Deborah Johnstone
LightNews LightNews
banner
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
Deborah Johnstone
@deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
310 followers 14 following 11 posts
Speculative fiction writer and Explorer mapping ideology, myth, and power
https://deborahjohnstone.com/
https://deborahj.wordpress.com/
https://www.alchemywritinglab.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/brac...

Sarah McBride denied the use of a bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity on Capitol Hill. Republicans are so worried about trans people using the “right” restroom but have no compunction about a convicted felon and pedophile roaming the White house.
bracing.bsky.social Mrs W @bracing.bsky.social · Nov 21
Trump is a convicted rapist. And that wasn't even this case.
March 12, 2025 at 8:43 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
To be a Fool in Desperate Times
open.substack.com/pub/deborahj...
To be a Fool in Desperate Times
The Revolution is Coming
open.substack.com
February 21, 2025 at 9:15 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
2025:
Union Square, New York City February 17. There were thousands of people but no media coverage. Protesters kept arriving ...The Resistance marched downtown on Broadway and turned West on 9th Street. Crowd was peaceful but clearly resisting the fascist regime in Washington.
February 18, 2025 at 12:06 AM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
February 15, 2025
open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...
February 15, 2025
After World War II, the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—agreed that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructur...
open.substack.com
February 16, 2025 at 2:29 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
Fear is not just a byproduct; it is the fuel that keeps Totalitarian regimes in power
Political theorist Hannah Arendt warned us of this long ago:
“Gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts…”
February 1, 2025 at 4:58 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
Codifying a fascist regime has proved easier than we imagined. Trump has successfully criminalized non-compliance through fear. Parallels to the Nazis are clear:
deborahjohnstone.com/2025/01/26/w...
Criminalizing Non-Compliance Through Fear – DEBORAH JOHNSTONE
deborahjohnstone.com
January 27, 2025 at 7:19 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/niki... Two of my favourite writers/poets
nikitagill.bsky.social Nikita Gill @nikitagill.bsky.social · Jan 20
From Mary Oliver
OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
January 21, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Deborah Johnstone
nikitagill.bsky.social
From Mary Oliver
OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
January 20, 2025 at 8:40 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
Seedy, reliable life... in this thankless morass of “Enshittification” [a phrase coined by the transcendent, partially Canadian, Cory Doctorow].

My latest at Marrow Magazine -
"Depredation and Transcendence"
marrowmagazine.com/depredation-...
November 21, 2024 at 10:03 PM
deborahjohnstone.bsky.social
The New Fascist Right Has Arrived
I wrote this in November 2016. Here we are again.

...Fascism is not designed to be obvious. It's a carefully woven tapestry of clandestine signals comprised of hatred, deceit and fear...
Read the entire article:
tinyurl.com/yc5c4m9a
The New Fascist Right Has Arrived
“The next wave of fascism will come not with cattle cars and camps. It will come with a friendly face.” – Bertram Gross, “Friendly Fascism” I came to New York in the e…
tinyurl.com
November 18, 2024 at 8:49 PM