As Sinclair Lewis once accurately opineed, "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Well folks, as much as we may want to deny it, Fascism has arrived. Georgi Dimitrov, who sucesfully defended himself in a nazi court against charges of setting the Reichstag ablaze observed, fascism is the brutal dictatorship of the most reactionary sectors of the corporate ruling class.
A good analysis by Kevin J. Elliot in Liberal Currents on Trump and fascism notes:
"Fascism is more than just really bad authoritarianism. While in many non-fascist authoritarian regimes most people can more or less live a normal life if you keep your head down and stay out of politics, fascist leaders want to force all of society into alignment with their vision of social redemption. They seek not just to control the state but to purge all major social institutions of any independence and bend them to the regime’s purposes. Fascists won’t leave you alone unless you’re actively assisting their vision, often demanding public pledges of submission or complicity in the regime’s crimes."
"Because of this intrusiveness, fascism and authoritarianism generate different potentials for mobilizing opposition. Either sort of movement could, of course, deploy newly seized power gradually or selectively to generate uncertainty and division among their potential opponents. But when a newly risen movement moves swiftly to assert its power far beyond the scope of a more limited authoritarianism—not being content with seizing key power centers like the military, for instance, but reaching for a more comprehensive takeover of economic, cultural, and social life—the only remaining room for uncertainty lies in self-deception. This clarity produces considerably more scope for solidaristic mobilization against a budding fascist regime before it has consolidated power"
"It thus matters enormously whether the new Trump regime is fascist or simply authoritarian. Authoritarianism is mainly about the structure of power in government. That means government lacks effective checks & balances and, as a result, there’s an intense concentration of power in the executive. Whatever formal title the leader has—general secretary, prime minister, president—he (it’s almost always a he) can get his way over the will of any other actor or institution in government. Most importantly, however, state power in an authoritarian regime is unaccountable to the mass public, meaning for instance that incumbents can’t lose elections even if the people want them gone."
"The place to look for fascism is in the politics and program of a political movement; it’s about how they talk and what they aim to do rather than in the structure of power. Of course, they want the authoritarian structure of executive-focused unchecked power and seek to build it where it’s lacking. But this, brutal co0rporate rule aside, is in service of the core fascist mission: a cultural rebirth in which the nation, understood as its (racially) pure or ‘true’ people, is saved from destruction and its enemies are purged from within."
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This is a vital aspect that is inseperable from nationalism which inevitably poisons minds and ripens to faschism with horrific human rights abuses and crimes against humanity, as we see in Palestine and increasingly all around us as ICE thug snatch gangs attack, kidnap and disapear people from workplaces, courts, homes and on the streets. First the come for immigrants and refugees but, rest assured, if you've every stood for anything, you're likely on the list as well.
We have and advantage over other countries where fascism seized power -- for now -- in that Republican fascism and Trump are highly unpopular. Of course, that was true in Chile as well under the bloody Pinochet dictatorship.
What can we do? We need to understand that focusing on Trump is not enough. He is the ideal "useful idiot" installed by and for corporate consortia including ALEC, the Heritage and Clairmint institue "think tanks."
We must continue to organize and to have mass actions including strikes and class action lawsuits. We must support Progressives Populist candidates. We have to push back in mass as a class to overcome this fascist putch and to work for the Abolition of Corporate Rule and the legal Separation of Private Money from Politics at all levels in order to cripple and prevent the undue influence of corporate power and to ensure and enshrine working class representation and power. It may require a national strike. It may require an underground Partisan movement. Ultimately, it may require a revolution. The alternative is unthinkable yet there, we have arrived. As published in the Blue Collar Review:
Them and Us All of us or None.
What money does to a person --
not the pittance it takes to squeak by
but wealth the driven addiction
for more always more
the erosion of connectedness
of empathy
the commodification of others
reduced to clients
hands "losers"
useful
or not
in the obsession of accrual
like poor Gollum and the ring
the warping delusions
of power
Behold their grimacing visages
their soulless
derisive eyes
seeing us all as disposable marks
and now more empowered and brutal
than ever
It's them against us --
and nothing terrifies them more
than us --
than our power
when united
