This is not a guide to resisting fascism

[CW: suicidal ideation, discussion of genocide, transphobia, and autistic sensory overwhelm]

We’re overwhelmed, overstimulated and in paralysis. We're absorbing more information via social media than we’re evolved to process in real time – switching between 2-minute hacks, celebrity faux pas and live-streamed genocides. We need each other now, perhaps more than ever.

– Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin, Roses for Hedone

Some days I don’t understand why the world doesn’t stop.

It’s July 2025 and some days I can’t comprehend how the world keeps moving when the daily horrors we’re surrounded by are so heavy, so inescapable. I want to scream; I am scared, overwhelmed, furious, and exhausted. If I stop for a second and take a breath to centre myself, I hear a ringing in my ears. 

I don’t understand how people can act like everything happening right now is normal. I don’t understand how to deal with the pain that feels bigger than my body, the grief I don’t know how to hold or process. How am I supposed to pretend that everything is ok when it so blatantly isn’t? 

I wish the world would stop, catch its breath. Acknowledge the horror we are surrounded by, because some days I feel like I’m going mad when someone asks me how I am and I have to respond in words rather than just screaming. 

I feel so overwhelmed it’s like I’m drowning. I can drive myself into a panic attack trying to stay up to date with all of the terrible things that are happening, but who does that help? Yet staying off social media makes me feel like I’m ignoring the atrocities I’m privileged enough not to be directly affected by – even though I know being informed is different to actually helping. 

I’m paying a license fee to the BBC so they can minimise the atrocities happening and present a biased version of the truth while claiming neutrality. I’m also aware that the images of suffering and dehumanisation I do see are blurring together. I half remember an Instagram post that explained how this can be an intentional tactic to desensitise us to the violence, but I can’t find the post now to see if I’m remembering it correctly. 

Yet amidst all of this, joy still exists. Lying next to my girlfriend, finding ways to touch even in the oppressive sticky heat. Episodes of a silly YouTube show I’ve watched ten times already but still make me laugh. The plip plip plip of heavy raindrops hitting hot pavements, and tasting the syllables of petrichor on my tongue as its smell makes me smile

Finding moments of joy and hope are important, so why do I feel so guilty?

I feel like I’m failing, like I’m not doing enough. Am I doing as much as I can without burning myself out? Is resisting facism worth risking burnout, or would I just be taking up resources that could go to someone else? I feel so powerless. Everything feels so pointless, because what difference can I make? Meanwhile, the people in power, those with the ability to make serious change, seem more interested in stripping the rights from the most marginalised people in our society. 

I still want to scream.

Stopping, letting myself rest, feels self-indulgent – even when it is necessary. Even if I wouldn’t have anything to give if I didn’t rest. But am I protecting myself from overwhelm, or from the horrors of a genocide I’m hundreds of miles away from? My work feels so frivolous at times like these, but maybe the small amount of money I can donate each month is the most useful thing I can contribute right now. Or is that a lie I’m telling myself too, a justification for how I’m not willing to put my body on the line?

I haven’t been to any protests or demonstrations since moving. I know I should, but I also know how easily I go into sensory overwhelm when surrounded by the noise of a crowd and angry voices. I know how important it is to show up, but is there any point if all my body will do is shut down? At a recent gender clinic appointment, the psychiatrist I was speaking to pointed out the ways my autism might affect my experience getting top surgery – especially the overnight in hospital afterwards. It made me more afraid of the sensory hell that would likely come with being arrested. 

I feel like such a coward. 

I am so scared for the people I love. I am so full of rage at a government who have declared that schools cannot “encourage students to question their gender” (read: support trans pupils) but that you can be arrested for showing solidarity with people who are being starved. I am so fucking exhausted from trying to hold together some semblance of normality when everything is such a mess. My heart aches; my skin crawls with disgust at myself. 

Amongst all of this suffering, I’ve realised that my suicidal ideation has decreased. The intrusive thoughts are still there, but it’s much easier to realise they’re not real, not reflective of how I actually feel. It’s strange to realise that as scared as I am some days, I want to stay here. I want to fight. I want to live every second of my beautiful, transsexual life in flagrant defiance to the people who tell me that I don’t exist, shouldn’t exist. 

Is it selfish to write this when I don’t have any of the answers? I don’t have a list of actions for you, a place to start when it comes to making positive change. I barely feel like I’m keeping my head above water most days, how could I possibly make a difference? I’m not sure I even know where to begin. 

I try to remember that if our voices were not so powerful, our governments would not be trying so hard to silence them. That if the existence of trans people didn’t threaten the existing power structures of white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy, they would not be trying to erase our very existence. That maybe the only way for me not to feel all of this right now is for me to care less, and that I don’t want to care less. 

So I let myself scream into a pillow. I let myself cry. I remind myself everything I’m feeling is, I’d wager, a pretty normal response to what’s happening – and that being paralysed by fear and overwhelm into inaction is what our authoritarian governments want. 

This is not a guide to resisting fascism, but I really wish I had one.