George Monbiot

1. You feel powerless? Don’t know what you can do to resist the rise of fascism? Here is an answer: Good Things. Fascism inflicts pain and harm as a matter of doctrine. Kindness, care and conviviality defend us from it. The more we build community, the less it can take root. 🧵

2. You might feel powerless to change the world. By and large you are. But you can change your neighbourhood, your city, perhaps even your country. We need people working at every level. We need some people to fight the bad stuff and fight it hard, and some people to build the good stuff.

3. So don’t feel overwhelmed by the scale of it. Do what you can. You already possess a fascism-killing machine. It’s called a good heart.

4. In my experience, and with apologies to Feargal, a good heart is not at all hard to find. Though we've been instructed for years by neoliberals that most people are selfish and greedy, it is simply not true. Research shows that our dominant values are kindness, community, family, empathy etc

5. For a small proportion of the population - about 1% - selfish and greed are the dominant values. We call these people psychopaths. Unfortunately, we keep electing them to represent us. *They do not represent us*.

6. Humanity's age-old political struggle is to defend ourselves from psychopaths. To judge by the evidence, we're not very good at it. Paradoxically, that's partly because we are trusting and kind. We simply cannot believe other people are lying to us, manipulating us, using us as mere instruments.

7. Getting better at it means: a. improving our scepticism and understanding of how manipulators operate. b. being as unlike them as possible: confidently asserting our kindness and empathy. Especially towards those being kicked blue by fascists, such as refugees.

8. The better we show this is the human norm, the harder it is for others to violate it.

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