Image by Gayatri Malhotra.
“The fundamental lesson of Hegel is that the key ontological problem is not that of reality but that of appearance: not “Are we condemned to the interminable play of appearances, or can we penetrate through their veil to the underlying true reality?”, but: “How could — in the middle of the flat, stupid, reality which just IS THERE — something like APPEARANCE emerge?”The mask itself, not the truth underneath it, or the lie on top of it, is the source of freedom today.”
—Slavoj Zizek
Anti-mask laws in the United States, now being put on the books by the far-right, have a fascinating history. At times they were put into place in order to stop the far-right itself, as the KKK wore masks to conceal their identity. But the paradox today is that being an open racist isn’t a crime, it gets you a promotion. To the contrary, if an institution attempts to be equal, they face litigation and defunding.
So the KKK would no longer need a mask. In fact we could easily imagine a scenario in which the state rounds up a group of masked civilians and when the masks are taken off to reveal white supremacists the state issues an apology and the officers get fired and the fascists applaud because the deep state was taken down. Take the claim by J.D. Vance that if Europe was more militarized it could have stopped the Iraq War. Isn’t this the very logic that led us into Iraq in the first place? That militarization could in fact, stop the bad guys. Here we say that we are the bad guys, and therefore, you too, need to militarize in order to stop us.
So the need for the mask, at least for the far right, is long gone. The mask still is necessary for those, in one way, or another, do not wish to be the far right. The fascist puts on the fascist mask, not to conceal their fascist actions outright, which are politically correct to the core, but rather to channel resistance to the mask itself, rather than to the fascist core. The establishment takes up this resistance to the fascist mask, performing resistance to this lack of pretense, while benefiting from the fascist core underneath. The real resistance must wear a mask by necessity, inverting the establishment. The real resistance must appear to be simply ordinary, while doing the real work away from the ever-expanding eye of the surveillance state.
The real resistance, if they are lucky, lives an anonymous life. The establishment resistance puts out an alternative narrative that still targets the real resistance as the true enemy. Take Ezra Klein, who in an interview with Sam Seder, seemed to claim that Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson, the very people who gave the most to this country, were somehow to blame for modern problems. Klein’s dangerous rhetoric, which was rightly challenged by the tireless Sam Seder, appeared to aim at combating the lack of mass transit and abundance of homelessness by taking down environmental regulations.
Here Klein’s fascism takes down multiple victims at once, packaged in an oppositional narrative. On the one hand he eliminates the homeless from public sight, on the other he paves the way for further capitalist development. In this way there is nothing balanced about Klein, he punches down at two targets he claims are opposed to one another. In this way he can blame environmentalists for the homeless, and the homeless for the environmentalists. The leftist must thank Klein for his intersectional bullying, and proudly link the freedom of homeless and the environmentalists together.
Another alternative narrative is that of MAHA, which masks a pro-corporate eugenics agenda with a posture against the deep state. Notice the stance of anti-vaxxers is not a demand of the state to invest in further research to make medicine more accessible, effective, affordable or safe. Rather their intervention is to deny the danger of the very sickness caused by corporate excess itself. Naturally the triumph of this movement was to defund public health and criminalize descent, openly advocating for a racial and gender sorting, justified by bunk science given credibility through the demonization of actually existing science.
Take the conspiracy that the vaccine, not the virus, was a plant by the deep state. Imagine the lengths one has to go to make sense of this conspiracy. While we should reject any conspiracy the right could have easily taken up the stance that the corporations created a virus, if not to make us all sick and cement power, then to get us to take this supposedly evil vaccine. But even this conspiracy is not possible in the anti-science MAHA.
The actually existing illness of the poor must be celebrated as something natural. All rights to health must be sorted into hierarchies dictated by the markets. Sort the poor and non-white into defunded public schools, polluted areas, and form a coalition between the private market, creating value through this exploitation of the environment and the poor, and the right kind of American, dutifully promoting bunk science as a way to make race scientific again while also justifying austerity, deregulation and authoritarianism as a way to save the real Americans from a collapse that brings joy to them.
Abundance and MAHA are both interventions to maximize the new gold rush of an economy that has no new markets. Go all in on technologies like crypto and AI that provide no use value to the poor, but also use up all the natural resources. Tax real useful activity through tariffs, and claim that Americans should want to be on the productive side of the economy, which is always dangerous for health, rather than the consumption side, which according to the all-consuming capitalist and dictators who pretend to be Marxist, only alienates.
Here we must reject China’s productive economy, which was a key in environmental deregulation, while also rejecting America’s bullying, which has disciplined all markets while giving only politically correct consumerism as a form of enjoyment rather than a true social enjoyment of various perversions that are too often criminalized even if they are also commodified up to that point of criminalization; existing alongside legal production, with the difference between them being useful for these very authorities.
Abundance and MAHA are both masks which cover up the true goal of further exploitation, But what about the opposite case? One in which real resistance is masked by the leftist? The case of Hassan Piker is informative here. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/17/hasan-piker-us-customs-story-backlash
For those claiming the left needs a Joe Rogan of our own, we have one in Mr. Piker. But the problem with those drooling over Rogan’s far-right politics masked in neutrality is that the left’s Joe Rogan gets picked up by the deep state. Here the arguments about some mass populist movement falls apart. Being a leftist is so openly accepted as a criminal act, if not directly leading to incarceration, then certainly leading to financial ruin.
Those critical of Piker for challenging the authorities upon being detained, rather than simply “knowing his rights” and demanding a lawyer miss a few key points. The first being that knowing your rights under this administration may not save you. The second is that Piker did know exactly how unique his rights as the Rogan of the Left were and that by challenging the authorities directly he could create a larger opening for his audience.
The critique that we must wear a mask at all times is of course a wise one but knowing when one can take the mask off is even more important. For without these moments of authentic resistance, however careful we must be about choosing them, then we simply are forever wearing the mask and never making any progress. One can imagine a room filled with gas and every time we move our gas mask cleverly opens up, weakening us. But the only way out is a door on the other side of the room. Stay put and one’s death is that of a frog in boiling water, move without thinking and one’s death is immediate. Therefore a careful strategy of moving at the right time, with the proper breaks, is the only hope.
The threat posed by Piker is one of effortless authentic masculinity as opposed to the lack of, or the mask of, masculinity in the manosphere. Here we are not shaming the lack of masculinity itself, but rather the belief that this lack of masculinity is a justification for brutality against the marginalized. The right surely sees Piker as the figure who could easily steal their wives, but this underestimates his true appeal. Rather Piker spoke to Elon Musk’s daughter on his stream with such respect and basic human decency that the real threat of Piker’s masculinity to the far right is not simply that all their wives will secretly be streaming Piker under the covers, but rather that he will treat their daughters as equals, radicalizing the youth within the fascist family structure.
Here the strategy of reaching the daughters of the right, rather the wives, is a brilliant one. Take the example of The Sopranos. Meadow, the daughter of mob boss Tony, flirts with radical critiques, not only of her father, but even more dangerously about the very system of world-wide capitalist gangsterism. Tony, like our current fascists, uses the everyday corruption and brutality of capitalism as a justification for his own corruption and brutality that through its honesty, goes further than the corruption and brutality behind the mask. Meadow on the other hand at times reverses the formula, giving her father the pass he claims to want, but of course is one he is afraid to actually claim.
For the real sin of Soprano, like our current gangsters, is not some individual lack of character, as he talks about in his therapist chair, but rather that he is just another enforcement agent of the system itself, and the reason the state targets Soprano, or the reason the state appeared to be against the current fascist administration, is not an opposition to the brutality, but rather simply about market share. The threat posed by the fascist to the establishment is that the market will be organized around this fascist figure, and that he will take a cut of every transaction of exploitation.
However the trade-off appears to be a profitable one for many involved. By further deregulating, expanding the surveillance state, defunding the government, and stripping away constitutional rights, the fascist is useful, even as the need to go through his petty demands for himself continues to plague business as usual. For this reason the game will be played, but with tension. The oligarchs enjoy their winning generally, but are confused as arbitrary blows hit them. These mistakes are quickly corrected however and the chaos itself becomes useful to terrorizing the poor, who are not in a position to absorb massive losses that the rich are.
Here the blindness of the fascists can be to our benefit. They fear losing possession of the wife, who can be a metaphor for the establishment resistance. This false opposition makes a lot of noise about resisting but they are also so invested in the system. This figure is at once completely trapped, and also a beneficiary with agency within a strict set of rules. The establishment is there to put on the mask of resistance while paving the way for the fascist.
Here the real resistance must wear another mask, even if a real mask is itself illegal. The fascist masks fascism through the fascist mask. The establishment resistance masks complicity through their mask of opposition. The real resistance, the unions, environmentalists, feminists, anti-racists, etc., must wear a mask of their own. While unpacking ideology is useful to understand the establishment, revealing the ideology of the masked resistance will lead to their oppression. Therefore the freedom is keeping the mask on, underground, offline, local, building a silent collectivism, which if it got the credit it deserves, would only lead to punishment in the public square.
