Natasha Lennard

"We cannot simply be anti-fascist; we must also practice and make better habits, forms of life. Rather than as a noun or adjective, 'anti-fascist' as a gerund verb: a constant effort of 'anti-fascisting' against the fascisms that even we ourselves uphold. Working to create nonhierarchical ways of living, working to undo our own privileges and desires for power. The individualized and detached Self, the over-codings of family-unit normativity, the authoritarian tendency of careerism—all of them paranoic sites of micro-fascism in need of anti-fascist care. Again, easier said than done. But better a faulty approach to anti-fascism that frames it as some pure position, when it is anything but. We act against fascists in the knowledge we need to act against ourselves, too."⁣
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A short book that a fierce critique of liberal politics (centrism?) in Trump's America, Natasha Lennard turns an unflinching eye to the hypocrisy in what we choose to name (protesters in Black Lives Matter or Occupy protests) as violence & what we don't (police brutality, the state apparatus). The book looks at the mass arrests of protestors at Standing Rock that face a racist, punitive justice system, to the policing & managing of partnership in relation to borders, to how it's insufficient to simply believe that engaging in non-normative sex acts are inherently "radical" (this chapter was a bit hmm for me though but couldnt place why), to how surveillance has permeated our existence, to how white corpses are rarely seen or disseminated in the media while brown & black corpses are often reduced to spectacle . My only complaint is that the essays towards the end start to taper & are not as deep & substantive as her earlier essays.⁣… (more)