OUR RESISTANCE CANNOT JUST BE CONTENT CREATION
While we film fascism from our windows, real people are being detained. Your viral thread isn't the revolution we were promised.
THERE WAS A TIME I THOUGHT resistance meant content creation.
I believed that crafting the perfect post, getting enough likes, building a following large enough to “raise awareness” was the right path to change. I measured progress in shares and comments. I confused virality with victory.
If that version of myself existed right now I’d love to ask her:
Hey Jo, did that carefully crafted thread explaining why *your team* is morally superior to *their team* stop a single bomb from falling on Gaza or Yemen?
Did the exhaustive discourse on whether ableism is acceptable when directed at politicians we dislike fill even one empty stomach?
Did posting hot takes on Elon’s dumbassery help the people of Myanmar after the most powerful earthquake to strike their country in more than a century?
That Jo would have been defensive.
She’d have crafted a razor-sharp reply, dripping with sarcasm, that would have earned fire emojis from fellow #resistors.
Current Jo just wants to know who got fed.
To those who don’t know, my husband and I run a platform called The Progressivists — 810,000 followers on Instagram, 210,000 on Threads, tens of thousands elsewhere, and yes, this very Substack you’re reading. And I’m here to tell you that in our experience, social media equates to fuck all toward actual progress.
Viral posts don’t free anyone.
Engagement metrics don’t protect communities from state violence.
Follower counts don’t house or feed people.
If they did, we’d all be living in utopia by now, saved by the acid-tongued wit of blue-check commentators and a well-timed written eyebrow raise. Fascism? Don’t worry guys, I Tweeted.
Sure, social media can sometimes raise money, create connections with like-minded people (which I deeply appreciate on the platforms we’ve built), and provide starting points for further education. But awareness and information don’t mean shit if that’s the extent of the work.
Theory alone doesn’t save lives. Practice does.
Perhaps more than ever, the gap between digital outrage and tangible outcomes is becoming increasingly and painfully obvious. We see actual fascism unfolding in real time, and turn it into ‘content’ to, ahh *checks notes* stop the very fascism we’re seeing?
Exhibit A: This week, the greatest hits of authoritarian fuckery played out on a residential street in Massachusetts while someone filmed from a distance at a window. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was handcuffed and detained by masked Department of Homeland Security agents while on her way to break fast during Ramadan.
Imagine if instead of just filming from a distance, those ICE agents had to face twenty neighbors gathering in the street — documenting badge numbers, photographing vehicles, live-streaming the encounter, calling attorneys on speakerphone, forming an unmistakable circle of witnesses.
Wouldn’t their “productivity” drop significantly when operations designed for isolation suddenly face organized community resistance?
To be clear, before Todd jumps down my throat: The filming was valuable. I’m not criticizing whoever documented this incident, and that video may well prove vital in legal proceedings. But at this moment in history, when the playbook of authoritarian tactics is being deployed openly on our streets, documentation alone won’t turn the tide. We need more. What protected civil rights workers in the ‘60s wasn’t just cameras — it was communities standing together in physical solidarity.
When masked agents show up to intimidate and detain, their strategy relies on our fear, passivity, and us being trained to believe our only role is safe digital archiving. Folks, we’re not filming a nature documentary here. This isn’t Fascists in Their Natural Habitat: Please Don’t Disturb the Racist Predators During Feeding Time. This is us witnessing each other be systematically dehumanized and detained. And if we allow our fear to dictate our humanity none of this gets better.
Our resistance cannot just be content creation.
While ICE agents are physically detaining people in our neighborhoods, our virtual spaces have become battlegrounds of their own — but with far less meaningful impact.
I spend very little time on socials these days. I genuinely love it here on Subbers, but find the traditional social platforms overwhelmingly and intentionally divisive, propagandized and harmful. The very small amounts of time I am on there, the bulk of what I see is American people weaponizing individualism, binaries, identities, and exceptionalism.
And no, I very much don’t just mean MAGA folks. Some of the vicious rhetoric I’m seeing online from those who identify as liberal or progressive is astounding. Yesterday I saw a former Dem State Rep saying “FAFO” to Palestinian Americans for not voting for Kamala. Another woman who lost her job said: “I get a little solace knowing that some of the people that wanted this for me are getting it a lot worse.”
“For me” — as if refusing to vote for a genocide enabler was somehow a personal attack aimed directly at her cubicle. “Getting it a lot worse” — you mean the systematic and racist obliteration of families, homes, and futures? The starvation of children? The bombing of hospitals? THAT kind of worse?
Look, of course I feel for this woman losing her job. That’s scary and destabilizing. But to frame it as some kind of perverse justice that people facing literal genocide are *getting it worse* because they didn’t vote how she wanted? That’s not just misguided — it’s a moral collapse that perfectly illustrates how imperial thinking corrodes basic human empathy.
This is what happens when the empire conquers our collective compass alongside our critical thinking. People start viewing human suffering as karmic retribution for not supporting their preferred brand of imperialism. We justify the violence of the American machine, rather than actually thinking about what we’re supporting and condoning.
Look, do I have all the answers? No. But I do know for certain that giving free reign to one government — because that’s what it is, ONE government with two parties — to bomb children is bad. And if you don’t understand this, I really don’t know what to tell you.
This understanding doesn’t make me an “accelerationist”. It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of vulnerable folks in my community. It means I am extremely worried about everyone’s safety when so many people are straight-up condoning imperialism in one form or another.
Remember that bipartisanship people say they so desperately want? Well, we have it: On mass murder.
Right now, while we’re fighting online, the USA continues dropping bombs on Yemen. Israel continues its assault on Palestinians. Trans people continue to be erased. Real humans are suffering and dying. And what are we doing? Having circular firing squads about linguistic purity tests and ideological litmus tests.
We need to stop pointing fingers at each other. Liberals at leftists. Progressives at moderates. Blue MAGA at MAGA. And start pointing fingers at the imperialist industrial complex that is the United States.
When we create hierarchies of which injustices deserve our active resistance and which ones just get our digital sympathy, we’re essentially playing musical chairs with human rights. Eventually those unsettling carnival tunes will stop playing with you standing, and you’ll be left clutching nothing but your collection of #resistance tote bags wondering why nobody’s showing up for you.
I don’t have to agree with you or even like you to recognize your humanity and the way you’ve been shaped by a system MADE to propagandize you. I was propagandized by it too — still unpacking that shit every day. The most powerful empires don’t just conquer land and resources; they conquer minds and narratives. Recognizing this isn’t about moral superiority — it’s about accepting that we’re all swimming in the same toxic river.
And that’s what I believe collective liberation actually means — understanding that my safety depends on yours. That neutrality isn’t neutrality at all. That imperialism abroad eventually comes home. That if I let them take you today, they’ll come for someone I love tomorrow.
Like how they came for Rumeysa Ozturk.
We’ve turned resistance into content creation, and the fascists are counting on it. They’ve factored our angry tweets into their operational costs. They know our outrage has a 24-hour shelf life. And they’re betting on our preference for digital solidarity over physical presence.
The revolution won’t be in your Instagram feed and the path to freedom won’t be paved with likes and shares. It will be in the meals shared, the rent covered, the bodies that stand between fascism and its targets.
It’s time to put the phone down, and pick each other up.
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Wow. Take no prisoners. Literally. Passivity is the problem, clickbait is not the solution. Thank you for this kick in the pants. It empowers me.
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