On Memorial Day we honor those who have fallen in the line of duty, and we also keep those who have lost someone they love in our thoughts. This includes those service men and women from the Greatest Generation who fought fascism in the 1930s: Americans who volunteered to fight against fascist leader Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and those who bravely fought in WWII against the Axis forces who sought to engulf the world in the flames of authoritarianism, xenophobia, barbarism, hate, and genocide.
Along with our allies, the U.S. defeated the brutal dictatorships of Hitler, Mussolini, and Emperor Tojo. Allied forces liberated concentration camps, cities, and entire regions from the clutches of fascism, and in so doing sacrificed their very lives for freedom and democracy.
However, this Memorial Day seems to be more important than ever, because freedom and democracy are again under siege, and this time it’s on our own soil.
The aftermath of Trump’s disastrous presidency and the culmination of forty years of tea-partyism and right-wing anti-government movements are now a very real threat to our democracy. Gone are the days when tragic events such as Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing were considered just one-off events perpetuated by crazy, cultish, anti-government nut-jobs. Today, the very belief systems of the Branch Davidians, the KKK, the Aryan Nation, and Timothy McVeigh have gone mainstream in the form of the MAGA movement, January 6, Fox News, Nick Fuentes, and Tucker Carlson.
What is most alarming is that post January 6, the resurgence in hate speech, hate crimes, wild conspiracy theories, “stolen election” rhetoric, mass shootings, and mistrust of the Executive Branch is now the norm. Anti-abortion legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and the banning of books discussing slavery and gender is spreading like wildfire across red states (yet GOP lawmakers refuse to enact stricter gun laws to protect our children). Bigotry and hate have even infected the highest levels of government, as illustrated by the insane and incendiary statements made regularly by U.S. representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), as well as senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Tom Cotton (R-AK).
Those who took part on January 6 are not patriots, they don’t care about democracy. They want an authoritarian, Christo-fascist, nationalistic society in which they as the chosen ones are the ruling class, presiding over a dystopian society that oppresses women, blacks, Asians, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Native groups, and members of the LGBTQ + community.
This Memorial Day, I hope that we as Americans reflect on the fact that our service men and women have given their lives in countless wars, and have spilled their blood on foreign battlefields in order to defend our democracy and preserve our freedom. It is our duty to honor the fallen by continuing the fight against authoritarianism and the attempts of right-wing groups to erode our liberties through hate speech and violence.