America is no different than many other nations in it’s authoritarian patriarchal tendencies, which always contain the seeds for even worse governments and turning into an openly fascist repressive state. Thanks largely due to the more liberal perspective of FDR and the strength of the developing trade union movement, America avoided sinking into fascism in the 1930s. The same was not true for other advanced but less powerful capitalist countries, such as Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain. The world-wide Great Depression, which arose directly as a result of runaway market capitalism, eventually led to WWII and the deaths of 100 million people by 1945.
We see again today many economic conditions and failures which have resulted because market styled capitalism still dominates the planet. A third world war remains a possible development, as the current world-wide dominance of market (profit oriented) capitalism has no reliable mechanisms to overcome the vast differences in wealth, power, development, and material resources it creates but wishes to keep this arrangement through it dominance of political systems.
Flip Side of Authoritarianism
The flip side of authoritarianism, and what makes authoritarian leaders able to assume power is a passive aggressiveness and dependency of the masses themselves on authority figures. We have been raised since childhood to follow leaders and trust them to do much of the thinking. We are especially alienated from politics, and easily can be manipulated by charismatic leaders who pretend to take up our cause but in reality owe their loyalties to the corporate classes.
Just needs a moustache.
Trumpers are an all to common example of this phenomenon, and how unscrupulous leaders can manipulate this ignorance. Bare in mind that by ignorance I do not mean stupidity. Republican preference for authoritarian undemocratic rule has an economic as well as a political basis. It’s understandable why many of America’s privileged classes might support and benefit from such a development in the short run. The long term consequences are another matter. Lie upon lie, attacks on logic and science, the sabotage of a world-wide pandemic, and the construction of a fantasy world perspective laced with conspiracy theories and supported by a police state, will do nothing to resolve the problems we must confront if civilization is to survive.
Republican State Television describe a dangerous alternate reality.
The most perplexing problem we face is our society’s difficulty in grasping the truth behind the fictions, and understand the willingness of so many to follow the doomsday leadership of the Republicans. Trump’s wide support, even if not numerical in nature, represents fascism which in American wears a white supremacist face, still knocking at the door even with Biden’s election by more rational and progressive forces. A willingness of so many Americans to persist in a backward and racist world view and follow an imbecilic psychopath does not bode well for our future. Many years ago, Malcom X got in hot water for speaking the harsh truth when he said “The chickens come home to roost” after President Kennedy’s assassination, likely believing he was killed by right wing conspirators. In a similar sense, should the Republicans succeed in their ultimate goal, it will be a lot more than chickens coming home to roost.
Sources of Republican Advantages
Fascism: Led from above; originates in the masses themselves.
Part of the Republican advantage is their lock step political authoritarianism and willingness to use their vast economic resources and media influence to pillage their progressive opponents, knowing that their less privileged supporters expect little to nothing material in return and will follow them without question. I believe much of their support stems from believing the Republicans will protect both their perceived and actual white skin privileges and clinging to a increasingly challenged old guard cultural status which perpetrates many myths, biases and a long list of “isms.” The Republicans quite naturally prefer to organize around these emotional issues rather than material economic ones, which they naturally oppose unless pressured to do otherwise.
That said, the weakness of Trump styled Republicanism was pointed out by the fact that he lost the last election by 7 million votes, despite widespread voter suppression. The downside was the fierce Republican counter offensive against Constitutional democracy afterwards, beginning with the January 6th coup attempt initiated by deposed president Trump. Another major reason for their anti-democratic tendencies is the fact that without even more massive voter suppression, they fear they will eventually start losing most elections due to population demographical change.
I believe our greatest strength is to advocate progress and economic change which recognizes reality. And to turn out millions of people to demonstrate our strength and spread the word. As much as we need to fight for democracy and the right to vote in the political arena, we should not forget that the 2020 mass demonstrations against Trump and racism helped win the election in November and put progressive issues on the national agenda. The right of course has counter attacked viciously since then.
Corporate Media will never deliver our message
Wall Street casts a major influence in both parties.
The power brokers behind the scenes must know and feel our strength. We cannot expect to send this kind of message through a primarily corporate and right wing controlled media. And despite the Democratic gains in the 2020 election, Democratic political insiders and centrists have to date been ineffective in understanding many aspects of mass psychology and countering the authoritarian and fascist direction and complexity of the information wars. Republicans are reaping the benefits of a nearly 50 year plan devised when the right took a beating and was on the defensive in the 60s and 70s. Neither the left nor the Democrats have ever had such a master plan or understanding of how to formulate one.
Another trait accompanying the prevalence of authoritarian leanings in the masses themselves is their tendency to see dictatorial personalities as figures of strength and strong leaders who can get things done, and democratic forces and democracy itself as weak and ineffective. The corporate media has to some extent succeeded in painting Biden’s struggles with Congress and even with some of his own so-called Democrats as weakness and incompetence. This has even carried over to some progressive supporters, frustrated by an offense against the president’s agenda from within his own party.
Modern Republicanism is 100% based on Harnessing Negative Emotions
A sex negative demo with more signs than protestors.
Trumpers not only accept authority figures readily, but in addition may be rendered dependent on authority figures to lead and even think for them. This can happen with both politicians and corrupted clergy. Bottom line, we have a very polarized, patriarchal and authoritarian society, and very different attitudes towards conformity and independent thought. With a tendency to form cult like groups that blindly follow a charismatic leader. This has happened on both the left and the right, lately much more on the right. Many are not aware that media sources and politicians can have a concealed bias and interest that conflicts with their own. This may also be true about their religious leaders, who often align out of view with opportunist politicians. Individuals, myself included, had to throw out much of what they were taught or believed before they could take progressive positions.
It’s worth remembering that ultimately logic can be trumped (small “t” here!) by negative and irrational emotions. To a greater or lesser extent, all of our decisions are influenced by some variety of emotions. This is, of course, a primary goal of the Republican Party in a negative and self-destructive sense. And in general, the method used by any reactionary or fascist party, past or present. The goal being to conceal their true motivations by any means necessary, which in practice is to faithfully serve the short term interests of the upper classes and corporations and divide the lower classes with envy, fear, racial pandering, paranoia, distractions, etc.
Fear and the Anti-Vaxxers
I remember from the 60’s and 70’s when the slogan “All Power to the People” was popular. A seemingly good slogan, but it all depends on which people you are advocating power for? And what you mean by power. The tidal wave of conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and lies have created a crisis whereby facts and truth has become elusive and a concept of freedom is associated with authoritarian power, its opposite. And this goes well beyond effecting the cool aid drinking Trumpers. Efforts to end the Cov19 pandemic have been sabotaged largely due to the ability to circulate an unlimited number of false and fearful scenarios falsely attributed to science and civil and personal rights. Some swallowed by members of my own family, equating the anti-vaxer sentiments with a power to the people rationale. And they are miles away from being Trumpers.
Conclusions
I must reluctantly give the Republicans credit for deploying their various myths, poisons, and unapologetic racism and other “isms” cleverly and successfully. They understand how to use mass psychology and racism in politics, even if they may not always know why it works so readily. It helps that they have a large audience that accepts their rants without question.
Reich
That said, do we ourselves understand the mass psychology of America? What makes us tick? Rise and Fall? I’m going to push a book written nearly a hundred years ago. Everyone in progressive politics should read Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich. 1 He links fascism not just to authoritarianism but to sex negative practices fostered by sex negative patriarchal religions that help cement their submission to authority. Reich also predicted well in advance that the Soviet Russian revolution was fatally wounded when Stalin took over, long before the mass arrests and executions which followed and sincere but misled members of America’s Communist Party realized what Stalin’s authoritarian rule had morphed into. This was based on both his understanding of past Russian history of authoritarian rule by Czars and the appointment of Stalin as a supreme authoritarian ruler of the party and the repressive policies which quickly followed. The book’s overall analysis of fascism are both controversial and timeless, and apply today just as much as it did in the early pre-days of Nazi Germany. Where they experienced an inability to counter their version of “Trumpism,” even though the opposition had a numerical majority (sound familiar?). Among other factors, the failure to forge some kind of tactical unity and understanding among fascism’s many opposing groups played perhaps the greatest factor in their failure to defeat fascism.
Fascism is Practiced Without Rules, Lawfulness or Boundaries
My basic argument is that we currently lack sufficient understanding of the mass psychological problems we face that are behind Trumpism, nor do we have sufficient strategy and unity of purpose. And we are in danger of losing to the fascists. I know it’s not a message anyone wants to hear. But it is also a fact that fascism almost universally has been a violent trend in politics. The Republican Party has clearly assumed the role of a authoritarian fascist party, and we must consider that violence will be part of their strategy, and indeed they have already actively resorted to violence against the Congress of the United States on January 6th. It was only the heroics of the Washington Police that averted the assassination of some of its members.
Patriarchal standards and ideology, though challenged at times, have remained largely in control over most nations throughout recorded history. Today we face fascism, the modern version of patriarchy gone mad. It’s an all in Texas Hold’em time of adversary. One that respects no rules or boundaries. Only the ruthless pursuit of power. It’s not an envious or easy task to thwart them. But without a clear understanding of American mass psychology and how our racist history becomes attached to almost every issue, it will be used successfully by the Republican fascists, violently at times, and we will not be successful against them.
1- Notes on Wilhelm Reich: A former student of Sigmund Freud’s work, when he first wrote “Mass Psychology” he was a member of the German Communist Party, the largest such party in Europe, including the Soviet Union. The German CP rejected Reich’s analysis and writings on fascism and sexual politics, and under pressure expelled him. While still a very worthwhile book, he afterwards revised it and became disillusioned in Communism because he saw that the left had also fallen victim to authoritarianism. He later came to the U.S., was persecuted for his controversial beliefs in Orgone energy by the FDA during the McCarthy period, likely as well for his former communist leanings. Orgone energy was a biological force he believed existed in nature and was found in the very air we breath. Whatever one thinks of the veracity and scientific validity of his later research, for which he was eventually imprisoned unjustly, it does not take away for his pioneering early psychoanalytic work. For more on Reich, you can read this brief biography.