Didn’t we have a world war about this a while ago? Remind me again, what was that one lesson we learned about fascists…?

It needs no mention that the US Supreme Court’s decision on abortion is a repulsive ruling by repulsive people for repulsive people. It will achieve nothing of value. It will result in the avoidable serious injury or deaths of women. But, of course, that’s the idea. A sickening push to indirectly murder innocent people for daring to live in the 21st century, instead of accepting their fate as broodmares for white nationalists. Because pro-life, right? It’s almost amusing when you consider that Clarence Thomas is a black man pursuing a racist agenda that will most likely harm black women the most. Indeed, Clarence Thomas has already called for same-sex marriage and contraception to be up for discussion.

In light of all this, it’s incredible that it needs to be explained to people that they should:

• Respect the right to autonomy over one’s own body, which supersedes any law, no matter the origin;
• Have some basic decency and empathy with women who are going to be directly harmed by a bunch of racist Christian fascists.

Most of all, understand that the GOP and Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett are never going to stop at attempting to restrict women’s sexual freedom and autonomy.

• They are going to come for the trans community;
• Then they are going to come for the gay community;
• Then they are going to come for the Jews;
• Then they are going to be right back to reinstating slavery again.

Because that’s just how these rabid animals are. 

Hypberbolic? Here’s llinois Republican Mary Miller quoting Hitler in a speech at the Capitol.

Here’s llinois Republican Mary Miller hailng Roe v Wade as a “victory for white life.”

That wasn’t a mistake, that was just a mask-off moment.

You can’t make this up. You can’t tell me that not only could she not have found a better candidate to quote from, but also that this wasn’t just her being comfortable with the people around her, and feeling emboldened to say the loud part louder.

Of course, the Trump base went wild. Speaks for itself, really.

Mike Pence wants to make the abortion ban a national law. Can we ban Mike Pence? Just full stop.

That, most of all, is why Americans should be extremely worried by the direction their country is being dragged in.

But what do you expect? There’s very clearly no talking to them. Rational people have tried communication for years. It only ends with moved goal poasts, an endless stream of logical fallacies, degenerates brandishing guns at people and riot police assualting reporters in the street. We’ve seen much of the same from America’s finest this time, who proudly attacked unarmed women with batons. These are the manly ‘good guys with guns’ who bravely stood outside Robb Elementary School school in Uvalde, Texas, on the 24 May 2022 and waited for one hour, 14 minutes, and eight seconds as 19 children and two teachers were massacred by a lone gun man.

There are some people who will look at these directives coming down from the Supreme Court as some sort of word of God. The reality is that they have the power that you give them. What’s to stop people from simply ignoring this series of unelected individuals? What are they going to do, send in the Proud Boys? More to the point, why should anybody listen to God on the issue of wombs, much less anything else, if the people acting in his name are so consistently vile?

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have nice little titles, and nice little badges, and nice little salaries. They live, breathe, bleed, vomit, cry, piss, shit and die just like anybody else.

In the end they are just meat and chemicals.

Still, as with all fascists, they’re incapable of speaking any language other than violence, so no matter how peaceful protestors are, people can expect to be threatened, assaulted, and to have weapons brandished at them. Because, as we are repeatedly told, violence is never the answer… 

If you’re in the USA, and you’re interested in protesting:

Here’s a map of events in the USA

A subreddit for a general strike

An article on dealing with tear gas

Some information regarding protesting

If you join any future protests, use your own judgement on whether you need any of the following:

• Head protection to protect yourself against blunt-force weapons; 
• Goggles in case of tear gas and other chemical agents. Gasmasks work for both your identity and chemical weapons;
• Have a traffice cone at the ready and bottles of water to douse any grenades and/or rinse out eyes;
• Heavy gloves as a last resort, to return any incendiary and disorentation devices. But don’t get hurt in the process;
• Protective clothing such as motocrycle leathers if the situation has escalated;
• Makeshift shields, such as bin lids. There’s a reason riot police carry these and they will be throwing things around – it’s on you to be smart about matching them;
• Masks to protect your identity. You don’t know if you’re going to get put on some kind of facial recognition database, and we know that the patterns facepaint doesn’t work, so go hard;
• Mace/pepper spray for self-defence. 

American right-wing media figures, such as Tucker Carlson long-time proponent of replacement theory, were foaming at the mouth about a supposed ‘night of rage’. Indeed, Saturday’s protests were broadly very peaceful, save for some exuberant police, a man defending an innocent protestor from said exuberant police, and some cowardly politicians in the Arizona Capitol who hid in a basement, rather than face the women they’d just attempted to steal the rights from.

Nonetheless, the way the right-wing media reported it, you’d have thought people have thrown Molotov cocktails at the Supreme Court Justice’s homes, the addresses of which were, recklessly, circulated online. With any luck we can avoid the insanity that seems to be headed in America’s direction, but we’ve learned by experience that the the American right-wing like to project everything that they are about to do onto the left before they actually do it. 

Which means that the next time you go out to protest peacefully, there’s a good chance you’re going to be attacked by a pack of racist Christian fascists.

If intelligent people needed a better reason to consider arming themselves in case they need to in self-defence, there it is.

Should you unfortunately need them:

The liberal gun owners subreddit

The Socialist Rifle Association subreddit