The literary community reacted (unsurprising) to The Regime’s funding cuts on literary organizations. What was surprising was the lack of empathy. This was partly due to a bit of the shock (which I’ll partly attribute to lack of awareness) that many notable organizations received relatively sizable government grants. Welcome to Left Infighting 101.
Really though, this is all tactical on the part of the Trump Administration and closely follows the authoritarian playbook.
You begin by targeting the outer edges of societal institutions category by category.
Here’s what I mean. And I’m outright stealing the concepts behind these ideas from others who are actual experts.
If you want to get rid of the legal defense, then you target ultra-prestigious law firms. The fancy pants ones that We, The People are unlikely to want to shed any tears for. After all, what do they have to do for you or me? Or so the thinking goes…
On the other end of the spectrum, the regime punches down—way down—and hits the most vulnerable populations in society. Vulnerable groups that people don’t want to believe they have anything in common with. Think: migrants, the homeless, recent immigrants, non-citizens here on temporary visas. (Speaking of homelessness, there’s a reason the phrase “one step away” is used.)
A fascist regime can, oftentimes, get away with attacking both far ends of the spectrum without a lot of pushback from The People who, remember, do hold power in a Democracy. So that’s where this tends to begin.
Hence, it arrived as an unpleasant surprise that The People got behind the elite educational institution Harvard. This is a win for The People. Way to go, folks.
A dumbed down population is an easily manipulated population. We don’t want to get cowed.
The Arts are a threat to a fascist regime. For many reasons. Notably, they don’t like getting mocked. So, cartoonists and satire writers are often targeted and silenced early on. Already, pressure has been put on mainstream media resulting in the firing of cartoonists who have had to shift from public facing mainstream media to independent and overseas sources where they can still be given a platform and a voice.
We don’t want to let it get to the point where it dawns on regular folks what has been happening. At that point, it’s very difficult to fight back against a fascist regime.
Many have noted that now is the time that mainstream media needs to develop a spine and fight back. If this is not done now, it is much more difficult to do later. Pilipino journalist Maria Ressa has spoken artfully on this subject. Ressa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to expose and push back on abuses as the Duterte regime rose to power.
Read as if. Rachel Maddow offers wise advice to read articles in which the Trump regime talks about what they are doing to migrants and immigrants and take out those words (migrants, immigrants) and imagine that they are talking about everyday U.S. citizens. Because all of this is real time practice for what they will do to the general populace. Tactics alleged to establish boundaries at the border will go from outward to inward. That is, they will turn their attention to keeping U.S. citizens in check. What ICE is doing now to “others” will be much like Secret Police have been used by other fascist regimes to terrorize and disappear citizens.
It doesn’t stop here.
For now, a reminder to pay attention to the fringes.
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The Los Angeles Review reports:
““All 51 of this year’s grantees in the Literary Arts category received either termination letters or withdrawal letters,” says Mary Gannon, executive director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. (Termination letters were for active grants; withdrawal letters were for grant offers that hadn’t yet been finalized.) In addition to the CAT, this year’s grantees included publishers like Alice James Books, Archipelago Books, Arte Publico Press, Aunt Lute Books, BOA Editions, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Deep Vellum, Dzanc Books, Feminist Press, Four Way Books, Graywolf Press, Hub City Press, Kaya Press, Milkweed Editions, Nightboat Books, Red Hen Press, Restless Books, Sarabande Books, Semiotext(e), Transit Books, Tupelo Press, and Ugly Duckling Presse—as well as publications like AGNI, American Short Fiction, Bennington Review, BOMB Magazine, The Common, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Massachusetts Review, n+1, Ninth Letter, One Story, Orion, Oxford American, The Paris Review, Poets & Writers Magazine, Rain Taxi, Words Without Borders, and Zyzzyva.”
“Together, the canceled literary grants amount to $1,227,500—just 0.0000002 percent of the US government’s 2025 budget. If the federal budget was spread out evenly over 365 days, these grants would represent 0.063 seconds. (By comparison, the government of Iceland contributes around $3,700,000 per year to the Icelandic Literature Center alone, despite a federal budget over 400 times smaller than that of the US.)”
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Thoughtful article Mark.Resistance in any form isn't futile in the struggle of saving democracy.
To everything you say - yes yes yes. Thanks for articulating it. I read a few days ago (in Robert Reich's substack) that in the "Big Beautiful Bill" there is a little underreported clause that would stop courts from even being able to hold someone in contempt. Which is to say, judges would have no recourse at all if the administration simply ignored rulings (not that this is not already happening)