When the Obvious Breaks Open

 

Title: When the Obvious Breaks Open

(All personal names have been anonymized)

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Introduction

There are certain insights that feel like clichés. They circulate in theory, in cultural critique, even in everyday conversation. We nod at them, half-bored, certain they’re true but without urgency. Then one day, you live them. The truism takes on flesh, and suddenly you have to think about things differently.

This piece reflects on one such truism: that fascism is, at its core, disavowed queerness.

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The Maxim: "Obviously Fascists Are Disavowed Queers"

On the intellectual level, this line feels obvious. Entire traditions of psychoanalysis, queer studies, and cultural commentary have drawn the connection between authoritarian aggression and repressed desire. At a distance, it’s easy to dismiss it with a shrug. Like fucking duh.

But ideas that feel obvious on paper have a way of becoming destabilizing when they cross into your lived world.

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The Encounter

It’s one thing to roll your eyes at the cliché. It’s another to watch it unfold in someone close to you. Suddenly, what felt abstract becomes uncomfortably embodied. The fascistic posture is not just in the headlines or in history—it’s in your kitchen, your conversations, your intimate arguments.

This is the moment where the maxim turns into encounter. The intellectual framework collides with lived betrayal. And it hurts.

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The Reckoning

The real work begins after the recognition. Because once you see it, you can’t leave it at the level of cliché anymore. You have to reckon with it.

• You have to think about what repression does to a person.

• You have to think about how disavowed desire twists itself into cruelty.

• You have to think about what it means when the person you love, or once loved, embodies the very structure you thought you only studied.

This is the transition from the easy “obviousness” of theory into the devastating clarity of lived truth.

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The Cost of Thinking

To encounter fascism as disavowed queerness up close is to lose the comfort of dismissal. It is no longer an academic insight—it becomes a personal crisis, one that forces you to integrate, grieve, and reorient.

And that process is not optional. Because when the obvious breaks open, you either harden into denial or you think. You think, even when it costs you.

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Conclusion

“Obviously fascists are disavowed queers.” It’s a line that can sound glib, detached, overfamiliar. But when you encounter it “for really,” the banality burns away. What remains is a call: to confront, to reckon, and to think—even when the thinking hurts.

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Author’s Note: This essay is part of an ongoing exploration of how theory shifts registers when it collides with lived experience. All personal names and identifying details have been removed to protect privacy.