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MAGA and the Myth of Inevitability

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“Nothing is inevitable but everything is possible.” My friend and comrade once said that in reference to the vibrant movement moment of the Black Lives Matter uprisings after the heinous Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.

These words have been a mantra for me since I read them. Like many of you, I’m terrified of the state of the world and my country's role in its suffering. When I consume the news, take a tally of the rights our people have lost, and hold the memory of those who are no longer here, I am at times resigned to believe that “it’s over” and that “nothing matters.” When the onslaught is constant, giving up becomes alluring.

Hope is a necessary and useful tool for our social movements in the struggle against authoritarianism. My attempt here is to share my perspective on possibility and the role it plays in tumultuous times like these.

Winning this election means stopping authoritarian consolidation within our government, which clears the way for defeating the MAGA movement for a second time in the 2028 presidential election.

Authoritarianism always tries to abolish memory—capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, evangelical Christian, fascist imperialists want us to be trapped in their now. As if their now is inevitable. Authoritarianism wants us to believe that only one thing is happening.

While destruction and great loss has occurred in President Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, it does not mean that it is inevitable that it will continue to occur in perpetuity. Since the colonists first came to this land, horror has followed. And so have miraculous acts of resistance, political gains, and life-altering wins. That’s because human beings chose resistance and strategy in the face of oppression. Abolitionist movements of the past engaged in highly sophisticated, multi-century, strategic political struggle to free enslaved Black people from bondage (movements composed of enslaved people and abolitionists like Fredrick Douglas). In hindsight, people over and over again made the conscious choice to engage in the long arc of protracted struggle.

Nothing; not a moment, administration, movement, law, nor empire lasts forever, nor is any of it inevitable. Or more relevant to the point I’m trying to make, nothing is one thing constantly and always. Change will occur. History is never one note. There are variations over time and in those variations are the inspirations for interventions where dominant ideas are changed. These changes, or fluctuations and fissures, are opportunities of possibility to exploit to use against our enemy.

Capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, evangelical Christian, fascist imperialists want us afraid and isolated. We are facing a multi-pronged attack. MAGA and billionaire oligarchs are launching attacks in a variety of ways. Using electoral intimidation and rigging, tech over-dependence and surveillance, and right-wing takeovers of media through monopolization, to name a few. Billions of dollars are being spent to keep us apart and to internalize a false narrative: “It’s over,” “Nothing matters."

This false narrative of the inevitable has begun to make its way into some contemporary American movies. Movies like Don’t Look Up, A House of Dynamite, and Bugonia. All were released within a few years of one another, the latter two came out the same year (2025). Each of these movies come to similar fatalistic conclusions: Doom is inevitable.

This is not true, but it does serve a strategic purpose. This fatalistic view is both a real felt experience of........

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