How Fascism Erases Our Collective History
Added 2025-07-19 14:00:10 +0000 UTCSo… fair warning. This one’s rough—for all the obvious reasons, and some that crept up on me while I was making it. I tried to hold onto hope, I really did. But there’s grief in here. Grief for the stories stolen and the futures deliberately broken. And also personal grief. So fair warning before jumping into this one. I do think it ends hopeful.
That said - I’ve shown it to some friends—Aranock and a few others—who say it’s a good video. Maybe they’re right. But I have such mixed feelings about it. Not just emotionally, but even just structurally. It feels fractured to me. Uneven. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the shape fascism leaves us in.
Because fascism doesn’t just kill. It rewrites. It buries. It silences. This essay looks at how fascist and colonial systems erase history, not only through violence, but through the archive itself: who gets remembered, how, and why. From the boarding schools that tore Indigenous children from their families, to the erasure of trans lives from national memory, to the targeted destruction of Palestinian cultural sites, fascism and colonialism thrive on forgetting.
And it leaves behind broken timelines. Gaps where people should be. A story full of missing names and haunted places.
I hope, in some way, this video helps make sense of that mess. Or at least reminds you that you’re not alone inside it.
Comments
This video has given me a lot to think about, particularly when it comes to the Tyranny of the Archive. I ended up thinking about that in regards to World Music which I am a big fan. Because music from Africa or South America or Asia or elsewhere isn’t so popular in the United States people’s first exposure to it might well come in the form of a compilation - that’s how I started getting interested in it. I remember getting interested in two companies putting out compilations - Putumayo and The Rough Guide series. In both series I discovered some tracks and some bands that I really loved. But I eventually noticed the differences between the two. Putumayo was very focused on what would appeal to American audiences; the sort of music you could put on in your coffee shop or alternative book seller and not offend anybody. It was soothing, and was more focused on vibes. Many of the artists featured were UK artists who had ties to the country they were celebrating, but were they really representative of what the country sounded like? Or representative of what folk in the United States thought they sounded like (without being too odd or off putting)? The Rough Guide approach always did strike me as more authentic to the cultures they were celebrating. There was much more of an element of crate digging - finding those tracks and bands that never made it outside of Nigeria or India or Mexico. That said, I recognize that they are still selecting for what they think their audience might like. Two bands from Brazil might be equally Brazilian, but one has a sound that the compiler thinks will appeal more to their audience. So that’s the one I get if I pick up my Rough Guide to Psychedelic Brazil. On the other hand I’ve definitely heard bad music. Living in America most of that music has been from the English speaking world; but I am sure that there are plenty of unpolished or less good tracks coming from other artists throughout the world. Which raises it’s own can of worms. If I say “This is a bad song,” aren’t I really saying “This is a song that doesn’t appeal to me and my collection of biases and opinions?” Probably. It’s a tricky question, but one good thing is that Crate Diggers around the world and for a long time are trying to preserve music before it disappears; one can just hope they are grabbing as much as possible, and not just the stuff that they think will appeal to people in the west. Anyway grim but great episode that gave me a lot to think about. I am very sad about your Cat - I'm more of a dog person but been around Cats often enough to know they aren't so bad (regardless of what my dog says).
El Bryanto
2025-07-30 20:11:10 +0000 UTCHi I'm would like to thank you for this. I've been watching your YouTube films for quite some time, unfortunately I wasn't able to support you longterm. I'm queer person from Poland and the topic of memmory and privillage is still ongoing here. I hope this small amount will help you and I hope I'll be able to rise in Patron ranks to support you some more ❤️
Joanna
2025-07-30 13:48:43 +0000 UTCAs a cat-mom myself, I want to offer my deepest condolences to you and Erin, with the loss of sweet Newt 💔💔💔, Jessie. This one got to me, as a month ago I nearly lost my Ziggy, thankfully he recovered. I also want to take a moment to thank you for speaking up for Gaza and Palestine & draw attention to an NGO in Gaza that is seeking to set up a soup kitchen, as they are able to source a little, but they cannot do it alone and without our financial support: https://chuffed.org/fundraiser/33353 thank you, and stay strong, ladies 🍉🙏💜
Rita Balbo
2025-07-21 19:49:47 +0000 UTCThis is beautiful and powerful <3
Bernice Roust
2025-07-21 19:23:16 +0000 UTCthank you for sharing this realness. I appreciate the (content? tone?) warning that this video would be heavy, but I think we are all starved for unflinching truth and reminders of our shared humanity, and I so appreciate how you provide that with your work.
Marta Elena Soto
2025-07-21 15:45:35 +0000 UTCI cried several times during this video. Thank you for reminding us all of this incredible message. Much love <3
Rasmus Meyer
2025-07-20 15:36:57 +0000 UTCI am reminded of the old tale of Zouthis (thrice great) came to the Pharaoh with his new invention: writing. "I have invented a new tool for memory" he proclaimed. Helios-Ra –who sees all things– shook his head. "No my brother. You have invented a tool of forgetting"
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-07-20 14:40:46 +0000 UTCPeople have probably pointed it out but archive is spelled arhive in the title.
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-07-20 14:40:25 +0000 UTCHow much have liberal regimes also been guilty of the erasure and/or sanitisation of queer history?
John Vinals
2025-07-20 01:45:22 +0000 UTCI was so happy to see you reference Reservation Dogs; that show was like a warm hug to my soul; I hope more people watch it; also one of the main writers is a queer indigenous person, one of the four hosts of the Food 4 Thot podcast. It hurts watching you talk about Newt. I just adopted a 10YO black cat that's become my family and roommate, and I often feel conflicted about calling myself his owner or dad. I see your pain and I know I'll be there eventually. I wouldn't change this moment for anything, despite the heartbrake that will come when he is gone. I am sorry for your loss, Jessie. Your narration of what will happen when you leave that house reminded me of this anime OST song "Solanin". I appreciated your description of christiany. I grew up in a Catholic culture going to Catholic school, and in times like those in the video, where Jesus is narrated cold and straight forward, it feels like waking up from a dream. I choked when you showed that the place of the Compton riot are now GEO group facility. It felt so violent. Although I understand the thesis when speaking about the Harvey Milk ship. It feels like revenge to have Harvey's name on it, because of all the foolery between the lavender scare and the don't ask/don't tell. It feels like a big F you to the system to put Harvey's name there, like a refusal to go down quiet. I agree we shouldn't take it as the battle is over and we have assimilated, and that assimilation is good. Because that's the propaganda I agree we have been fed since 2015. But I still feel a sick need to write our names in those institutions just to say "you can't erase us, we remember and we will make you remember with us". Even if the navy wouldn't narrated Harvey's life that way, we can and we should narrate it in it's own power. I was touched by the images of the quilts. I've only been to DC once, but walking around, that's the one thing I wanted to see. The places where those quilts had been, to remind myself that they had been there. Hello Keepo and Jetta and Smoke (I apologize for misspelling their names), new family members. I'm also struggling with depression because of the present. I said it to a friend who is in a less precarious situation than me, and he also shared his mental health has deep dived since January. Our productivity at work has gone to nothing. Like you, I also get out of bed thinking I need to keep it together for my cat roommate, since I'm the single breadwinner of our household. I am not a white person, and I don't share the feeling of wanting things to stay the same, and repeating loops. But I didn't have a sense in general of what to do with loss. The anecdote of your native colleague on how to tink of loss, helped me think of it in a different way along with you in this video. I'll be thinking more about this. I'm sorry for your loss Jessie. Im wishing for you: warmth, self compassion, and a day of work that makes you feel energized and proud and excited. Stay strong, thank you for making this video
Kai Lewen
2025-07-19 22:49:47 +0000 UTCThat’s why I’m an atheist. Because it made me stronger while my father is. Trump supporter who is very easily influenced
Jesse gartung
2025-07-19 21:40:50 +0000 UTCMemories love. They live on eternally in our memories and our thoughts. They left a paw print on your heart that will never fade. Never go away. My kids never met my father but they know him through my stories and my pictures. That’s how he lives on with us. And after 20 years he’s still here. He is the wind that holds my hand as I stick my arm out the car window. The white butterfly that flutters around me when I sit outside drinking my coffee. The laughter I hear in my son. The ones that pass away are always with us. We are on channel 2 and they moved on to channel 3 and sometimes our signals get crossed and we can still feel them. I can’t see the program on channel 3 for I’m on channel 2 but sometimes the stations blend and they come through. My heart goes out to to Jesse. Lots of love.
Viessa
2025-07-19 21:08:52 +0000 UTCNot 1 minute in and you've already got me crying. So sorry for the loss of your beautiful cat to the both of you. <3
Lam Zwerfpaard
2025-07-19 20:58:53 +0000 UTC#ZenHugs for anyone who wants them…
Rick Sjolin (BearGriz72)
2025-07-19 19:07:26 +0000 UTCWow! Beautifully felt. I am with you in so many ways. 💜 you all. I have been where you were. And the loss of my cat friend. You always seem to touch me so sweetly but powerfully. I feel some of your pain. We share that. It connects us. Thank you.
Melissa Thorpe
2025-07-19 19:00:37 +0000 UTCEven if the quality is a bit rough, the effort is still appreciated. Especially right now. You're a hero in my eyes, Jessie
Rogue Command
2025-07-19 16:58:08 +0000 UTCHi Jessie... I'm not certain whether you're implicitly asking for feedback on this video or not. There's no explicit ask, and you're expressing significant mixed feelings in ways that seem (to me) to possibly be asking for viewers' thoughts. In the spirit of providing feedback if you're asking for it, I'm including some thoughts below. If I'm misreading you here, then I'll offer my regrets for misreading you. Either way, keep what resonates for you, leave behind what doesn't. First: I agree with your self-assessment that this video feels fractured to me. I'm having a very hard time seeing the throughline of your argument/thesis in the video. For example, at 20 minutes into your video (out of ~120 minutes, so there's a lot of video left at this point) you've shared your personal grief (my genuine condolences to this), talked about gender, talked about colonialism, talked about imperialism, talked about archival narrative... but you haven't yet much mentioned fascism, which is (from the title) the focus of the video. While I would be willing to agree that various forms of mass oppression are overlapping, to me colonialism is not the same as imperialism, and neither are the same as fascism. I'm already significantly into your video and I'm not seeing when/where/how your thesis is emerging, and we're already jumping around between different contexts/subjects/foci such that I'm also struggling to see what argument you're laying out. Second: I'm struggling to connect different examples you've provided to a main point. For example, I'm not sure how to interpret your early story about Venus "only existing in the margins of other people's stories" and "as an asterisk." (I hope I got those quotes correct.) While I personally will have more documentation about my life at the time of my death, I think that's mostly because we like in a mass documentation society in a way that wasn't true hundreds of years ago. While more documents of me will exist upon my death, I think that I'm pretty much going to be an asterisk when I die, and I don't think that I'll be remembered any more than Venus. Maybe I'm wrong, and I would agree with the points you made around Venus about how power shapes documentation, which in turn shapes narrative. And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from the example of Venus toward that point. If I'm right that I'm also going to be an asterisk, does that mean I'm oppressed similarly to Venus? I don't think I am. But if the point is that oppression leads to being an asterisk, and I can be an asterisk without that same level of oppression, then that seems to make the connection between oppression and asterisk-ness more tenuous. Third: One of your recurring themes/words in your video is the language of "violence." Unless I missed it, I don't think you ever defined the term in your video and motivated that definition/usage. (And if I missed it, my sincere apology!) I feel as if your video assumes we (your viewers) have a shared understanding of violence in the way that you mean it, and I'm not sure that's a good assumption. And maybe I'm wrong and I'm an outlier here; I'm definitely open to that possibility. If "violence = harm," then stubbing my two becomes violence, and I don't think that's a good working definition of violence. So what makes violence "violence" and not any other general form of harm? Fourth: I feel as if this would be a very, very challenging video to come into without seeing a lot of your prior work. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it is still a thing. For example, I'm familiar with your past videos on gender, colonialism, and capitalism. (In fact, I first learned about you through your excellent analysis of JKR's transphobic essays and then stayed for the wealth of your other work. Thank you for doing such a thorough and accessible deconstruction of her essays and the embedded assumptions and factual falsehoods contained therein. I learned from you.) For example, at around the 30-minute mark of your video you have a quote of: "Their lives are seen as replaceable, commodified, and disposable." The idea of the commodification of lives was not (to me) well-explained in this video, and this quote (and the other language around this quote in this section of your video) seems to me to be very opaque if I hadn't already seen your past work. Fifth: One of your recurring points in the video is the assertion is that people/societies with power control the archive/narrative and decide who/what does and doesn't get included in the history or narrative. You extend that point to these editorial choices (for lack of a better term in this moment) having very real consequences for the conception and moralization of the self and others. I agree with both of these points. However, I'm not seeing an argument in your video to this being about fascism in particular. To the best of my knowledge and understanding, this is about how power works in society. It's not unique to fascism. Yes, fascism and other forms of societal/governmental oppression do this, and do this in harmful ways. Strong agree. But it's not unique to these societies/governments (to the best of my knowledge). So I'm wondering if you're actually making a point about power rather than fascism, colonization, etc.? Given some of the things you talk about in video, I wonder to what extent this is actually about "mainstream history" (quote). In which case, it doesn't matter to what extent a society is or isn't fascist, authoritarian, etc. There's (almost?) always going to be a mainstream history, and there's (almost?) always going to be consequences to that. Sixth: On a more personal to me level, I'm struggling with some of your language about "the queer community" and "queer people" in (to me) very broad, categorical ways. I'm a queer person myself, and I don't agree or align with everything you said. When you say things like "the queer community does X" or "queer people believe Y" and the like, I feel as if in some ways you're erasing the variation among queer people. I want to be very clear that you do NOT go so far as to say "there's only one right way to be queer." That said, I do feel as if some of your language starts going down that road. The more you made broad assertions about "queer people" (rather than "some queer people" or "many queer people" or even "most queer people"), the more I felt as if you were starting to do some of the... precursor work of coming up with a singular queer narrative. By the end of your video, I somewhat felt a bit... alienated and excluded, in some ways as if my queer identity was called into question because I didn't believe, do, etc. a significant number of the things you said "queer people do/believe." Again, to be very clear, I do NOT think this is your intention. I also think it's very clear from your prior works that you think there are multiple ways to be queer and that there's no right/wrong way to be queer. Those both said, in and of this video itself, I feel as if this video is making a some strong normative claims about queer people in a way that (to me) lands as being antithetical to your point about assimilation into a single narrative being violent. I mean this feedback in good faith based on my reading of there being an implicit request for feedback. If I misread you, then I apologize. And requested or not, keep the parts of what I wrote that resonate with you and feel free to leave behind the points that don't. --Much care...--
Jared Boyce
2025-07-19 16:11:19 +0000 UTCAnd the scary thing is...what happened to Venus often happens even to the powerful and magnificent figures who shaped all of history. Socrates is one of the most famous and influential philosophers who ever lived, and yet we know nothing about him except what Plato wrote down about him.
John Vinals
2025-07-19 15:41:43 +0000 UTCFor the past two years, I've been sending books, DVDs, CDs, and artwork to LGBTQ archives in other countries, hoping to save a fraction of what I expect will be destroyed here. There's no guarantee it will be safe somewhere else, but this is a small thing I can do, so I do it.
Johnny Townsend
2025-07-19 14:12:05 +0000 UTC
