We won't let them win

In short: Fear is contagious, but so is courage. Bad times demand good stories.

THE FARCE is a progressive newsletter and multimedia channel that fights fascism in new, fun, and/or contagious ways. Think of it as anti-Fox but without billions or billionaires behind us. Wheee!

We do this by creating and sharing stories that fuel both anger and hope. We also step back to examine and champion the most effective insights, strategies, and insults in the fight against American authoritarianism.

Join us—free or paid, your support matters.

Thanks to everyone backing us

First, a sincere thank you to everyone who stepped in and up early to support this newsletter as it evolved to its current FARCE-ness.

You may have subscribed as far back as a year ago and been shocked to see THE FARCE on a credit card bill. Sorry about that!

Thanks for hanging in there and helping to launch what we hope will be a vital part of democracy’s comeback. If you’ve backed us for a year, we’ll contact you soon about getting you pins or shirts.

Why invest in THE FARCE

Like you, we know one thing for sure: What we do in the next few years will shape the confines of the rest of our lives.

Will freedom ring? Will my daughter have control over her own body and life? Can we protect the people this regime exists to hurt? Is that even possible without putting a target on our backs and the backs of everyone we love?

Like you, we put the proper amount of worry into this all happening, trying our best to stop my country from taking all the obvious steps on the path to unfreedom and remorseless atrocities. But you know how that went.

The fight gets bigger

After the election, moving on was impossible. The need to fight metastasized.

I, Jason, also known as LOLGOP, began producing Andrea Pitzer’s NEXT COMES WHAT, utilizing the lessons of the recent past to inform our present crisis. While working on that, I saw this:

That’s Erica Chenoweth. She’s one of the co-authors of the research on the “3.5% rule,” which found that “no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event.”*

In that clip, she pointed to research on what it takes to build a mass mobilization of that size, something like 11 million Americans: anger and hope.

“Not just anger and not just hope,” she said. “But anger and hope are what make people ready to engage in collective action.”

How will THE FARCE give you anger and hope?

Karl Marx wrote: '...all great world-historic facts and personages appear... twice... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.'"

The comedy of our present crisis is almost unbearable. It’s a farce, without the sex.**

The absurd adulation of the worst humans as they act out their floundering hatred of themselves and their parents on the most vulnerable people they can find, while doused almost entirely in shittiest kitsch possible, is a lot to take—even if it doesn’t directly threaten your wellbeing or life.

But I know that the surest sign that hope still exists alongside anger is the ability to mock and laugh at absurdity.

“Jokes serve a transparent purpose: they reclaim the power to define—and inhabit—reality,” Masha Gessen, the Russian dissident, wrote during Trump’s first term.

At THE FARCE, we use jokes, shitposting, and absurdity to remind us that as long as we can see some humor in all the terror, we can still fight. If we can still fight, we can still win.

We may look goofy and too self-aware as we do it. But who gives a shit? We're way past cringe now. Cringe died when Trump "won" the popular vote. Instead, we rage against the dying of the light. And we do it loud—often obnoxious—ways.

Because, as Pedro Pascal, my Luigi, says, “Fear is how they win.”

How this grows

Subscribe, share, follow.

To subscribe, click that subscribe button. If you’re already a subscriber, this would be a great time to step up your support, if possible, and sign up for a year to receive a pin or T-shirt to show everyone and/or your mirror how much you oppose fascism.

To share, pass this on to anyone you know who likes freedom and/or laughing at fascists.

Follow:

We’re on Bluesky.

We’re on LinkedIn, where we're trying to reach the normies and spread a little fearlessness in the least courageous platform on earth.

We’re working on our YouTube channel to launch a streaming show/podcast. If you could follow the @lolgoptv channel, you'd be doing us a solid.

And, again, thanks. Doing this together is the only option. And it's how we remind ourselves that we can and will do better things with our lives once we win.

Programming note: We only send out two posts a week (so you don't unsubscribe). However, we will post something to the site almost every day. You can always check in to THEFARCE.org to see what's up.

In short: Fear is contagious, but so is courage. Bad times demand good stories.

THE FARCE is a progressive newsletter and multimedia channel that fights fascism in new, fun, and/or contagious ways. Think of it as anti-Fox but without billions or billionaires behind us. Wheee!

We do this by creating and sharing stories that fuel both anger and hope. We also step back to examine and champion the most effective insights, strategies, and insults in the fight against American authoritarianism.

Join us—free or paid, your support matters.

Thanks to everyone backing us

First, a sincere thank you to everyone who stepped in and up early to support this newsletter as it evolved to its current FARCE-ness.

You may have subscribed as far back as a year ago and been shocked to see THE FARCE on a credit card bill. Sorry about that!

Thanks for hanging in there and helping to launch what we hope will be a vital part of democracy’s comeback. If you’ve backed us for a year, we’ll contact you soon about getting you pins or shirts.

Why invest in THE FARCE

Like you, we know one thing for sure: What we do in the next few years will shape the confines of the rest of our lives.

Will freedom ring? Will my daughter have control over her own body and life? Can we protect the people this regime exists to hurt? Is that even possible without putting a target on our backs and the backs of everyone we love?

Like you, we put the proper amount of worry into this all happening, trying our best to stop my country from taking all the obvious steps on the path to unfreedom and remorseless atrocities. But you know how that went.

The fight gets bigger

After the election, moving on was impossible. The need to fight metastasized.

I, Jason, also known as LOLGOP, began producing Andrea Pitzer’s NEXT COMES WHAT, utilizing the lessons of the recent past to inform our present crisis. While working on that, I saw this:

That’s Erica Chenoweth. She’s one of the co-authors of the research on the “3.5% rule,” which found that “no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event.”1

In that clip, she pointed to research on what it takes to build a mass mobilization of that size, something like 11 million Americans: anger and hope.

“Not just anger and not just hope,” she said. “But anger and hope are what make people ready to engage in collective action.”

How will THE FARCE give you anger and hope?

Karl Marx wrote: “...all great world-historic facts and personages appear... twice... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

The comedy of our present crisis is almost unbearable. It’s a farce, without the sex.2

The absurd adulation of the worst humans as they act out their floundering hatred of themselves and their parents on the most vulnerable people they can find, while doused almost entirely in shittiest kitsch possible, is a lot to take—even if it doesn’t directly threaten your wellbeing or life.

But I know that the surest sign that hope still exists alongside anger is the ability to mock and laugh at absurdity.

“Jokes serve a transparent purpose: they reclaim the power to define—and inhabit—reality,” Masha Gessen, the Russian dissident, wrote during Trump’s first term.

At THE FARCE, we use jokes, shitposting, and absurdity to remind us that as long as we can see some humor in all the terror, we can still fight. If we can still fight, we can still win.

We may look goofy and too self-aware as we do it. But who gives a shit? We're way past cringe now. Cringe died when Trump "won" the popular vote. Instead, we rage against the dying of the light. And we do it loud—often obnoxious—ways.

Because, as Pedro Pascal, my Luigi, says, “Fear is how they win.”

How this grows

Subscribe, share, follow.

To subscribe, click that subscribe button. If you’re already a subscriber, this would be a great time to step up your support, if possible, and sign up for a year to receive a pin or T-shirt to show everyone and/or your mirror how much you oppose fascism.

To share, pass this on to anyone you know who likes freedom and/or laughing at fascists.

Follow:

We’re on Bluesky.

We’re on LinkedIn, where we're trying to reach the normies and spread a little fearlessness in the least courageous platform on earth.

We’re working on our YouTube channel to launch a streaming show/podcast. If you could follow the @lolgoptv channel, you'd be doing us a solid.

And, again, thanks. Doing this together is the only option. And it's how we remind ourselves that we can and will do better things with our lives once we win.

Programming note: We only send out two posts a week (so you don't unsubscribe). However, we will post something to the site almost every day. You can always check in to THEFARCE.org to see what's up.

* There are exceptions. Georgia, the country, not the state or the movies or songs, today seems to be one.

** “Farce is a type of comedy that places exaggerated characters in improbable situations where they face a number of outrageous obstacles,” the Theater & Dance section of Appalachian State University’s website tells us.