Essay: Fuck Fascism
On Radical Rudeness
Rep. Al Green disrupting Trump’s address to Congress. Win McNamee/ Andrew Harnik/ Getty Images
First published on March 07, 2025
Also read: Why Trump Won
And: Dear White Democrats
Fascism is not polite. Fascism is not civil. Fascism cares little for decorum.
When Rep. Al Green disrupted Donald Trump’s address to Congress, he issued a challenge that many lawmakers in that chamber failed. This is not business as usual, Green’s protest declared, as Trump spewed one lie after another. Instead of following Green’s lead, the majority of that chamber’s legislators–who collectively represent one of the three branches of power in the United States–acquiesced instead to applause, if they were Republican, and decorum, if they were Democrats. The Republicans in the chamber fell into a loud chant of “USA! USA! USA!” to suggest that Green’s protest was less American, less patriotic than their parroting chant.
Whether we are urged to be civil to racists, polite to patriarchy, or obedient to decorum when opposing a fascist, the goal is the same: to maintain the power of the racist, to maintain the power of patriarchy, to maintain the power of fascism.
Not only was Rep. Green kicked out of Congress for his protest of Trump, but he was censured the next day for “a breach of proper conduct.” It is telling that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that describes lies as a “breach of proper conduct,” nor does it lay out a way to punish a fascist for targeting Black and people of colour, transgender people, and women as he dismantles a country for the benefit of oligarchs.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of those who voted to punish Green were Republicans, Shamefully, ten Democrats signed on to humiliate Green, only the 26th representative to be censured in U.S. history.
Whether we are urged to be civil to racists, polite to patriarchy, or obedient to decorum when opposing a fascist, the goal is the same: to maintain the power of the racist, to maintain the power of patriarchy, to maintain the power of fascism.
Demanding we stay within the confines of decorum even as a fascist fuck occupies the White House is the height of white privilege—the privilege of those least hurt by that fascist fuck. The obsession with civility and decorum in the United States is bipartisan and white.
Rep. Green is a Black man. And the few Democrats who, subsequent to his protest walked out of Trump’s speech, were mostly Black and people of colour. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman who like Green represents Texas, was among those who walked out. Unlike the white women Democrats who wore pink ostensibly in protest during Trump’s speech but to decided to stay put, Crockett and those who walked out wore black t-shirts with messages such as “Good Trouble,” “Resist,” and in Crockett’s case, a t-shirt honouring Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress, along with Chisholm’s famous catchline, "unbought and unbossed."
"He's up there, he's spewing all kinds of nonsense and bullshit, let me just be real, and we weren't just going to sit for that shit," Crockett told her followers in an Instagram reel.
Rep. Crockett has been profoundly and powerfully profane when addressing the danger of Trump and his oligarch BFF, Elon Musk.
Over the past few weeks, she has told Musk to “Fuck off,” and refused the forced deference of civility when dealing with the incivility of fascism in the U.S.
Dictators, authoritarians, patriarchs demand obedience, despise disruption, and are especially angered by disrespect. In fact, they consider any form of accountability itself a form of disrespect. How dare we question them? How dare we expect justice? How dare we dare to be anything but quivering and fearful? How dare we tell them to fuck off, for any reason at all.
We are not obligated to show respect to those in power.
Fascism isn’t an “idea” to be debated. We--whose lives are directly threatened by that fascist fuck in the White House—are expected to behave and play along. Profanity is an essential tool in disrupting racism, patriarchy, and fascism, and the “rules” and “codes of conduct” that those systems of oppressions delineate. Profanity, which includes defiance, disobedience, and disruption, is the verbal equivalent of civil disobedience.
Fuck decorum at a time of fascism.
Dictators, authoritarians, patriarchs demand obedience, despise disruption, and are especially angered by disrespect.
When Donald Trump was first elected, many truths that white Americans were oblivious to - willingly or naively - were forced onto their consciousness. It was impossible to deny that racism and white supremacy were a driving force behind his election and yet analysts and pundits insisted it was the “suffering working class” and “economic anxiety,” as if Black and people of colour who were working class were immune from suffering or economic anxiety.
Those of us who called out his fascism when he was first elected in 2016 were mocked or scolded as over-exaggerating a threat that was clear for all who wanted to see it, if they accepted removing (white) blinkers.
Many white people in the U.S. exclaimed “This is not the America I know” precisely because they had refused to or had never had to come face to face with that racism and white supremacy. Those of us who are not white and who have experienced that racism and white supremacy all too well have long known that America.
Gaslighting - a form of psychological abuse that aims to make someone doubt their own thoughts, beliefs and perceptions - and denial went on full throttle as talking heads, politicians, media, etc went out of their way to blame everything but racism for the success of Trump at the polls. Moreover, we - those of us who insisted on calling racism and white supremacy what it was rather than a series of euphemisms - were urged not to call a racist a racist and we were instructed to be civil when arguing with Trump supporters. Even Trump’s lies were described with euphemisms by mainstream U.S. media. For the sake of a host of concerns - unity, free speech, healing, etc - civility was held up as paramount.
But paramount to whom? Who does “civility" serve?
And now Trump has been reelected–again thanks to racists and white supremacists–and his fascism is unmasked and unfettered while those still wearing their (white) blinkers are stubbornly wedded to decorum and civility.
Cowards. Capitulators. Quislings.
And now Trump has been reelected–again thanks to racists and white supremacists–and his fascism is unmasked and unfettered while those still wearing their (white) blinkers are stubbornly wedded to decorum and civility.
Clearly, those who insist on decorum and civility in the face of its very opposite, are those least affected by the incivility that Trump represents. They have power and they have privilege, both of which cushions them from that incivility. It is imperative to recognize that we are not playing on a level playing field. I refuse to be civil or to play by decorum with someone who refuses to fully acknowledge my humanity.
Who determines what is “civil” and what is “rude”? Who benefits from upholding those social codes that insist on decorum? In a time of fascism, politeness is capitulation.
In my book The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, I devote a chapter to Profanity. A large chunk of that chapter is devoted to Dr. Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan scholar, poet, and human rights activist whose glorious insistence on profanity in the face of authoritarianism offers a masterclass for those of us willing to defy, disobey, and disrupt.
Nyanzi is currently in Munich as part of a writer-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany. Before she left Uganda, that country’s dictator had imprisoned her twice for essentially telling him to fuck off. During her sentencing, she famously yelled “Fuck you fuck you fuck you” and bared and jiggled her breasts.
Pause for a minute and reflect: how does one woman and her Facebook posts and poetry threaten a man who has ruled for over three decades? Nyanzi is a writer whose language is deliberate. She understands the agility of words and their ability to disturb the powerful and their networks of wealth and privilege.
And she comes from a tradition of “radical rudeness” that serves a historical reminder of who determines what is “civil” and what is “rude” and who benefits from upholding those social codes that insist on decorum.
White Christian Victorian values imposed on colonized people with the spread of the British and other empires a narrow set of values, of what is and is not “decent” and “respectable.” It was against that set of values that “radical rudeness” was used by activists in colonial Uganda.
In an article in the Journal of Social History, published by Oxford University Press, historian Carol Summers explains that activists in 1940s colonial Uganda, especially in the kingdom of Buganda, defied, disobeyed and disrupted power - both of the British colonizers and their local allies - via “a rude, publicly celebrated strategy of insults, scandal mongering, disruption, and disorderliness that broke conventions of colonial friendship, partnership, and mutual benefit.”
In the 1940s, it was British colonizers - the white supremacists, fascist, patriarchs of their day - and the networks of power they facilitated.
To place Nyanzi’s deliberate profanity within the historical Ugandan context - and to understand the disruptive power of rudeness then and now - it is instructive that what made the rudeness of the “disorderly, intemperate and obnoxious” Buganda rebels “more than just adolescent immaturity … was that it was rooted in an understanding of the significance of social rituals, constituted a strategy to disrupt them, and was tied to an effort to build new sorts of public sociability to replace the older elite private networks.”
Stella Nyanzi leaving court in February after her release. She donned a tiara and a sash that read “FUCK OPPRESSION” and began to address crowdsPhotograph: Sumy Sadurni/AFP via Getty Images.
In other words, it is imperative to understand how civility, decorum, manners, etc are used to uphold authority - patriarchy, racism, fascism, other forms of privilege - and that we are urged to acquiesce as a form of maintaining that authority.
“People have said to me: perhaps radical rudeness will not oust Museveni. And I say: perhaps the intention is not to use rude poetry and big breasts in public to oust Museveni; perhaps the idea is to invite others to be able to poke holes in this huge over-glorification of a mighty, untouchable demigod and, if many of us are poking small holes, perhaps the mighty trunk of the tree will fall. I don’t know,” Nyanzi told The Guardian. “Many do not approve. But I’m not looking for approval.”
Whether we are urged to be civil to racists or polite to patriarchy or to obey decorum, the goal is the same: to maintain the power of the racist, to maintain the power of patriarchy, to maintain the power of the fascist.
Fuck that shit.
Defy, disobey, and disrupt like Rep. Green. In a time of fascism, choose radical rudeness.
Thank you for reading my essay. You can support my work by:
Hitting the heart button so that others can be intrigued and read
Upgrading to a paid subscription to support FEMINIST GIANT
Opting for a one-time payment via buying me a coffee
Sharing this post by email or on social media
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
I appreciate your support. If you like this piece and you want to further support my writing, you can like/comment below, forward this article to others, or send a gift subscription to someone else today.