Thread by @monaeltahawy

I say this almost every day: I moved to the U.S. in 2000. Over the past 2 decades, I've learned that many white Americans have a delusional amount of confidence in their government and its institutions.
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They are childishly naive in believing that institutions will save them/work for, not ever hurt them.

That stubborn belief in U.S. exceptionalism undergirds the refusal to see the fascism that Trump brought.

Black, Indigenous, and people of colour have no such delusions. They do not expect institutions to protect them because they are so often hurt by those institutions.

No matter how often those of us from authoritarian countries who know to be suspicious of state power, and those of us who've fought fascism--via military rule/rule of religious fundamentalists--warned & warned, white Americans arrogantly shook head that it couldn’t happen here.

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And no matter how often we warned you that the fate of nations is not a straight line bending towards a “manifest destiny,” you only saw Iran and women in chadors or Afghanistan and women in burqas and refused to believe that their fate awaited you. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…

But that fate never comes overnight.

Just as Trump is not an aberration, but rather a fruition of decades of white supremacist, misogynist, bigoted rot.

so too is the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court, which conservatives have worked for since the early 1970s. feministgiant.com/p/if-amy-coney…

Liberal, affluent, white cisgender women thought as long as Roe v. Wade survived, they could ignore whatever the Christians were saying all along - since the 1970s. In the U.S., white and Christian is considered the default, a norm, not scary, not brown or Muslim or pathologized.

They remained wilfully ignorant to the fact that Roe v. Wade died for many Black and women of colour and poor women in the South, where one after another clinics that provide abortions were being shuttered.

And there were plenty of white, Christian women who are what I call Foot Soldiers of the Patriarchy who helped destroy Roe v Wade–a tag team of white, Christian terrorists, legislators, attorneys general, governors, and judges. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-wh…

So successful has white supremacist patriarchy been at convincing white women that they’re lucky to live in the U.S., not Saudi Arabia/Iran, that so many white women didn't pay enough attention to theocracy that white supremacy was building at home. feministgiant.com/p/if-amy-coney…

It was being built by white men who were their fathers, uncles, brothers & husbands who voted for zealots stripping them of bodily autonomy. And white women who were their mothers, aunts & sisters who were all too willing to foot soldier for the patriarchy feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…

I say this just about every day and will continue to say it.

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And it will get worse, until white Americans recognize the white supremacist theocracy that is flexing its muscles.

White and Christian are considered default – the harmless norm – in the U.S. It is easy to see theocrats when they don't look like you feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…

And unless the United States develops the stomach for a long-overdue reckoning with the white supremacist Christian theocracy that has been unabashed in its destruction of Roe v Wade, abortion rights will not be the only rights it destroyed. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-wh…

Fascism doesn't happen overnight. Theocracy is not built in a day.

Recognize that those who yelled “Creeping Sharia” loudest are the same ones who did not just creep upon the nation with Christian zealotry but announced it at every turn. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…

Remember the “Creeping Sharia'' crowd–white supremacist, Christian zealots, who passed bills and laws in the early 2000s to ban a non-existent threat from an “Islamic law” that no one in the U.S. said they wanted.

And look at whose zealotry you should have feared and worried about all along:

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” Laurent Boebert theguardian.com/us-news/2022/j…

The week after #Jan6 insurrection, I wrote about the dangers of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene--who both won their primaries feministgiant.com/p/a-white-supr…

I was shocked to discover just how pervasive religion in politics is in the US when I moved here in 2000. I was familiar with the fact that the US is the most devout of the industrialized nations. But it is stupefying to see every candidate for political office espouse a faith.

That religion should play no role in politics is a truism that U.S. media and Americans in general apply only to someone else’s country (particularly countries which are not majority Christian, like my country of birth) feministgiant.com/p/if-amy-coney…

It is easy to see theocracy when the theocrats don’t look like you.

But it’s imperative to understand that the theocrats who look like you and those who don’t both follow the same rule book: control desire and control our bodies. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-wh…