(1346 words, part 6 of 7)

In case you missed it, Israel has admitted (and a leak from within their ranks confirms) that civilians make up 80% or more of those killed in Gaza. And since they call any male over 13 years old a “terrorist,” the actual percentage is far higher. More children, and more journalists, were slaughtered with U.S. bombs in this war than were killed in all 20th century wars combined. The tonnage of TNT dropped there is more than Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden combined. Never before, historians note, have we seen such complete destruction of the infrastructure of civilian life. 92% of homes in Gaza—436,000 units—have been destroyed or damaged according to Shelter Cluster.

Did you hear the UN’s plea in May 2025 that 14,000 babies would die of starvation unless 55+ trucks per day were let into Gaza? In the days that followed, the zionist entity allowed in five trucks: three of food and two of body bags. They’re laughing at a civilization they are starving, much like a cartoon villain would. This week, hundreds in the west posted to social media saying they support military intervention into Israel to force food into Gaza. You should too.

First: since everyone will someday claim they were against this, we must keep records of those who weren’t. Who ran cover for Zionists, thwarting efforts to stop it. AP and other major U.S. media all call this a “war,” but it’s just bombing civilians in tents. Every effort to stop this has been a good effort. If you’ve objected to any measures trying to slow or stop it, you were doing the work of the Zionists for them. Zionists have been disowned by almost every Jewish person I’m familiar with, and will doubtless go down in history as the grotesque colonizers they are. But the government you pay taxes to still supplies “all” their bombs and shells and targeting intelligence, according to more than one Israeli military official speaking publicly.

It’s crucial to speak out against this. And yet the ruling class exerts its solidarity by criminalizing acts or displays of dissent. (If they can’t yet make it criminal, they treat it as criminal in their rhetoric.) This criminalization will be crucial to their continued control as we enter a time of climate instability and its attendant mass migration. Which of course the ruling class caused.

Social media companies are already allowed to throttle and censor criticism of Zionist drivel or other fascism… but my money’s on these practices proliferating even more as fascism marches into the sunlight. We may not even notice when the platforms owned by “X” (Twitter) or Meta (like Instagram) become less reliable sources of information. It could be that folks who are solid antifascists are shown antifascist content, but anyone who’s on the fence—and the platforms know who is—gets a feed carefully scrubbed of disturbing content. They’re now, or soon to be, given a washed world, devoid of dissenting opinions.

Legacy social media might be a tool, but remember that it’s not your friend. In 2022 (and likely often thereafter), Facebook gave Nebraska cops a teen’s DM’s so they could prosecute her for having an abortion. It’s become clear in 2026 that TikTok had to strike a deal to throttle pro-Palestine content for the Biden administration to let it live. Bluesky has been banning a lot of Palenstian accounts of late. So I encourage you to set up accounts on decentralized social media like Mastodon. As of February 2026, the Trump administration had requested, of Google and Meta, the personal information of people critical of ICE. The companies very well might comply.

How can you ensure your one-on-one “dissent” discussions aren’t swept up by the dragnet? Download Signal for digital communication with like-minded people. But IMHO, even Signal isn’t secure enough if you’re planning something more subversive than a protest. A couple of high-profile cases lately involved Signal breaches whose mechanism, AKA route into encrypted content, isn’t clear, at least publicly. So if you or someone you’re trying to help is in a sensitive situation, understand that the government’s technological reaches run deep. Best to consult a security expert if you want some certainty. Feel free to text me on Signal, using only vague references, at 740-505-0038. I might be able to advise or get you in touch with someone who can.

You think Bernie Sanders and AOC are dissenters? Sanders keeps saying “Israel has the right to exist.” I want to be clear: no country has a right to exist; all people in all countries do. That’s why international law says that an occupied people, in this case Palestine, has the right of armed resistance, and the occupying force does *not* have the right to retaliate against that. Sanders is on the wrong side of international law, and history. In the last election, both major party platforms were pro-Gaza Holocaust, so—I’ll just say it—it wasn’t morally acceptable to vote for either of them.

EDIT: In early February, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke in Munich at a security conference. She said that Trump didn’t go far enough when he abducted the democratically elected president of a sovereign nation; that Trump should have deposed the entire government. This isn’t the voice of a dissenter; it’s the voice of empire.

If you told me it was imperative to vote for Kamala Harris, a candidate who funded a genocide for 452 days prior to election day, I would remind you that what we’re now witnessing is the empire enacting, on us, that which you supported (via the candidate you supported) in the global south.

As Madeline Pendleton said, “Every time I get mad at a Trump policy, I remember the Democrats wanted you to trade 100,000 Palestinian lives in exchange for that mayyyyyybe not happening (no promises!)”

Yes, Trump is likely more harmful. But if we believe Trump, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem to be singular harms, then we will always end up with people like them. Why? Because we’ll keep getting shitty candidates to oppose them. Why? Because we won’t admit when we have a candidate who’s not up to snuff.

In other words, if we want to avoid people like Trump, we actually *have* to critique Trump’s opposition. Otherwise, that opposition will never have policies popular enough to be elected.

The most harmful idea in our society right now is the pressure to vote out of “harm reduction,” a close corollary of which is saying that the only vote that “counts” is one for a major party. What kind of real change are Bernie and AOC offering when it took a year of their entire base hounding them for them to endorse Zohran Mamdani, even to stave off an Andrew Cuomo mayorship? There’s a serious chance Bernie and AOC endorse Gavin Newsom in the next presidential election, out of “harm reduction.” Newsom is a blatant fascist who, in addition to filming himself throwing away the last possessions of poor people, has told his state’s mayors to criminalize (in effect) existing outside while poor, sending those people to forced labor camps.

The administration Harris played a large role in (considering Biden’s mental state) approved a policy that would kick 15 million people off Medicaid. That was a decision that not more than 15% of voters in any congressional district supported, according to Data for Progress. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to surmise that these people would rather serve their donors than win an election. Despite their rhetoric, Biden & Harris’ actions strongly suggest they believed a second Trump term was an acceptable outcome.

If you take away only one message from this series, I’ve love for it to be this two-part belief system:

1. Everything is political, because none of us exists in a vacuum and our choices affect others.

2. When evaluating any political decision, you should disregard what people in power say about it, and especially what they say about their own beliefs, instead focusing only on what the outcome does. What effect does it have on the world. On lives.

The actual effect of the Democrats, including (maybe especially) Bernie and AOC, is to direct your antifascist rage into a party that will not stop the bombs. Will not stop the surveillance. Will not provide equity or enact justice. Will not even oppose fascism, preferring instead to partner with it, albeit a tad slower than it would take shape otherwise.

The majority of the Democratic Party is comprised of people like Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who says she won’t sign a repeal of Virginia’s anti-union “right to work” law if she’s elected. If Democrats regain power nationally, they won’t undo 99% of what Trump has done, and when voters ask why, they’ll say “these things take time.” This party is fully captured by capital, and exists as controlled opposition.

To continue reading this series, visit the final entry, here.

Brandon Smith has been an elected town official and the youngest winner of the only award for independent journalism. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and In These Times.