, and they only respond to power: if you give an inch, they’ll take more. But they’re also dangerous and often have the advantage of size, so we must stand together.

What does this mean practically? It starts with resistance: if we don’t stop fascism’s advance, everything else becomes much more difficult. As Steven Levitsky reminds us: checks and balances are only useful… if we use them. There is no cavalry arriving: we are the cavalry. At every opportunity where the Trump administration is encroaching and closing civic space, we have to stand our ground. Be like Harvard, not like Columbia. What we have to remember: the rules of the game are different under fascism. This is existential: this is a regime intent on dismantling democracy.

There are two components to what I mean by RESIST here, and they are different and both essential. This is both about refusing to consent (noncompliance), and assertively pushing back. (I still hold my discomfort with the term resistance as an organizing principle for all of our action, but it is absolutely the right first step as a bulwark against fascist encroachment).

Both tactics carry risk, which is why to the extent possible they should always be done in solidarity: strength in numbers! Non-consent is where it all begins: civil disobedience is a moral responsibility in the face of fascism. We all have this power: to refuse to go along. This is Timothy Snyder’s exhortation: “don’t obey in advance!”

That escalates into active resistance, which I think of as pushing back. This is an escalation of effort and risk. I recommend two tactics in particular: the use of humor/satire, and the (very careful!) use of shame. Humor is powerful because it breaks through fear; bullies cannot stand to be mocked.

There is also a powerful opportunity to wield shame as a tool responsibly. Not to dehumanize or attack the person, but to clearly label their actions and behavior: shame on you! This serves dual purposes: it forces the perpetrator to confront their own dissonance (the sting of feeling ashamed), AND it reinforces/emphasizes the pro-social norm for bystanders. It creates an “us,” those of us who do not behave in fascist ways. It points the path back to belonging: stop behaving in fascist ways.

2. Empathize: we must respond to feelings

This is a major growth area for our movements, and a place we need to bring more attention and intention. Fascism is driven by feelings, and we HAVE to address those feelings. I will write an entire post unpacking what I want to say here, but for now let me try to sketch out the argument.

Here’s the thing: the conditions that animate fascism are the same conditions that inspire people to become liberationists. Principally a felt sense of precarity and broken-ness, and a sense that the system is rigged and doesn’t work for most people. We all share three primary emotions: fear about the state of the world and what that means for us and those we love; anxiety about change (technological, climatic, demographic, etc.); and a longing to belong.

So why are some people choosing to support fascism? I believe the most important thing is a sense of victimhood/wounded pride/loss. This sits upstream of everything else, and we MUST find a way to reckon with it. I unpacked how this operates more fully in this recent post; I see it as the central ingredient in fascism, and the most relevant feature of the American expression of it. Trump is a master at responding to this sentiment, because he identifies with it. As my favorite 2016 election post-mortem observed:

Trump's accomplishment was to take these inchoate feelings of decline and marginalization and to provide a perspective that not only made sense of them but also provided a solution. In so doing, he acknowledged the real problems of his audience (while others ignored them or even contributed to them); he understood them and empowered them to participate in the process of resolving those problems.

Arlie Hochschild’s new book is my favorite diagnosis of this subject in the present moment, though she stops short of offering actionable prescriptions. I’ll offer a few in shorthand here:

1. Do NOT use shame as a tactic. This group is stuck in toxic shame, and needs validation and acknowledgment before anything else is possible.

2. Acknowledge the sense of loss: name the pain. Pain is a portal to transformation: it has to be named and felt before it can be transmuted.

3. Support sensemaking: name the systems. It’s easy to blame people (and most messaging handbooks even in progressive/radical spaces endorse this tactic). I think we need to take the higher and more difficult road, and a more complex truth: we need to blame the systems.

4. Offer people agency, and a chance to be part of building a better world. This is the bridge to Invite, below.

One important messaging tip here: target behavior, not people. We are inviting people to change behavior: to withdraw consent from the fascist regime they may currently be supporting, and to join us. Which means everything we do must (a) acknowledge their potential to change (b) support them in making a different choice.

My sister Trina, a communications professional, has been really helpful for me in landing this insight. For example, she never refers to Zionists (noun, an identity that is immutable), and instead invites us to think of “people who are currently choosing to support Zionism.” A mouthful yes, but it reminds us that these are humans, who are making a choice in a specific moment, who could make a different choice. Our job is to support them in making a different choice… which starts by understanding the “why” behind their current choice.

3. Invite people to join us in building a world that works for everyone

The unfortunate reality is: we’re losing. Fascist forces are on the rise globally and here in the U.S.; we are living through what narrative strategist Shanelle Matthews calls a “reactionary moment.” She frames the challenge:

In this crisis, we must ask ourselves: What story does the social movement left need to tell now? How do we situate ourselves within this historical moment with clarity and purpose? How do we mobilize a broad base with messaging that is both visionary and materially grounded – one that inspires but also builds power at scale?

The bad news: their vision taps into our base fears, and offers simple (false) solutions. The good news: our vision taps into our deepest longings, and offers genuine solutions.

Every post I write for this newsletter takes up this question, so I won’t go deep here. Just to invite those who are called to the work of building/visioning: keep up that work! Yes the terrain is much more challenging in a reactionary era; yes we must devote more energy to resistance; AND we must continue to build the better world we know is possible.

I’m curious how this lands for folks; are you also seeing fascism here? Curious about readers in other countries; certainly I see fascist movements (the AfD in Germany in particular) that haven’t yet claimed federal power.

More to say in a future post about how we respond to the emotions of this moment, and the connection to liberalism and capitalism… but I’ll leave it here for now.

In community,

Brian

For movement strategists this has always been the Holy Grail. Our strength is in our diversity and pluralism; this is also our weakness: movements divided cannot stand. How can we connect our movements so that the sum is greater than the parts? How can we connect across difference, and move toward coherence?

This question has obsessed me for as long as I can remember. And I think we’re finally getting close to some answers, recognizing the interconnectedness of our work. As Loretta Ross noted:

Even though we have many causes we have one struggle.

So today I want to talk about what it takes to build a movement-of-movements, and why I think for the first time in history we actually have a shot at pulling it off. I want to explore this question through the lens of emergence: the science of how complex systems transform.

Here’s where I’m coming out (TL;DR): Emergence (the transformation of one system to a new system) proceeds in phases: disruption > experimentation > coalescence > coherence (a new paradigm/system). I believe the moment is ripe for coalescence: to consolidate our gains, to build on what we’ve learned, and to invite everyone working to build a better world to find their place in a shared narrative. I think we finally have a common aim (captured in the language of liberation and belonging), and even more importantly we have common ways of being…. the emerging coherence I see uses means that are in integrity with our desired ends. Connecting and amplifying these “islands of coherence” feels to me like the essential work of this moment.

Emergence is how systems transform… and human transformation requires human agency

I’ve always been obsessed with the question of how transformation happens… and specifically how transformation happens at scale. As I discussed here, I believe the most compelling answer to that question is the phenomenon of emergence. There are many properties of emergence that I find compelling and relevant for social change work, but the insight relevant to today’s post is about the stages of emergence. I understand it as follows:

In natural systems this happens organically and in some cases even predictably: water subjected to heat becomes steam, a new equilibrium. In human systems, however, I think the process of getting to coherence—systems transformation—requires human intervention at every stage. What I want to emphasize here: there is an essential role for agency. We have the power—and therefore, I believe, the responsibility—to transform systems.

And we all have different roles to play. Bill Moyer famously identified four roles of social activism; Deepa Iyer offers an expanded version with 10 roles; I explored a few other frameworks here. I’ll adapt/offer my own synthesizing of the field for the purposes of this post: Disruptor, Innovator, Weaver, and Builder. What’s important to flag here: all roles are essential. Each is necessary and on its own insufficient to achieve transformation; only together can we transform systems.

Disruption is the first stage of transformation: without it nothing else is possible. This is confrontation and calling the question, as exemplified by powerful social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. This is a time for Disruptors (what Moyer calls Rebels). They are often the first to the frontlines, and essential to igniting the spark that can spawn a movement.

Experimentation comes next: self-organizing across the system to try something different. This is a time for Innovators, creators and entrepreneurs who plant seeds, prototyping new models for the new system that has yet to emerge.

Coalescence is the third stage: beginning to identify patterns across experiments, seeing connections, identifying the common threads that can become the basis of the new system. This is a time for Weavers, for connectors and bridgers, to help find coherence amid chaos.

Coherence: At last the new system has arrived and is taking shape: a new equilibrium is reached built on new principles which coalesced in the previous stage. This is a time for Builders, for synthesizers and stabilizers, people committed to ensuring that the new paradigm is rooted and durable.

Now is the time for coalescence

This is the move from divergence—what emergence practitioner Peggy Holman calls Differentiation—to convergence.

Many social change agents (myself included) have found resonance with this quote from Nobel-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine:

“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”

Yes: this is the transformative potential of coalescence—finding those successful experiments that can move the system from disruption (chaos) to the new equilibrium. It is a hugely catalytic role. As systems change practitioner Charles Leadbetter notes:

Coherence, making sense of how many threads come together and how they could be woven differently, is the main leverage that system shifters have; it is how a small initiative can have an influence over a much bigger system, especially one which finds itself at sea.

There are three different points I want to call out here.

1. The experimentation stage leads to multiple potential new paradigms. That is, there are different “islands of coherence” that correspond to different potential pathways we could take. This means that the new system is not inevitable: there is an essential role for human agency to catalyze that shift. To move from islands of coherence to systemic coherence (a new paradigm) requires coordination and intervention: it is about organizing emergence. This is the work of coalescence.

2. The first step in coalescence (the shift from divergence to convergence) is assessing ripeness: are the conditions right to begin moving toward coherence? I strongly believe that we have reached a moment of ripeness (indeed, I fear we’ve waited too long): there has been enough experimentation to illuminate clear patterns across diverse systems. I believe it’s time to call the question and move toward coherence.

3. I think there are two emerging paradigms currently vying to become the new equilibrium: the first is what I call authoritarian: a supremacist worldview of domination and ownership. Unfortunately this is currently ascendant and claiming structural power around the world. The second I will call belonging—an ecological worldview of right relationship with each other, the land, and all beings. Each of these paradigms is currently reflected in many “islands of coherence”: different nation-states are experimenting with different versions of authoritarianism (Russia, the U.S., Hungary, Israel, etc.), just as different communities are experimenting with different versions of right relationship at different scales (indigenous collectives of water protectors, bioregional regeneration in Colombia, urban initiatives like Cooperation Jackson, networked transnational initiatives like Transition Towns, etc.)

Here’s the problem. Steve Bannon and others are actively organizing the ethno-nationalist far right, an explicitly international effort to consolidate power at the national level. They are seeking to shift the system toward authoritarianism as the new equilibrium: a new age of empire. Which means we can’t afford to wait any longer: if we want to have a chance at shifting the system toward the belonging worldview… we MUST start coalescing and moving toward coherence.

Why now? What’s different?

Calls for a “movement of movements” have been around for decades. Dr. King took to the pulpit in 1967 to decry the “three evils,” explicitly seeking to link the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-poverty movement, and the anti-war movement. This insight was the basis for his launch of the Poor People’s Campaign, which he explicitly conceived of as a shift from reform to transformation, declaring:

We have been in a reform movement… But after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must be the era of revolution. We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.

This idea of course was deeply threatening to the existing status quo, as satirized in this 1968 comic:

The status quo successfully fought back the challenge through oppression and state violence (including the assassinations of Dr. King, Fred Hampton, and RFK, three figures who explicitly envisioned multiracial/multi-class movements) to usher in the neoliberal era: a new equilibrium.

That equilibrium survived until the first wave of global protests challenging the neoliberal era kicked off with the anti-globalization WTO protests in Seattle in 1999… momentum that evolved in the post-9/11 era to reboot the global anti-war movement. This led some to call again for a “movement of movements;” a book with that title was published in 2004 trying to call the question around neoliberalism and linking it to the anti-war movement. But those efforts didn’t successfully challenge dominant power in a fundamental way until the current wave of movements, kicked off by Occupy and the Arab Spring in 2011, and finally bringing the missing intersectional lens with the arrival of Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and MeToo in 2013, 2016, and 2017 respectively.

So we once again have powerful social movements disrupting the status quo, and as with the late 1960s there is a growing recognition that our movements are connected. I think three key things are different that make this moment of coalescence possible in a way it wasn’t in the late 1960s.

1. There is greater awareness and understanding of intersectionality, and a broader and deeper analysis of how we got here. Where in the 1960s we talked of racism and economic exploitation, today social justice advocates identify the underlying systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Dr. King was widely pilloried for coming out against Vietnam; today activists (especially Gen Z and Millennials) share a broad critique of American imperialism. This broader (and deeper) intellectual awareness is essential… and knowledge alone is insufficient.

2. The thing that really gives me hope is that for the first time in history, I think our movements are increasingly embodied. We are finally taking responsibility for healing trauma in ourselves and our movements, for building the relational skills necessary to navigate conflict and repair, and recognizing that how we show up is inextricably connected to what we want to change in the world. As bell hooks wryly observed:

   When you’re fucked-up and you lead the revolution, you are probably going to get a pretty fucked-up revolution.

   This to me is the primary distinction between the movements of the 1960s and the movements of the last decade: we now recognize the fundamental importance of inner work… and many more people have access to the resources to do it. Today we are finally integrating Gandhi’s exhortation to be the change, following the lead of elders like Grace Lee and James Boggs.

3. We are better prepared to resist the inevitable oppressive violent backlash of defenders of the status quo (or the authoritarian worldview). First, we have intentionally cultivated “leader-ful” movements: it is more difficult to decapitate a movement that has no clear head. Second, because of the two points above, we have far more resilience and solidarity across movements than we have in the past. No Kings Day summoned an incredible diversity of people and causes to the streets: popular pushback against ICE raids has also come from people not traditionally involved in (im)migration justice. Third, after Trump 1 and because of learnings from other countries dealing with state-sponsored violence (I personally drew huge inspiration from the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and its evolution toward “be like water” in 2019), we have become more sophisticated in responding to state-sanctioned oppression. In the face of Trump 2.0, this is more important than ever.

Of course these three changes aren’t nearly widespread enough, but I don’t think they have to be. If a dedicated minority transforms ourselves, I believe the ripple effects of that in our movements and systems will prove transformative. This is another insight from Emergence theory: scale (and transformation!) is fractal, not linear.

From emergence to resonance: toward a movement of movements

The good news: many of us are sensing the same thing, feeling the same calling, following the same imperative. Just this week alone (during which I’ve been trying to create time and space to put these thoughts to paper) friends have sent me two different resources playing with similar ideas and reaching similar conclusions:

1. Systems change practitioner Jennifer Brandel introduces the beautiful role/concept of “interstitionaries”:

Interstitionaries are people who operate in the connective tissue of society — between roles, institutions, disciplines, and identities. They’re natural triangulators, cross-pollinators, and weavers of coherence in fragmented times.

Yes! I feel so seen! (hat-tip to fellow interstitionary Sean Andrew for the share). This is putting lesson one into action: working to create connections across movements and systems, recognizing their fundamental interdependence.

2. The good folks at CoCreative put out a report on “the human heart of systems change” (with thanks to Julia Roig for the share). They echo Brandel’s insight—naming what they call the “interstitial paradox” that leaves these essential weaving roles under-resourced—and name that function as essential to the broader work of moving from emergence to resonance. They call this work “Harmonizing the “Social Symphony,” and close with an inquiry around how we can build a “Coalition of Coalitions.” This is putting lesson two into action: explicitly naming love, connection, and inner work as essential to systems transformation.

This is what organic coalescence looks like in action: the co-arising of similar conclusions across diverse systems. What’s missing/what we’re seeking: the energetic effort—and resourcing!—to intentionally convene/connect these systems at the scale and with the speed necessary to respond to this moment of threat and opportunity.

The symphony will not be conducted… yet the music must be harmonized

This is the bad news: we aren’t yet coordinating/organizing/coalescing with the speed and scale we need. There are good reasons for that: we are not Steve Bannon. We rightly reject top-down command-and-control efforts. We don’t want to make ourselves visible and risk being targeted by an oppressive state with access into our digital lives.

We are still searching for a metaphor, one that is aligned with the world we are trying to co-create. The orchestra/symphony isn’t quite it; we reject the idea of a single conductor, one individual directing a collective.

In her foundational work Emergent Strategy, which introduced the concept of emergence to activists involved in movements for social change, adrienne maree brown invoked the metaphor of a murmuration of starlings. It’s a gorgeous image, with important implications for action: focus on what is within our control, adapt quickly, and if each individual follows simple principles the collective will thrive. In the early stages of experimentation, it’s a great way to be in collective relationship.

And yet: I fear it’s the wrong metaphor for our current moment, for our purpose is now different. Scientists don’t fully understand the purpose of murmurations: the prevailing theory is they are designed to help avoid predation (confusing would-be predators with large numbers and coordinated action, like a school of fish). But our goal is not only survival: our goal is liberation. We have a destination in mind, and now—thanks to successful experimentation by a range of innovators and creatives—we have the practices for how to get there. In a time of coalescence, I am drawn to a different metaphor: geese flying in V formation.

Because the fact is, there ARE better ways of doing things. Some strategies and tactics are more effective than others. Geese MUST fly south to survive the winter: they are not agnostic as to direction. They fly in V formation to reduce drag and conserve energy. And they take turns in the lead. To continue experimenting with different formations at this point is to ignore what we’ve learned: it is to waste energy and leave us vulnerable. In the face of the authoritarian threat, I fear we can’t afford to do that any longer.

Here are the lessons I want to draw:

1. We know where we’re going. While in the early days of disruption we were rightly focused on what we were against (white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism etc. and their expression in racialized violence), we now have a vision of what we’re moving TOWARDS. We want liberation. Justice. Belonging. A world that works for everyone, in right relationship with the land and all other beings. It is time for us to fly in the same direction.

2. We know how to get there. I don’t mean we know the path (there isn’t one); I mean that we know how to create the path while walking. I mean we know how to be the change. In the days of experimentation we tried many things, exploring different ways of being, relating, healing, and organizing. Now we have enough data and success from those experiments. We now have the collective wisdom about how to be in right relationship: the work now is to practice. We can be leader-ful (rejecting the false binary of the unitary leader or the fiction of leaderlessness). We need to fly in a V formation.

3. We all have a role to play. What I love about the geese metaphor is it invites all of us to play our roles, inside of constraints. The direction and the mode of travel are set; how we navigate the obstacles along the way is up to us to solve as a collective. Each of us will take a turn in the lead, according to our strengths. There are times we may need the Disruptors to take the lead; other times we may need to follow the Builders. (And there may still be times in the face of threat where we may need to move into murmuration). But the important thing to remember: we all belong. None of us without all of us.

I’m suggesting that at this moment we need to listen to the weavers and the bridgers, and follow their lead to connect with our kindred spirits in adjacent and distance spaces. As Alanna Irving reminds us:

There is no such thing as “self-organizing”—there is always work to be done and a skillset required to coordinate people to move together toward a larger shared goal.

To be clear: I don’t mean our disparate flocks all have to fly together. Like geese, we can stay in whatever family units and flock formations best serve us. What I am saying is that whatever flock we’re part of (the movement for Palestinian liberation, women’s liberation, climate justice, etc.) we need to be heading in the same direction and following the same principles. There is still room (and a need!) for a diversity of tactics, and even strategies… as long as we recognize our common aim.

I’m curious if this resonates, and what others are seeing: do you agree that it’s time to coalesce? What do you see as the emerging coherence? This post from 2019 was my first effort to try to illuminate the emerging “system of systems” and tease out some common threads.

There’s more to say about why it’s been so hard to coalesce, and why our movements resist coherence. I believe a big piece of the story is that coalescence requires integration: it requires us to confront our shadows, to move toward wholeness. That inner work is incredibly difficult… and essential. More on that for a future post. I also think this is the work of narrative and cultural strategy: providing the superstructure within which we can see ourselves.

In community,

Brian