Death Cult Diary: on making martyrs

It's a sunny Saturday September afternoon in the apocalypse, and I'm sitting in the shade in a community garden next to the train tracks in the city I love, smelling the slightly-rank wind off the river, surrounded by strangers who mostly seem lovely. We're here to celebrate the love between two wonderful weirdos, and everyone brought bread they baked, wine they got for free, grilled haloumi wrapped in basil, lamb sliders everyone says are excellently seasoned.

I'm here but I'm not here. It's now but it's not now. A space created by communities fighting to create and preserve something beautiful in a city that only eve wants to prioritize what's profitable. A moment of celebration and safety for oddballs in a moment when the guns are being loaded against us.

There's a candle burning on the table, a sweet little flame bringing light and warding off the mosquitoes, but the slightest strong wind would snuff it out.

It's been a great week for the dominant Death Cult here in 2025. They're having their Horst Wessel Moment, or at least they're trying very hard to. An enthusiastic but ultimately insignificant ideologue was murdered, and in spite of the hate he spread and the violence he advocated, it's sparked an orgy of performative grief. People are posting expressions of grief on social media who never shared a thought for a single one of the thousands of victims of the 500+ mass shootings that have happened in America since 1966 (or the 390,000 children who have experienced gun violence in school since Columbine in 1999).

Even before the shooter was identified, the Death Cult's most extreme adherents were demanding a bloody purge of the left, with the Death Cult demagogues also claiming that their political foes were responsible. This is a standard part of the playbook of Death Cult - they create the conditions for violence, then blame the violence on their enemies.

The mainstream media, including supposedly-left-wing pundits, has been uncritically echoing this far-right lionization of a person who - to name just one of his many violent acts - created a "Watch List" of Black professors that resulted in so many death and sexual-assault threats that colleges had to hire extra security for targeted professors. People are being fired for sharing dissenting views on social media.

So. I'm here. At this wedding in this garden in this city. And I'm existing in the bliss and warmth of this moment.

I'm also not.

I'm also strapped into a ship heading straight for its own destruction, being steered by a Death Cult that doesn't care what gets destroyed or who gets hurt as long as it can keep steering - because they've relied on hate and violence for so long that they're convinced that any shift in power away from them will result in that same hate and violence being turned on them.

They've been so blinded by their own toxicity that they can't see how we are different, how we choose to live in a lord where something OTHER than conformity and submission to hierarchy and tradition determine every aspect of our lives.

I think that because those of us opposed to the Death Cult have lost control of the conversation so completely, it's easy to assume that they're doing something right. And that we're doing something wrong.

But I don't think that's right. It's true that the American Death Cult has done a great job of studying history, and replicating the plot beats of the rise of fascism in Germany, for example. But we've learned from history too. Knowing that others have fought back and won and lost and survived worse is what's sustained us through the darkest days.

The difference between us and them is that they have massive amounts of money on their side, and they control the media outlets and the tech platforms that shape the narrative, and they've spent decades - centuries - figuring out how to stifle and suppressed and distort our voices and our stories.

Our stories are better. We just need to keep telling them.

We just need to keep coming together. Even as they sharpen the knives - even as they stack the bombs.

When the fires burn out and the smoke clears, we'll still be here. We'll still be holding hands. Singing songs. Telling stories. Dancing in the garden.