I won't suggest that fascism hasn't always been a part of the American landscape. However, especially during the Great Depression and WWII it was certainly considered an extreme fringe. There were of course the Father Coughlin's of the time who insisted that Hitler was America's friend. On the other hand, the liberal imperialist bloc of countries had allied with the USSR against the common fascist enemy who was seen by the liberal states as a threat to their colonies throughout the world.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki signaled a decisive break between the socialist bloc and the capitalist bloc dominated by the USA. The use of nuclear bombs on a civilian population was a warning to the USSR not to mess with the US. Throughout the war Roosevelt and Stalin and enjoyed a rather cordial relationship, but after FDR's death Harry Truman, his vice president who in 1941 said, “[I]f we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible,” took the presidency. This lead to an official foreign policy by the United States of pragmatic support for regimes friendly to capitalist business interests whether they be liberal or fascist most clearly evidenced by the US involvement in the coup that put Pinochet in power in Chile and the subsequent execution of an economic liberalization plan designed by Milton Friedman.
Of course, the history of fascism in the US does not begin there. As a matter of fact, may of the ideas adopted by the Nazis in Germany came from the USA including, most notably, eugenics and ideas about racial inferiority. We can perhaps trace the proto-fascist tactic of scapegoating an already oppressed minority group to the founding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865. The KKK would later inspire and become linked with George Wilson Rockwell's American Nazi Party during the tumultuous 1960s, a period of time when the oppressed black American population were standing up for their human rights and dignity as human beings.
Especially disturbing is the apparent openness and brazenness of racist fascism in America as recently as this summer. In June 2015 a white supremacist terrorist massacred 9 people in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, SC followed by an epidemic of arson targeting black churches throughout the American south. In July openly white supremacist and fascist groups held a rally protesting the taking down of the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina capital grounds. They were escorted by heavily armed police, some of them black, and probably would not have made it as there was an equally large counter-demonstration of black people and allies defending themselves and their communities waiting to meet them. All this comes at a time when black people are standing up against a wave of police violence.
Around the same time celebrity capitalist buffoon Donald Trump announced his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants "people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." By all accounts Donald Trump's platform can be nothing other than fascist.
Before we get into the dynamics of the political situation withing the GOP we should first explore what fascism is.
Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003,page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.
The 14 characteristics are:
We should not think that Trump's buffoonery and fascistic idiocy is unique. It is very much politically mainstream. Recently, when asked about the Trump candidacy, Noam Chomsky stated:
I think we should recognize that the other candidates are not that different. I mean, if you take a look at—just take a look at their views. You know, they tell you their views, and they’re astonishing. So just to keep to Iran, a couple of weeks ago, the two front-runners—they’re not the front-runners any longer—were Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. And they differed on Iran. Walker said we have to bomb Iran; when he gets elected, they’re going to bomb Iran immediately, the day he’s elected. Bush was a little—you know, he’s more serious: He said he’s going to wait 'til the first Cabinet meeting, and then they'll bomb Iran. I mean, this is just off the spectrum of not only international opinion, but even relative sanity.
This is—I think Ornstein and Mann are correct: It’s a radical insurgency; it’s not a political party. You can tell that even by the votes. I mean, any issue of any complexity is going to have some diversity of opinion. But when you get a unanimous vote to kill the Iranian deal or the Affordable Care Act or whatever the next thing may be, you know you’re not dealing with a political party.
It’s an interesting question why that’s true. I think what’s actually happened is that during the whole so-called neoliberal period, last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes, can’t get votes by presenting those positions. So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. It is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it’s extremely religious. It’s one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. And by now, I suspect the majority of the base of the Republican Party is evangelical Christians, extremists, not—they’re a mixture, but these are the extremist ones, nativists who are afraid that, you know, "they are taking our white Anglo-Saxon country away from us," people who have to have guns when they go into Starbucks because, who knows, they might get killed by an Islamic terrorist and so on. I mean, all of that is part of the country, and it goes back to colonial days. There are real roots to it. But these have not been an organized political force in the past. They are now. That’s the base of the Republican Party. And you see it in the primaries. So, yeah, Trump is maybe comic relief, but it’s just a—it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important.
This mainstream "radical insurgency" has emboldened the racist, fascist fringe to carry out acts of "lone wolf terrorism." Since 2009 right-wing terrorism has claimed more many more lives than Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. However, when Cliven Bundy rallied violent thugs to fight the government because he did not want to pay the government for grazing rights he was hailed in the conservative media as a patriot, not a terrorist.
The way to understand all this is to think about the concept of reactionism. The Marxist Internet Archive lexicon defines reactionary as:
A political position that maintains a conservative response to change, including threats to social institutions and technological advances. Reaction is the reciprocal action to revolutionary movement. Reactionaries clamp down on the differences of the emerging productive forces in society, and attempt to remove those differences, silence them, or segregate them in order to keep the stability of the established order.
Examples of the political position of reactionaries can be seen throughout history: during the US Revolutionary War, the reactionaries were the ruling British aristocracy, who sought to maintain their feudal government over their American colonies, while the US revolutionaries sought to establish a government to represent the interests of capitalist values and practices. Hundreds of years later in Russia, the tables would turn and capitalists became reactionary while the Socialists are revolutionary.
After almost 50 years of neoliberalism the excesses of unchecked capitalism have made the system's internal contradictions quite apparent. As a result a popular, left-wing, civil society movement is growing. International examples include the election of Jeremey Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, Syriza's rise to ruling party in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Naxalites throughout India, Nepal, Bhutan and parts of China, the Bolivarian governments in South America, the success of PKK/YPG/YPJ in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, the LGBT, Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 movements' recent success in the USA and even to a small degree the symbolism of a so-called "democratic socialist" as a contender for the Democratic Party nomination for POTUS. This scares the reactionaries so they are becoming more extreme. Their radicalism is a paradoxical radical reactionism.
Revolutionary communists must not be discouraged by the apparent visibility of the fascist movements at the current moment in history. We should actually be encouraged that this is because the left is becoming more popular and more successful throughout the world. Of course, this also means we must be vigilant in our opposition to and struggle against fascism. We mustn't allow them to take control of our lives. Venceremos!
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki signaled a decisive break between the socialist bloc and the capitalist bloc dominated by the USA. The use of nuclear bombs on a civilian population was a warning to the USSR not to mess with the US. Throughout the war Roosevelt and Stalin and enjoyed a rather cordial relationship, but after FDR's death Harry Truman, his vice president who in 1941 said, “[I]f we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible,” took the presidency. This lead to an official foreign policy by the United States of pragmatic support for regimes friendly to capitalist business interests whether they be liberal or fascist most clearly evidenced by the US involvement in the coup that put Pinochet in power in Chile and the subsequent execution of an economic liberalization plan designed by Milton Friedman.
Of course, the history of fascism in the US does not begin there. As a matter of fact, may of the ideas adopted by the Nazis in Germany came from the USA including, most notably, eugenics and ideas about racial inferiority. We can perhaps trace the proto-fascist tactic of scapegoating an already oppressed minority group to the founding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865. The KKK would later inspire and become linked with George Wilson Rockwell's American Nazi Party during the tumultuous 1960s, a period of time when the oppressed black American population were standing up for their human rights and dignity as human beings.
Especially disturbing is the apparent openness and brazenness of racist fascism in America as recently as this summer. In June 2015 a white supremacist terrorist massacred 9 people in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, SC followed by an epidemic of arson targeting black churches throughout the American south. In July openly white supremacist and fascist groups held a rally protesting the taking down of the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina capital grounds. They were escorted by heavily armed police, some of them black, and probably would not have made it as there was an equally large counter-demonstration of black people and allies defending themselves and their communities waiting to meet them. All this comes at a time when black people are standing up against a wave of police violence.
Around the same time celebrity capitalist buffoon Donald Trump announced his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants "people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." By all accounts Donald Trump's platform can be nothing other than fascist.
Before we get into the dynamics of the political situation withing the GOP we should first explore what fascism is.
Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003,page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.
The 14 characteristics are:
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
- Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
- Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
- Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
- Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
- Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
- Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
- Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
- Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
- Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
- Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
- Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
- Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
We should not think that Trump's buffoonery and fascistic idiocy is unique. It is very much politically mainstream. Recently, when asked about the Trump candidacy, Noam Chomsky stated:
I think we should recognize that the other candidates are not that different. I mean, if you take a look at—just take a look at their views. You know, they tell you their views, and they’re astonishing. So just to keep to Iran, a couple of weeks ago, the two front-runners—they’re not the front-runners any longer—were Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. And they differed on Iran. Walker said we have to bomb Iran; when he gets elected, they’re going to bomb Iran immediately, the day he’s elected. Bush was a little—you know, he’s more serious: He said he’s going to wait 'til the first Cabinet meeting, and then they'll bomb Iran. I mean, this is just off the spectrum of not only international opinion, but even relative sanity.
This is—I think Ornstein and Mann are correct: It’s a radical insurgency; it’s not a political party. You can tell that even by the votes. I mean, any issue of any complexity is going to have some diversity of opinion. But when you get a unanimous vote to kill the Iranian deal or the Affordable Care Act or whatever the next thing may be, you know you’re not dealing with a political party.
It’s an interesting question why that’s true. I think what’s actually happened is that during the whole so-called neoliberal period, last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes, can’t get votes by presenting those positions. So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. It is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it’s extremely religious. It’s one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. And by now, I suspect the majority of the base of the Republican Party is evangelical Christians, extremists, not—they’re a mixture, but these are the extremist ones, nativists who are afraid that, you know, "they are taking our white Anglo-Saxon country away from us," people who have to have guns when they go into Starbucks because, who knows, they might get killed by an Islamic terrorist and so on. I mean, all of that is part of the country, and it goes back to colonial days. There are real roots to it. But these have not been an organized political force in the past. They are now. That’s the base of the Republican Party. And you see it in the primaries. So, yeah, Trump is maybe comic relief, but it’s just a—it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important.
This mainstream "radical insurgency" has emboldened the racist, fascist fringe to carry out acts of "lone wolf terrorism." Since 2009 right-wing terrorism has claimed more many more lives than Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. However, when Cliven Bundy rallied violent thugs to fight the government because he did not want to pay the government for grazing rights he was hailed in the conservative media as a patriot, not a terrorist.
The way to understand all this is to think about the concept of reactionism. The Marxist Internet Archive lexicon defines reactionary as:
A political position that maintains a conservative response to change, including threats to social institutions and technological advances. Reaction is the reciprocal action to revolutionary movement. Reactionaries clamp down on the differences of the emerging productive forces in society, and attempt to remove those differences, silence them, or segregate them in order to keep the stability of the established order.
Examples of the political position of reactionaries can be seen throughout history: during the US Revolutionary War, the reactionaries were the ruling British aristocracy, who sought to maintain their feudal government over their American colonies, while the US revolutionaries sought to establish a government to represent the interests of capitalist values and practices. Hundreds of years later in Russia, the tables would turn and capitalists became reactionary while the Socialists are revolutionary.
After almost 50 years of neoliberalism the excesses of unchecked capitalism have made the system's internal contradictions quite apparent. As a result a popular, left-wing, civil society movement is growing. International examples include the election of Jeremey Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, Syriza's rise to ruling party in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Naxalites throughout India, Nepal, Bhutan and parts of China, the Bolivarian governments in South America, the success of PKK/YPG/YPJ in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, the LGBT, Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 movements' recent success in the USA and even to a small degree the symbolism of a so-called "democratic socialist" as a contender for the Democratic Party nomination for POTUS. This scares the reactionaries so they are becoming more extreme. Their radicalism is a paradoxical radical reactionism.
Revolutionary communists must not be discouraged by the apparent visibility of the fascist movements at the current moment in history. We should actually be encouraged that this is because the left is becoming more popular and more successful throughout the world. Of course, this also means we must be vigilant in our opposition to and struggle against fascism. We mustn't allow them to take control of our lives. Venceremos!