You should just read this essay by Ken Baumann, but for my future reference:
Phrases which point to no distinct situation, but instead to other phrases which are just as vague. One of the pains of living today is that we live and make decisions without a clear picture of reality to reference or feel a part of. We feel pain not from this lack, but from knowing deeply and intuitively that we are mostly full of shit. And from feeling trapped in a petty game in which you can only proceed by gathering more and more of the right kind of phrases into your head then saying those phrases at the right time to the right people. (Job interviews and talking with customer service representatives are events that scream this truth: the game is not fun because the game was not made for you.)
I’ll say again our situation: we think in phrases that either stun us or which we resent; we want reality and our lives to make sense and feel purposeful but we have bad sources of information; we forget every day the immediate proof of our goodness and ability to choose. It’s as if we are dying of thirst yet stumble again and again to a well full of poisoned water. And when this water touches our lips we wonder: Is there any other way?
Those are the pains that must be admitted.
Now I want you to imagine a machine which can show us proofs of these pains, hundreds of thousands more proofs than we see stars in the night sky. A hundred proofs for every day of every year. Now imagine that this machine works everywhere. That we keep it within our reach every moment of our lives. That this machine is the first thing we use when we wake up and the last thing we use before we fall asleep.
No wonder we feel besieged. No wonder we feel naked to agony and disbelief. No wonder we accept the invitation to refuse to feel.
For nearly all our history as a species, we have lived because we have been where we are. By intimately understanding our environments, we have learned to thrive as a contributing part of them. We are local. This fact too is conveniently obliterated by cellphones and their makers. Knowing that we are best at surviving where we live—as opposed to living somewhere that doesn’t exist, like in some bullshit national narrative or in a battle between good and evil—knowing we are best when we are local helps us practice democracy. And the obviousness of the needs of your friends and neighbors reminds you of the ease of being where you’re at. Reality, and a language that makes sense of it, returns.
I define fascism as a kind of work. Fascism is a kind of maintenance. It is the work we do when we hurt others in order to maintain our belief that we are better than them. A fascist believes that another group is weaker and worse than theirs, then weakens and harms that group so that their original belief feels incontestably true. Fascism is cowardly work. We are fascists all the time. Knowing this, it is our personal and collective responsibility to change our thinking and behavior. Otherwise the logical end of fascism is not killing and torturing this or that specific group: it is destroying everyone and everything that is not you.