The first thing every American should know (left, center, or right; religious or atheist; black, Hispanic or white; any other nationality or self-description; male or female; gay, straight or transgender) is that whomever the rank-and-file supporters are behind the fascist movement, neither they nor anyone else just mentioned will be in control over the de-facto dictatorship that follows, or the greed driven repressive policies, practices, murders and imprisonments that will surely follow if they are successful. Apologies for the long sentence.
Corporate Money is Behind Fascism
Don’t wait for the corporate media and owners of social media to warn you. Their corporate owners and wealthy financiers are largely behind the leaders that are the public face of the fascist movement and will not permit most media outlets to give you any warnings. They are those who are accustomed to using racist pandering, lies, threats, violence, conspiracy theories, false priorities, misogyny and other forms of deception and repression to get their way. They fear and loathe democracy. And the ideas, values and moral principles behind it. A fairly run democracy with an independent media would never endorse the scandalous profits Wall Street gets or the extremely pro-business legislation that gets through Congress. To Wall Street interests, accumulating profits squeezed and stolen from others less privileged than they are entitles them to rule society and the rest of the world by any means necessary. While they pretend to you to have moral values, they have none. They worship no god or religion but the almighty dollar.
They present public figures to their deluded and misled supporters such as Donald Trump who if truth be told is an accomplished grifter, bona-fide traitor and pathological liar. Who will be quickly replaced when he is no longer of use with another puppet-like tyrant. Blindly following and trusting leaders who cannot be held accountable through an open and democratic process has been the downfall of humanity throughout history. And will always lead to tyranny whether left or right.
Definition of Fascism
Fascism has had many faces throughout history. But it always has the same purpose, to eliminate a society’s democratic tendencies and establish male patriarchal rule by the wealthy classes. It can even develop unintentionally in a country that was trying to establish virtually the opposite system (Cambodia/Pol Pot, Soviet Union/Stalin) or deliberately in an advanced capitalist country (Germany/Hitler, Italy/Mussolini, Japan/The Emperor). It’s origins go back further in history that capitalism, much further, which is why it can actually begin with the best of intentions. The ultimate roots of fascism largely escaped detection in the early Marxist and socialist movements that attempted to tame the capitalist beast. They limited an explanation of fascism mainly to economic causes and capitalism, which while a major factor in its development was not the only factual cause of fascism. Wilhelm Reich of pre-Nazi Germany was one of the first left figures to identify the problems authoritarian influences over the masses would present. He predicted very early-on in his original version of The Mass Psychology of Fascism (reviewed in this link) that socialism would fail in the Soviet Union because of the rise of Stalinism but feared the various social democratic, socialist and communist parties in Germany did not have an understanding of how to successfully combat fascism or its origins in the masses themselves.
And what is behind the driving engine of fascism? It’s not enough just to blame capitalism itself, although it is certainly also behind many, if not most, fascist movements of today. But fascism also needs to be understood as part and parcel of the basic character and development of human evolution, which evolved agriculture and technology and then shifted and adopted a male dominating patriarchal family structure which proceeded to subjugate women and other classes of people (workers today) and place them in a largely inferior leadership role in the new developing societies.
Patriarchy: The Engine of Fascism
There can be little doubt that patriarchy has dominated human evolution since the emergence of agriculture and increasingly technological societies. And has played a major role in the development of class society. It also is the driving engine of fascism. A major threat to American fascism today is both the black and the women’s movement, with the white supremacy and the misogyny of our fascist leaders well on display. In particular we see this in racist voter repression tactics in Republican controlled states and the decades old anti-abortion movement aimed at restricting women to baby producers, which also has an inherent class and racial bias in that poor and working-class women will bare the harshest consequences as this right is taken away from women.
Grass roots democracy is also a huge threat to corporate interests, which fears a new wave of unionism on the horizon and attempt to socialize things like medical care and reverse the 60 years of nearly continuous tax cuts they’ve received since WWII and make them pay a huge part of the bill for planetary pollution and global warming. It is worth noting that many of the lowest paid workers are black, people of color and immigrant farm workers, perpetually scapegoats and targets of the fascists. Many sectors of capitalism have been emboldened to back Republican fascism both by the immense power that comes from their ownership of most media and the relative weakness of their organized opposition and the mostly bought off unions.
Numerous white Christian groups have also bought into backing fascism as a way to gain back lost members, ignore the racism of their flocks, and chase women back into their former submissive roles. Of course to do so, they have to totally throw most of Christianity under the bus. Which of course they have.
The Mass Appeal of Authoritarianism and White Racism
On an even more basic level, it will not come as a shock to most of you that racism is the driving force in fascist recruitment. This is based on the entirety of American history. White American labor was mostly kept in line and compromised by separating it first from black slavery and latter black labor under Jim Crowism. In recent times, feeling that both their real and imagined white skinned privileges are being threatened by black progress and not grasping that it is the economic and political dominance of the upper classes which is their main problem, they have made up the bulk of Trump’s fascist supporters.
This is also complicated by the general tendency toward authoritarianism in a patriarchal society among the masses and the desire to follow a perceived strong, in our case white, alpha male type leader/savior. The task of the fascists had been made easier, and ours more difficult, as their have been years of myth spreading and slanted, false and racist misinformation to build upon.
Corporate Media Enabling of Fascism
It’s also worth remembering again that the corporate media cannot be counted on today to alert the country to the dangers posed by the Republicans as it did with Nixon. Significant elements in corporate America are either supportive or unafraid of the Republican agenda and will either savage Biden and the Democrats or remain silent about the Republican threat to democracy and the nation.
Which leaves the Democrats with few options without a media network of their own other than MSNBC. Which is why, and I’ve said this ad-nauseum in other blogs: the Democrat leadership needs to open themselves up to other avenues of struggle if they are to have any chance of repelling fascism. Literally millions of Democratic leaning people demonstrated and took to the streets thousands of times in 2020. They believed that perhaps defeating Trump would enable the newly elected government to put a nail in the coffin of fascism.
Corporate Money Can Also Buy Democratic Senators
This was not the case and large parts of Biden’s agenda were sabotaged by the Republicans thanks in large part to help from two Democratic Senators! Sending Biden’s popularity to levels lower into the toilet and lower than even Trump’ were, mainly from disappointed or demoralized Democratic voters. Which is why it is critically important for the Democratic Party to make or join alliances with other groups and organizations, perhaps form or join a united front against fascism. None of this has been done to date. Nor has even one major conspirator from the January 6th attempted coup been charged and arrested yet. If something is in the works along this line, I’d be pleasantly surprised if not shocked.
In the 1930s, even the Communist Party U.S.A. gave critical support at times to FDR, who had his own fascists to deal with in both this country and abroad. In turn FDR saw the need to enter into more open support of labor and made reforms a priority throughout his 4 terms. The corporate world of today has forgotten that it was a liberal New Deal government than enabled capitalism to survive the second world war and defeat international fascism.