Remember, friends - It never ends well for Nazis.

May their memories be a blessing.

My sister and I have recently started the process of arranging to have stolpersteine (literally - stumbling stone) placed for our paternal grandparents who were murdered by Nazis in Belgrade, (former) Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. We will also have a stolpersteine placed for our father who miraculously escaped death, despite Yugoslavia being declared 'Judenfriei' by Harald Turner, the Nazi commander tasked with wiping out the approximately 82,500 Serbian Jews. Some years ago, as part of my lifelong attempt to emotionally process some of this family trauma, I'd written a letter to this man who was responsible for the suffering and death of so many Serbian Jews in which I ended it by gloating that he had hung for his crimes, while my children and I are living proof of his failure. As with so many other Nazis, things did not end well for Harald Turner. Or, in other words - karma's a bitch.

I first learned about stolpersteine a few years ago when I came across an article by Julie Brill who was writing about how her father (a few years younger than my father) had survived the Holocaust in Belgrade by (like my own father) being Hidden in Plain Sight. In the article, she wrote about her experience arranging with the Serbian government to have a stolpersteine placed for her paternal grandfather who, by my calculations was in the same concentration camp as my grandfather at the same time, and likely died by the same firing squad. From Julie I learned about these small brass 'stones' that are planted outside the last voluntary residence of Holocaust victims, slightly raised so that passers-by might 'stumble' over them and stop to look, and hopefully to honour the person named. Inscribed with the words, "Here lived...", stolpersteine are a memorial stone designed to remind the passers-by of the reality, the humanity of these individuals who were ripped from their homes and tortured and murdered by fucking Nazis and their fucking sympathizers (aka fellow racists).

Everyone hates Nazis.

I'm not one to study authoritarian regimes in depth (too depressing), but my understanding is that even those individuals who are enmeshed in such regimes usually hate each other. Just a few months ago (though so much happens so fast lately, it feels like years), we all delighted in the catfights between Musk and Trump and Miller (meow!). It is not inconceivable that, behind the visible worship of the orange menace, there's enough shit-talking among the sycophants and grovellers to fill a municipal sewage system. We are watching those in government, and those who are government-adjacent, and those who have devoutly supported this regime viciously attack each other over the Epstein files and Whatshisname Kirk. As Rebecca Solnit so clearly wrote about this week in her newsletter, authoritarian regimes are built by and for narcissists who make a habit of blaming and attacking others for their own misery. It is always entertaining to watch them blame and attack each other.

Throughout history, every authoritarian regime has been rife with backstabbing, in-fighting, universal distrust, and general loathing. And that doesn't even account for the mass rebellion - either out in the open, or underground - of the citizenry (that's us!) who have traditionally been the ones to eventually topple these so-called governments. Everyone hates a Nazi. Even Nazis hate each other, and that makes them more susceptible to their inevitable demise. My point being that we must never stop telling Nazis that they are despicable and nobody likes them. As so many others have already said, "we can't make nice with Nazis".

Nazis have names and faces.

Eight decades after the Holocaust, Harald Turner is still cursed by name as the fucking Nazi who killed my grandparents. After WWII, there were the Nuremberg Trials and the Nazi hunters, seeking to bring the Nazi leaders (those who hadn't already offed themselves) to justice. This was where we learned that claiming "I was just following orders" doesn't excuse you from your participation in genocide, or protect you from paying the consequences.

Modern day technology makes it even easier for us to know the names and faces of modern-day Nazis and their supporters. And it makes it easier for us to challenge them every time they fuck up (which seems to be all the time). Boy howdy! Was the Disney Corporation ever challenged by the masses after they kowtowed to the orange menace last week and suspended Jimmy Kimmel's show! I haven't fact checked that $3.87 Billion (USD) overnight figure, but I'm betting that Disney is seriously feeling the burn for their foolish fealty just now. We've seen the power of our conscience-based boycotts on Target and Tesla, and now on the Disney empire. Every one of these massive corporations watching their profits plummet is evidence of our collective ability to weaken the wannabe fascists and their bootlicking toadies. This regime is desperate to shut down dissent but we won't let them. Not now. Not ever.

I know I'm using words like 'fascist' and 'Nazi' quite freely these days, but aren't we all? Not so long ago, these descriptive words were reserved for a select few, the worst of the worst. But Tump and his cronies have made it perfectly clear who their role models are, and that they are working from the Nazi playbook, thus earning these ugly titles. We cannot stop telling them that they are the worst of the worst. We must call them for what they are - fascists and Nazis.

I can't believe we're still protesting this shit.

This weekend I attended our local Draw the Line protest - "Thousands of people mobilized for people, for peace, and for the planet in 70+ communities from coast to coast to coast". It was a beautiful thing to see so many people standing up for everything good, from protecting old growth forests to demanding peace in Palestine, from saving ecosystems from extinction to rendering billionaires extinct, from ending our love affair with fossil fuels to loving justice for all. The Draw the Line protests invited us who care for the world to come together to champion all these existential causes because, of course, they are all connected. We are all out here doing what we can to make the world kind and fair and sustainable. Are we really asking so much? I don't think so, so why the hell do those in power insist on making this world cruel and inequitable and unsustainable?

I wish with all my heart that we humans could just all be nice and there would no longer be any need for protests, but I doubt that will ever be the case. I can't believe we're still protesting this shit, but we are, and we don't have a choice. Either we protest or we succumb to the stupidest, meanest, shittiest dictatorship. Succumbing is not an option, and so we protest.

Things are not going well for the fascists thanks to us!

It is so easy to feel overwhelmed, disheartened, defeated, and completely bamboozled by all that's going on every goddamned day. You are not alone in feeling any or all of these things. I feel each of these sensations every day. But there is also so much to celebrate, and that is because each of us, despite feeling all the bad stuff, keep showing up and speaking out and getting together and being creative to make things as difficult as possible for those who would destroy us. Even though it looks like the fascists are winning, they're not. ICE is constantly being chased out of communities. Trump is losing court cases like crazy. There are boycotts and blockades, marches and protests, banner drops, phone calls and emails, and every kind of constant reminder that nobody likes these wannabe Nazis and that their support is in free fall. Our wins are their losses, and we're winning because we're all taking part in shutting down this nightmare.

I don't know how this chapter in history will end (no one knows), but I feel quite certain that it will not end well for the fascists. It never does. What I do know is that it is up to us to make sure we do whatever we can to not just destroy this regime, but also to replace it with a world based on kindness and care and justice for all living beings. This is a monumental task and it will take all of us - all of us who have been showing up for the better part of a year, or for many years, or for just the past few weeks, and all the folk we can inspire to join us. Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have been taken down by folk like us. Now it's our turn.

Shanah Tova,

Jessica

p.s. Picture this - the next chapter of US history is co-authored by the guy who wrote The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) and Aaron Sorkin, in which the Republican Party insiders eat each other up and the regime is replaced with a Zohran Mamdani type leader. What do you think?