letter to the american people

This podcast is a departure from my usual recordings, because I’m reading someone else’s words: in particular, The Lemkin Institute’s “Letter to the American People,” published on March 27, 2025. This letter is a crucial communique that every neighbor in the battle against fascism must read.

My hope in reading it aloud to you here is that it might move you— that it might inspire you to share The Lemkin Institute’s letter with your peers, neighbors, coworkers, parishioners, family members, and friends. And more than that— it is my prayer you might be moved into unrelenting local action to defend your neighbors from persecution.

I also encourage you to read The Lemkin Institute’s public resource, titled “10 Patterns of Genocide.” I encourage you to read it, especially if you are someone who prefers to look away from “stressful” things. There are some times, neighbor, when looking away becomes a crime. This is one of those times. I need you to make yourself aware of the patterns of genocide because many of those patterns are already taking place, and you cannot fight what you cannot (or will not) recognize.

Neighbor, I need you to find your courage. I need you to access your anger and forcefully push back against the reign of fascist cruelty, because it will escalate if we do not challenge every moral injury enacted upon ourselves and our neighbors.

We tend to think of people who enact genocide as monsters, and we do this, in part, because we want to distance ourselves from violent people. But the moment we convince ourselves that such cruelty is inhuman, we fail to recognize the rather pedestrian motives behind such depravity: It’s about greed, control, exploitation, the avoidance of accountability, and the lies that some misunderstood Other is the source of your pain— and not the fascist elites, playing you like a fool and turning you against your neighbor, while they rob you blind and leave you to rot in the ruins.

But there is another reason why, even if we have become accustomed to saying it, that we must avoid calling fascists monsters: Calling them monsters takes away our agency.

Recall that I have often said the word fascism itself scares people off. And why? Because we call fascists monsters. We make them inhuman and flee, cower, or look away while they brutalize our neighbors. This must end.

We are adults. We do not need bedtime stories. These are human beings doing evil shit for pedestrian reasons, and they know you are scared of monsters, which is why they aim to scare you into submission. And that’s the biggest con of all because fascists, if confronted by a swarm of neighbors who refuse to comply— who refuse to let their neighbors be abused— will always fall.

Fascists are weak.

Their money, guns, bombs, tanks, spyware, propaganda, engineered algorithms, bots, trolls, militarized police, and military might is no match to the army of ordinary decent people who refuse to allow their country and their kin to be destroyed by fascist elites and their bigoted enablers.

It is so so so important for you to get offline, talk to your neighbors, and build support networks right now to keep your targeted neighbors out of harm’s way. Some of these neighbors may not want your help, but others don’t even think to ask for aid, because they have been so thoroughly scapegoated by fascists. They assume you’d reject them. They assume you don’t care and, even if you did, that you wouldn’t back that sentiment up with meaningful action. Your job is to prove them wrong with your actions. Your job is to be the decent human who assembles neighbors and gets people out of harm’s way.

This is a fight we must not lose.

No foreign army will swoop in to rescue us from the fascist whiles of Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Jeff Besoz, Erik Prince, Sam Altman, Kevin Roberts, Mike Johnson, Russ Vought, and their lesser enablers.

These are not monsters.

These are not gods.

These are weak men, so afraid of the world that they need it to reflect their version of reality, because weak men cannot bear to share resources with neighbors who don’t look, live, love, worship, and think like them.

They must fall.

We must prevail.

We must hold the line— for our neighbors, our country, our future, our planet, and human decency, dignity, and liberty for all.