The Fascist Blob Targeting Literature, Educators and the Marginalized

Just Because We Have Mr. TFG's Mugshot, It Does Not Mean Celebration or Apathy

Yesterday the world waited for Mr. TFG’s mugshot to be released. I will not share it here. Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults and mind control, warned against sharing the mugshot in a recent X/Twitter post, pointing out that widely promoting the image is what autocrats like Mr. TFG want. He even went as far to describe Mr. TFG’s “pose . . . [as] modeled on Adolf.”

When Mr. TFG guy came down his ostentatious elevator in 2015 with paid actors cheering him, all he did was fuel America’s racists, anti-Semites, puritans, homophobes, transphobes and alliterate and provide them permission to not only boldly share their words of poison but their destructive actions. Ever since Columbus got lost and wound up in the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) and kicked off European colonization in the Americas, the United States has been a country founded on racism, puritanism and genocide.

What Mr. TFG unleashed was like providing an unending supply of blood to a dying vampire, resulting in terrorist attacks against libraries, educators, literature and the marginalized as well as their allies that have increased since his announcement targeted Mexicans and Muslims.

Days before Mr. TFG’s mug shot, Warren-Newport Library in Gurnee, IL received its second bomb threat on Monday this week and reopened on Wednesday. The day before Warren-Newport Library’s bomb threat, the Oak Park, IL Library System closed because of its own bomb threat. It reopened on Tuesday.

But most tragically on Friday last week, a man yelling homophobic slurs that he had also spewed on social media and the internet fatally shot Mag.Pi store owner Laura Ann Carleton over her use of the Pride Flag outside her store. Law enforcement ended up fatally shooting the gunman as well.

In addition to being an LGBTQIA+ ally, Carleton was the mother to 9 children. Carleton’s daughter Ari Carleton later told both-sides CNN anchor Anderson Cooper that her mother would order a new and bigger pride flag whenever someone tore one down. After Carleton’s murder, a new pride flag had arrived at her home to replace a faded pride flag.

Terrorism against the marginalized occurred early this summer too. For example, back in June, anti-Semitic flyers were dropped in Sacramento, CA neighborhoods. Last Sunday, The Forward reported that over Jewish Sabbat, several kosher Jewish restaurants were attacked. Holocaust-survivor Dr. Ruth Westheimer responded to the news on X/Twitter.

Make no mistake that when Mr. TFG said he “loves the poorly educated,” he knew what that meant and what he would do once elected U.S. President in 2016. The 1990 Vanity Fair article “After the Gold Rush” revealed not only the depth of his racism and anti-Semitism but that even then Mr. TFG believed in “The Big Lie.” The article’s author Marie Brenner stated that the late and first Mrs. TFG told her lawyer that Mr. TFG read and stored a copy of Hitler’s speeches “in a cabinet by his bed.”

History repeats when people remain unaware of not only the news and their own history but also world history. Mr. TFG knows this. Attacks against culture, education, literature, the marginalized and dissenters are always early signs of fascism and autocracy and always will be. Florida’s turn toward fascism inspired by Mr. TFG and lead by a U.S. governor who strains to smile has caused fear and brain drain in Florida K-12 schools and higher education.

Is this how human beings smile? Asking for a friend.

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, himself Jewish, immediately recognized the danger in Florida that has spread to other U.S. states. In early June, Pritzker signed a law making banning books illegal in Illinois. This created an impetus for this week’s bomb threats to Oak Park Library System and Warren-Newport Library.

The month before these bomb threats, parents in a Central Illinois town filed a police report against veteran eighth-grade teacher Sarah Bonner. The reason? Bonner included Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay in her class’s “Reading Monday” collection — one book of many that students could chose to read in order to promote reading as well as inclusion and equity. This optional book’s inclusion resulted in Bonner losing her job.

Author Juno Dawson. Photo: Rachel Adams

Again. Illinois remained aware and resisted. On August 14, The74 published Illinois Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders’s op-ed inviting Florida teachers to relocate to Illinois. Pritzker echoed this five days later on X/Twitter.

Pritzker knows that the fascist blob must be resisted and defeated. Regardless of politics, book bans, terrorism and attacks on teachers, literature and the marginalized have always been and remain unacceptable. Unlike the ending of 1958’s B-movie classic