When does a formal democracy degenerate into fascism?

It can happen here. “Here” being any country in which capitalism rules. When does a bourgeois formal democracy tip over into fascism? That is a question that needs an answer in many places, certainly not excepting the United States, which has already experienced a self-coup attempt with unmistakable fascist overtones.

We’re referencing Donald Trump’s attempt at a self-coup, to use the Latin American phrase, in January 2021. Many people, even on the Left, laugh at that day’s events, pointing out that the would-be putsch had no chance of success. It did have no chance of success. That does not mean it should be cavalierly dismissed; on the contrary, it should be taken with utmost seriousness. Hitler’s beer hall putsch of 1923 had no chance of success, either, and his violent movement remained on the lunatic fringe for several more years. But we know how German history would turn out.

There will be no facile comparison of the contemporary United States with Weimar Germany here. We are not living in Weimar times. There are no organized brown shirts running amuck, a military deeply hostile to democracy and ready to act on that hostility nor a significant number of industrialists bankrolling storm troops. History does not repeat itself, as tragedy or farce, neatly and certainly not precisely. We nonetheless might take a lesson from history before we take stock of contemporary political conditions.

^{Anarchist feminist and Spanish Republican anti-fascist protest at #25NFeminista event in Madrid (photo by Jack From Hell)}

One myth to be dispelled is that Hitler was elected. He wasn’t. He was handed power by the German president, Paul von Hindenburg, who appointed Hitler chancellor. Unfortunately, that was completely legal under the Weimar constitution, and enough for the biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats, to hold their powder — they refused to unleash their militia and confined themselves to a legal order that was imminently going to be destroyed. The other major opposition party, the Communists, declared “After Hitler, our turn,” a public sentiment quite a contrast with their membership forced to go into hiding or exile as the newly empowered Nazis began rounding up party members and destroying their offices.

Union leaders meekly rolled over for Hitler after he was handed power, agreeing to participate in what would now be a Nazi-led May Day celebration. Within two days of that May Day, the Nazis began arresting union leaders and banning existing unions; social democrats would soon meet the same fate. It took Hitler only three months to sweep away all opposition and assume dictatorial power. With all political opposition swept away, persecutions of Jews, Roma and LGBT communities began with results the world should never forget or minimize.

Why did von Hindenburg appoint Hitler chancellor? In the last election before the January 1933 appointment, the Nazi vote had actually declined from the previous ballot; the combined Communist and Social Democrat vote was 1.5 million votes higher than the Nazi vote, which totaled 33 percent, although the combined Left vote was a million shy of the combined vote of the Nazis and the National Party, the remaining vehicle of the traditional Right. Most of the 1920s support for Germany’s traditional right-wing parties had been transferred to the Nazis, who made a gigantic leap from 2.6 percent in May 1928 to 18 percent (second among 10 parties) in September 1930. The leaders of those traditional right-wing parties had thought they could control Hitler by having him appointed chancellor (the equivalent of prime minister) but giving the Nazis only two of 10 cabinet positions. Unfortunately, one of those positions was the Interior Ministry that controlled the police, allowing the Nazis to flood the police with their brown shirt thugs. That Interior minister, Wilhelm Frick, was a participant in the beer hall putsch but was given no more punishment than a suspended sentence.

Violence in the service of corporate profits

The stories in Italy and other countries that fell to fascism aren’t much different. Mussolini, too, was handed power. Mussolini was a socialist until he began receiving money from arms manufacturers and other business interests. Although now far to the right, he carefully allowed a variety of propaganda to be put forth and even denied having a program, allowing fascism to appear to be whatever one wished it to be. But his benefactors knew what he and they wanted. Fascists were receiving regular subsidies from shopkeepers’ associations and the Confederation of Industry. Socialists came in first in November 1919 elections but conservatives began buying the support of fascist squads and police allowed them to attack unimpeded and even provided support. Mussolini’s March on Rome could not have happened without Italian business leaders financing the fascist squads. Soon King Vittorio Emmanuel appointed him prime minister. Bans on unions and strikes swiftly followed. In Spain, a fascist-minded military overthrew the Republican government; military coups brought fascist generals to power in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s with the support of fascist squads using violent tactics. Violent suppression of working people and their organizations, and reduced wages and working conditions, followed in each case.

In none of the historical cases was a fascist takeover a sudden burst from nowhere. There was much violence by the Right amply funded by corporate leaders and backed by the military and police. The tipping point came before the takeovers — there was, and is, no easily definable point where the rubicon is crossed. Thus vigilance and pushback is always necessary. If it looks like fascism and acts like fascism, then it should be taken seriously as a fascist movement. The 2024 presidential election season has already begun in the U.S., which does not yet have industrialists and bankers bankrolling street thugs and maneuvering to overthrow formal democracy. Those corporate titans certainly appreciated all that the Trump administration, staffed by some of the most virulent ideologues from among the bourgeoisie and comprador, did for them and would do for them again if they get the chance, but that is different from backing an outright fascist movement. Given how much control industrialists and bankers have over the U.S. political process, it is hardly necessary for them to overthrow a system that works so well for them. 

^{July 2018 Stand Up To Racism rally in London (photo by Alisdare Hickson from Canterbury, U.K.)}

Nonetheless, times and conditions can change, and the very fact that a fascist movement exists — one that Trump currently heads but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wishes to assume the leadership of — should be taken with utmost seriousness, especially as it is a movement that shows no sign of dispersing.

There is not a parliamentary system in the United States but rather a two-party system that is seemingly impregnable, and possesses a military that to all appearances, for all its use as a battering ram overseas for corporate plunder, is nonetheless a strictly constitutional body with no hint of domestic unrest. True, but we should disabuse ourselves of elevating form over function. The classical image of fascism is of storm troopers marauding in the streets, violently suppressing any opposition. But 1970s South America was different than 1920s and 1930s Europe. There were fascist gangs running loose in Chile and Argentina, but fascism was imposed through undisguised military coups.

Fascism in the United States, were it to happen, would come in forms different from all of those, with Christian fundamentalists forming a key portion of any base. But what is crucial is that a significant percentage of a country’s industrialists and financiers — its capitalist ruling class — backs the imposition of a dictatorship with money and other support. This is the crucial commonality overriding the different forms of fascist takeovers.

Empty rhetoric versus class interests

Why is this so crucial? Because fascism is a dictatorship imposed for the benefit of large industrialists and financiers. At its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism, are among the necessary elements.

Despite national differences that result in major differences in the appearances of fascism, the class nature is consistent. Big business is invariably the supporter of fascism, no matter what a fascist movement’s rhetoric contains, and is invariably the beneficiary. Instituting a fascist dictatorship is no easy decision even for the biggest industrialists and bankers who might salivate over the potential profits. For even if it is intended to benefit them, these big businessmen are giving up some of their own freedom since they will not directly control the dictatorship; it is a dictatorship for them, not by them.

It is only under certain conditions that business elites resort to fascism — some form of democratic government, under which citizens “consent” to the ruling structure, is the preferred form and much easier to maintain. Working people beginning to withdraw their consent — beginning to seriously challenge the economic status quo — is one “crisis” that can bring on fascism. An inability to maintain or expand profits, as can occur during a steep decline in the “business cycle,” or a structural crisis, is another such “crisis.”

^{Fascism is a global phenomenon, not limited to any one country. (Photo by The All-Nite Images from New York)}

No fascist movement can succeed without a sizable base convinced that those on the Left must be stopped at any cost, that the only way the mystical far Right return to the past that is dangled in front of them can be brought about is for it to be forcibly imposed and those in opposition must be suppressed with violence. This portion of the equation, unfortunately, very much exists in the United States as the unshakable following of Trump sadly demonstrates. Trump’s desire to be a fascist dictator is obvious — this should be unmistakable for anyone on the Left, but sadly isn’t as all too many either still don’t take Trump and his base seriously or, worse, are seduced by Trump’s siren songs.

I was once a guest on a respected environmental radio program discussing the Trump administration’s plans for revising the North American Free Trade Agreement when I was quite rudely interrupted and addressed in a most condescending manner by another guest, the prominent head of a Washington non-governmental organization (NGO) who purported to “correct” me by claiming that Trump’s trade advisers say they want to do away with the secret tribunals that corporations use to overturn government laws and regulations. Trump had been in power more than a year at this point, and his administration’s all-out war on working people and its strenuous efforts to allow corporations to plunder and pollute unencumbered by regulations was in full swing. Moreover, the administration’s trade policy paper had been released — this was the topic I was addressing — and there was nothing ambiguous about its intention of dismantling labor, safety, health or environmental standards upheld by other countries.

Trump’s vaguely left-sounding rhetoric was merely for show, a transparently obvious ploy to attract voters who had very good reasons for deploring so-called “free trade” agreements and the many other policies that have screwed over working people while allowing jobs to be moved overseas. Germans in the Weimar Republic had plenty of reasons to be fed up, too, but those obvious Nazi lies became unmistakably lies when Hitler wiped out those storm troops who believed the left-sounding rhetoric in the “Night of the Long Knives.” Mussolini used such tactics as well.

The records of Trump and DeSantis should be unmistakable

Four years of Trump in the White House — four years of all-out assaults on working people and the environment, incompetent bumbling and lying about the Covid-19 pandemic and giving permission to every misanthrope to act out their most obnoxious anti-social fantasies — could not be clearer. Trump remains an embodiment of the threat of fascism. And what of his main rival for the Republican Party presidential nomination? DeSantis — or DeSatan as he has been dubbed — clearly also has aspirations of becoming a fascist dictator. The governor does not have a rabid popular backing like Trump does but he seems more likely to acquire strong backing from industrialists and financiers than Trump, giving his success in reducing the Florida Legislature to his rubber-stamp. DeSantis might as well be ruling by decree considering how legislators hand him whatever he wants.

The record here needs no introduction for those paying attention. But let us “highlight” some of his doings. He’s waging a scorched-earth war against LGBT communities, denying their humanity and banning to the extent possible even discussing those communities’ interests, imposing draconian abortion bans (women always stripped of rights and reduced to baby machines under fascism), unilaterally removing from office elected officials who dare to disagree with him, banning books, whitewashing history, using immigrants as disposable props in the service of nationalism and nativism, and offering bonuses to police officers to relocate to Florida, many of whom have been accused of criminal acts including domestic battery, kidnapping and murder. So vicious is the police state DeSantis is moving to create and so hostile is the attempt to erase slavery and racism from history that the NAACP has issued a travel advisory for African-Americans to avoid the state.

Although it is inarguably true that an independent fascist party is not going to take power in the United States in the foreseeable future, it is not necessary for one to arise. The two leading candidates for one of the two parties that alternate in power, the Republicans, both have aspirations of being fascist dictators and there is a sizable base of Republicans ready for just that. Little help from the other party, the Democrats, is forthcoming as the “center-left” opposition (in actuality the “center-right” opposition to the far right) is steam-rolled time after time, their inability to stand up to the right or mount any effective opposition is not only the product of being beholden to corporate money and “American exceptionalism” ideology but the intellectual dead end of liberalism. (I’m using North American terminology here; readers in the rest of the world can substitute “social democratic” for “liberal.”)

North American liberalism and European social democracy are trapped by a fervent desire to stabilize an unstable capitalist system. They are hamstrung by their belief in the capitalist system, which means, today, a belief in austerity for working people and subsidies for corporate and financial plunder, no matter what nice speeches they may make. When Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jean Chrétien, Justin Trudeau, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, François Hollande, Gerhard Schröder, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Romano Prodi all fall to their knees in front of industrialists and financiers, when each speedily implements neoliberal austerity policies despite leading the supposed “center-left” opposition to the conservative parties that openly stand for corporate domination, there is something other than personal weakness at work. And this sorry record — Bill Clinton was the most effective Republican president the U.S. ever had — provides an opening for far right demagogues to offer left-sounding siren songs that fool too many.

Nonetheless, I can readily understand why so many United Statesians, not only liberals but even those who are on the Left, vote for Democrats as a tactical move, arguing that a Democrat in power, particularly in the White House, provides more space to maneuver. Although I personally don’t have the stomach to vote for Democrats, I certainly understand this tactical voting as a matter of survival, especially as each Republican administration is worse than the last. But it would be helpful if Democratic voters would put some pressure on their office holders to actually try to implement some of what they want rather than giving them a free pass. And a different strategy from the usual Democratic Party cringing and cowering shouldn’t mean cowering first and then cringing.

Voting aside — and voting should be the least of the things we do — fascism can only be stopped by a mass movement, by confronting it directly. And that means taking seriously the danger, rather than laughing at the ignorance of Trump and his blinkered followers. Fascism is never a laughing matter as its body count ought to make clear.

As long as capitalism exists, the threat of fascism exists

Six years is an eternity in politics. Consider what was common opinion at the start of 2016: That changing demographics in the United States favored the Democratic Party; it would soon be impossible for Republicans to win a national election unless they sharply changed from their primary strategy of sending dog whistles to their base of conservative white people, a dwindling percentage of the U.S. population.

Six short years later, there is not only much hand-wringing that Republicans are using bare-knuckle tactics that are poised to give themselves a permanent grip on power despite their minority status but there is open worry of a possible coup by fascistic elements in the Republican Party that would put an end to formal democracy. No longer, it seems, is demographics destiny; the Democratic Party, ever haughtily giving the back of the hand to its base, had believed it merely need show up to win elections.

One year on from Donald Trump’s attempt at a fascist coup — that the attack on the Capitol by his deluded but fanatical followers had no chance to succeed does not mitigate the severity of that day — the Orange Menace’s grip on the worst of the two parties of capital has further tightened. And perhaps Republicans won’t have to resort to widespread cheating and voter suppression to win back the White House — not that the possibility will in any way give them second thoughts about blocking access to the ballot box — given the pathetic performance of Democrats since winning the 2020 elections, a lack of results dismal even by Democrats’ standards of ineptitude.

^{Fascism is a global phenomenon, not limited to any one country. (Photo by The All-Nite Images from New York)}

Many reading these lines will wonder why we should care which party wins since neither of the two parties of capital will work for working people, who constitute the vast majority of United Statesians as they do in any advanced capitalist country. Even the minuscule number of genuine progressives among Democratic members of Congress are constrained by their party’s dominant corporate wing and, due to the material realities of elite politics, inevitably find themselves politically supporting that wing. Nor is the corporate wing reluctant to undercut its electoral base and its progressive colleagues. Witness House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doing an end-run around the Squad’s refusal to back the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the larger Build Back Better bill passed the Senate by gathering sufficient Republican votes to win passage of the infrastructure bill and thus torpedo the only leverage the party had over its two Senate holdouts, fossil-fuel mouthpiece Joe Manchin and perfidious Kyrsten Sinema. It is impossible to avoid thinking there are other Democrats secretly glad the focus is on those two holdouts, allowing them to avoid the pressure to vote for Build Back Better.

There are others who argue that people should hold their noses and vote for Democrats anyway, given that when Democrats are in office there is more room to maneuver and some possibility of some small reforms. The all-out assault by Republicans, when Trump occupied the White House, on seemingly every front does provide support to lesser-evilism voting. So those who do hold their noses and vote for Democrats won’t get any criticism from me although I can’t bring myself to do it. Whether voting for lesser evils or for socialist or Green candidates, the important thing is to be involved in organizing; taking a half-hour to vote once a year need not detract from activist work.

Nonetheless, there are anti-capitalists, including Marxists, who argue forcefully that Trump and his minions are a unique threat, a threat that rises to the threat of fascism. Fascism is far worse than capitalist formal democracy, sham as the latter is. There is no question, or shouldn’t be, that Trump has aspirations of being a fascist dictator. That alone should be enough to see him and his followers as a mortal threat. Trump does not have sufficient support of industrialists and financiers (however much they applaud what he did for them while in office) to actually become a fascist dictator, and his base, although depressingly large and immune to reason and reality, is not big enough for a successful putsch.

Trump does have the blind support of the Republican Party, after Republican leaders momentarily wavered during the immediate aftermath of the 2021 insurrection, so he does have an institutional base he originally lacked — an institution that has become singularly focused on voter suppression and using all means available to put themselves in a position to overturn election results that don’t go their way. There is indeed here an existential threat to the formal democracy of the United States. History provides no shortage of warnings of what could happen, from Weimar Germany and post-World War 1 Italy to Chile and Argentina in the 1970s.

Fascism is a specific form of dictatorship

First, let’s clarify what the political term fascism means. It does not mean any right-wing movement or politician we don’t like, and shouldn’t be thrown around as such. What it does reference is a specific political phenomenon.

At its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism, are among the necessary elements.

Despite national differences that result in major differences in the appearances of fascism, the class nature is consistent. Big business is invariably the supporter of fascism, no matter the content of a fascist movement’s rhetoric, and is invariably the beneficiary. Instituting a fascist dictatorship is no easy decision even for the biggest industrialists, bankers and landowners who might salivate over the potential profits. For even if it is intended to benefit them, these big businessmen are giving up some of their own freedom since they will not directly control the dictatorship; it is a dictatorship for them, not by them. It is only under certain conditions that business elites resort to fascism — some form of democratic government, under which citizens “consent” to the ruling structure, is the preferred form and much easier to maintain.

^{Boston Free Speech rally counter-protesters on August 19, 2017 (photo by GorillaWarfare)}

Fascism is instituted when it is no longer possible for capitalists to enjoy the profits they believe they are entitled to, or to put a forceful end to large and rising left-wing movements threatening the power of industrialists and financiers. Neither of these conditions are in place in the United States, and with one party dedicated to using existing legal power to repress working people and giving capitalists all they want, and the other party giving them much of what they want while absorbing and smothering nascent movements, formal democracy works just fine for them. What immediate need do they have of going to the trouble of instituting a dictatorship? (Although some of course would love to have one no matter the circumstances.)

The foregoing does not give us license to be complacent. The economy is fragile, environmental destruction steadily mounts, and the numbers of people willing to oppose capitalism has grown tremendously over the past couple of decades, particularly since the 2008 economic crash. And industrialists and financiers — the bourgeoisie to use the classical term — believe themselves entitled to rule. The most important lesson from studying the fascism of the past is the overwhelming violence they will use to keep themselves in power. (No surprise there, given that violence, slavery, colonialism and plunder established capitalism and has kept it in place ever since.) U.S. capitalists are quite content to have police and the world’s biggest and most well-equipped military at their service, and there has never been much hesitation to use it.

If conditions continue to deteriorate, then Trump (or, more likely, someone with more intelligence and self-control) could be tapped on the shoulder. Trump is hardly the only demagogue out there. It could have happened in the 1930s. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first year as president, a group of bankers and industrialists, backed by financing from DuPont, General Motors and Morgan Bank, hatched a scheme to institute fascism. Wall Street bond salesman Gerald McGuire approached retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler with an offer for him to be the fascist leader and deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt to either take orders from businessmen or be forced from office by an army of 500,000 veterans. Their arms were to be supplied by Remington, a DuPont subsidiary.

Butler declined, informed Roosevelt and the plan was defused by leaking it to the press. No one was punished and the coup threat was treated as a joke. Perhaps the coup plotters didn’t do their homework — Butler, in 1929, became the first general officer since the Civil War to be placed under arrest. His crime? Criticizing Benito Mussolini! Butler, summing up his highly decorated career in 1935, said in an interview, “I spent thirty three years and four months [in] the Marine Corps. … [D]uring that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Don’t confuse form with content

What we shouldn’t get hung up on is appearances. Chilean fascism under Pinochet and the Argentine “Process” took different forms than did the classical German and Italian varieties, and any fascism in the U.S. would have further divergences and would be wrapped in Christian fundamentalism and phony right-wing “populism.” Political culture in North America is such that brownshirts goose-stepping down the street wouldn’t have much appeal, and we need not have that. There were fascist street gangs in Chile and Argentina who did much marauding and received funding, but in those cases the military was the decisive organization. The military and police would almost certainly be decisive in any fascist takeover in the U.S., with crucial support from the right-wing militias that already exist and Trump’s middle-class base that we saw in action at the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Comparisons of present-day United States to Weimar Germany are easily overstated, but the years leading up to Hitler being handed power (it is a myth that he was elected) are instructive. Consider the full name of the Nazi party — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Yet workers were whom the Nazis intended to suppress on behalf of their corporate benefactors. At the same time that Nazi rhetoric claimed to uphold the right to strike and other worker interests, Hitler was assuring Germany’s industrialists that such policies were merely an attempt to gain popular support and would not be implemented.

^{Mural paintings in honor of Jecar Neghme of Chile’s MIR in the place where he was killed by the Pinochet government. (Credit: Ciberprofe)}

What Hitler’s corporate bankrollers wanted was clear enough: the destruction of their workers’ ability to defend themselves and higher profits in a stable atmosphere. This Hitler promised in meetings of Nazi leaders and industrialists. But no matter how powerful they are, numerically these big businessmen are a minuscule portion of the population. How to create popular support for a movement that would destroy unions, strip working people of all protections, regiment all spheres of life, mercilessly destroy several groups of society, reduce the standard of living of those who still had jobs and inevitably lead to war? This is not an appealing program.

Germany’s blue-collar workforce mostly didn’t buy into fascist siren songs, and continued to support the Communists and the Social Democrats, although it was sharply divided between the two. Most of the middle class, however, was a different story. The desperate economic crisis of the Weimar Republic devastated the shopkeeper, the professional, the white-collar worker on the lower rungs of management. The middle class was losing or threatened with losing what it had, and its sons and daughters were unemployed with little or no prospects. From here the Nazis were able to draw their votes, and these sons, along with unpoliticized people at the bottom of society, swelled the ranks of the storm troops.

The Nazis skillfully appealed to German middle class fears of economic dislocation, the increasing numbers of unemployed blue-collar workers, the threat of being swallowed by big business, and political instability (although the Nazis were the most responsible for the last of those four), creating the social base needed by the economic elite to bring its movement to power. A movement that was as anathema to the middle class as it was to the lower economic ranks, although its middle-class supporters were blind to that reality as the Nazis simultaneously appealed to its grudges against societal elites.

In the last election before President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor, the Nazi vote was 2 million less than the combined vote for Communists and Social Democrats. Although there were many Communists who bravely battled Nazis in the streets, there was no attempt at a united defense of the two parties or their armed followers. The Communists, the Social Democrats and the unions all failed to mount any effective challenge, and the leaders of what remained of Germany’s centrist and nationalist right-wing parties thought they could control Hitler. Had the Communists, Social Democrats and the unions made a common fight against the Nazis, that would have been enough to stop Hitler’s accession to power.

Once in power, Hitler quickly arrested the political opposition, putting Communists, Social Democrats, union leaders and others into concentration camps. Within weeks, the right to strike was abolished, union contracts were canceled and an employer-aligned fascist “union” began to replace the existing unions. With opposition silenced by terror, severe oppression of Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, artists and others began. Once Hitler had destroyed all political opposition, there was no need to maintain his corps of street thugs, some of whom began demanding that the populist promises begin to be fulfilled. The storm troops, too, found out those promises were fantasy and this potential internal Nazi opposition was crushed in the murderous 1934 “Night of the Long Knives.”

From German shopkeepers to U.S. small business owners

Yes, history never repeats exactly. But what is noteworthy here is the class composition of Nazi support beyond big capitalists, who provided huge sums of money. It was shopkeepers, professionals and the white-collar workers on the lower rungs of management. This is consistently the case with fascist movements. It was the middle classes who supported a military overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, as did the parties they voted for. (Both parties of the opposition to President Allende’s Popular Unity government were banned after the takeover; Pinochet’s blood-soaked dictatorship was a régime for Chilean big business and U.S.-based multinational capital, not a régime for shopkeepers or white-collar professionals, nor even big business’ political representatives, as they would soon find out.)

Although the middle classes in a capitalist country, particularly in advanced capitalist countries, are highly heterogeneous, including a wide mix of people with varying interests and thus unable to constitute an organized bloc, the weight of their demographic size can make them decisive if large numbers go one way or another. Large numbers in the U.S. are anti-fascist and/or Democratic Party partisans, and many of their sons and daughters are describing themselves as socialists, even if an ill-defined socialism that is more oriented toward strong reforms of capitalism unable to be accommodated by Democrats. Nonetheless, it is from middle class ranks that support for Trump comes. That has been seen clearly as hundreds of Trump’s insurgents are prosecuted (albeit treated with kid gloves in contrast to the harsh treatment of Black Lives Matter and other left-wing protest movements).

^{Raleigh-Durham IWW stands with clergy at the stairs to Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia (photo by Anthony Crider)}

The “Tea Party” that arose during the Obama administration was a classic “astroturf” operation, a “movement” that was begun, organized and funded by corporate interests such as the organizations of the Koch Brothers and Republican Party leaders like Dick Armey. It is a straight line from the Tea Party to Trump; they have similar social bases and many of the same financial benefactors.

A study by two University of Chicago researchers, for example, found that more than half of the January 6 insurrectionists held white-collar positions such as small business owners, architects, doctors and lawyers. The two researchers, political-science professor Robert A. Pape and senior research associate Keven Ruby, also found that a large number of the insurrectionists live in counties that have seen declines in their White, non-Hispanic population, also not a surprise given the “great replacement” canard Trump-style fascists are fond of peddling. That of course was a prominent theme in the 2017 fascist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Whatever capitalist country you live in, it can happen there. Fascism is capitalism stripped of all democratic veneers. In every fascist state, wages drastically decline accompanied by draconian laws stripping working people of all protections at the same time that corporate profits rise dramatically, all in an atmosphere of state-organized terror. The only safeguard against this happening in any capitalist country, including the United States, is for working people to organize in their own defense. Given the sorry record of social democracy, no help from there will come to the rescue in Europe. In the U.S., it would be laughable to believe the Democrats would save us from potential Republican dictatorship, whether a conventional authoritarianism or an outright fascist régime.

The long history of Democrats falling to their knees

Democratic Party ineptitude and weak-kneed acquiescence has been on display long before the Biden administration and current congressional majority’s yearlong lack of resolve. From Jimmy Carter’s austerity setting up the start of the neoliberal era for Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton ramming through regressive legislation that Republicans could only dreamed of having done to Democrats’ meek “me too” in response to Newt Gingrich’s Contract On America and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress to Barack Obama’s serial capitulations to Democrats’ present inability (unwillingness?) to implement the programs they were elected to fulfill, and instead give the Pentagon another raise, liberals are persistently run over by conservatives. But however weak-willed Democrats are, that is only one side of the picture.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Democrats believe in so-called “American exceptionalism,” imperialism and corporate control of society just as fervently as do Republicans.

Liberalism has reached an intellectual dead end, however much individual liberals may yearn for alternatives. There are various reasons that can be assigned as to the cause of the Democratic Party’s — and, thus, North American liberalism’s — steady march rightward: Dependence on corporate money, corruption, domination of the mass media by the Right, philosophical and economic myopia, cowardliness. Although these factors form a significant portion of the answer to the puzzle, an underlying cause has to be found in the exhaustion of North American liberalism. Similar to European social democracy, it is trapped by its core desire to stabilize an unstable capitalist system.

In contrast to the Right, which loudly advocates what it stands for and uses all means possible to get it, liberals are caught in the contradiction of knowing changes are needed but unable to put forth anything beyond the most tepid reforms, a bit of tinkering around the edges. The Democratic Party is not only reliant on corporate money, but in thrall to ideologies that promote corporate domination, propaganda blasted across the corporate media and propagated through a thick web of “think tanks” and other well-funded institutions. With no clear ideas to fall back on, they meekly fall to their knees when the world’s industrialists and financiers, acting through their corporations, think tanks and the “market,” pronounce their verdict on what is to be done.

There is no secret formula waiting to be discovered. The only way to prevent a fascist takeover is through the same methodology that is the route to a better world: A mass movement of movements linking together struggles, organizing with people who don’t look like us and uniting across borders. As long as capitalism exists, the threat of fascism exists.

The threat of fascism rears its head in Washington

Let’s not mince words: Wednesday’s storming of the United States Capitol building was the work of fascism. That it didn’t and couldn’t succeed, and that Donald Trump is days from being out of the White House, should not blind us to the reality of larger social forces at work.

The Orange Menace possibly finished off his personal political prospects with his pathetic attempt at a putsch — although I suspect the shameless toadying of Republicans seeking to capture his base for future elections will continue — but, as I have already written, Trump’s base isn’t going anywhere. Neither are Trump’s fans among the police.

By midnight Wednesday, police had arrested a total of 52 people, counting from Tuesday afternoon. Contrast that to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, when at least 430 people were arrested.

Consider the difference. White people storm an important seat of government, terrorize those inside and stage the equivalent of an armed insurrection, yet it takes hours for police reinforcements to arrive and those who don’t leave are allowed to mill around for hours past a curfew. Police claim they were surprised by the size of the crowd even though Trumpites had announced their intention days ahead of time, the Orange Menace himself told his followers to go to the Capitol that morning and Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” 

In contrast, peaceful protestors motivated by the injustices of police brutality and indifference to Black lives walked down streets and are met with massive force and indiscriminate arrests. Multiple federal and local law enforcement agencies brought in tanks and other vehicles and built an eight-foot-tall fence surrounding Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. And that show of force was hardly limited to Washington. By June 4, less than two weeks after George Floyd’s murder by police, more than 10,000 people had been arrested across the U.S., according to an Associated Press tally. Here’s what The Associated Press had to say that day:

“As cities were engulfed in unrest last week, politicians claimed that the majority of the protesters were outside agitators, including a contention by Minnesota’s governor that 80 percent of the participants in the demonstrations were from out of state. The arrests in Minneapolis during a frenzied weekend tell a different story. In a nearly 24-hour period from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, 41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses, according to the Hennepin County sheriff. In the nation’s capital, 86 percent of the more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.”

Those “outside agitators” must have had sophisticated teleporting equipment to have been in so many cities at once. What a pity they haven’t shared it with us.

Police show their preferences

During Trump’s inaugural, more than 200 protestors were arrested, including journalists. Earlier this year, tear gas and force were used to disperse peaceful demonstrators just so Trump could wave a bible in front of a church. So we have a pattern here.

The skin complexion of the demonstrators has much to do with these different approaches on the part of law enforcement. We can all imagine the body count that would have resulted had a Black group decided to storm the Capitol. But political affiliation is not absent. It’s no secret that police heavily favor Trump and are well to the right of the populations they supposedly serve, and police unions across the country took a few minutes off from screaming for officers to be entirely beyond accountability to endorse Trump.

Pictures of police posing for selfies with the invaders inside the Capitol began circulating by Wednesday evenings, and videos circulated showing officers allowing the mob through a gate, facilitating the invaders’ ability to get inside the building. Anybody who was watching the television coverage as the events unfolded, as I did, could see that the Capitol invaders were handled with kid gloves. Police were seen walking with the invaders down the steps of the Capitol and only hours later slowly pushed the mob away with periodic advances, taking care to give the mob plenty of time to move back.

Nor was the storming of the Capitol a spontaneous event. As housing and feminist activist Fran Luck noted, there was the appearance of preparation:

“While watching coverage of the terrorist incursion into Congress today, when I saw the group of burly men effortlessly scale a 20+-foot wall surrounding the Capitol, it occurred to me that they must have had military training to do this — it’s not easy to climb straight up vertically without much to hold on to — but it is what they teach you to do in army basic training. I also noticed they were dressed similarly, with flag handkerchiefs hanging out of their back right-hand back pockets. In my opinion, this was a staged action — probably rehearsed by a ‘militia’ and consciously created for future propaganda for the purpose of attracting new recruits This might also apply to the photo they released of the man wearing a MAGA hat and holding a rifle while sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s computer; it could be used to convey the message: ‘Look how far we got this time — next time we’ll be ready to go all the way!’ ” 

Again, a most sharp contrast to Black Lives Matter protests, repeatedly violently attacked by police. And police violence at demonstrations for Left causes is routine. Again, it is impossible not to notice the bias in policing. Recall the 2016 standoff in an Oregon national wildlife refuge, when a pack of White far right militia members took over the refuge’s headquarters, seeking to spark a national uprising, yet were allowed to come and go as they pleased and to destroy Native American artifacts.

White privilege was fully on display during Wednesday’s Capitol invasion, in addition to police demonstrating plainly their political preferences.

Aspiring fascist leaders need violent mobs

“What else is new” shouldn’t be our response. The conclusion to be drawn from Wednesday’s events is that we are almost certainly at the beginning of a fascist upsurge. There is no other conclusion to be drawn. Trump doesn’t have the intelligence or sufficient ruling-class backing to be a fascist dictator, and we can only hope he’ll be seeing the inside of a courtroom soon and then the inside of a prison. But it is quite possible another demagogue will arise, and the next one might not be such a buffoon. 

That is only part of the equation — there can be no fascist movement without street thugs and followers willing to use violence. The shock troops were on display Wednesday. Not nearly enough to pose an immediate threat and certainly too few to actually take over the Capitol even with police assistance. But with millions believing Trump’s lies and ready to move on his word, a latent threat exists. And, perhaps, those shock troops might transfer their loyalties to another wanna-be dictator, one perhaps with more ability.

Nor can we take solace in the fact that formal democracy remains the preferred method of governing; with most United Statesians still willing to believe they can better their circumstances through electoral politics, there is no need for U.S. industrialists and financiers to impose an outright dictatorship, especially as they continue to have an iron grip on the country’s government, mass media and institutions, and exert decisive influence over both major political parties.

The threat of fascism always looms in the background as long as capitalism exists. If a capitalist ruling class comes to a consensus that dictatorship is the only way to maintain their profits and power, then they are willing to unleash fascism, as happened in Italy, Germany, Spain, Chile, Argentina and other countries across the 20th century. The imposition of fascism arrives with shock troops — street thugs — augmented by police and the military, although sometimes, as was the case in Chile and Argentina, the street thugs augment the police and military. 

The street thugs following Trump have now shown their willingness to spring into action. Are the rest of us willing to step up and out-organize them?

Don’t let up: Fascism isn’t dead yet

Even if Joe Biden had won the U.S. presidency by the expected landslide, the threat of fascism would remain. And not simply because Trumpites are not going away anytime soon.

Donald Trump doesn’t have the intelligence or sufficient ruling-class backing to actually become a fascist dictator. His desire to be one, however, has been more than sufficient to necessitate the widest possible movement against him and the social forces he represents, and there is no doubt his authoritarian impulses would have become still worse had he won a second term. What little democracy is left in the United States’ capitalist formal democracy would have been further reduced.

It might be better to understand Trump as the Republican Party’s frankenstein — the culmination of the Republican “Southern Strategy.” Richard Nixon was an open racist who developed the strategy of sending dog whistles to White racists; Ronald Reagan promoted “states’ rights,” well understood code words for supporting racially biased policies; George H.W. Bush exploited racial stereotypes with his Willie Horton campaign ads; George W. Bush’s presidency will be remembered for his callous ignoring of New Orleans and its African-American population in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and the roster of Republicans hostile to civil rights is too long to list. Moreover, the Republican Party, with very few exceptions, has been an eager promoter and enabler of Trump’s virulent pro-big business policies with most not even bothering to pretend to challenge Trump’s racism and misogyny.

It was no surprise that a billionaire con man whose business plan has long been to screw his real estate empire’s working-class contractors and use every trick imaginable to not pay taxes or his creditors was going to stick it to working people. 

Protesters in Portland, Oregon, on the Morrison Bridge on June 3, 2020 (photo by Henryodell)

The Trump administration has been the worst U.S. presidency in history with an extraordinarily fierce approach to class warfare. But let us consider what fascism is: At its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism, are among the necessary elements.

Despite varying national characteristics that result in major differences in the appearances of fascism, the class nature is consistent. Big business is invariably the supporter of fascism, no matter what a fascist movement’s rhetoric contains, and is invariably the beneficiary. We often think of fascism in the classical 1930s form, of Nazis goose-stepping or the street violence of Benito Mussolini’s followers. But it took somewhat different forms later in the 20th century, being instituted through military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. Any fascism that might arise in the U.S. would be wrapped in right-wing populism and, given the particular social constructs there, that populism would include demands to “return to the Constitution” and “secure the borders.”

Formal democracy vs. fascism

United Statesians have indeed suffered through four years of militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, the imposition of “constitutionalist” judges and demands to “secure” borders, complete with open racism and misogyny. But the Trump administration and its followers constitute a movement with the potential to bring about a fascist dictatorship, not actual fascism. Should the U.S. ruling class — industrialists and financiers — decide they would no longer tolerate the country’s limited, corporate-constrained variety of “democracy,” the militias and assorted far right street gangs that “stand by” on Trump’s command would be unleashed without constraint. And they would be openly joined by police and security agencies in fomenting violence rather than being tacitly supported as they are at present.

Nonetheless, fascism is the last resort of any capitalist ruling class. Instituting a fascist dictatorship is no easy decision even for the biggest industrialists, bankers and landowners who might salivate over the potential profits. For even if it is intended to benefit them, these business elites are giving up some of their own freedom since they will not directly control the dictatorship; it is a dictatorship for them, not by them. It is only under certain conditions that business elites resort to fascism — some form of formal democratic government, under which citizens “consent” to the ruling structure, is the preferred form and much easier to maintain. Working people beginning to withdraw their consent — beginning to seriously challenge the economic status quo — is one “crisis” that can bring on fascism. An inability to maintain or expand profits, as can occur during a steep decline in the “business cycle,” or a structural crisis, is another such “crisis.”

A rally against Donald Trump in New York City on March 19, 2016, organized by the Cosmopolitan Antifascists

Industrialists and financiers have an iron grip on U.S. politics (witness the dreadful choice the two corporate parties have just offered), and the overdue economic downturn triggered by the pandemic has not hurt profits for most big corporations, with bailouts provided for those who have taken a hit to their bottom lines. Financiers and speculators are doing quite well, and because Wall Street values stability, financiers likely were more behind Joe Biden than Trump. As the Democratic Party favors financiers (while the Republicans favor industrialists), Wall Street will have no problem at all with a Biden administration. Some industrialists likely have tired of Trump’s antics, or calculate that they have gotten all the services they can reasonably expect from him; some among this grouping probably don’t mind a change. And given Joe Biden’s decades of loyal service to corporate interests, in particular the banking industry, little gnashing of teeth is likely to be found in corporate boardrooms.

There was no need for U.S. capitalists to institute a fascist dictatorship during the Trump administration and there won’t be any need in the near future. So, to circle back to the opening of this article, why should it be said that the threat of fascism is undiminished with the ouster of Trump? That is because as long as capitalism exists, the threat of fascism exists.

The rule of capital

The system is called capitalism for a reason — it is the rule of capital. The owners of capital. Those who have capital generally divide into two camps, industrialists and financiers, as alluded to above. Industrialists own or are the top managers of enterprises that produce tangible goods and services, while financiers trade, buy and sell stocks, bonds and other securities, continually inventing new instruments to profit off virtually every aspect of commercial activity. The two compete fiercely for the bigger half of the profits and thus have sometimes conflicting interests, but there is considerable overlap between the two sectors of capitalists. Crucially, their class interests are completely aligned. 

Employees are paid far less than the value of what they produce; this is the source of corporate profit. The bloated salaries and profits generated by exploitation of employees is far greater than can be thrown into spending on luxuries or used for business investment, so these massive piles of money are diverted into financial speculation, swelling an already bloated financial sector, which grabs large amounts of this speculative money for itself. Top managers of industrial firms in turn are paid largely in stock so that their interests are “aligned” with that of finance capital, to use Wall Street lingo.

This is the ordinary and routine working of capitalism. As long as people consent to this arrangement — and thus consent to their ongoing exploitation — all is well for industrialists and financiers. But what if consent begins to be withdrawn? What if an economic downturn is so severe and sustained that it becomes difficult to extract profits? This is when capitalists begin to think about putting an end to formal democracy and instituting authoritarian rule. At the most extreme, this authoritarian rule can slide into fascism. Such a scenario is always a possibility because capitalism is inherently unstable. Twenty years into the 21st century, we’re already living through a third economic downturn, each worse than the previous one.

United Statesians, for now, have pushed back against a potential slide toward fascism by ousting Trump. But the recent global trend is unmistakable: Far right authoritarian ideologues remain in office in countries around the world, among them Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary and Poland, and the U.S. has a history stretching back to the 19th century of installing right-wing dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments. Capitalists have a variety of economic tools at their disposal to maintain their rule, the armed force of governments to enforce their rule, and a variety of institutions and control of the mass media to reinforce ideologies upholding their rule. Elections in capitalist countries decide who gets to govern, not who gets to rule.

Formal democracy is the preferred method of ruling, but if violence, ranging all the way to fascism, is the only way to maintain their power, that is what industrialists and financiers will insist their governments impose. Fascism can’t arise or be raised to power without a social base, a badly confused bloc that supplies support and the shock troops. This social base has to be maleducated enough to believe the obvious lies spewed by the leader and be enthused by the permission granted to openly display their hatreds, be those racism, misogyny, nativism, homophobia or anti-Semitism, permission wrapped in virulent nationalism. The millions of fanatical Trump followers are a monument to the lack of education in the U.S., a pervasive propaganda system and the product of decades of relentless Republican Party ideology. There can be no potential fascist movement without such a social base.

Given this fanatical support of Trump despite the massive failures and undisguised class warfare of his administration, both the followers and the shock troops remain even when Trump leaves the White House. Will they be called on in the future? If you don’t want the threat of fascism to hover in the background, you’ll have to get rid of capitalism.

The problem is fascists, not those who stand up to them

The ongoing debate of recent weeks around how, or if, to confront demonstrations of white supremacists and fascists is the latest manifestation of arguments the Left and liberals have been having for many years. For this is not simply a question of tactics but incorporates broader ideas of how we conceptualize the threat from the extreme Right.

For decades, the liberal “solution” to fascists, including marches by undisguised neo-Nazis, has traditionally been to go to the other side of town, pray and hope they go away. Critiques of antifa and other groups who courageously stood up to the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, are variations on that pacifist theme. We need do no more than refer to Cornel West’s support of “the anti-fascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that.”

Raleigh-Durham IWW stands with clergy at the stairs to Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia (photo by Anthony Crider)

The problem with liberal-pacifist responses is that, if adopted, the only result would be to embolden the fascists. The white-nationalist gangs behind the Charlottesville rally unmistakably intended to intimidate. Remember that another demonstration was scheduled for Boston the following weekend and several others were planned. Instead, because they were confronted in Charlottesville, their Boston rally became a fiasco for them and appearances in other locations were called off. Communities showed what they think of them. The result for speaks for itself.

The foremost problem with liberal-pacifist responses is that it tells people they have no right to defend themselves. That should be rejected, emphatically. The violence of hate-mongers like those carrying the torches in Charlottesville and any violence that is used in defense by people who have no choice but to physically defend themselves has no equivalence. Should people have just stood there and allowed violence to be perpetrated against them and allow gangs of white supremacists and fascists to intimidate the majority — the vast majority — into silence? Do we really need to ponder this question?

Sufficient numbers in themselves stop fascists

Fighting back needn’t be physical, and generally does not need to be if there are sufficient counter-forces. I’ll draw here on two examples from late 1990s in New York City.

In the first example, a small band of neo-Nazis were running loose on Staten Island, the city’s right-wing outpost situated at a distance from the rest of the city. There were five of them, apparently inspired by a truly loathsome “novel” called The Turner Diaries, which features scenes of vast groups of people hung by Nazis during a race war. (To give you an idea of the demographics there, Donald Trump won Staten Island even though he received only 18 percent of the overall New York City presidential vote.)

A small group that I was then a member in, New York Workers Against Fascism, organized a coalition to confront the neo-Nazis. It was quickly decided to organize a series of peaceful demonstrations on the belief that a violent response would only alienate the community we were attempting to rally against the neo-Nazis. At one rally, in a park, the neo-Nazis actually showed up in uniform, across a busy street, and started giving Hitler salutes while shouting “white power.” They were simultaneously pathetic and representative of a potentially highly dangerous trend. In this instance, we had to hold back a group of anarchists from Love and Rage who wanted to charge, one of whom angrily told me “I came here to smash fascists.” I answered that today we were going to smash them peacefully. Conceding to the coalition’s consensus, he didn’t charge although he remained angry. Tactics had to be a serious consideration here.

Note the coalition did not go to another part of the island and pray the neo-Nazis would go away. In this case, a confrontation needed to be non-violent, although we did have some baseball bats hidden in case we were attacked. Fortunately, they stayed hidden as the coalition significantly out-numbered the neo-Nazis.

A few years later, a Ku Klux Klan group decided to have a rally in Manhattan. Setting aside the idiocy of them thinking they could get a foothold in a place like New York City (fascists aren’t the brightest bulbs, to put it mildly), one can’t help but wonder how they thought they could get any reception other than the one they got. Their appearance was scheduled for Foley Square, a downtown location with wide spaces. Eight of them showed up, guarded by hundreds of police officers and surrounded and heckled by about 80,000 counter-demonstrators. Yes, we outnumbered them 10,000 to one! The Klan ended its event early and were said to have received an escort by the police to the Holland Tunnel, the nearest exit from the city.

Similarly, the white supremacists were badly outnumbered in Boston last month and had to be protected from the people of Boston by rings of police and metal barricades. They had to slink home. They were successfully confronted. Not by praying they would go away but by so out-numbering them that they had to concede defeat and realize how unpopular their racism and misogyny is, even if they are highly unlikely to admit to themselves.

Communities are entitled to defend themselves

Questions of tactics, based on the immediate situation, the size of the forces on the two sides and the community being defended and/or reached out to, should predominate. Should we condemn antifa for a physical defense in light of the other outcomes discussed here? Emphatically no. The situation in Charlottesville called for such a defense, as Professor West directly said. The next time a community needs to defend against physical jeopardy, we can only hope there will be people ready to provide it.

Let’s not forget what fascists stand for. They stand not simply for hate, but for supremacy of one group over another, violence to enforce such supremacy and ultimately the annihilation of demonized peoples and groups. We all understand what fascism led to Nazi Germany.

Boston Free Speech rally counter-protesters on August 19, 2017 (photo by GorillaWarfare)

The Holocaust should not be out of our minds when fascists carrying torches march in formation chanting “Jews will not replace us.” When we think about where fantasies of white supremacy lead, such as in the apartheid systems of South Africa and the United States South of the pre-civil rights era, and in slavery, ideologies of white supremacy should not be taken lightly. When we see the results of misogyny globally, especially but far from only in régimes run by religious fundamentalists, talk of making women subordinate to men can’t be laughed off as nothing but the fantasy of losers who can’t get a girlfriend.

Liberals who don’t want to confront these threats but insist on an absolutist free-speech position, even to the point of saying we should engage with fascists, are playing with fire. You don’t “debate” people who deliver their message only with violence. You don’t debate whether one racial group if superior to another. You don’t debate whether we should adopt social forms reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. You don’t debate whether the Holocaust happened or if there is an international Jewish conspiracy. Just as the proverbial “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” puts limits on free speech, advocating the annihilation of people (always conveniently different) is outside any reasonable definition of free speech. Yes, that means “no platform for fascists” — we shouldn’t apologize for such a stance, which is what the non-violent confrontations recounted above amount to.

All working people are ultimately threatened by fascist ideologies. Beyond all the reasons already discussed (more than sufficient in themselves), there is the question of who fascist movements serve. That there is no immediate danger of a fascist takeover in the United States (or almost any other global North country, Hungary and Poland excepted) does not mean we should ignore the class nature of fascism.

Who would a dictatorship serve?

As always, we should carefully distinguish between right-wing demagogues like Donald Trump (whose election is ultimately a product of decades of routine Republican Party rhetoric) and his ability to actually implement fascist rule. Once again, it might be best to see the Trump phenomenon as constituting the seeds for a potential fascist movement rather than a fully fledged fascism. That ought to be scary enough, and enough for all of us to make a stand against it. To say this is not to ignore the glaring connections between the Trump administration and white supremacists and the so-called “alt-right” (let’s retire that silly term and just call them fascists or fascist wannabes), but rather to note that most of the U.S. ruling class — industrialists and financiers — backed Hillary Clinton and not President Trump in the 2016 election.

That matters, because at its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism, are among the necessary elements, although not sufficient in themselves.

Despite national differences that result in major variations in the appearances of fascism, the class nature is consistent. Big business is invariably the supporter of fascism, no matter what a fascist movement’s rhetoric contains, and is invariably the beneficiary. For even if it is intended to benefit them, these big businessmen are giving up some of their own freedom since they will not directly control the dictatorship; it is a dictatorship for them, not by them. After using violent militias to gain power, those militias are quickly sidelined.

Hitler would never have reached power without significant material support from German industrialists. German industrialists and aristocrats, and the conservative politicians who served them, thought they could control Hitler if they put him in government. They couldn’t, but profited enormously as wages for German workers declined sharply and were enforced by labor codes that even a Nazi paper once said were “reminiscent of penal codes.” It was little different in Mussolini’s Spain or Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile.

Think it can’t happen in your country? It can. Any country dominated by the capitalist system is at risk of fascism because fascism is capitalism with all the democratic veneers stripped away, when capitalists come to believe they can’t continue to rule and maintain profits any other way. That fascist groups, even the Nazi Party, start out as small bands of deluded misfits lashing out at scapegoats because they don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand the world they live in, in no way alters this picture.

Better to definitively defeat fascist grouplets now, before they have any chance of becoming tools. Anti-fascist organizers are doing humanity a service, whether peacefully counter-demonstrating or using more militant tactics such as those of antifa.

What do we do when a neo-Nazi speaks at a Left venue?

A sharp controversy has been raging in New York City Left circles for the past week, as one of the city’s few remaining Left spaces allowed a neo-Nazi to speak as part of a forum about the 9/11 attacks.

I had originally intended to not name names because the intent with this article is to discuss the broader issues raised, not only one specific incident. But as the issue has been widely discussed already, there isn’t any point to withholding the name of the locale, The Commons in Brooklyn. Nonetheless, this issue is much bigger than any one institution.

The basics are this: The owner of The Commons allowed the space to be used for a presentation by Christopher Bollyn, a virulent anti-Semite with a long history of publishing on neo-Nazi and white-supremacist sites. He was booked to speak as a “9/11 truther” who would talk on “9/11 and our Political Crisis.” Adding to the intrigue is that the owner of The Commons has herself been a prominent “9/11 truther.”

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens (photo by Daderot)

I don’t wish to paint with an overly broad brush. Many people who continue to investigate what happened on September 11, 2001, do so out of genuine principle and attempt legitimate research. There is no reason to believe the official government account of that day, and one need not believe 9/11 an “inside job” to question the official narrative. (So as to not hide my own perspective, I don’t believe 9/11 was an “inside job,” for multiple reasons, and I am skeptical of the so-called “truther” movement.)

Although reasonable research merits support, we should distinguish between people who investigate the commercial ties of Bush II/Cheney administration members or who make scientific inquiries into the physical properties of the World Trade Center materials that were destroyed on 9/11 from the unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that shade off into the considerable anti-Semitism that permeates the “truther” movement. That movement consistently provides platforms for rabid anti-Semites, and that is to their cause’s detriment.

On what basis do we defend an objectionable speaker?

This issue is impossible to disentangle from the Right’s continual conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. It is not difficult to distinguish criticism of the state of Israel for its apartheid policies and other crimes against humanity in its ongoing subjugation of Palestinians from blanket accusations against all Jews. Critics of Israel routinely do so. Ironically, one defender of the owner of The Commons decided to build on Right-wing tactics of misinformation by inverting the meaning of words when he absurdly claimed that “There are zionist-fascists who are trying to destroy The Brooklyn Commons as a venue for radical events.”

Huh? People who oppose neo-Nazism, and condemn anti-Semitism on a Left basis, are fascists — and Zionists! Truly remarkable. That statement can be dismissed as the desperate agitprop of an individual who has burned many a bridge. But what of the owner of The Commons herself? When asked to cancel the appearance of Christopher Bollyn, she responded with a lengthy statement that seems to have since been pulled from her venue’s web site. But, in part, she wrote:

“I did not research the speaker before accepting the rental. I do not have the time, resources or inclination to censor the hundreds of groups who rent the space.”

That is not unreasonable. But once it was brought to her attention, she could have canceled the event, as Busboys and Poets in Washington and the Unitarian Society of Hartford swiftly did when confronted with the nature of the speaker. Two paragraphs later, however, she wrote:

“I never intended for The Commons to be a safe space at all times. Nor was it designed to be a cozy cocoon for intramural debate among leftists. From the beginning my goal has been to foster discussion among disparate groups across a wide political spectrum.”

Nobody is asking for a “cozy cocoon,” and the many groups and individuals aren’t objecting because Bollyn is from another part of the political spectrum, but because he represents something that ought to be out of bounds anywhere: A Holocaust denier and an advocate of an ideology that calls for (and has attempted) genocide. There can be no “debate” with that. To deny the Holocaust is to endorse the murder of 6 million Jews and the Nazi ideology behind it. If we are part of the human race, we give no quarter to that. Period.

One other passage stood out in The Commons’ owner’s response. Although the venue has consistently been promoted as a Left space (and many Left organizations have offices there), she wrote:

“Since launching in 2010, the list of renters has included local Tea Partiers, conservative promoters of charter schools, explicitly anti-union corporations, elected officials who voted for the Patriot Act and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Lies and damned lies

If I were an advocate of charter schools, I sure would be upset at being grouped with a neo-Nazi. To be sure, advocates of charter schools peddle lies about the performance of them, and knowingly do so in the hopes of destroying public schools systems, reducing education to narrow training schools for future corporate drones and busting unions. Alas, there are liberals, unable to free themselves of corporate ideology, who go along with this, thereby making themselves useful dupes. But discussion of charter schools is a legitimate topic, however much we disagree with them.

The purpose of the above defenses is to obfuscate the issue and turn it into one of “censorship” and of Leftists’ supposed inability to tolerate opposing viewpoints. This is the first I had heard of charter-school advocates booking the space and although I might not like that, there is no comparison to inviting a neo-Nazi.

Another defender of the decision to allow Bollyn to speak, Nathan J. Robinson, did so under the straightforward title “Let The Kooks Speak. They will only embarrass themselves.” Writing in Current Affairs, Mr. Robinson said:

“[T]he best way to deal with a Holocaust denier is to allow him to hang himself with his own words. Because the historical reality of the Holocaust is among the most well-established of factual certitudes, anyone attempting to deny it will quickly be forced to resort to babble rather than reason. It is the simplest thing in the world to humiliate such people.”

He backs up this viewpoint by citing what he says happened at the talk:

“[A]ccording to witnesses, he simply rambled incoherently for nearly two hours to a tiny group of bored misfits. The AlterNet writer who went said it was a ‘pathetic spectacle’ with the ‘supposedly brave iconoclast, prevaricating for a half-empty room of gullible dimwits while dressed like a dad at a PTA meeting.’ The Daily Beast’s Jacob Siegel wrote that ‘not long after the talk started, people started to nod off,’ and that and that once you ‘strip away everything else … here was a middle-aged man dully clicking through slides.’ So Bollyn gave his speech, and he was a failure who converted nobody.”

Facing the larger issue

The point, however, isn’t that a raving anti-Semite who denies the Holocaust and claims Jews assassinated John F. Kennedy to take over the U.S. government could be convincing. The issue here isn’t this or that individual speaker, it is the failure to confront anti-Semitism, racism and associated social ills. None of the defenders of allowing the speaker to talk have bothered to address the larger issue of the anti-Semitism that pervades the “truther” movement.

Take one prominent example. Many a “truther” (including some I personally know) repeat the preposterous argument that two, or five, (depending on the version) Mossad agents were “jumping up and down with joy” as the World Trade Center towers came down. This, sadly, seems to be widely believed among “truthers.”

Were these agents the same ones who called 2,000 Jews the night before to tell them not to go to work? What a busy day. Maybe the conversation went like this: “Yitzhak, Shlomo here. The family is fine, thank you. Listen, Yitzhak, I can’t stay on the phone; I’ve got another 500 to call tonight, but please stay home tomorrow because we’re taking out the towers. Oy, I better get time and a half for all these hours.”

Did the Mossad agents identify themselves to onlookers? Were they wearing Mossad name tags? (Maybe the tag read, “Hi, my name is Shlomo. I’m a Mossad assassin. How can I help you?”) Can anybody imagine one of the most professional (and thus deadly) spy agencies on Earth being so ham-fisted and obvious? No. Why would such a preposterous story gain traction for even a second? Because of belief, even if held unconsciously, that Jews constitute some sort of cabal, and when that arises on the Left it is among those who are unable to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.

I suppose that is not completely separable from a belief that because the U.S. government, or the Bush II/Cheney administration (take your pick) is capable of evil acts, all evil acts are done by them and thus 9/11 has to be an “inside job.” This is reductionist thinking. The irony of inside-job belief is that is actually lets U.S. foreign policy off the hook! Maybe people in the Middle East really are pissed off about the oppression they’ve endured thanks to U.S. imperialism and maybe some of them, with a deficit of political knowledge or guidance, decided that individual acts of terrorism would be their response.

Evil individuals or a rotten system?

We really need to get beyond the idea that no so much as a leaf moves without the CIA being behind it. I write that as someone fully aware of the CIA’s record (and have recounted it in numerous articles and in my book.) The CIA is not a secret cabal of evil people; it is simply the government agency that carries out much of the dirty work that is required to maintain capitalism and the U.S. as the financial and military center of it. If the CIA didn’t exist, some other agency would be doing that work.

Much of the 9/11 “truther” movement derives from an unwillingness to grapple with the concrete realities of the capitalist system, and the structural inequalities and oppression built into it. The CIA is not ultimately the problem; it is the system it serves.

Unfortunately, it is far easier to indulge in conspiracy theories than to systematically analyze the world we live in. Those evil doers did it! Let’s get rid of those bad people and all will be well! Anti-Semites who cast Jews in the role of evil doers, and assign responsibility for all ills to them, are just a more extreme version of conspiracy-theory mongers and, ultimately, lie on a continuum.

This I suspect is why otherwise rational people exhibit a willingness to believe ideas that fall apart once they are examined seriously, and why the “truther” movement is unwilling, or unable, to separate itself from unexamined, often unconscious anti-Semitism (such as the Mossad agents jumping for joy) nor even from outright virulent anti-Semitism that goes so far as to deny the Holocaust. Even if someone was unfamiliar with Bollyn before this episode (I, for example, had never heard of him), the most basic Internet search would find his work. The New York Left activist Carol Lipton, for example, did a quick search and found:

“Bollyn also makes repeated reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. … Bollyn regularly appears on David Duke’s blogs, blames Jews for all the ills in the world, is a strident Holocaust denier who refers to the ‘Holohoax,’ and has been quoted across Twitter in hundreds of posts to show everyone his fiercely Jew-obsessed and Jew-hating statements. He is credited by some 9/11 truthers with originating the theory that Israel and Mossad were to blame for 9/11. He blames Israel for everything from Orlando to problems in Ukraine. He was formerly a long-term writer with the American Free Press, a white supremacist newspaper that was founded by fascist Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby.”

The online magazine JewSchool similarly had little difficulty finding Bollyn’s rants, publishing a long list of his nonsense, including numerous mentions of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” well known as a crude forgery concocted by the frantically anti-Semitic régime of Tsarist Russia.

Taking a stand, even at a cost

To their credit, several Left organizations that are tenants of The Commons issued a statement condemning Bollyn’s appearance:

“As organizations that work out of the Brooklyn Commons, we reject the antisemitic politics of Christopher Bollyn. We do not have any say in event booking and management at the Commons but agree that such politics should have no place in leftist spaces.”

One regular user of the space, the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, has said it will “pull all of its classes and upcoming events” and go elsewhere, even though this will cause itself problems in the near term. And that brings up to the final point for now. Should a space that booked a neo-Nazi be boycotted?

That is not so easy to answer, especially for those familiar with the effect runaway gentrification has had on New York City real estate. This, alas, has to be practical discussion. One prominent Left activist, with a well-earned reputation for integrity, argues that any organization that stays by renewing its lease would lose its credibility and that people should cut its ties with the venue. Another prominent Left activist, with a similar reputation, argues the opposite, saying that to leave would be to allow the far Right to drive us out. “We have hardly any spaces left and an easily accessible space, such as The Commons, that includes both meeting rooms and a hall for large gatherings is not something we should easily abandon — such spaces are central to our organizing,” she said.

There is no simple answer here. For years, The Commons has provided a low-cost space for a variety of Left causes and events, and the Left organizations that rent office space do so at below market rates. (Full disclosure: I have given talks there, had my first book party there and have attended dozens of events.) It is very painful to have to have this discussion, but it has been forced upon us.

The question of real estate in a capitalist economy looms large here. If housing and real estate were not capitalist commodities, and instead meeting places and centers for organizers were part of a public commons, this discussion would not be necessary; organizers would not be dependent on the decisions of one person who, as the owner of a private property, is not necessarily answerable to a broader community. Organizers may choose to “vote with their feet,” but those would be individual decisions.

Housing should be a human right, and would be in a better world, but an incident such as under discussion here reminds us that the the issue of space goes beyond basic housing — the restoration of a public commons needs to be central to our struggles.

Trump is a Republican, but is he a fascist?

It’s hard not to chuckle at the hand-wringing going on within the Republican Party. That terrible Donald Trump: How dare he say openly what we only say in code! And, why, Republican candidates have never stooped to exploiting fears and pandering to racism and nativism.

Uh-huh. Richard Nixon attempted to provide federal money for segregated schools as he ushered in the Republican Party’s “Southern strategy”; Ronald Reagan famously opened his 1980 presidential run close to the site where three Civil Rights Movement workers were murdered in Mississippi with calls for “states’ rights,” well understood code words for supporting racially biased policies; George H.W. Bush exploited racial stereotypes with his Willie Horton campaign ads; George W. Bush’s presidency will be remembered for his callous ignoring of New Orleans and its African-American population in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and the roster of Republicans hostile to civil rights is too long to list.

So does Donald Trump really represent something new and frightful? Or does his campaign represent the same-old, same-old in more concentrated form? Or, to put the second question in a different way, does he represent a new manifestation of fascism, as many are already proclaiming.

A rally against Donald Trump in New York City on March 19, organized by the Cosmopolitan Antifascists

Perhaps it might be best to see the Trump campaign as constituting the seeds for a potential fascist movement rather than a fully fledged fascism. That ought to be scary enough, and enough for all of us to make a stand against it.

Fascism is a specific phenomenon, and we should not loosely throw the word around, as if it means anything with a whiff of authoritarianism that we do not like.

At its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism, are among the necessary elements.

We often think of fascism in the classical 1930s form, of Nazis goose-stepping or the street violence of Benito Mussolini’s followers. But it took somewhat different forms later in the 20th century, being instituted through military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. Any fascism that might arise in the U.S. would be wrapped in right-wing populism and, given the particular social constructs there, that populism would include demands to “return to the Constitution” and “secure the borders.”

The Trump campaign’s ongoing violence

There is no shortage of peans to the Constitution or demands for border sealing, true enough, and violence has not been missing from the Trump campaign — to the contrary, the Republican front-runner has been reveling in it. Watching videos stringing together some of these incidents is sobering.

It’s been said over and over again that Germans didn’t think Hitler could ever take power (although he was never elected; he was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg). Let’s set aside that all too easy comparison. Instead, it would be more pertinent to look back to the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign that culminated in a lurch to the right. That was the first one I could vote in. Many people thought Ronald Reagan would never be elected; voters in the end would recoil from his extremism. I was one of those doubters. To this day I remember the chill of horror that ran down my back when I first saw the electoral results, well into the evening, as a television announcer called the latest state to go his way part of a “tidal wave.”

In a year in which even the Democratic primary front-runner, Hillary Clinton, eagerly white-washes President Reagan’s actual history, we should correct the record. To only scratch the surface, he lavishly funded and supported the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador in their terror campaigns against their population through military units and death squads that killed hundreds of thousands; waged war against Nicaragua, mining harbors and funding and directing terrorism through the Contras; opposed civil rights legislation at every opportunity; cut Medicaid, Medicare, school breakfast and lunch programs, and declared ketchup a vegetable for school lunches; refused to lift a finger as AIDS ravaged communities across the country because he believed homosexuals deserved their fate; and invented preposterous stories of pink-Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” raking in $150,000 per year.

There is a straight line from Reagan, whom the Republican establishment still venerates through a rather creepy personality cult, to Donald Trump. And Mr. Trump isn’t necessarily the scariest or most extreme candidate out there — Ted Cruz, determined to become the second Joe McCarthy, holds that distinction. But Senator Cruz, however much he lusts for a Medieval theological dictatorship and despite the frightening ignorance of his supporters, doesn’t command a following the way that Mr. Trump does.

The culmination of Republican pandering

He’s the front-runner precisely because he says it straight out rather than using code like other Republican candidates. He’s the logical product of 36 years of Republican pandering — half a century if we go back to Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy.” Or, really, a continuation, if in new packaging, of the whole history of the United States. If he were just another in a long line of demagogues, we would not be throwing around the word “fascism” so freely. But the Trump campaign comes with violence and particularly open hatreds. Alarm bells ought to be ringing.

Let’s return to the definition of fascism offered above: “A dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business.” Industrialists and financiers are firmly in the saddle in the United States. Opposition to the policies there that have created widespread misery and towering inequality certainly is growing not only in intensity but in numbers, yet it could hardly be said that capitalist rule in the U.S. is in any danger whatsoever today. There is no need for capitalists to create and build a corps of street thugs or brown shirts.

Rather, we have the odd phenomenon of a billionaire “populist” telling his followers that he won’t be beholden to corporate interests because he is too rich to be bought. We have seen this siren song before: Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s morbid combination of George W. Bush, Rupert Murdoch and Ross Perot. He did not work out so well for Italy. Prime Minister Berlusconi’s reason to run for office was to advance his business interests and stay out of jail. Promoting his business interests is Donald Trump’s motivation. All we have here is a billionaire cutting out the middle man and buying the office for himself instead of buying a professional politician.

Nonetheless, it is impossible not to note the violence and the threats against Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims and, implicitly, to all People of Color, and to social activists of the Left. Any Right-wing movement that has gained a substantial following of people that includes more than a few willing to condone violence must target the Left. History is painfully clear on this. We need not think Trump is a fascist or capable of building a fascist type of movement to mobilize against his campaign. Not that we should minimize the ultimate threat of fascism — all capitalist countries contain the potentiality of fascism, a threat that materializes when capitalists dispense with democracy because they can no longer earn profits in the ordinary ways and working people begin to refuse to cooperate with capitalist business as usual in significant numbers.

I would argue that the Trump campaign is not necessarily fascist today, but that it carries with it the seeds of a future, potential fascist movement. That is more than serious enough for everybody who struggles for a better world.