Confronting & Rejecting a Culture of Fascist Violence

Episode 113 Refuse Fascism

Coco Das, Mark Ruffalo, Kayleigh Carter, Carol Anderson, Sunsara Taylor, unknown, Sam Goldman

Coco Das 00:22

Welcome to Episode 113 of the Refuse Fascism podcast. This podcast is brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Coco Das, one of those volunteers guest hosting this week’s episode. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country.

This week we are rerunning an interview our regular host, Sam Goldman, did with Dr. Carol Anderson, author of the book The Second – Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. This is the book I needed to pick up after a white supremacist targeted Black people to massacre in Buffalo, New York, and just 10 days later, the massacre of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. Accounts are also unfolding about the police response in Uvalde where the supposed “good guys with guns” stood outside for over an hour, while children inside the school were being slaughtered.

Just three days later, the NRA convention in Houston hosted a typical lineup of fascists including Donald Trump, South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, sending a video statement from Uvalde and Senator Ted Cruz. There is no end to the heartless depravity on display at this convention. Kristi Noem said the enemies of the Second Amendment are “schooled in the ways of Marx and Lenin.” Ted Cruz went on a rant against doors, and Trump had the gall to try to utter the names of the victims in Uvalde, and then called for hardening our schools with “impenetrable security at every school all across our land. Our schools should be the single hardest target in our country.” Several of the speakers called for arming of teachers, and there were lots of backhanded references to the criminality of Black and brown people in the inner cities, and the godless state of our society. They say bring back prayer and fathers and all will be good.

Concentrating the program of white supremacy, patriarchy, and theocracy that can only be consolidated through fascist violence from the state and fascist mobs. It is noteworthy that this time there were thousands of protesters outside the NRA convention. Most were calling for gun reform, but we do have to confront that this is a problem that goes deeper than that. It’s a culture of violence and terror that is rooted in the founding of this country; a legacy that the fascist Republican Party is marshaling towards all out fascism and civil war. And that we cannot fight against without digging deeper and marshaling a force just as powerful, the people who have a heart for humanity.

I want to read some questions from a statement that came out at Revcom.us: This week, from Buffalo to Uvalde, to those in agony at the insanity they call America. The statement goes on to ask these questions: How are horrors like these connected to the history of this country, with its empowering of white people to use violence to seize land, and to enforce barbaric slavery, traditions that until relatively recently were celebrated in the mainstream culture? What is the connection between the violence ripping through the cities and small towns of America and the violence committed by America in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other places? How is this madness connected to an economic system and a culture that fragments and isolates people from each other into billions of powerless individuals competing against everyone else in a heartless world of winners and losers, rather than the world we could have — of freely cooperating human beings taking care of each other and of nature? What is the connection between this violence and the violence done everyday to women in 10 million ways in this society, and to the move right now to strip women of control over their own reproduction by outlawing abortion? And how might it be connected to the splitting of America in two right before our eyes, and the growing talk of civil war?

This has been a difficult week for me as I speak to you from Texas. It also caused me to reflect on the current mission of Refuse Fascism, which ends with this: Through our engagement and networking with people and social movements, we are forging understanding and relationships aimed at preventing the consolidation of fascism. Since the founding of RefuseFascism.org, our stand and resolve have not wavered. We pledge to the people of the world: In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America. Right now in the United States the deepening divisions and all parts of society are coming to a head. There is a great need for resistance in word and in deed.

After the interview with Carol Anderson, we will bring you some more voices from the streets in the fight to stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe — a fight we can still win, if we dare.

Sam Goldman 05:48

Thank you, Dr. Anderson, for joining us.

Carol Anderson 05:50

Thank you so much for having me.

Sam Goldman 05:52

I know that you’ve been talking about it a lot, but I do want to start with this because it’s what’s on people’s minds. Many people have rightfully contrasted the numerous cases of unarmed young Black men or even Black children who had been murdered by police or vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse, who not only was allowed to roam the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15, but was just acquitted for gunning down people protesting there, resulting in the deaths of two people, as I said earlier, and maiming a third. For example, 12 year old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park in Cleveland before being shot to death by a police officer; Trayvon Martin, who was assaulted and shot dead by a neighborhood vigilante. Both of them claimed that they felt threatened by these unarmed children.

Many people have also rightfully compared the Rittenhouse scenario to a fictional alternate, predicting a Black teenager who attempted to confront right wing protesters with an AR-15 that he would not have survived that encounter, much less been acquitted after shooting anyone. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about what the Rittenhouse case reveals about the right to self defense and the right to bear arms.

Carol Anderson 06:55

Thank you so much. So one of the things that I have really laid out in my book, The Second, was the deep anti-Blackness that courses through this nation, and that was part and parcel of the crafting of the Second Amendment. We get the narrative, the NRA narrative of the Second Amendment, as being bedrock foundational to American citizenship — that it is the thing that is there to stop domestic tyranny, that it is the thing that is your bedrock right.

What we have to understand about the Second is that it was a bribe to the South to get the South to buy into the United States of America. When the constitutional ratification convention was happening in Virginia, James Madison had put control of the militia under federal control, and had done that because the militia had proven that it was absolutely unreliable in the War for Independence. Sometimes they’d show up, sometimes they wouldn’t. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they would take off running.

So it was this thing about how do we have this militia, and have this militia do what we need to do, when we can’t rely upon it? So Madison had put it under federal control. The slave owners in Virginia were absolutely apoplectic about that. You had Patrick Henry and George Mason arguing strenuously that you could not trust the federal government to send in the militia when there would be a slave revolt. George Mason was like: We will be left defenseless. And it was like, because you know under the federal government, you’ve got those folks in Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts, who have been rolling back slavery in their own borders, we can’t rely upon them to defend us, we will be left defenseless.

It’s important to understand that this Second Amendment, which was what George Mason had required, he had required a Bill of Rights put in the Constitution. That was the way to keep the south from organizing for a new constitutional convention, because Madison was afraid it would go back to the old days, open up a Pandora’s box and go back to the old days of the Articles of Confederation. How do we save the United States of America, just like with the Three-fifths clause, just like with the 20 additional years of the Atlantic slave trade, just like with the Fugitive Slave clause that was in the Constitution.

Now we have the Second Amendment as this bribe to the South to not scuttle the United States of America, and to do so on the back of enslaving Black people, and to do so and understanding the militia is part and parcel of this ongoing anti-blackness, of defining Black people as the default threat in American society, as those who the white community has to be protected against, and the way that you provide that protection is via the militia, is via determining who has access to guns and who does not, determining who legitimately can claim self-defense and who cannot, because Black folks in this narrative do not have the right to self-defense. That came out of Virginia law in the 1600s, I believe it was that made it clear that if a white person hits somebody Black, either enslaved or a free Black, that Black person does not have the right to strike back.

So you begin to see how foundational these themes are that are carrying through into our modern day. So I look at, for instance, Trayvon Martin. When you see the Trayvon Martin story, what you had in that legal proceeding was to cut off the entire narrative of how George Zimmerman had the gun; how George Zimmerman said, Oh, and they always get away; how George Zimmerman stalked an unarmed child through that neighborhood, and in the judge’s instructions to the jury, only to look at that confrontation, and to see that you have this big Black scary guy threatening poor pudgy George Zimmerman — what was George to do?

It is that same narrative that you get where they cut off Kyle Rittenhouse’s origin story, so you don’t get [included in the trial, him] being at the CVS and saying: Ah, I really want to put a couple of bullets in ’em for looting. You don’t see the rest of the story about the illegally obtained AR-15. You don’t get the story about how he inserted himself in the midst of a protest about a Black man being shot in the back seven times by the police. You don’t get that. You don’t get that these were folks protesting injustice.
Instead, the judge rules that you cannot call them victims. You can call them rioters, looters, but not victims. And you get that you don’t see the initial killing because of the problem of pixelation by expanding the screen so that you get a better view, to not call in a technological expert on that but instead to rely upon this judge who was talking about the text messages that he gets and his ability to handle text messages.

So you see that you get this very narrowed sense of who has the right to bear arms; who has the right to defend themselves. I hear folks say Yeah, but the folks that he killed were white, that Rittenhouse killed were white; whites who believe that Black folks lives matter, whites who fight for Black citizenship rights, they are in the crosshairs. That is a consistent theme. We see it in 1837 with Elijah Lovejoy, who was an abolitionist, and his newspaper kept getting attacked. They kept burning down his building, messing up his presses. He kept having to rebuild, and finally he got sick and doggone tired of it. And he’s like, The next time they come, I’m ready. So he had a gun. Well, the mob got to him first and killed him. They were found not guilty.

So arsonists and killers are found not guilty because you have [as the victim] a white man who believes that slavery is wrong. You begin to also think about Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Mickey Schwerner was the first one killed by the Klan in Neshoba County, Mississippi. They put a bullet in him immediately. That anger that there would be somebody white, who could believe that Black people have citizenship, that Black people are human — in this system of white supremacy, it is anathema. It is the penultimate. It is heresy. It is blasphemy. It is going against the way, the hierarchy, the way that things should be. And it is a way to signal to whites stay in your place.

Sam Goldman 13:40

Thank you for that. Dr. Anderson. One of my favorite parts of your book was learning all the stories; the stories that we aren’t told. I knew about the attacks that, say on more recent history, the Freedom Riders that were white. But going back and looking at the rebellions that took place and white people that support it in some way, offering any kind of support to these rebellions of slaves and how they were deemed equivalent as the slave because they identified a human being as being a human being.

Carol Anderson 14:10

It becomes a false narrative, that race had nothing to do with Kyle Rittenhouse killing those men and wounding the third one, because that was a Black Lives Matter protest and what we have seen in this nation. So think about the difference between the way that the Black Lives Matter protests was handled in DC, where Trump had called out all kinds of federal officials, even those that weren’t identified by their names or what unit they were with — violating law — and the tear gas that was just raining down on these folks. Juxtapose that to the invasion of the Capitol on January 6th, where the message goes out, We will not be able to contain this but let it happen. Yeah, let it happen.

And we will see that with Ashley Babbitt, who was breaking into a federal building, to overthrow an election, a duly free and fair election, to basically stage a coup, and you had an officer shoot her, what you see from the right wing is to lionize her and make her a hero, make her a martyr for trying to overthrow the US government. Let me back up to say that part of what we’re seeing in that is, again, the delegitimization of Black people. So, when you have a Newt Gingrich say they stole the election in Milwaukee — that is a city that has a lot of Black folks — they stole the election in Detroit — yet another city with a lot of Black folks — they stole the election in Atlanta — yet another city with a lot of Black folks — saying if these Black folks did not vote for a white supremacist, then this election was not legitimate, therefore it must be overturned. So that invasion that you saw was about delegitimizing the votes of folk of color.

Sam Goldman 16:06

I think that’s very helpful. The way that you are threading these together, because I think for some people, they see the hypocrisy, they see the difference in treatment, but they don’t see the commonality that’s at the center of all of them. That’s the center of white rage, of white supremacy, of in my opinion, people have been talking a lot about is the Second Amendment trumping the First Amendment. There’s a lot of language around that. I have been feeling like, let’s stop, let’s wait a second here. It’s about who, and it’s about what?

It is about power. And it is about taking away power from anybody who is not a white Christian male. It’s a very particular thing, and if you don’t fit in that, then who do the guns go to? Maybe it’s not true, so I’m always cautious about “I follow on social media” type things, but I believe that before a jury deliberations began, there were Black folks in Georgia, armed, walking. I don’t think that’s the kinds of Second Amendment rights that they’re going for.

If gun rights were a very certain section of people, the people who were out in the Capitol, their gun rights are protected, but whose voting rights are on the line, whose right to protest is on the line? It has everything to do with power, and in my opinion with fascism. On creating a certain section of people that are stuck. The Trumpers, and all those who follow him, as Tony Norman was a guest on his show a while a little while back was saying, these are people that are going, they’re going back.

Carol Anderson 17:36

It’s one of the things that I wrote in the new epilogue for White Rage. You know, because I smelled Trump coming in that first version of White Rage. I smelled him as the antithesis as the response to Obama’s election. And when Obama becomes the scary Black man, it begins to tell you how deeply entrenched this anti-blackness is in American society. So the response to Obama is the un-Obama, which is Donald Trump. And what Hillary said in her campaign was we are stronger together, which meant then that there were enough resources in American society where we could all benefit.

What Trump offered was a neo-apartheid state, which was a state where you have a vast rightless labor pool made up overwhelmingly of folks of color, and you would have whites in there, except there would be the allure that in this neo-apartheid state all of those resources that are generated by this vast rightless labor pool would eddy up to that strata of whites, but it is a small strata of whites in this system. That is what Trump put on the line, and that is what fed into the fury and the violence, fed into Tucker Carlson talking about replacement theory, fed into the rise of vigilante justice, the storming of the capitals.

Remember, in Michigan, where you had this group coming in with their rifles into the state capitol, overlooking the legislature, as the legislature is trying to do its business. You had the plot against the governor — to kidnap the governor and hold her on trial. Wow, wow. This was basically a prelude to what happened on January 6th, where they were hunting down Mike Pence and they were hunting down Nancy Pelosi, because they would not do the ultimate right wing’s bidding and overturn an election and install Donald Trump as president for life.

Sam Goldman 19:38

I wanted to ask your opinion on whether you feel like this movement that we’re talking about the GOP as it stands today, would you use the word fascist to apply to it? Is this the same-old, same-old, going back to the nation’s origins? Or do you think that there’s anything new, you know, akin to a movement that’s aiming at eliminating the rule of law and democratic and civil rights. How do you see that?

Carol Anderson 20:05

When I look at the Southern Strategy, which really came into the fore during Nixon’s campaign for presidency, what you had there was the Southern Democrats, who were the group that hated civil rights, and that the Southern Democrats were like: We cannot be in a party that believes that Black people have rights, and is putting the federal government behind the exercise of Black people’s rights as American citizens.

So you had the Republican party look up and going, ooh, we can finally break the solid Democratic South, and we can get the number of conservative votes in order to move forward our conservative agenda. And to me, just like the conservatives in Weimar Germany, who looked at Hitler and said: Ooh, we can use Hitler’s group and Hitler’s status in order to create the coalition that we need in order to quash the socialists and the communists who are in our Reichstag. We can do that and we can control them. Well, the thing about white supremacy is it is a viral toxin. It is all powerful. And when the Conservatives brought that toxin of the Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, it took over. It moved the moderate Republicans out, silenced them, and it also then led to the base being just turned up, fueled on this fear, this anger, this hatred, fueled on it.

So it requires then that those who were in the GOP primary had to speak to that base, that energized base, which continued to move the party further and further to the right. When you think about the insurrection, and you think about the big lie that this election was stolen, and the way that Republicans have tried to downplay the insurrection; Oh, this was just a tourist visit. Wow. The way that they have blocked, blocked subpoenas the way that they have blocked the investigation, the full-blown investigation, and the unveiling of this, juxtapose that to Watergate, where you in fact had Republicans who were absolutely appalled at what the Nixon administration had done and said: Oh, we cannot abide by this.

When you have Barry Goldwater going into Nixon saying no son, no son, you got to go. We cannot do this, you will not have the votes in the Senate to survive an impeachment. And Barry Goldwater was the one who helped with the Southern strategy, because of his belief that Brown versus Board was unconstitutional, his belief that the Civil Rights Act violated basic states rights. So Barry Goldwater is no flaming liberal. But he was like: Under this line, I will not go. We have yet to see that in this current version of the Republican Party, there is no line under which they will not go. The rule of law does not matter. Democracy is the enemy. That is what is so frightful and perilous about this time that we’re in right now.

Sam Goldman 23:17

I really, really agree. I wanted to shift back to something that we touched on earlier in the conversation. I wanted to talk about federal law versus states rights, because it’s something that is in your book, The Second, and something that I think really relates to a few cases that are happening right now. The slave states demanded that the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 occur because the supremacy of federal law, as you talked about in The Second, required non-slave states to recognize and “honor” their right to retrieve their “property” in human beings anywhere in the US.

Today fascists in office demand the supremacy of federal law when it comes to overturning any prohibition on concealed carry, and ow you have the New York state, attempting to overturn any state or municipality’s attempts to regulate the individual’s right to bear arms anywhere they want. [CA: Yes, yes] But, when it comes to stripping people of their basic civil rights, states rights must prevail. I think about Texas and SB 8, the abortion ban that denies what has been recognized as a right by the Supreme Court of the United States, and dozens of states are suppressing their citizen’s rights to vote. So there’s a long history to this apparent conflict, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on this,

Carol Anderson 24:31

This sophistry, is what it is, it’s situational. So, it’s like when I need the federal government to do my bidding, I’m all for federal power. When I don’t want to do the federal government’s bidding, then I’m all for states rights. As you noted, you had the slave states demanding bullying, ending up with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which said that any state had to provide support for slave owners to come and retrieve their property, their runaway slaves. And if the state refused, the state then had to pay the slave owner out of the state’s Treasury for that lost property. Either way, the northern state had to provide resources to uphold slavery and human bondage. The states were bristling at this. And you had the South just strolling around going: Yeah, look, we can really go get them now.

I look at that moment — you know, I talked about the Battle of Christiana in the book, where you had a slave owner named Edward Gorsuch out of Maryland, who goes up to Pennsylvania to retrieve his property, and he has a US Marshal with him as well as his son and his nephew. They go to Christiana and they knock on a man named William Parker’s door, saying, I’ve come to get my property. Now Parker was a fugitive slave himself, but they had set up a self-defense community in Christiana. And when Gorsuch started getting really just, I come to get my property, Parker was like: There’s nothing here that you own. That chair is not yours. So think about the humanity in Parker to say, Is there nothing here that you own? And the response was Gorsuch was ready to get it on.

Gorsuch ended up dying there in Christiana, and you had this really weird moment, because a white man named Castner Hanway, who was in that group of those in the defenders, he was charged with treason. So think about that, those who defy the Fugitive Slave Act, that is like a war against the United States charged with treason. And thank God you had a judge who was like: Nah, this was a self defense community, this was self defense. This was not treason, and Hanway was found not guilty. The South felt violated by that, that we want the federal law to uphold this. Remember, earlier on they fought to ensure, when Benjamin Franklin came in with a petition saying that Congress would have the right to regulate an end to slavery, that the South rose up and did its first filibuster, even before they knew what a filibuster was, and bullying folks, going: You do not have that and if anybody tries to take my property, they will be in danger, mortal danger.

So you get this sophistry here, where it’s like, we like federal law when it is about the violation of a people’s rights. We don’t like federal law, but federal law is about honoring citizenship rights, honoring the human rights, honoring the humanity of the folks who live within our borders. So when federal law says you are an American citizen, and as an American citizen, these are the array of rights that you have. And the state is like: No, you don’t. You are a citizen of Mississippi, you are a citizen of Alabama, you are a citizen of Georgia, and your rights are therefore conscribed and the feds do not have the right to step in. Think about the way Texas has SB 8. It allows for basic vigilantes to police women who are exercising their reproductive rights.

Sam Goldman 28:23

Yeah, I mean, the growth of vigilantism that people are seeing and rightly shocked, rightly shocked that at this point in time, we have people in Texas hunting down abortion providers, hunting down aunties, who gave their nieces some money to get an abortion, you know. It’s insane. This is part of the same vicious and violent revenge fueled movement that is hunting down and killing Black folk. Turning to the Arbery case, which I consider to be a modern day lynching straight up; they lynched a man and then they lynched his character in court. The disgusting verbage that came out of the defense attorney in the McMichael trial, people should have nothing but contempt for.

There’s a history in this country of lawless vigilantism under the guise of law and order. This is something that you speak to in your book, and I think that it’s very helpful for us to ground ourselves in this. I was listening to the closing argument, as I’m sure you did in the McMichaels murder trial — that’s a trial of the murders of Ahmaud — and they were leaning heavily on this: neighbors were helping neighbors to deal with this wave of burglaries, because the police weren’t able to apprehend them.

This is the same argument that resulted, in my opinion, in Rittenhouse’s acquittal: He was there to protect the community, protect private property over people, and was forced to defend themselves against these rioters and looters. I was hoping that you could touch on the history and roots of where this sort of murderous vigilantism under the guise of law where that comes from in American history?

Carol Anderson 30:02

I see it coming out of basically the slave patrols were at a certain point in South Carolina’s history basically every white person was deputized as a member of the slave patrol to be able to have the right to question somebody Black. Why aren’t you in your place? What are you doing out here? And let me see your papers. Who are you? Who do you belong to — that kind of white gives right? So when you think about how Travis McMichael said: Well, he wouldn’t stop and answer my questions. As if Travis McMichael had the right to question why Ahmaud Arbery was running, jogging in that neighborhood? That Ahmaud Arbery did not have the right to refuse to answer this man who had been harassing him by following him in this pickup truck and cutting him off.

That is the sense of whites have the right to control Black bodies. They have the right to demand and get an acceptable answer for the whites who are asking the question. That sense of whites have the right we see carrying through to the Atlanta race massacre in 1906, where under the guise of protecting the white community, protecting white women from these black rapist beasts — this had been the press and the politicians who are running for governor stoking the fears and the flames that there were just mass rapes happening, that no white woman was safe because of all of these Black men. So you have whites forming vigilante mobs and hunting down Black people and just killing them left and right.

You have the same kind of sense that, you know, we’ve got to get these black folks under control. In Red Summer 1919, where you had, like in Washington, DC, white mobs attacking Black folks under the guise of putting Black folks back in their place because they were acting like they were equal. They were doing things like looking at white women; we have to protect our community. You see the same kind of language happening in Tulsa, when black Tulsa is wiped out — the same kind of thing about we have to protect our community. We see it in Groveland, Florida in 1948. And you saw today that the four Black men who were convicted of rape were finally exonerated. When Groveland burned down, it was the same: We’ve got to protect our community.

That kind of vigilante violence is endemic in the United States. What makes it endemic? Go back to the rise of Jim Crow, where you would have a lynching on average every other day, for three decades. Begin to think about the terror that rains down on the Black community, knowing that that kind of violence is happening and that law enforcement is not there to protect you. That’s where this conjoins, is that you get this violence, and this nation of laws does not value the laws that protect Black people.

So, now I go to Ahmaud Arbery, laying this out. Remember that that video was readily available immediately. The cop saw it. Two DAs saw it, and one DA wrote a long, long brief about why this killing was justifiable. It took protest to make that video public, and when it became public, that’s when you begin to see some movement. You did not have the kind of coddling, that kind of legal justification for an unjustified killing. The fact that there are little or no consequences for the violence raining down on Black folk, is what becomes this spur to vigilante violence. The assault on the Capitol was vigilante violence. And the fact that there haven’t been real consequences to that violence puts this democracy and the people in it at risk, at serious risk.

Sam Goldman 34:09

I really appreciate all that you were laying out. And I think that people really need to shake off whatever denial they have, discomfort that they have, and really take a sober look at not only the history, but the current reality and danger. Part of, in my opinion, confronting this as you were talking about the white supremacy being endemic. I’ve heard you speak and talk about the genesis of the Second Amendment, the genesis of these. It is white supremacy. So you have to confront that. I think that it’s pivotal, and if we look at it with clear eyes and we see a situation in which the very foundation and fabric of this nation is totally interwoven with, and inseparable, in my opinion, from white supremacy in our nation whose continuing to this today stems from Black people being property.

I think that people need to look at a system that continues to perpetuate and be fueled by and fuels white supremacy. And because people are rightly outraged, I wanted to get your opinion on something that we see in the movement as important, which is nonviolence — in this movement being Refuse Fascism, sorry, that wasn’t clear to the listeners. You’re a historian, and your work documents and analyzes deep roots of racism in this country, and our role as ordinary folks who want to uproot that racism have a lot of work to do.

To me, it starts with understanding what we’re up against. But we also need to act, and in Refuse Fascism we’ve consistently argued that we need massive nonviolent protests, on the lines of the beautiful rising that swept the country last year after George Floyd was murdered so cruelly as an example of how a whole conversation can be changed, and a sliver of justice can be won through massive determined protest that doesn’t stop. Now, some have argued, since we are still seeing people being murdered by police at the same or worse rates than ever before, and since the fascists have now been given a green light to murder, that our side needs to stop being nonviolent. To me, this isn’t just an ethical stance.

It’s about a blueprint for prevailing, I think about how a massive determined protest can make space for everyone to participate and rely on our courage for others to join us. I feel like we’re in a moment where that actually does matter. But I was wondering what your thoughts or comments, because my friend Coco was an editor for a few sessions. She was writing about we need a beautiful rising and talking about nonviolence and all these comments about we need to stop being nonviolent. And I was wondering, as a historian, what advice would you give people around this?

Carol Anderson 36:44

It is both strategic and practical. The practical side is that you can never match the violence that the state can rain down. The state’s access to weaponry, to the tools of violence, are just, whoo, you know. I think about at Selma after Bloody Sunday, and Andrew Young talked about there were folks who were like, I’m sick of this, I’m getting my gun. And Young was like: Okay, you have to talk them down. You had to say: Okay, so what kind of gun you got? And they talk: Well, yeah, I got a .22. And they’re like: Okay, have you seen that shotgun that they have? You know what a shotgun can do? And then he’s like: Okay, so how many do you have? And they’re like: Uh, uh… He was like: Okay, so you know, you got the whole Alabama State Patrol out there. You’ve got Sheriff Jim Clark’s folks, and you know them calling the National Guard. Can your weaponry match what they have?

And so practically, we know that this state is armed. So I’m going to get my gun is a suicide run. I teach the Civil Rights movement, and I’m teaching it this semester, actually. And one of the key elements was nonviolence, that language of nonviolence and the nonviolent protest — and I’m gonna tie this into Ahmaud Arbery — what that did was it helped short circuit that long standing narrative of Black people as criminals, as violent. Because then what you see when you see white folks just going after Black folk, and you’re like, Well, why were they doing this? You know, they went after because they were Black. We can’t figure out what else has happened in here. It was just because they were Black. Then it begins to shift the narrative.

And so I think about the prosecuting attorneys’ closing arguments on Ahmaud Arbery. She said he didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t even have a cell phone. All he had were his running shorts. The reason they went after him is because there was a Black man running through their neighborhood. That was jarring. Absolutely jarring. Because what we know is that in this society that is so steeped in anti-blackness, it is that it makes it easy to say: Well, you know, he had a gun. Well, you know, he was a druggie. Well, you know, well, you know, as the way to justify the systemic violence that is raining down on folk. What we also know, when we imagine the kind of society that we want, that we want to live in, that we want to raise our kids and that we want our neighbors to be in.

It is not a community steeped in violence. It is a community that has rethought what safety and security really looks like, that has rethought what humanity really looks like, that values real safety and real security, that values real humanity. That does not happen by trying to take on a state that is as well-armed as this one. There are almost 400 million guns in private ownership here in the United States. So I’m not even talking about those guns. I’m just talking about the state guns.

Sam Goldman 39:55

Yeah, I think it makes sense why people are saying: Do I need to come to a protest armed when this is happening? My solution is: No, we need to stop this fascist danger. We need to get rid of a society in which you have over 74 million people wanting to go back to what they think is friggin antebellum greatness. We need to get rid of that, and you don’t get rid of that by going gun to gun with a violent genocidally racist movement, who has the full backing of the state. You don’t do that. I’m not saying that violence is never warranted or there isn’t such thing as self-defense and all those things.

Let me be clear that, people have a right to defend themselves, obviously. I just guide people back to Dr. Anderson’s work and who gets to have that right and who’s going to be put in most jeopardy and it’s going to be Black folks, so people should just be cognizant of those things when they start saying this crap. I wanted to close out. We’ve talked a lot about how deeply rooted white supremacy is and the foundation of the country right down to the Constitution itself. In a recent article that you wrote for The Guardian, you wrote: “The nation has a really d habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy. It’s time to break that habit. If we don’t, they just might succeed that time.” I’m wondering, what gives you hope that we can dismantle this oppression, that we can break this habit?

Carol Anderson 41:20

It’s several things. It’s the people. After the killing of George Floyd, we had protest movements in 50 states. People saw that and we’re appalled. It is in the 2020 election, in the midst of a pandemic, where hundreds of thousands of Americans had been killed, you had the highest voter turnout, record breaking turnout, because people understood that democracy was at stake, that what Trump was bringing was the destruction of American democracy. Because if he didn’t have to worry about reelection, lord, Katie bar, the door! That was so clear about what the plan was.

So here in Georgia, you have folks saying I will stand in line to vote for 12 hours to make sure that I have done all that I can do to fight for this democracy. When it’s really clear what’s at stake, the people rise up, and they make clear that they want a vibrant, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy. They don’t want what Michael Flynn was talking about: this one Christian nation under one religion, one God. No. So my hope is in the people.

Sam Goldman 42:33

Well, Dr. Anderson, we share that hope. Even though my listeners know I think that we can’t talk about democracy without talking about that there’s never been democracy for all in this country, so we need something very different, but I definitely agree that what gives me a lot of hope is that people see that they’re not all powerful. They are weak in the sense that they are afraid and very cognizant of our power, if we choose to make it visible. So we don’t want to hand these fascists that future. We’ve gotta change that. We’ve got to make it visible. I want to thank Dr. Anderson. Thank you so much for sharing your time, your expertise with us. Folks can be sure to find a link to Dr. Anderson’s books through her website in the show notes. Dr. Anderson, is there anything else that you want to guide people to besides your book, your website?

Carol Anderson 43:24

My website: ProfessorCarolAnderson.org. You will find all of my op-eds on there, as well as my podcasts and TV appearances. And just keep reading and knowing this history and continuing to fight for a better future. That’s the thing to really imagine what we could be. Wow.

Coco Das 43:44

Thank you so much, Dr. Anderson.

Coco Das 43:46

That was Sam Goldman speaking with Dr. Carol Anderson. Now you’ll hear some voices from a powerful student walkout in New York City this past Thursday, called for by Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. The actors Mark Ruffalo and Kayli Carter, as well as some of the student voices. And finally, Sunsara Taylor key initiator of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights.

Mark Ruffalo 44:10

I’ve come here with my daughters today, and we’ve been participating in this several times over the past few weeks. And I just want to say I’m from a generation where my mother lived in a world before Roe vs. Wade, and she had to have an illegal abortion. She had to travel over state lines. This is a whole generation of women that were being forced to have children and their whole lives were based on that non-choice. So it’s not that far behind us.

And I’m here as a man, and I think it’s really important that our men folk I see all these young men here and I’m so proud of you for being here, for marching with our sisters, because these are men who are making decisions for our sisters or daughters in the future generations, and if we don’t stand up with them, then we are allowing these terrible things to happen. We are here today as Roe vs. Wade still stands, and we cannot succumb to the despair that says that we can’t fight. [cheer] We cannot succumb to this, to despair that says the other side is going to win this. They haven’t won yet.

We came out today, and it’s meaningful. And everyone who saw, got hope from seeing us on the streets today. You guys, you’re beautiful. You young people, I’m just blown away. [large cheer] You guys are doing beautiful things. The fact that you showed up at your age is beautiful. So keep going, keep fighting, we have not lost this. The more we mobilize. the closer we are seeing the future that we want and you deserve.

Sunsara Taylor 45:47

I want to welcome Kayli Carter, who is an actress, so give her a big welcome.

Kayli Carter 45:59

It’s so lovely to be out here with all of you. I’m so proud of all of you for walking out of your schools. I think back to myself as a high schooler, and I would have been right next to you, holding a sign very high. Today, I am here because this organization reached out to me and asked if I would share my story since I’m so loud about it normally. In a few years from where you guys are right now, I was at the position in my life where I needed to decide to have an abortion and did so. And the state in which I had that abortion is one of these states that is on the line over the next few years that will absolutely take away the right to abortion if Roe is overturned.

And let me make it very clear to you that conservatives in this country have been trying to overturn Roe since the day that it was made law of the land. They have been mobilizing, they have been one voice, they have taken religion and used it as their bully pulpit to make sure that this existential right for women and for people who menstruate and for people who have uteruses is not available. They have been working on this since the 1970s. And that is why we’re here, because they have been calculated, they have been very, very sharp in their rhetoric. And they have made sure to use Jesus in the way that he would never have intended his name be used. That is why we are here. [large cheer]

We have to be just as calculated, just as smart, smarter, even, which shouldn’t be hard, but there’s a lot of evil out here, and there’s a lot of people working against us in this movement. My mother as well. My mother had an abortion when she was in college. And that abortion enabled her to give birth to me to make the choice to be a mother when she was ready, when her body was ready. [large cheer] I am here as the result of an abortion. [cheer] And that is something we don’t talk about enough. Women have the choice. People who have uteruses have the choice to make decisions about their own bodily autonomy. And anybody who tries to make you believe otherwise is committing violence against you. [cheer]

Now, I am just an actor. A lot of the incredible work that is being done in this activism space and by you guys here today is still above my paygrade, and I want you to give yourselves a round of applause for showing up because activist work takes you showing up every single day. [large cheer] It is not a line in your Instagram bio. It takes every day showing up, bring out your bodies and putting them on the line for this cause. That is what it takes. [cheer] There is only so much that the human mind can take, and we are standing at a moment in which we are being asked to process an amount of grief that is inhuman. It is unimaginable. And if you don’t think these issues are closely related to gun violence, may

I remind you that the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the United States is gun violence. [cheer] At a time when a woman in intimate partner violence is the most at risk is when she finds out she’s pregnant with that abusive partners baby. That is the moment that her life is the most at threat. [cheer] So make no mistake, they want women dead. They do. They want children dead. There has not been enough to end the inaction. So we have to decide to end the inaction for ourselves.

We have to wake up every single day and commit ourselves to this, because the minute we grow tired, that is when they come in and they chip away more rights. Everyone will be next. They will not be done until this country looks like one nation under patriarchy. They will not stop. They want it to look like the Revolutionary War. They want us to be in 1776 all over again. So if we will not go back, say: Overturn Roe, Hell No! We will not go back! [crowd: We will not go back.] That is what I like to hear.

Student 51:13

If we all come together, throughout the country, we may have a chance at winning this fight. For decades, women have been fighting for their rights for numerous things. Those who are saying: Oh this won’t change, or: They’ll never listen to you. I want you to think about how all of our rights have been won throughout the history in America.

51:18

We will continue to have to come out in the streets by the hundreds. by the thousands to demand change that is not otherwise happening. As soon as we become apathetic, and as soon as we give up, the other side wins. It is imperative that we as young people, as old people, as people of all kinds do not become numb to what’s happening around us. This should not be happening. And I know personally, this life of oppression, of watching Black people get murdered in the streets. That has been most of what I’ve known as a child. However, I remain optimistic. I remain hopeful that a different and better future exists.

51:56

The outrage that I feel at this Supreme Court decision is greater than any consequences school could possibly give me for missing one class. I know it was like really scary to like walk out and they were taking pictures of us. But I just feel really glad, and I know that like so many people didn’t come. But I’m just glad that the people who did come are here and are fighting for what they believe in, which I think is amazing. Everyone here is just amazing.

52:24

I think it’s really stupid that we’re the ones who have to do this and all the adults who are supposed to have their shit together, and they’re supposed to be protecting us. [huge cheer]

52:35

People can buy guns at the age of 18, but we can have an abortion at any age just to protect yourself.

52:41

Abortion doesn’t kill young children and girls. The NRA kills children.

52:47

When we say that we are going to die because of this decision, we are called children. Our voices are not listened to. When we got pregnant at 13 or 14 or 15 years old, we are not children. We are mothers. We are women. We are forced to carry children to term.

Student 53:03

I don’t feel safe as a woman and I shouldn’t have to live in a world where my rights are slipping away. [cheer]

53:09

Government right now is trying to take away our lives and our rights, and we will not stand for that. [cheer]

53:16

The school administration tried to suspend my comrade here if they walked out today, which is in violation of our First Amendment right. [cheer] So of course, we have to come down and show our numbers, show that there are people fighting, putting themselves on the line [cheer] to maintain our right to autonomy over our bodies.

Sunsara Taylor 53:42

The Supreme Court’s threat to women’s fundamental right to abortion is a major assault on the half of humanity that is born female and on society and justice as a whole. This must be defeated. Their draft decision must not be allowed to become the law. We need to stop it because when women are denied the right to abortion, women are forced to have children against their will, and this is a form of violence. This is a form of subjugation, male supremacist domination of women. It shatters lives, it forecloses dreams, it forces women and girls to drop out of school, to lose their jobs, to be trapped in abusive relationships. It drives women into poverty and it causes many women to lose their very lives.

We have to stop this from becoming the law in this country. And when I say it can be stopped, a lot of people, they don’t believe me. They think I’m naive. They think that I don’t understand or you don’t understand how powerful the fascists on the Supreme Court are. That maybe I don’t realize that there’s a fascist women-hating movement in this country that has been built up over decades to terrorize and bomb abortion clinics, to kill doctors, to take over state legislatures, to pass things like that fascist law this morning in Oklahoma that bans all abortions.

Well, I know they’re powerful. I take them very seriously, which is why you need to be determined to insist that we stop them from getting any more power. We have power. Our power is in the fact that we have justice on our side We have the interests of women and humanity as a whole on our side. I want you to imagine if all the tens of thousands of people who marched in the streets in the last few weeks after the Supreme Court draft was leaked, marched with tears in their eyes and rage in their hearts, if they came back in these streets, and they kept coming back.

If the thousands across this country who have marched with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights saying: Overturn Roe [crowd: Hell no.] Overturn Roe [Hell no.] I want you to imagine not just continuing the walkouts, but you young people using your moral authority to march to the hospitals at shift change to challenge the nurses and the doctors and the healthcare workers to come on and join this fight, because they know what’s right. I want you to imagine marching to the theater districts and calling on the artists and the actors and the audiences to come out in the streets and join us.

I want you to imagine our beloved artists and actors using their influence, their stages, their platforms, to call on more people to come into the streets. I want you to imagine if every one of the bus drivers and subway conductors and soccer moms transporting their kids to the game, if they decided they were gonna bring it to a halt and stop the railways and stop the roads even for an hour and shake this society. I want you to imagine the pulpits and the mosques and synagogues turning their faith into action in the streets. If we came out in our millions in massive nonviolent, determined, relentless, sustained struggle.

Not one day and you’re back to normal, but again and again, calling on others. We can create a situation where those of the Supreme Court and the fascists everywhere else have to calculate, have to recognize that if they go forward, they will lose any shred of legitimacy in the eyes of the people of this country and around the world. We have that power if we are visible in these streets. [cheer] I want to call on you, each of you, as you marched today. Call on people to join us. Look, it’s the third quarter. The decision from the Supreme Court is coming soon. We are coming from behind. But all the greatest movies, all the greatest signs, all the greatest legends are about the underdogs who rose when everybody counted them out. So don’t let them count us out. Now is the time to rise. [cheer]

Don’t underestimate your power and do not underestimate what we can accomplish. Everybody has a role to play. So let me end with this. I want to acknowledge as I began that today is a day of great heartache and taught everybody who has walked out against the gun violence in the slaughter in Texas, and against the horrific white supremacist massacre in Buffalo and all the other cruel and vicious violence. And I want to invite you to be part of pulling open the big questions about why this keeps happening. What this has to do with the history of white supremacist terror in this country, this gun violence. What it has to do with the violence that the US pervades around the world with its war crimes and crimes around the world. What this has to do with the misogyny and the cruel, masculine patriarchal culture of brutality.

There are answers, sisters and brothers and beautiful people, beyond what I can speak about today. But I want to invite you to be part of lifting your heads and asking those questions and seeking those answers. We are going to go forward and we have to dare to fight to win. There’s a whole future on the line. Let us not lose our nerve now. Thank you.

Coco Das 59:19

Thanks for listening to the Refuse Fascism podcast. We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, ideas for topics or guests or lend a skill. Tweet me @Coco_Das or our regular host @SamBGoldman. Or you can drop her a line at [email protected]. Leave a voicemail by calling 917-426-7582 You can also record a voice message by going to Anchor.FM/RefuseFascism and clicking the button there.

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Thanks to Sam Goldman, Richie Marini and Lina Thorne for helping produce this episode. Thanks to our incredible volunteers. We have transcripts available for each episode, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox each week. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.