Do You Hate Fascism? Boycott the Super Bowl

It’s Super Bowl week, but all I can think about is Nazis

My grandfather fought the Nazis in the Second World War. I remember him as a man of principle but with empathy and grace. The Spry family home in Ottawa was like a tribute to his fight and sacrifice, the toll and trauma of WWII. Medals, commendations, and gifts from heads of state and senior officers made the house like a museum, and many of those items now grace the walls and corners of my parents’ home. As my father tells it, the keepsakes that meant the most to him were the ones from his men, a community sentiment that I would like to believe runs in our blood. I have a few items: some of his journals, his collected Shakespeare, and two Fougasse prints warning that “Careless Talk Costs Lives,” depicting Hitler and Mussolini listening in the wallpaper and portraiture. As right-wing populism and fascism (and yes, Nazism) have returned to our everyday life, this time on domestic shores, I often wonder how Papa, as I knew Major General DC Spry, would confront our current reality.

I know one thing is certain: He wouldn’t buy a fucking Tesla.

This past week, a trade war was averted at the eleventh hour. Donald Trump was prepared to levy 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, and the two North American cousins planned their own in retaliation. At the end of the day, it ended up being a lot of bluster with little consequence—Canada agreed to a plan it had announced in December, and the US backed off its tariffs for at least a month. All the while, Trump continues to threaten the annexation of my homeland, openly claiming that the ultimate end to all this would be Canada becoming the 51st state. Perhaps it’s bluster or maybe hubris, but almost certainly an enactment of what Naomi Klein calls The Shock Doctrine, “the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock.”

As a Canadian currently working in the US, married to an American, the first two weeks of the second Trump administration have been, as they have for many, an absolutely chaotic nightmare. ICE raids are taking place in every major blue state city. Trans friends have asked about refugee status in Canada. My family is unlikely to visit until tensions have subsided. My friends have been forced to drink Canadian scotch. As I write this, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a vaccine denier, conspiracy theorist, and perhaps measle spreader—is on his way to being confirmed as US Health Czar, the tie-breaking vote out of committee coming from a Republican doctor, for chrissakes. Elon Musk has been given the Treasury Department debit card and has infiltrated the highest chambers with incel techbros and Sieg Heils, reforming the government as an appendage of oligarchy. The new Secretary of Defense is a White Supremacist. DEI is being blamed for plane crashes. Los Angeles is on fire. But Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend are taking on the Tush Push this Sunday, so for a few hours, the country will be distracted by spectacle—and there is perhaps nothing more American than attention diverted by jingoism, celebrity, and sport.

I’m not going to watch the Super Bowl, and I don’t think you should either.

The feeling of helplessness has been pervasive since the November election. Donald Trump told America that he was going to enact fascist, racist, genderist, sexist, and white supremacist policies once he took office, and that’s exactly what he’s done. But make no mistake; this is not expressly the fault of Trump or Musk or Hegseth or Fox News—77,284,118 people voted for Trump, and now we’re left to live with the fallout of their selfishness and lack of humanity. The American poverty class was treated so poorly for so long, creating a population without critical thinking or hope, so when he came along and said he’d save them and their hardship was someone else’s fault, they bought in.

The Democrats have been caught off-guard by the new administration's adherence to Project 2025 and disregard for the rule of law. There are many fighting back, in particular progressives: AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Jamie Raskin, and others are screaming with the rest of us. But for too many, especially the octogenarian establishment, their reply seems to be to wait and see/pick their fights while Nancy Pelosi gets older and her stocks rise further, and Chuck Schumer gets older and is still worth $81 million, and the rest of us get poorer and choke on fascism. Their helplessness manifests as incompetence and increased wealth, while mine presents as abject fear.

So what could boycotting the Super Bowl (which Trump will be attending, and the “End Racism” endzone messages have been removed) possibly do if those in power can’t even help?

When Nazism rises, we naturally return to the Second World War, the last time we fought against fascism, but this time the fascists are in office, on our soil. (Canada isn’t that far behind, as Pierre Poilievre cherry-picks bits of Trump’s playbook for his own quest to end empathy.) And what we learn from WWII is that the only way to beat back the offense of authoritarianism and theocracy is through sacrifice. Jonathan Safran Foer, in his book We Are the Weather, in which he confronts what he believed at the time to be the central global dilemma of our time, argued that the template of 1940s America provided the roadmap to combatting climate change.

World War II would not have been won without home-front actions that had both psychological and tangible impacts: ordinary people joining together to support the greater cause. During the war, industrial productivity rose by 96 percent. [...] By 1942, companies that had once manufactured cars, refrigerators, metal of­fice furniture, and washing machines now produced military products. Lingerie factories began making camouflage netting, adding machines were reborn as pistols, and the lung-like bags of vacuum cleaners were transplanted into the bodies of gas masks. Retirees, women, and students entered the workforce—many states changed their labor laws to allow teenagers to work. Everyday commodities like rubber, tin cans, aluminum foil, and lumber were collected for reuse in the war effort.

Safran Foer wrote that three simple sacrifices: Flying less, driving less, and eating less meat could effectively reduce the effects of climate change on our planet.

Six years later, our fight is more existential and arguably more present. In the 1940s, entire countries reinvented themselves to fight the spurge of communism and Nazism. Lives and livelihoods were sacrificed for the greater common good. But unlike during World War II, we seem less amenable to sacrifice. The idea of the common good has faded. Trump has eliminated empathy from swaths of the country. As our opposition leaders continue to fail, it is incumbent upon the citizenry to push back against the crisis. Our sacrifice is our only weapon left. I believe in the power of community, in the force of the collective, and it must present itself now.

Whether corporate or governmental, institutions only respond when they are shamed or their power and wealth are threatened. American consumer spending during last year’s Super Bowl reached a record $17.3 billion on food, drinks, apparel, and other related purchases. Legal bets placed on Super Bowl LVIII were estimated to reach $1.39 billion, surpassing the previous record of $1.25 billion set in 2023, which will no doubt be eclipsed this week. Advertising revenue on Fox, the broadcaster for Super Bowl LVIII (and this year), charged over $8 million for a 30-second commercial slot, up from $7 million in prior years, resulting in substantial advertising revenue of nearly $600 million.

What if we can cut those numbers by a fraction? Nearly 20 million Canadians tune in for the Super Bowl, and as our neighbors threaten to annex us, perhaps not indulging in their national moment is a good counter-movement. Few things mirror the ethos of America like the Super Bowl and the NFL, pageantry obscuring oligarchy and avarice. The outpouring of nationalism in Canada this week, with the exception of the assholes at Shopify, shows overwhelming anger and frustration at Trump’s hubris and arrogance. Even right-leaning Albertans have replaced their “Fuck Trudeau” flags with “Fuck Trump” flags, and there’s nothing conservative Albertans hate more than Justin Trudeau. Our morality and our actions must align, or we will descend further into dystopia. An overwhelming absence of viewers for America’s biggest cultural moment would attract attention. It would make a statement.

A simple boycott of the Super Bowl is just an avatar of how we must change our day-to-day engagement with society, how we must begin to make sacrifces. We can’t fight for DEI policies and shop at Target and Walmart. We can’t decry the unchecked autonomy of Elon Musk and own a Cybertruck or be on Twitter. We can’t rage against the rise of the oligarchs and be on Facebook. We can’t make Luigi Mangione a folk hero and still get our healthcare from UnitedHealth Group. We can’t cheer for the Kansas City Chiefs, their owners who have contributed untold amounts to Republicans and conservative causes, their placekicker who hates women, and their star QB’s MAGA wife (who got a shoutout from Trump on Fox News) and demand humanity from our government. We can’t support unions and get our coffee from Starbucks (I’m guilty of this one, twice daily.) We can’t watch SNL if Trump or Musk is hosting. We can’t eat at Jimmy John’s or Papa John’s or John Thune’s and hope that civility will return to Congress.

Look, the list is endless. And it’s expensive to live morally. Have you priced organic beets lately? But it’s easy to find out if we’re spending our money in a way that aligns with our morality. Even the simplest changes in our day-to-day will affect the pockets and power of those who are instituting a system of fascism in a country that defined its 20th century by sacrificing to defeat fascism. Trump this week spoke of the pain that will need to be endured for his tariff plan to produce dividends for everyday Americans. And while that is complete bullshit, the notion that pain can lead to revolution is not. The notion that great sacrifice can enact great change is not.

My grandfather was the youngest general in the history of the Canadian armed forces. By the time he retired in his thirties, he had accomplished more than I could dream of in a thousand lifetimes. He was known as a leader, someone who was loved by those who served under him, and who would question authority when warranted. (I believe that’s where I get it. I hope that’s where I get it.) During his life, he voted for both Liberal and Progressive Conservative candidates in Canada, but there’s no way he would’ve suffered the indifference, ignorance, and apathy that led to the rebirth of fascism. He once said,

During the war, one of the big lessons I learned was that it was possible to bring together soldiers or sailors or airmen from every part of Canada, from every walk of life, every religion, every political viewpoint, and make them over into platoons, divisions, and corps, etc., and somehow or other, under proper leadership, they would fight as well as any other soldiers anywhere at any time. Perhaps we were all striving for something, some common objective.

Seventy years later, we have another common objective. And we need to come together, from every walk of life, to sacrifice, to strive for something better. Because if not, I’m not sure how or when this ends.