Fascism Starts With Your Self-Care (and You Don’t Even Know It)

• “Fascism begins not with violence but with silence — and if self-care replaces collective care, healing becomes complicity.” Ana Mael 
• Fascism starts in the ordinary, not the violent. Ana reframes fascism not as sudden authoritarianism with guns, but as a slow erosion of empathy: disinterest, detachment, and normalized silence.

• Spiritual bypass as complicity. She names how “stay in your frequency” or “not my circus, not my monkeys” become spiritualized excuses for disengagement. Instead of tools for peace, they function as shields against responsibility.

• Self-care as cult. She critiques the commodification of “self-care” when it eclipses collective care. When people are “too busy healing to notice the harm,” wellness becomes a trap that isolates and depoliticizes.

 

Full Episode https://youtu.be/bE0Bk5Fa258

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Somatic & Trauma Lens

• Disinterest = nervous system shutdown. Apathy often comes from dorsal vagal collapse — “it’s not my business” is the body protecting itself by numbing. But unchecked, this physiological state enables collective harm.

• Spiritual bypass as avoidance. Using spirituality to dodge engagement (“just keep your vibration high”) mirrors how trauma survivors sometimes avoid discomfort instead of building capacity for contact. Ana is pointing to the social cost of this bypass.

• Self-care vs. collective regulation. Self-soothing is vital, but if it never extends outward, it fragments community resilience. Trauma healing needs co-regulation (relational safety) and collective action alongside individual practices.

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Social & Political Critique

• Warning against privatized healing. Ana cautions that “wellness culture” can turn into a new religion or cult: rituals of self-care without accountability for the world.

• Collective care as missing link. She positions collective care (mutual aid, solidarity, witnessing injustice) as the antidote to both fascism and isolationist healing.

• The slippery slope. The timeline she names — disinterest → silence → surveillance → normalized harm — mirrors historical patterns of fascism. The warning is urgent: by the time violence is visible, it’s too late.

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Stylistic & Rhetorical Moves

• Repetition for emphasis: “It does not begin with guns. It does not begin with guns.” Anchors the listener before redirecting them to the subtler beginnings of harm.

• Everyday sayings as critique: By quoting familiar phrases (“stay in your frequency,” “not my monkeys, not my circus”), she grounds her critique in the language of both spiritual communities and everyday avoidance.

• Religion metaphor: Calling self-care a “new religion” dramatizes its dogma-like dominance, highlighting how it can demand devotion at the cost of humanity.

• Direct address: “Okay.” This interjection breaks the fourth wall — jolting the listener from abstraction into responsibility.

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Chapters

• (00:00:00) - Self-Care has become the new religion