It's Later Than We Think

I wrote this thread on Twitter in 2022, I’m sharing it again because it’s relevant. When I wrote this, I had hoped it would help people to imagine how things would play out if we continued to allow the politics of creating hate-objects to continue. Here we are. It’s Later Than You Think is a book about “militant democracy” written by Max Lerner in 1938. I recommend it.

The liberal democratic consensus that had briefly restrained the powerful from the worst abuses of the powerless ended in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The planet overheated, causing widespread draughts, fires, floods, and hurricanes. Crops dwindled and the wars came.

Massive migration sent people all over the globe in search of safety, but none could be found. Those with extreme wealth saw what was to come and wagered that they could use their immense power to plunder the earth and set the people against one another in a war of all against all.

Words became weapons, positioning people as hate-objects for others. Political leaders refused to solve problems, but instead blamed the weakest among them for their collective fate. Conspiracy and distrust and hatred grew until no one felt safe and no one knew who to trust.

The frightened people stockpiled weapons of war, believing they would need to defend themselves from their fellow citizens and their government. Those who sowed hatred and fear grew powerful, urging others like them to use their weapons of war and their war words to attack the weak.

When the war of all against all first began many people didn't see it. They didn't understand that a violent protest against the government, a mass murder were part of a sustained campaign to cause war. They didn't understand what was happening until it was too late to stop it.

And the war came. Those with extreme wealth and power retreated to their guarded compounds in safety and watched as the world burned and the people fought the war of all against all, pleased with what they had done. The war would not touch them and the earth would be theirs.

Some of the powerful called their plan "accelerationism" others called it "conservatism." Those who tried to tell the world what was happening called it by different names--Christo-fascism, nationalism, rightwing extremism. The name didn't matter, the object was always the same.

And when the people realized that the powerful had set the war of all against all in motion, had created the exact conditions by which the war was inevitable, they felt ashamed that they had let themselves be used. But by then the world was ruined and the war could not be stopped.

It's later than we think.