How Can We Defeat Fascism Today If We Don’t Understand Yesterday?
Destiny’s confident ignorance about Jim Crow and apartheid shows exactly why we keep losing to the same playbook — and why history is our most powerful weapon.
We are living through a moment when fascist strategies are being dusted off and rebranded for a new era. Voter suppression, racial scapegoating, "America First" nativism — these aren’t new ideas; they’re echoes of a playbook America has used before. That’s why understanding our own history isn’t optional — it’s essential for survival.
Which makes it all the more alarming when one of the largest "democratic" voices on social media, Destiny (Steven Bonnell II), who has been covering U.S. politics since around 2016, manages to get the most basic historical facts so catastrophically wrong.
This segment takes place during Destiny’s reaction to Candace Owens’s appearance on Jubilee’s Surrounded. At one point, the subject of apartheid and Jim Crow comes up — and Destiny launches into a confident, utterly misinformed monologue.
Destiny opens this segment with the smug certainty that has become his trademark:
Chatter: "This is one of your bad takes. If nothing else, Jim Crow being analyzed through a lens of apartheid is a reasonable analysis."
Destiny: "Um, it's not. It shows you either know nothing about Jim Crow or you know nothing about apartheid."
Remember that line. Let it marinate in your mind as we walk through his claims one by one. Because this isn’t just a throwaway quip or a rhetorical flourish — it’s a confident assertion of absolute authority.
And by the time we’re done here, you’ll see exactly why that line is so important. Remember it.
After playing a short segment of the Surrounded video, Destiny returns to the apartheid subject when a chatter brings it back up. He then proceeds to offer his definition:
“Apartheid was a top-down system of racial domination from the federalized government in South Africa where different races were doled out explicitly, different rights, relegated to live in different areas, were treated differently by the government of South Africa. Like, whole stop. that that was apartheid.”
To his credit, Destiny’s definition of apartheid is excellent — frankly, better than I would expect the average person to be able to provide off the cuff.
The irony? That definition also describes Jim Crow with eerie precision: a top-down system of racial domination, explicitly assigning different rights to Black Americans, forcing them into segregated neighborhoods and schools, and enforcing those differences through law and state violence. Destiny defines apartheid perfectly — he just doesn’t realize he’s describing Jim Crow too.
And just in case there’s any doubt that Destiny’s definition also describes Jim Crow, let’s look at actual historical records — starting with the federal government’s own policies.
Take the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), created in 1934 as part of the New Deal to help Americans buy homes. The FHA didn’t just "tolerate" segregation; it actively enforced it. In fact, it published an official underwriting manual (yes, a federal document) that explicitly recommended racial segregation to protect property values.
We don’t have to guess or rely on vague "vibes" to prove this. The 1936 Federal Housing Administration Underwriting Manual, a federal document, spelled it out in chilling detail:
"233. The Valuator should investigate areas surrounding the location to determine whether or not incompatible racial and social groups are present, to the end that an intelligent prediction may be made regarding the possibility or probability of the location being invaded by such groups. If a neighborhood is to retain stability it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes. A change in social or racial occupancy generally leads to instability and a reduction in value. The protection offered against adverse changes should be found adequate before a high rating is given to this feature. Once the character of a neighborhood has been established it's usually impossible to induce a higher social class than those already in the neighborhood to purchase and occupy properties in its various locations."1
This isn’t "informal." This isn’t "wink wink nudge nudge." This is explicit, state-engineered, federally endorsed apartheid, written in plain English for federal agents and banks to enforce across the country.
Jim Crow wasn’t just a patchwork of local customs or state laws. It was enforced at every level — including in core federal institutions. Take the U.S. armed forces: officially segregated until 1948, when President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which declared:
"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin."2
This order didn’t appear in a vacuum. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to address rampant discrimination in defense industry hiring and job training. But Congress, under pressure from southern segregationists, shut the FEPC down in 1945.
When Truman’s Civil Rights Commission later recommended making the FEPC permanent, southern senators threatened a filibuster to block it entirely. In response, Truman sidestepped Congress and issued Executive Order 9981.
Congress’s shutdown of the FEPC — which had forbidden discrimination by federal defense contractors and helped train Black workers for defense jobs — is undeniable proof of deep, persistent, federal-level segregation more than 60 years after the Reconstruction amendments. You don’t need to "desegregate" an institution that wasn’t segregated. The order’s existence is itself irrefutable evidence of formal, top-down racial apartheid.
The United States didn’t just maintain white supremacy through domestic segregation — it built it into its immigration system at the highest levels of federal power.
In 1924, Congress passed the Immigration Act (Johnson-Reed Act)3, which created a national origins quota system explicitly designed to preserve a white, Protestant, Northern European majority. It drastically restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe (primarily Catholic and Jewish immigrants) and outright banned immigration from Asia.
This wasn’t a "local" or "informal" prejudice — it was federal law, drafted and enforced in Washington, D.C. And it didn’t happen in a vacuum. By the end of the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan claimed 11 governors, 16 senators, and as many as 75 congressmen4, roughly split between Republicans and Democrats. Their influence was decisive in shaping immigration policy to ensure that only the "right" kind of immigrants — white, Protestant Christians — could enter and thrive.
Across the ocean, South Africa enacted the Aliens Act of 19375, restricting immigration to reinforce its own white-dominated apartheid system. The parallel is unmistakable: both governments weaponized immigration to build and preserve a racial hierarchy.
And we are still living with the consequences today. The demographic imbalances, visa backlogs, and inherited quotas that continue to plague U.S. immigration policy are not accidental bureaucratic problems — they are the downstream effects of a system deliberately designed to engineer a white nation-state.
Destiny argues that Jim Crow was merely local, informal discrimination — but in reality, federal policies like the 1924 Immigration Act reveal a national project of white supremacy every bit as explicit and systemic as the apartheid system he so neatly defined.
Destiny briefly brings up Plessy v. Ferguson before he spirals off into one of his logic puzzles, but let’s slow down for a second — because this case absolutely blows up his argument that Jim Crow was somehow “informal” or not top-down.
In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t just shrug at segregation; it outright blessed it. The Court said it was perfectly fine — even constitutional — for states to separate Black and white people in public spaces, as long as the facilities were “equal” (spoiler: they never were). This decision gave states the green light to write explicit segregation into law everywhere: schools, buses, trains, theaters, hospitals, water fountains — you name it.
And let’s not forget: it wasn’t until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 — almost 60 years later — that the Court finally admitted, “Hey, actually, segregation in public schools isn’t equal at all.”
And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: inaction is also an action.
After Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, we saw what the federal government actually can do when it decides to enforce equality. In 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas to force the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. Federal marshals escorted Black students to class under armed guard. The message was clear: segregation would no longer be protected by law, and federal power would finally be used to protect Black Americans — at least in that moment.
But think about what that means for the decades before. For the entire Jim Crow era, the federal government chose not to intervene. It refused to send troops to protect Black students in 1920, 1930, or 1940. It looked away while states violently upheld segregation. In doing so, it enabled everything that followed: every cross burned on a Black family’s lawn, every person lynched in a public square, every man or woman tied to a truck and dragged until their body went limp, every body hung from a tree to terrorize an entire community.
Federal inaction wasn’t neutral — it was a decision. A decision to side with white supremacists. A decision to let domestic racial terrorism flourish unchecked. That’s not "informal." That’s not "local." That is complicity at the highest level of government.
So, if we add this all up: you’ve got the executive branch pushing segregation through the FHA manual, maintaining a segregated military for decades, and deliberately choosing not to enforce constitutional rights until the 1950s. You’ve got Congress shutting down fair employment protections, passing the 1924 Immigration Act to keep America as white as possible, and refusing to act against racial terror. And you’ve got the Supreme Court itself making segregation the law of the land in Plessy v. Ferguson.
That’s every branch of the federal government not just tolerating, but actively maintaining and defending a system of racial domination — both through action and through deliberate inaction. In other words? Destiny’s own definition of apartheid fits Jim Crow America like a glove.
Let me be clear about something: I actually respect Destiny’s success. You don’t build an audience that large or sustain a content career that long without serious talent. I even agree with some of his positions and — when he’s on point — I admire his aggressive debate style.
But now, after watching this segment, I finally understand the root of so many of the points where I’ve disagreed with him over the years. It isn’t just a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of missing the historical foundation entirely. Once you see how deeply that ignorance runs, so many of his takes start to make sense — and not in a good way.
Let’s not forget: in the middle of this segment, Destiny actually had to pause and ask his chat whether Jim Crow existed before the Civil Rights Act. Think about that. A guy who has spent nearly a decade streaming about U.S. politics — confidently lecturing hundreds of thousands of people over the years — doesn’t even know what came before one of the most pivotal pieces of civil rights legislation in American history.
How do you claim to understand American politics without knowing the basic facts that shaped the society we live in today? How do you talk about polarization, racial resentment, or "culture war" without understanding the legacy of Jim Crow — a legacy that is still very much alive? From voter suppression laws to the "America First" nativist slogans, to the ongoing gutting of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, we are watching the resurrection of Jim Crow strategies in real time.
Destiny wasn’t just wrong in the abstract. He’s wrong in a way that helps perpetuate ignorance, weakens our collective ability to see modern fascist strategies for what they are, and ultimately makes it harder to fight them. Because you cannot defeat a playbook you refuse to even recognize.
So when he confidently tells his viewers that seeing Jim Crow as apartheid means you "know nothing"...
Well. You tell me — who actually knows nothing here?
No ads. No billionaires. Just one person, fighting like hell to call out fascism and build a better future.
If this work matters to you, support it.
Subscribe now—because silence is surrender. And we do not surrender.
Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (1936), Part II, paragraphs 226–233.
Official FHA guidelines explicitly recommending racial segregation as a condition for neighborhood "stability" and mortgage approval. Full manual available via FRASER, the digital library of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/fha/1936apr_fha_underwritingmanual.pdf.
Executive Order 9981, Harry S. Truman, July 26, 1948.
Available at the U.S. National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9981
U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act).
Overview: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
“How social media spread a historical lie,” Washington Post, March 15, 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/03/15/how-social-media-spread-a-historical-lie/
Aliens Act, 1937 (South Africa).
Overview: Aliens Act, 1937 - Wikipedia
Thank you for this excellent review. You point out a lot of the problem- a lack of knowledge and a lack of education. But I have to suggest that much of that is willful and by choice. Such knowledge about the TRUTH has been censored, hidden, twisted and spun. There’s a deep sickness in our culture which discourages basic curiosity, critical thinking and question asking. So many don’t WANT to think, to consider they might have been taught lies or not taught at all. And if they get a glimpse of possible truth and reality, the admission that they might be wrong is apparently unbearable.
Admittedly it has been hard to realize over and over that my education had huge amounts of basic history that were simply left out. That my parents and other relatives just plain lied about or omitted important things in my background. But as you point out - the information is there if one is willing to seek it out. I have often said that “everything I don’t know could fill volumes” because I have been humbled by learning so many things I never knew.
I didn’t know about Japanese internments during World War II until my honeymoon when we stopped at a historical site on our road trip. I was stunned and it triggered some huge questions in me about what ELSE had I never been told. And there has been a LOT.
I had no idea how insanely racist my Mississippi raised father was until I was impregnated by a beautiful black man. I was nearly 30 before I learned the family “secret” that my gentle tenderhearted uncle was a homosexual. Growing up I didn’t even know what that word meant.
I heard the words “manifest destiny” in US history but didn’t know it meant that entitled white people were so convinced of God’s will that they massacred entire nations of indigenous people and STOLE their homeland and way of life. I admit sometimes knowledge comes at a high price. I am no longer able to feel proud of my pioneer ancestors who felt they deserved to STEAL and “settle” blood soaked land because . . . they were “christians”?
I am 68 and just learned I’m a daughter of the revolution AND those ancestors owned slaves. It doesn’t help to be told not to feel bad about the choices those people made since I wasn’t the one who did it. But for gawds sake, I wouldn’t BE here if they hadn’t!!
Anyway, I’ve always been a voracious reader and when I began to wonder, to want to know, to ask important questions I began searching for the truth about so many things. If you care at all the information is readily available. Or it has been luckily for me. There’s a good reason white supremacist “christians” want books banned. It seems far easier to just erase history than to face it and hold oneself, one’s ancestors, one’s religious affiliation, one’s political party, one’s country, accountable.
Self examination is painful. To have to admit all the dishonest, hurtful, horrific beliefs and actions I personally have been complicit with is painful.
But the thing is, for some reason I CARE. The truth MATTERS to me. No matter how painful, I want to KNOW everything about my country and my personal background. I want a just, GOOD world not just for myself but also for my children and grandchildren and neighbors and the strangers on the street.
If we want things to be different as in better and kinder and fairer then it behooves us to start being curious, start learning TRUE history.
I heard a wise saying years ago: if we always do what we’ve always done then we will always get what we’ve always gotten.
As Maya Angelou suggests, if we KNOW better then perhaps we’ll DO better. One of the questions I’ve often asked myself is how can I do better if I don’t KNOW what is worse?? Learning factual history is the only way I know of to find out.
If there is a hereafter I think we’ll be held accountable for all we refused to know, all we refused to honestly see, hear and learn. I prefer to KNOW as much as I can NOW. I don’t want to someday look in my creator’s eyes and see reflected there all the ways I could have made a difference but didn’t because I simply didn’t want to know the truth.
So again, thank you for this information you have shared. I already knew some of this but it’s helped fill in a few more gaps in my knowledge and understanding I didn’t even know were there. And it affirms the deep concern I have for all we’re up against right now and at least some of what the REAL issues are.
I agree with everything here. I have experienced many of these realizations myself, albeit from a different perspective. Like most people raised in another country, when I came to the US, I had an understanding of America that mirrors what much of what you described here. Even going through high school in a fairly liberal area (Manhattan), there was so much that I was never taught. Sure, they taught about slavery, about the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, etc. But there was a lack of depth, it's like someone gave you a set of Legos missing the connecting parts. There was a lack of real analysis of what it all meant when you put it all together; a lack of connection between the lessons about the past we were being taught and the struggles of our neighbors today: or the connections between the overtly discriminatory slogans and words that were used then and the heavily diffused racism (back when I was in high school at least, today it's starting to resemble much more Jim Crow than Southern Strategy dog whistles).
Abu Ghraib was the first shock for me. It fractured the foundation of everything I believed about America, shattering the illusion that most people from other countries grow up with when it comes to America. But it would take over a decade and a fair bit of effort to grasp the degree with which certain ideas are entrenched throughout American culture. Don't get me wrong, I love this country, but I love it for what it aspires to be, not what it has become.
And it's not even just the racism and discrimination that so obviously corroded our society today. Even back when I was in school, they did a good enough job to get the point across that some people are just dark inside, so even when I see ICE disappearing people these days, it hardly surprises me. What really gets me is the complacency of the "good people." It's the abandonment of Reconstruction, it's the enabling of Jim Crow, the apathy towards allowing American History to be taught, to many, as though the Confederates were anything more than slavery loving traitors who would rather have destroyed than country and were perfectly fine killing their countrymen for the right to own people. That's what gets me... I think nobody should be able to graduate high school without being to recite from memory the cornerstone paragraph from Alexander Stephen's Cornerstone speech and to explain the depths of evil that the Confederacy represented. And that should be just the start... And so, in the name of "tolerance" the "good people" allow the same evil that nearly destroyed this country to linger and metastize over and over again.