Quote of the Day
The Daily Beast writer Kelly Weill has identified a new locus of creeping fascism: farmers’ markets.
WHAT HAPPENED
“From Chicago to Sweden, farmers’ markets have become a surprising battleground between the far right and its opponents,” Weill wrote in July 2019.
- “The far right’s love of the markets plays into a larger fascist talking point that idealizes pastoral life and demonizes ‘degenerate’ urban living. The contrast attempts to cast white supremacy as a purer alternative.”
Weill’s analysis — extrapolated from an incident in which alleged neo-Nazis tried to sell produce at a market in Bloomington, Indiana — has been echoed by other writers.
- Rebecca Bratten Weiss warned last month in The Christian Century: “The ‘America first’ ideology is widespread in our rural communities, where a preference for natural food and holistic medicine doesn’t always signal progressive politics but rather a distrust of urban liberals, coastal elites and shadowy globalist influences.”