Fascism Is Global BTW...
By Nyles Pollonais
““Excuse me, everyone. I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus is Black. Ronald Raegan was the devil. And, the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time, and goodnight.””
“How many times have I told you, you better not even dream about telling white folks the truth?” Grandad wakes Huey out of his sleep reminding him to stop dreaming about making white people riot. “I’m going to go find me a white man and lie to him right now,” he says to himself while walking out of the bedroom. I start here on this evening of February 10th a little shocked, but not surprised. Just last weekend, Vox, Spain’s far-right conservative party, held their Make Europe Great Again (MEGA) event in the capital, Madrid, with attendees like France’s LePenn and Hungary’s Orban. Shocked, in sarcasm, because I was told that this was impossible here.
See, all throughout the end of 2024 America’s election was front-page news around the world. Though they often deny it, American culture is the world’s culture. Our sneakers, our rappers, our reality TV shows, our failures, and yes, even our politics run the world. Yet in the midst of their consumption, they, and I am referring to the Europeans I work with, could not fathom that it wasn’t any more than that. They pitied us. I heard too often sentiments like, “How could they vote for such a man?” They could point out all of his wrongdoings, but never see the creep happening among their own peers. I would turn to them, feeling frustrated saying, “Can’t you see it coming?” — all the while Nazi symbols lined the sidewalks I took school. No, they could not. It felt like I had been transported from the future.
Americans were dumb. That’s the idea and the solution. That’s how it happened. They’re an overweight, undereducated, greedy, self-concerned, racist people who didn’t know better, and didn’t have the proper information to make better choices. I mean, how could that be different from the content coming from Reality TV, Tik Tok, and the White House? It couldn’t. See, to see beyond is worthy of a Master’s Degree or a PhD, it’s a cognitive dissonance to the majority. They can’t see from here how the Americans have been lied to, poisoned, imprisoned, fear-mongered, and pushed to the depths of debt servitude. They cannot see that the realities they witness are the results of failed economic policies, militaristic police forces disguised as protection services, and crumbling social infrastructures barely constructed. No, it would take someone special to be able to see that. To them, Americans deserve their fate. Europeans, on the other hand are superior — from a land of fairness, and diversity. It could never happen here in Europe, as I was told. “I’m so glad I’m not American.”
And yet, in the midst of the 47th American President threatening to take Greenland and impose tariffs on European products, here in Spain they hosted the Make Europe Great Again (MEGA) conference to solidify the “Patriot’s” party. How, how could this be in such a liberal place as Europe with its free healthcare, social welfare programs, and high-speed transportation systems? No, not here, again. Nazism was eradicated in Germany years ago. We moved on, didn’t we? As I read the comments on the YouTube video that described the MEGA event on Saturday, I was left with one thought. Replace the word ‘immigrant’ with ‘Jew’ and watch time travel become possible. Didn’t we just learn about WW2 in high school a couple years ago?
