The Wrong War
An introduction
I do not write to reassure. I do not write to antagonise. I do not seek to build a brand. I write under pseudonyms to facilitate safety and creative expression.
I’m not here to educate you with rigorous analysis or placate you with neutral “both sides” framing. I’m here because things move fast, and too many people still think this is just politics as usual. It isn’t.
Authoritarianism doesn’t always come with uniforms and salutes. Sometimes it stumbles around, red-faced and incoherent, while quietly hollowing out institutions, rewriting rules, and normalising the absurd, the depraved and the dangerous.
Sometimes it looks like farce until it’s history.
You don’t need to look hard to find something to be outraged by. Mass media mobilisation, algorithm-driven perverse incentives and decades of data-mining ensure that you can pick any app you like and get loaded on rage, hate and disgust toward your fellow human, cast in all instances as “the other side”.
This has resulted in clout economy, performative demagoguery and a race to the Emergency Fascist Accusation button. Meanwhile, real changes (to courts, to watchdogs, to civil rights) cement themselves into place barely commented on.
You will not find veneration or deference to institutions that have shown a willingness to be complicit here.
You will not find a sympathetic ear to the specific instance in which you believe violence is the answer.
You will not find hot air dressed up as a dog-whistling call to arms against those I despise.
You’ll find history lessons, though they won’t be nostalgic trips down memory lane.
You’ll find politics, imperfect as they may seem to you, delivered through teeth bared in a snarl, a laugh, sometimes both.
You’ll find a call to build communities and institutions that resist division, to reject ideals of suppression masked as safety, obedience masked as common sense, and intolerance masked as morality.
There is no schedule. There will be no price tag. The expectations are set.
Don’t fight the wrong war.
