Fascism Is Not a Mental Illness
This is one of those times you think maybe I forgot this newsletter is about developing a writing practice, but stay with me.
I confess. I haven’t gotten a lot of work done since January 6. The night before, as the results from the runoff Senate elections in Georgia started solidifying, I wrote a quick newsletter on how you can might thank Stacey Abrams for saving the republic; Wednesday morning, I leaned into my day job, figuring I’d hear about the certification of the electoral college later in the day.
By 3:00 P.M. (Eastern), I’d turned on the TV—something that almost never happens before sundown on a weekday in this apartment—and was glued to Al Jazeera, in order to avoid the pathetic bothsidesism of mainstream cable news in the United States, and that lasted into the early evening. Later, I tried watching some of the senators after they’d made it back into the chamber to start the process anew, but it was clear that everybody was talking past each other, so I stopped.
Skip ahead to Saturday, and many of us are still largely processing what the hell just happened, and how much or how little (depending on your perspective) has been done about over those 72 hours, when I came across a tweet from a Pulitzer-winning observer of authoritarian politics at the international level, someone who’s made it her business to study how tyrants amass power and then seize the instruments of state and then tell us all about it—and her contribution to the discourse on Twitter, in response to a Washington Post profile of a woman who had been fatally shot while attempting to storm the United States Capitol, was this:
“[This is a] sobering reminder that Qanon and Trump cultists are often people with profound personal problems and mental illness.”
As I wrote in my immediate response, that kind of messaging isn’t helpful.
Embracing bigotry & authoritarianism, as all the participants in last week’s unlawful insurrection, from the rampaging mob to the politicians who gave them aid and comfort from the chambers of Congress, did, is a choice. Mental illness is a condition, which can just as easily affect progressive activists as it can fascist foot soldiers.
In support of that point: I’m Ron Hogan, the creator of this newsletter, a fairly leftist fellow in thought and deed, and I’ve been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder.
I don’t write about it that often, but I was in therapy for fourteen years, and the only reason I stopped was that my therapist died and I didn’t feel like starting a new therapeutic relationship from the very beginning, so I decided to trust that the tools I had been given to manage my anxiety would be sufficient to see me through. Three years later, I’ve had some periods where those mental and emotional tools haven’t fully worked and I’ve been inert, both creatively and personally, as a result, but I’ve also had some fantastic periods where I’ve made headway and done things I’d wished I could do, but which had felt out of reach until I reaffirmed that I was capable of accomplishing more if I listened to my calling than I would by listening to my anxiety.
What I did not do, in any of the times when I was struggling to embrace that truth, was to blame my inertia or my failures on the outside world. Oh, sure, I recognized that it had become increasingly difficult to find a good job in the print and online media sectors where I was looking, especially for someone in my age bracket who wasn’t already attractive to employers by virtue of thriving at some other position, but that didn’t mean the deck had been deliberately stacked against me, or that malicious forces had taken over my industry and were hoarding the power for themselves.
It meant that I had to be more creative than I’d been before, take more chances, open myself up to more opportunities. That wasn’t an easy process, and it didn’t go smoothly. All in all, it took nearly four years to restore myself to full strength. I did some good work in those four years, but I knew I was capable of more, so I kept trying and eventually successes started coming together and reinforcing each other, and despite living in a crumbling republic whose corrupt leaders essentially allowed a deadly pandemic to run loose for a year, I’m reasonably happy. Not satisfied, not content… but happy.
Let me try to pull this back to a more broadly useful point, and let me start by saying that I’m not trying to downplay my anxiety in any way, or to get into a mental illness measuring contest of some kind. That said, I know a lot of people who are dealing with conditions that can be much more debilitating than general anxiety disorder and still manage to be productive—specifically, if creativity is how they measure productivity, they’ve managed to be creative. I know people who’ve gone through profound traumas in their lives who can say the same thing.
None of these people have chosen to embrace prejudice. None of these people hitched their wagon to a fascist movement in order to “get what was taken from them” or “make their lives great again.” They live with mental illness, or the aftereffects of trauma, or both, and yet their commitments to justice and equality do not waver.
Now, there are fascists who live with mental illness, or who were traumatized when they were younger. That isn’t what made them fascists, however, and pundits do a profound disservice to the mentally ill and the traumatized when they attempt to dismiss fascists as “crazy.” Such pundits also do all of us a profound disservice by minimizing the conscious and deliberate evil of embracing fascism, of pretending that it’s something beyond our control. It is always a choice.
I’m a moral particularist, so I don’t believe in fully universal ethical principles, but I do believe this: In every situation, there are appropriate actions you can take, and there are inappropriate actions you can take, and the decisions are, ultimately, yours and yours alone.
Perhaps, in some cases, you might excuse yourself by saying you weren’t fully aware of the consequences of your actions, but by January 6, 2021, there was no way that someone could not know the consequences of aligning themselves with Donald Trump and his minions. Those people knew what they were signing up for, and they either believed in it wholeheartedly, or were willing to participate in it as long as things worked out okay for them in the end.
That’s not mental illness.
I’m going to try to end this with something that might be helpful to those of you who read these newsletters because you want to write more consistently, more effectively. I don’t know your situations; I don’t know what conditions you might be enduring that, at this moment, are getting in the way of your writing. I do know, particularly if you’re reading this in the United States of America, that getting effective treatment for mental illness, or for trauma recovery, can be a major pain in the ass, both logistically and financially. So I don’t want to glibly advise you to “get yourself some therapy,” especially because even if you could, I know from experience therapy isn’t a magic wand you can wave over yourself and instantly become more successful creatively.
I guess what I would say is this: Don’t let anyone, including yourself, try to make you feel “less than” because of your condition. You want to write because you have something—a story, a message, a vision—you want to share with the world. Take advantage of every opportunity you can to develop your ability to do so, and then every opportunity to pursue the means to do it.
Not all of those opportunities will pan out. You will have bad days at the writing table; you will face rejection when you try to get your story out. Don’t allow those moments to define your creative identity. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can’t ever succeed because of your condition. In all likelihood, your progress will not be relentless. It will be slow and fragmented and probably pretty frustrating some days.
Your success might not lead you to the life of the “successful writer,” as we’re given to understand what that means.
Success is, however, possible. One way or another, it is possible to wind up in a better place—whether creative, emotional, or professional—than you were when you started. You can resist the temptation to do evil, or to do nothing, and choose to move forward.
If you’re reading this on the web, welcome! “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives” is, in its ideal moments, when the nation isn’t going through a very unpeaceful transition of power, a weekly newsletter about developing a meaningful and productive writing practice. You can get most of it emailed to you for free with a basic subscription—or, if you’d like to support its ongoing publication, premium plans are available for $5/month or $50/year. Whichever option you choose, I hope it’s helpful.
(Trump insurrectionists at the Capitol, photo: Tyler Merbler, Wikimedia Commons)