Examining the Role of Anti-Communist Rhetoric in the Growth of Reactionary Cult Movements

By Oskar Kaut

Amidst America’s increasingly polarized political climate, there has been growing concern regarding the emergence of reactionary groups that display cult-like behaviors and tactics, posing vital questions about the impact these groups have on individuals as well as mainstream political discourse. Cults can be broadly defined as groups or movements that share a set of philosophical, spiritual, or political beliefs that are by and large considered to be extremist or deviant by mainstream society. On the other hand, the label “reactionary” is typically given to individuals or organizations that oppose social change and desire a return to “traditional” values and practices. Such beliefs have been on the steady rise for several years, and the conception and popularization of affiliated organizations and movements have followed (Rodrik 162). Many fringe reactionary groups such as the Proud Boys and Patriot Front have come under scrutiny for some of their practices, which are often highly secretive and can involve physical and psychological manipulation (Ashland 37). In recent years, there has been a concerning rise of far-right movements worldwide, providing an opportunity for reactionary groups to amplify their message and reach a much larger audience. Many of these groups display clear cult-like behaviors, as demonstrated by their deference to authority and distorted sense of reality. These groups often use anti-communist rhetoric to infiltrate mainstream political discourse, which serves as a gateway to legitimizing and normalizing the extremist ideology of far-right cults. Resultantly, it is crucial to recognize and address the presence of these cults within right-wing movements and the impact their rhetoric can have on broader society. 

A cult is a group or movement centered around a given (typically extremist) belief system that uses coercive tactics to maintain its hold over followers. Sociological research has shown that cults utilize tactics of social influence in order to manipulate their followers into submission (Corvaglia 9). Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard divided the concept of social influence into two subcategories. Informational social influence refers to humans’ intrinsic desire to be “right”, whereas normative social influence refers to the desire to be liked by others. Both of these concepts can be aptly applied to cults. Cults use normative social influence (known colloquially as “peer pressure”) to recruit new members. In an increasingly isolated society, cults offer some individuals an opportunity to be a part of something that they see as larger than themselves. The propagation of this form of influence can lead to cult members partaking in practices that they would normally oppose in an attempt to gain favor with other members (Deutsch & Gerard 14). Similarly, in a world where misinformation is increasingly rampant and it can be difficult to know which sources to trust, cults make use of informational social influence to develop genuine conformity to their beliefs and practices. Cults attempt to create a hegemony of “accurate information” for their followers, thus justifying even private conformity in which individuals truly believe that the group is right or justified in their struggle (Corvaglia 18).  

Many reactionary organizations and movements embody the aforementioned cult characteristics. Stanley Milgram’s classical experiments in conformity shed light on the willingness of individuals to obey those whom they view as authority figures and perform actions that go against their own conscience (Slater 32-63). The experiments found that test subjects were willing to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to another person (who they believed to be a fellow test subject) even to the degree where they believed the shocks to be lethal. Reactionary cults (like other cults) often exert substantial social influence over their members and rely on a hierarchical structure of authority that leaves them vulnerable to pressures similar to those exhibited in Milgram’s experiments. Oftentimes–as can be seen in the cults of personality surrounding Gavin McInnes within the Proud Boys or Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera in Ukrainian nationalist organizations–members of far-right movements are subject to pressures to conform to the extreme beliefs and practices of groups under the direction of authoritative leaders (Rabotyazhev 525). In many ways, this demonstrates the presence of normative influence within reactionary groups and movements. Moreover, members of fringe right-wing movements are also frequently subject to constant messaging from the group’s ideological leaders and even cut off from external sources of information (Jurg & Tuters). This can be clearly seen as an application of informational social influence, in which far-right organizations appeal to their members’ intrinsic desire to be right by bombarding them with their subjective version of reality accompanied by statements such as “facts don’t care about your feelings”. The intent of this process is to present their extreme viewpoints as objective truths that cannot be challenged, thereby working to shift members’ worldviews over time. The existence of such cult-like behavior in reactionary groups and movements presents real issues for mainstream society as the prevalence of these cults continues to grow. 

In recent years, the presence of reactionary groups has risen sharply both in the United States and globally (Rodrik 162). The attention given to these cults has also increased in the wake of sustained political polarization and social unrest. Large rallies such as the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march and the January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States capitol demonstrate the power that these fringe movements now hold as well as their capacity for violence and contribution to the erosion of democratic norms and social stability. The prevalence of right-wing cults can also be seen through the drastically increased proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Now more than perhaps ever in modern history, mainstream American politics are characterized by a general rejection of the notion of objective reality (Bleakley 1). One of the main causes of this rejection can be attributed to the prominence of echo chambers among political extremists on social media, in which aligning beliefs are reinforced and dissenting viewpoints are actively suppressed (Bleakley 12). This phenomenon hints at a bleak reality: the influence of reactionary cults and movements is not limited to their own movements. Rather, their extremist views and tactics can be observed slipping into mainstream political discourse. 

The growth of reactionary cults within far-right politics has drastically influenced mainstream political discourse. These cults both directly participate in mainstream political campaigns and employ a number of more indirect methods to influence political dialogue. As previously mentioned, the rise of fringe, right-wing cults has coincided with a sharp increase in the prevalence of disinformation and harmful conspiracy theories (Bleakley 2). Reactionary groups have used their growing platforms to disseminate propaganda promoting their fringe ideology and undermining that of their political opponents. Much of this is centered around tactics of fear-mongering in an attempt to create a feeling of urgency for action. Additionally, fringe-right cults are able to methodically slip into mainstream political discourse through media coverage of contentious issues as well as through the actions of individual politicians. Over the past several years, a large number of far-right politicians have adopted language that echoes the beliefs held by reactionary cults in attempts to appeal to certain voters. For example, both Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert are former followers of the QAnon cult and continue to espouse much of the same rhetoric supported by the group today, even as they hold some of the highest elected offices in the country. Powerful politicians and media figures’ adoption of framing similar to that propagated by reactionary cults has led to a dramatic shift in the “Overton Window”—the frame of what beliefs are considered socially acceptable within mainstream society. 

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The Overton Window is a concept designed to describe the range of ideas that are considered largely acceptable within conventional society at a given time. Joseph Overton (for whom the term is named) conceptualized that ideas outside the window (i.e., politically unacceptable) may later fit within the realm of acceptable ideas because the “window” can “either move or be transformed in size” (Oleksandr 52). It is through this process that reactionary cults are able to slip their ideas into conventional political discussions. Even over relatively short periods of time, one can observe how views that were previously unthinkable become widely adopted within the mainstream. Similar to the concept of the Overton Window is that of deviance, which refers to the idea of departing from generally accepted standards present in society. According to Hewitt, “Deviance…represents a real or imagined threat to social order, and the deviant is accorded a special and discredited position in relation to it,” (214). Thus, views outside of the Overton Window at a given point in time typically also fall under the umbrella of deviant views. The concepts of the Overton Window and deviance (and the relationship therewithin) are crucial to understanding the strategic importance of falling within the views accepted by mainstream society for far-right organizations. As Zuckerman puts it, “Stray outside the sphere of legitimate debate into the sphere of deviance, and your position becomes invisible to mainstream media dialog,” (16). Essentially, in order to reach a larger audience, reactionary cults have to struggle to fit within the established norms of society at any given point in time. Because of the tactical need to infiltrate mainstream political discourse, many right-wing, reactionary cults seek to normalize their own viewpoints by falsely equivocating their views with those held on the left. 

Reactionary groups often use anti-communist rhetoric to slip into mainstream political discourse by framing their opposition to communism as a defense of democracy, individual liberties, and freedom. One of the simplest means by which fascists can achieve their ultimate goal of consolidating power is by utilizing anti-communism as a tool to create a common enemy. By depicting socialism as a threat to national security, reactionaries can silence opposition, suppress meaningful dissent, and legitimize their authoritarian system. Another means by which reactionary groups seek to utilize anti-communist rhetoric is to equivocate fascism (and oftentimes Nazism) and communism. This is of course, on its face, absurd: while communism promotes the seizure of the means of production by the workers (Marx & Engels 38), Nazism is characterized by its emphasis on racial purity and antisemitism. The false equivalence of communism and Nazism is often propagated by far-right cults and media figures alike as a means to both discredit left-wing ideas and shift the Overton Window in favor of their own ideology. Making the comparison between communism and Nazism serves to downplay the severity of the crimes of one of the worst atrocities in human history and silence legitimate criticisms of capitalism and neoliberalism. The conjoined propaganda tools of finding a common enemy around which to unite and equating communism to the atrocities of Nazism allow reactionary cults to both delegitimize leftist movements and slip their own beliefs into conventional political discourse, ultimately serving their own end goal of consolidating power within mainstream institutions. 

  Fictitious tropes equating communism to Nazism have been widely disseminated and adopted within transnational mainstream political discourse, perpetuating misinformation, reinforcing negative stereotypes about leftist political movements, and legitimizing the views of reactionary cults. While the degree to which such attempts varies, in some parts of the world (especially in former Soviet states), reactionary cults have been able to “...[capitalize] on decades of anti-communism mainstream discourse built-up to develop a full-blown populist radical right narrative and politics,” (Popescu & Vesalon 5). In practice, this means that fascist sects such as the AUR in Romania and the OUN/UPA cult in Ukraine have been able to normalize their own beliefs and have massive impacts on public opinion and public policy (Crstocea). As previously discussed, cults have a tendency to rely on (among other things), informational social influence. In many instances, this can include followers accepting blatantly false information and shaping their perceptions of reality around lies (Corvaglia 9). Naturally, it’s not difficult why it would be undesirable for distorted worldviews to slip into mainstream politics, but in many instances, it already has. One such example can be seen in The Black Book of Communism (Courtois et al, 1999), which coined the “100 million deaths by communism” myth that has since been thoroughly debunked (Francois et al 4). Despite being categorically disproven, this myth is still perpetuated within mainstream conservative (and even many liberal) circles. As the views of reactionary cults with distorted worldviews gain traction within mainstream political discourse, they are enabled to both expand their influence and increase their numbers. 

The presence of anti-communist rhetoric in mainstream political discourse has led to the growth of reactionary cults characterized by informational isolation and a deference to authority. The use of anti-communist rhetoric fosters an atmosphere of apprehension and widespread suspicion toward leftist ideologies, which renders individuals more vulnerable to the perspectives of reactionary groups. The fear-mongering and demonization of communism that has pervaded Western political discourse for decades has created a fertile breeding ground for reactionary cults and movements that espouse radical anti-communist ideologies. These groups oftentimes promise protection against a supposed communist threat and frame themselves as protectors of freedom and traditional values. By stoking fears of a communist takeover of institutions, these cults and cult-like movements are able to tap into the anxieties of ordinary people who are disillusioned with mainstream neoliberal politics and searching for a sense of belonging and purpose. Further, the adoption of fictitious anti-communist tropes by mainstream political leaders and media figures can also serve as a means of legitimizing the views of these movements, leading to a further increase in their membership and influence. As reactionary cults continue to gain traction in mainstream political discourse, the consequences of anti-communist rhetoric are becoming increasingly evident. The aforementioned groups are given steadily more and more massive platforms to promote fringe ideologies and often resort to violence, as seen in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, and the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Additionally, the dissemination of anti-communist disinformation and conspiracy theories among these cults creates a pipeline toward radicalization and a complete rejection of objective, factual information, facilitating the exacerbation of societal divides. The normalization of radical, anti-communist rhetoric also perpetuates narrow-minded perspective ideologies, discouraging both critical thought and nuanced discussions about complex societal issues. In conclusion, the prevalence of anti-communist rhetoric in mainstream political discourse has led to a sharp rise in reactionary cults, posing a threat to the very institutions that underpin Western so-called “liberal democracy”. Acknowledging and rectifying the adverse consequences of the normalization of anti-communist rhetoric is vital in averting the proliferation of reactionary cults and the further degradation of the material conditions of everyday Americans.

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Chile 50 Years Later: Imperialism's Blight Still Reverberates

By Alex Ackerman

September 11, 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the devastating US-backed coup in Chile that resulted in the death of President Salvador Allende and the installation of fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. The years that followed under the regime were marked by state-sanctioned disappearances, torture of dissidents, widespread poverty, and systematic repression. In looking back on this day in history, a day that would forever change the course of the country, it is important to connect the example of Chile to the broader structure of imperialism and its manifestations, both past and present. The tactics employed in fomenting destabilization of the country and its subsequent regime change are not an historical aberration; rather, they represent the tactics and aims of imperialism, epitomizing the very intent of the system: exploitation of the people and resources of the Global South for the enrichment of the Global North, especially the United States. Such a system has unleashed incalculable harm as a result of the hundreds of violent interventions motivated by greed and financial interests. However, the case of Chile is not one of deference; the resistance and organization of the working class stands as testament to the collective power that stands to threaten imperialist hegemony, in spite of the numerous contradictions with which it dealt. Through linking Chile to the ways in which imperialism functions historically and currently, a deeper understanding of the history and function of imperialism as a system can emerge. The case of Chile exemplifies the continuous provokation of unrest and instability as a pretext for intervention and control, thereby securing Western economic interests via imperialist tactics and violently maintaining their hegemony. Furthermore, popular resistance to this foreign domination has been violently repressed both historically in Chile and currently, as workers have encountered brutal state-sanctioned violence in the name of anti-communism. 

This coup is a harrowing moment in Chilean and world history, as it marks not only the death of former president Salvador Allende, but also the ushering in of a fascist dictatorship that would loom over Chile for 17 years and still haunts the country to this day. On September 11, Chilean military leadership, which had been incorporated into Allende’s government, launched the coup that would usurp Allende; they initially occupied Valparaíso and subsequently moved in on Santiago, wherein soldiers attacked Chileans on the ground while simultaneously bombing the presidential office, El Palacio de La Moneda. In the days following the swift and ruthless coup, the regime unleashed atrocities on the Chilean people in order to consolidate power and eliminate any potential threat to their authority. Thousands were kidnapped and held hostage in the national stadium, where ultimately they were tortured and massacred by government firing squads. Even the smallest hint of association with support of Allende, or the indigenous and working class masses more broadly, was a death sentence. The leaders of the coup and dictatorship openly admitted that these anti-democratic massacres were fueled by virulent anti-communism, though they claimed to have “freed” the country. For almost two decades, Pinochet oversaw an uninterrupted campaign of terror that claimed at least 3,000 lives and was characterized by extrajudicial kidnapping and trafficking, in addition to widespread poverty and income inequality. 

While the actual day of the coup is significant, it did not occur in isolation nor spontaneously; rather it was the result of a coordinated effort by the Chilean bourgeoisie and the United States government to usurp Allende. In fact, the Chilean working class had thwarted years of attempted sabotage, and the coup was therefore a last resort. The right-wing opposition, consisting of the Christian Democratic Party and the National Party, used any means at their disposal to manufacture unrest across Chile in order to delegitimize Allende’s government, led by the Popular Unity party, and restore the conditions that served their own interests and augmented their personal profit at the cost of the Chilean masses. As a developing country, Chile depended on copper as its main export, accounting for 76.9% of all exports in 1970. Therefore, when copper miners launched strikes across the country in 1972, the entirety of Chile was forced to endure the ramifications that such shortage of production inflamed. Supported by the opposition-led Congress, these mobilizations facilitated calls for regime change, reflecting their reactionary nature and more insidious purpose. Such strikes were not uncommon, and many petty-bourgeois professionals stood on the wrong side of history in their desire for greater personal comfort. For example, with aid and training from the US, Chilean bus owners that dominated the transport sector called an indefinite strike, aggravating already precarious conditions and further paralyzing the country. The 600 state buses stood in stark contrast to the 5000 privately owned buses that no longer offered transportation to and from the factories, resulting in the disturbance of the supply chain and the loss of millions of dollars. 

In addition to the economic pressures, the Chilean opposition used their control of Congress and the Supreme Court to obstruct Allende’s governance and strip the legality of his executive authority. For example, the legislature launched a boycott against the promoters of state-controlled food distribution, leveling accusations against top officials to discredit their competence and integrity, resulting in their acquiescence or expulsion. At least two intendants and seven ministers in Allende’s government were removed by the opposition; they even attempted to dismiss 15 ministers at once, although this specific effort failed. Congress also led continuous efforts to obstruct the legal expropriation of industries that would have further entrenched the power of Popular Unity and cemented their shift away from the capitalist mode of production and imperialist collaboration. In this manner, the opposition stirred political conflict, expanding power that benefited them while attempting to dispute that which Allende held through the executive branch. Furthermore, the military played a role in fabricating this crisis of legitimacy, as they threatened to mutiny if Allende violated the Constitution, of which the right-controlled legislature had control to amend. On June 29, 1973, the military would foreshadow their destruction of democracy, revealing their true face with an unsuccessful coup attempt wherein a small faction of officers attacked La Moneda with tanks and soldiers shot civilians, ultimately killing 22 people. In this instance, Pinochet remained loyal to the forces that defended Allende, who was blind to the fate that awaited him. In the aftermath of the failed uprising, the legislature blocked Allende from declaring a state of emergency, further entrenching their own power while provoking more instability. The political conniving that ensued after Allende took office thus demonstrates the lengths to which the opposition felt threatened by the ongoing project of nationalization that Allende undertook. 

These political ploys were not limited to the Chilean government, but also included support from the US government. The role of the United States in generating social, political, and economic chaos cannot be understated. In seeking to maintain cheap access to Chile’s copper, former employees of US Information Services in Chile instructed Chilean fascist groups, such as Homeland and Freedom, to provoke violence and terrorize the Chilean people with the goal of justifying a coup. These were not solitary acts; rather, they formed a right-wing mass movement fueled by anti-communism that sought to implement a neoliberal, capitalist order in Chile. This neoliberal policy would eventually come to fruition with the aid of the Chicago Boys, economists who studied under Milton Friedman and oversaw the realization of neoliberal policy in Chile once Pinochet had seized power. In addition to aiding fascists, the Chilean military itself received training from the US, with more than 4,000 officers attending courses in the US or Panama Canal area since 1950, as well as $45 million dollars in aid from the Pentagon since Allende took office. By incorporating the military into the government, his hand forced due to gridlock by the right-wing legislature and judiciary, Allende unwittingly signed his own death certificate. 

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Another means by which the US engineered the conditions for regime change in 1973 can be found in its economic warfare against Chile, specifically through boycott and sanctions. By preventing the import of spare parts, the conspirators hoped to halt production in factories, stifling the economy and thus fomenting further social unrest due to this manufactured scarcity. These sanctions affected all aspects of life, as food distribution became a crucial focus amongst the working class as an immediate result of limited supplies; the presence of black markets and the issue of hoarding necessitated the creation of direct supply systems, eliminating the role of intermediaries, whose petty-bourgeois role aligned them with the opposition. This ingenuity on the part of the Chilean people demonstrates their commitment to a government that operated in service of the interests of the masses rather than the few elite, in addition to the innovation that is possible when people organize, especially in the face of such monumental adversity as US imperialism. 

Just as the US weaponized sanctions against Chile during Allende’s tenure in office, US sanctions today impact almost one third of the world population, including those from Syria, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and the DPRK. This policy is an act of warfare itself, designed to intentionally target those most vulnerable and to sow discord amongst the people, ripening the conditions for regime change. The extremely limited supply of food and medical supplies, as well as restrictions applying to international trade, entail a disenfranchised population that struggles to survive on a day-to-day basis. In this manner, sanctions elucidate the connection between the economic and political aspects of imperialism, given that the United States and international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund will contribute “aid” and facilitate trade so long as the respective government heeds the wishes of its neo-colonial puppet masters. Often, a small comprador class will collaborate with the Western imperialist forces, securing personal enrichment at the cost of adhering to neoliberal policy imposed by Western powers, characterized by austerity, free markets, and, in the case of the Global South, inexpensive exports, especially of raw materials. In the case of Chile, the right-wing opposition comprised the few elite who wanted to institute neoliberalism, implicating the entire country in the imperialist machinations of the United States. Thus, the Chilean struggle against imperialism took on a national character, as the fate of the country and what it meant to be Chilean stood in question, while simultaneously belonging to the collective efforts of the international proletariat. 

The US imperialism that deposed Allende in 1973 is the same imperialism that currently operates around the world and informs international politics. In Latin America alone, the US has intervened in at least 15 countries, including Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama, and Uruguay. This unfettered violence has resulted in the destruction of democracy and even the very fabric of the countries themselves, as evidenced by the resurgence of open-air slave markets in Libya after the NATO-led operation that resulted in the death of Gaddafi in 2011. In this manner, the US has made clear that the unending pursuit of profit and capitalist expansion will eclipse any moral goodwill or qualms about the ordinary people who face the brunt of being caught in the crossfires of imperialism. The magnitude of resources that the United States poured into regime change in Chile demonstrates the lengths to which they have gone and will continue to go in order to preserve their hegemony and maintain the capitalist-imperialist system that continues to shape current global relations From Iran to Korea, from Syria to Chad, from Vietnam to Ghana, the US empire has unleashed its full arsenal against the colonized and working class masses, deposing leaders across the Global South for threatening the imperialist hegemony that has enriched a few at the cost of the exploitation of billions of people. Important to note is the fact that this imperialism is not a relic of the past, but rather a structure that has evolved concurrently with the changing conditions of an increasingly globalized and digitized world. For example, the Organization of American States (OAS) orchestrated a coup in Bolivia that installed right-wing leader Jeanine Áñez, utilizing bogus statistics and the threat of military violence to unseat democratically elected former president Evo Morales. Morales had presided over a government responsible for a 42% reduction in poverty, as well as the empowerment of historically marginalized indigenous populations and a greater emphasis on environmental protection. These modern machinations of imperialism function in the same manner as they did in 1973, revealing the serpentine nature of empire and its relentless cruelty in perpetuating capitalism and neo-colonialism. 

The weaponization of sanctions, as exemplified in the case of Chile, highlights the importance of organization and national unity among those affected, given that the United States’ express aim is to manufacture forced scarcity in order to destabilize and undermine those countries that resist the encroachment of American empire. In July 2021, the ongoing embargo by the US against Cuba, coupled with even more dire conditions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, sparked counter-revolutionary protests against the government that the United States exploited for their own purposes. This attempted color revolution mirrors the various ways in which the US manipulated the material conditions in Chile with the aim of inciting the overthrow of Allende; only the sacrifice and mass organization of the Chilean working class prevented his earlier demise, which subsequently impelled the US and Chilean elite to their last resort: the coup. The swift implementation of neoliberal policy in Chile, in tandem with the brutal repression of the Pinochet regime, sharply contrasts the previous emphasis on nationalization and agrarian reform under Allende that alleviated the harsh conditions of poverty. The resulting widespread hardship endured by the Chilean people serves as the basis of the model inflicted on countries around the world; in other words, it is the intended consequence, not an aberration or mistaken oversight. What the Chilean people suffered, the US hopes to inflict on Cuba and other countries who resist its hegemony. In fact, the US actively engenders Cuban suffering and obstructs the Cuban people’s right to self-determination because of its continuous struggle against imperialism. For example, despite Cuba developing a vaccine with an efficacy rate of 92 percent, rivaling that of vaccines produced in the United States, a shortage of syringes due to the embargo prevents Cuba from ensuring its citizens' health, even though the vaccine is readily available to be produced. This deliberate approbation of hardship for the Cuban people by the US government serves as an example of the US denial of Cuba’s right to self-determination, exemplifying how rather than championing self-determination, the United States is its active adversary. 

In the midst of United States interference in the conditions of Chile before the coup itself, contradictions emerged specifically amongst the Chilean left from which the left today can learn and use to discern its own path forward. The Chilean working class understood the necessity of community self-defense and organized vigilance committees in order to prevent right-wing sabotage and protect against US-funded fascist violence. This protection was a matter of utmost urgency: military violence manifested across the country in the form of raids, including of cemeteries, under the pretense of searching for illicit weapons, in addition to the looming presence of extrajudicial right-wing groups. However, the issue of taking up arms presented itself with many difficulties due to right-wing interference by the legislature and judiciary. While extrajudicial violence carried out by right-wing fascists received monetary and instructional support from the American state department, the Chilean people were legally not entitled to bear arms and thus take up armed self-defense. In attempting to negotiate with the Christian Democratic Party, Allende was forced into a position wherein he could not risk further alienating this wing of the opposition, who would only balk at the left demonstrating an explicit show of force. Thus, Allende was caught between the growing desire on the left for the right to bear arms and the consequences of enabling this form of defense on his success with maintaining any semblance of cooperation with the other branches of government. 

This specific contradiction that arose amongst the left reflects a growing class consciousness that developed concurrently with the highly systematized organization of the working class in their defense of Allende’s government. The steadfast determination of the Chilean working class maintained the functioning of the mines and factories, as they organized under the slogan “popular power,” or poder popular. Embodying this slogan in every aspect of their praxis, the Chilean masses developed autonomous forms of food distribution, transportation, union protection, and even self-governance. Consequently, workers found themselves directly immersed in the contradictions concomitant with the nationalization of various industries. Though these changes facilitated greater worker participation and control, the nature of the state itself remained unchanged, and the bourgeoisie maintained their grasp of the means of oppression against the proletariat. These conundrums reveal the inherent limitations of liberal democracy, as well as the dangers of granting concessions to the right; the right will always manipulate the verbiage of the law, and even the law itself, in order to gain more power at the cost of progress made by the left. Thus, the left today can call awareness to the fact that genuine revolution will not take place in the form of the ballot or liberal reformism; only through the complete seizure of the state and the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat can an end to capitalism and imperialism be achieved. 

After decades of repression and subsequent papering over the past, Chile is just now beginning to contend with its history. The government announced at the end of August that it would play a more central role in leading the search for the almost 1500 people forcibly disappeared by the Pinochet regime, demanding cooperation from the military, which has historically feigned ignorance as to its crimes. The number of families torn apart by the dictatorship spans beyond those tortured, executed, and dumped in mass graves; at least 20,000 infants were stolen from their families and trafficked into other countries, primarily the United States. Such institutionalized, state-sanctioned devastation bespeaks the cruelty on which these structures of inequality rely. No aspect of life has remained impervious to this government repression, and the ramifications of the regime reverberate through the world to this day. Though the United States, a settler-colonial state founded on slavery and genocide, will never address its own past, it is the task of the left–still scattered and reeling in many ways from previous decades of coordinated anti-communist and racist repression–to reckon with this history and adapt to the current material conditions that dictate the most immediate concerns. An increasingly prevalent rise in right-wing censorship and an institutionalized erasure of history necessitates even greater urgency in confronting the ongoing escalation of domestic and international state-sanctioned violence. 

The lessons the left can learn from Chile assume an even greater importance in this current context of state-sanctioned repression. The United States government is currently escalating state violence against its own population, as evidenced by the RICO charges brought against Stop Cop City protestors in Atlanta. The collective, organized effort of these forest defenders reflects a growing resistance to this imperialist police state in spite of the immense resources levied against those who dare to challenge its hegemony. Furthermore, this brutality is not exclusive to the imperial borders of the United States. The people of Palestine, Kenya, and Haiti, among numerous other countries, continue to challenge the brutal violations of their right to sovereignty and self-determination. In this manner, the imperialist violence occurring today parallels that which occurred in Chile in 1973. 

Chile stands as a principal testament to the viciousness inherent to capitalist imperialism, as well as the power and necessity of unified, working class organization. Imperialism is a global force, and its enforcers are highly organized and have proven that they will use any and all means in order to preserve their power. Thus, it is our collective responsibility to organize, and the example of Chile illuminates the multitude of possibilities that such organization can inspire, with purposeful mobilization guided by concrete goals that do not underestimate the primary enemy of the world. Then and now, Chile shows that revolution is not some distant ideal but rather an immediate possibility; Chile shows that the masses control their own destinies, and that a better world is ours to win.  

What Latin America Can Teach About Political Instability

[Pictured: A group of fascists march in Brazil in 2019, with hopes of reviving Brazilian Integralism]

By Diego Viana

For a Latin American like me, a certain anxiety currently expressed by liberals and social democrats in the wealthy West is intriguing. Op-eds in the mainstream media and book titles in political science set off the alarm: democracy, often designated our democracy, is in danger. Why? Because centrist political forces are gradually losing their capacity to determine the terms of the debate and the universe of what is possible, election after election, opinion poll after opinion poll. Meanwhile, the social landscape is transformed by an increasingly aggressive far Right and the return of the Left to the streets around 2011, after a somewhat dormant decade. It is true that political, economic, and social leaderships with little esteem for a democratic veneer are clearly on the rise. It is also true that mass protests and barricades are back in the game. Yet, seen from my part of the world, these trends are remarkably familiar.

It is tempting to reduce the complexity of current political tendencies by jamming them all into the single narrative of “rising populism,” as mainstream political scientists and journalists in the West so often do. It is comfortable, but hardly elucidating, to melt such names as Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen, Éric Zemmour, Donald Trump, Georgia Meloni, Vox, Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the United Kingdom Independence Party, but also Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Bernie Sanders, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, and others, into a single political concept, and then contrast them with a liberal center deemed democratic in essence. 

Comfortable, of course, for those who only aspire to lament the slow corrosion of liberal democracy, as witnessed in Eastern European countries like Poland or Hungary. The framework that delimits the trend as a rise of populism or illiberalism conveniently leaves aside the traditional Right's consistent drift further right. France is a good example. While the suburbs burn in protest against police brutality, the traditional Republicans (formerly “Union for a Popular Movement”) send out xenophobic and racist messages and policy proposals. President Emmanuel Macron, in turn, who was once a minister under socialist president François Hollande, then was elected in 2017 with a strictly neoliberal platform, places himself increasingly in the orbit of rightist ideas, hoping to keep right-wing voters within reach. In 2021, he adopted the notion that universities are dominated by “Islamo-leftism.” This year, he repeated far-right novelist Renaud Camus's diagnosis of a “decivilization” of France.

And yet, someone like Macron, who bypassed Congress to sign a pension reform into law despite overwhelming popular opposition, is considered a symbol of liberal democracy. Is it simply because, unlike Le Pen's Right or Mélenchon's Left, he remains a free market champion? Or, likewise, is the Conservative British government, which installed a prison boat to detain immigrants, liberal-democratic because they don't subscribe to the recoil of economic nationalism characteristic of their Brexiteer predecessors under Boris Johnson? If (neo)liberalism itself develops into a strict surveillance/police state, with a distinctly authoritarian horizon, are we still speaking about democracy?

I believe the Latin American experience suggests that the most significant aspect of the current political trend is neither its “populism” [1] nor its “illiberalism,” but its instability. While the usually nationalistic, sometimes ultraliberal, occasionally religious, and often openly fascist New Right has been rising relentlessly, by creating new parties or caucuses inside the traditional ones, the process has not been as steady as it might seem. In the last decade, the Right, Left, and Center have all seesawed vertiginously between victory and defeat. Think of how the AfD in Germany grew during the refugee crisis of 2016, then lost popularity in the aftermath of the pandemic, then grew again. Or how the traditional Left won the French 2012 elections, only to be practically wiped out in 2017, replaced by Mélenchon's France Insoumise, which has now become the centerpiece of the left-wing coalition NUPES (New Ecological and Social People’s Union) in Congress. Or how the Labour Party reached 40% of the vote that same year with Corbyn as leader, before the debacle [2] that led to the rise of Keir Starmer. Or even the rise of young socialists in the United States, while the obscurantist Right took over the Supreme Court. More recently, in Spain, the Right's inability to form a government with the neofascists from Vox, immediately following a significant victory in local elections, shows that the game is not as linear as is often depicted. Quite the opposite: it oscillates wildly.

Moreover, in most of these countries, opinion polls do not show a clear preference for the nationalist, xenophobic, ultraconservative ideas these groups profess. It is true that they usually don't tip towards left-wing ideas either, such as redistribution or public ownership. Nevertheless, if people in Europe and the United States tend to view the world with a more "centrist" lens, then the loss of steam by the centrist forces becomes puzzling in its own right. Which leads to the good old materialistic interpretation: the political oscillation and the ultra-conservative call may reflect economic insecurities, or, more widely, deeper anxieties concerning living conditions.

The relation between the worsening living conditions and the odd mix of nationalism, racism, bigotry, religious fanaticism, and libertarianism we are becoming used to is not immediately obvious. Sadly, structural relations are rarely obvious. But it is not hard to notice that, in the absence of factors that foster social cohesion — through common experiences, such as work relations and opportunities to consume, which give people a feeling of participation in economic life, and public services, pensions, unemployment benefits etc. — those yearning for belonging may recourse to confrontational forms of religiosity, a renewed strength of white supremacy, or the extreme demands of a neoliberal ethics as it appears in the Silicon Valley way of life, where every aspect of existence is monetized. All of these seem to be fusing as the contemporary face of fascism.

Which brings us back to Latin America, this old periphery of the Western colonial powers (the United States came up with a much cruder term: “backyard”). Here, political oscillation has been the rule in most countries, not in the sense of what in the region is usually called the “healthy alternation of power,” but violent swings between oligarchic (and, more recently, neoliberal) and progressive forces, with a constant risk of authoritarian slides. The 1990s were a nearly monolithic neoliberal period in the region, succeeded by two “red (or pink) tides,” when a series of somewhat left-wing parties took power in many countries almost simultaneously. In between, a conservative interregnum took hold, either via elections or coups — explicit or not (Honduras in 2009 [3], Paraguay in 2012, Brazil in 2016, Bolivia in 2019).

The Argentinian case is probably the most extreme, as the country is still grappling with financial asphyxiation due to the insistence on a one-to-one parity between the peso and dollar from 1991 to 2001, and the  “rescue” packages from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that followed. In the last decade, the left-wing “Peronista” president Cristina Kirchner was followed by the businessman Mauricio Macri in 2015. Macri then fell out of favor with the electorate due to an inflationary hike intensified by yet another IMF package, and the left-leaning Peronistas [4] regained the Casa Rosada in 2019 with the current president Alberto Fernández.

This year's electoral process has a particularity. In the primaries (where voting is open to all and mandatory), the libertarian, discreetly fascist candidate, Javier Milei, received 30% of the vote, ahead of the traditional right-wing opposition (28.3%) and the governing coalition (27.3%). This means that Milei's prospects of actually becoming president by the end of the year are far from unrealistic. At the time of writing, he’s the betting favorite.

In Brazil, a decade of turmoil ended the relatively stable period associated with the post-1988 “New Republic.” This era of stability, whose hallmark is the adoption of an economic stability plan in 1994, was punctuated by the presidencies of center-right Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) and center-left Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (2003-2010), whose tenures marked a particularly optimistic time, when Brazilians genuinely felt that the country had reached a new stage of political maturity — if there is such thing. The following decade, which began hopefully and the expectation of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, would turn out to be marked by a series of mass protests beginning in 2013 and political strife.

The apex of this instability came in 2016, when a poorly justified impeachment process sacked Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, who faced increasingly vitriolic opposition in Congress, the media, and even heavily astroturfed protests in the streets. The process, which has consistently been denounced as a coup by the Left, installed her conservative vice president, Michel Temer, in her seat. The traditional political forces of Brazil, which includes large landowners, bankers, the very few families that control the media, the high bureaucracy, the military, and what is left of the manufacturing sector, believed this would obliterate the Workers' Party (PT) and lead to many years of center-right governments.

Instead, the 2018 election brought what felt like a preordained victory for a caricatural far-right candidate who promised to “clean up” the country of leftists and, during the pandemic, mocked the victims and imitated a person suffocating to death. COVID killed more than 700.000 Brazilians. Four years later, Lula was back in office, elected by an insignificant margin of 1.8% of the vote, and riding on the widest imaginable alliance.

In the last few years, the oscillation intensified and accelerated. Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Ecuador have faced protests, impeachments, jailed ex-presidents, fascist presidents, and strikes [5]. Chile — historically the most stable South American country — caught fire.

The 2019 “estallido social” (social blowup) during the presidency of neoliberal Sebastián Piñera led to the formation of a remarkably progressive constituent assembly. The 2021 election pitted the young left-wing activist Gabriel Boric against the neofascist José Antonio Kast, with a victory for Boric that may have been his last. Since then, the project of a new constitution suffered a resounding defeat and his approval rates have sunk. 

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In Colombia last year, Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla fighter and mayor of the capital, Bogotá, was the first left-wing candidate to reach the presidency, with Francia Márquez, a black female environmentalist, as vice president. Petro's party, Humane Colombia (formerly “the Progressive Movement”), is small and had to rely on a heterogenous alliance (Historic Pact for Colombia) to achieve victory. In government, as the alliance shattered with some of the parties failing to vote with the government, Petro and Márquez came under fire from all sides: the regional agricultural elites, the traditional parties (such as ex-president Álvaro Uribe's Democratic Center) and, of course, the media — which, as in many of the neighboring countries, is highly concentrated. As usual, accusations of corruption are the first tactics employed. In Petro's case, they involve illegal drug money in the electoral campaign and spying on his enemies.

In sum, except for Uruguay, where the Left governed for 14 years and was succeeded last year by a traditional, “normal,” neoliberal president, the politics of Latin America are unstable and often nasty. Progressive, conservative, and neofascist governments have been coming and going in many of the key Latin American countries. No particular set of policies seems to be able to take hold. One group reaches power when the others have disappointed their constituencies.

Why are they disappointed? Once again, because of living conditions, which have largely stagnated for at least two generations, beginning in the early 1980s and leading to rural and urban conflicts, underemployment, and that same permeability of the middle classes to neofascist messages as we are witnessing in the West. As the social tissue increasingly frays, those with a certain level of property and wellbeing feel threatened, and it is hardly a surprise that they resort to “saviors” and “punishers.”

And what makes the Latin American case so instructive for the developed West? I would argue that Latin America, being a “fragile” satellite of the Western world, is particularly exposed to the fluctuations that reveal a crack in the edifice of liberal democracy, in the way this form of government has developed over the last half-century.

While a significant portion of humanity has been living under the aegis of neoliberalism since the late 1970s and particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, it seems that everywhere in the world the mental model of political stability is still the social-democratic system of the post-WW2 period, particularly in Europe, and known in France as “Les Trente Glorieuses,” the three “glorious” decades of growth with distribution, well-paid manufacturing jobs, widespread unionization, and a managed form of capitalism that guaranteed a comparatively high level of social participation in policymaking. In other words, we seem to expect a kind of world, with the living conditions it implies, that belongs to a bygone era. Our grandparents took a certain political security and quality of life for granted, and we still long for that. But it is not within our reach.

Social-democratic parties promise to reconstitute this historical structure, and occasionally win with that message. But they cannot deliver and lose face, support, and credibility. Then come the conservatives, who intensify the neoliberal agenda, only to cause more precariousness and financialization. Then come the neofascists, who generate horror, social conflict, and brutality. And the cycle repeats.

The illusory character of this somewhat rosy depiction of the mid-20th century is well-documented and nowhere more evident than in what was then called the “Third World.” In Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, the voracious quest for raw materials and cheap labor left a trail of civil wars, coups, and massacres. This probably reminds you of the Vietnam War, but the military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile etc., all of which were supported by the CIA, are also part of the story. The colonial grip over these parts of the world far outlasted the formal colonial ownership or “protection,” as we see from the Western interventions following independence wars in African countries. To a large extent, the comfortable lifestyle that the West associates with liberal democracy was built on the exploitation of the rest of the world, in a renewed form of colonialism.

What made possible the political balance that characterized the “Trente Glorieuses,” with strong trade unions, rising manufacturing wages, and social mobility (in French again: the “ascenseur social,” or “social elevator”), was the possibility and necessity of class negotiations and agreements. Neither capital nor organized labor could expect to have their way in full — even taking into account the strong communist parties of Europe, whose revolutionary flame was kept as low as possible most of the time. Political systems could remain stable and successful due to this delicate equilibrium. However, the equilibrium in turn was maintained thanks to a fear of the Soviet bloc, an unimpeded flow of cheap oil, easy access to resources and markets in the “Third World,” and the absence of serious economic competition from non-Western countries.

As we know, this model was progressively eroded by several factors. The quick rise in productivity that accompanied the industrial advance waned off, making it harder to keep the wage increases. The rise of neoliberalism eliminated the redistributive mechanisms that could have extended the balance of power between capital and labor for a few more years. The capacity of China and other Asian countries to attract manufacturing jobs with ever higher skill profiles, in part due to the opening of markets known as globalization, broke unions' bargaining power. Neoliberalism first emerged and reached power as a response to the exhaustion of the post-war welfare state, the social-democratic model. But it never truly replaced, even among the Left, the notion of a nearly ideal state of affairs where a certain level of democracy was guaranteed by what the German philosopher Theodor Adorno called “managed capitalism” [6].

What makes Latin America a particularly relevant place to understand where the structural power relations are heading elsewhere is that many of the countries mentioned above have been experiencing a post-industrial kind of stagnation for several decades already, after an incomplete process of economic development undertaken precisely in the period of late colonialism, Cold War, and the belief that industrialization was an infallible catalyst of development. Latin America, which never quite developed the institutions of Western social democracy, has to cope with swollen cities, underemployment and informal work, capital imbalances, crumbling infrastructure, but has poor political means to respond. And it was, after all, the site of the first experiment in neoliberal governance: Augusto Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship.

As a result, neoliberal, progressive, and fascist governments replace each other continually, not always in the smooth manner one expects from the ideals of liberal democracy. Occasionally, promises of improved living conditions can be fulfilled, but only to a limited extent, which is why the success stories are quickly followed by a period of frustration and revolt, leading to power changing hands again.

In this context, it is not hard to see that the authoritarian far Right has an edge. Its advantage comes at a low cost. By promising the past over the future, the known over the unknown, the neofascists of our time are always able to delay satisfaction and simultaneously keep their position by blaming someone else. The worse it gets, the easier it is to repeat the process. While an ultraconservative government cannot provide the quality of life that subsists in people's imagination as a mark of the 20th century — the economic and even environmental conditions are incompatible — it can still renew its promise by blaming non-conforming groups for the slowly worsening conditions of life. Hence, the ghost of communism, the widespread xenophobia, the justifications of racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. that have become so common in our time. 

The post-WW2 model tends toward utter unattainability. It should no longer be our horizon of expectations. Bleak as this may sound, it is safe to say that the edifice of multi-party democracy is crumbling before our eyes. In a world where energy is no longer abundant, manufacturing does not guarantee safe jobs for the working class, unions are busted, climate change puts crop yields at risk, and the neocolonial control over the rest of the world can no longer be expected, the social-democratic balance is hardly tenable.

The greatest risk is that the dominant classes give up the pretense of democracy and revert to a more explicit authoritarian regime. This is most certainly already underway, if we think of the Republican Party under Donald Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reforms, the British Conservatives, the Spanish People’s Party, or Macron. Once again, Latin America provides a clear-cut example of this choice, as the Right turns to military and religious leaders in their attempts to regain or extend control over the state.

If we can still hope for democracy, we have to accept that it will not be social democracy and certainly not liberal democracy. Whatever it will turn out to consist in, it must be built from the ground up, and the very process of construction needs to be as democratic as the expected final result. In this respect, the bright side — and it is always advisable to conclude from the bright side — of the Latin American landscape is that this part of the world is also a vibrant cluster of the grassroots political and social experimentation we must nurture. The plurinational constitution of Bolivia, the ecosocialism being developed by the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement, the strength of solidarity economy schemes in Argentina, and the articulation of indigenous movements in many of the countries show that the authoritarian conservative turn is not a matter of necessity. New models of collective life and social organization are being forged, and this is where we should turn to find inspiration.

Diego Viana is a Brazilian economic journalist. He earned his PhD in political philosophy from the University of São Paulo and covers Brazilian politics, economy, and social conflict.

Footnotes

[1] In its contemporary form, the concept is most often used in a way that corresponds to Jan-Werner Müller's definition as pitting a “pure and unified people” against a “morally corrupt elite.” This is, of course, not a helpful definition if we are trying to understand the inherent instability of the period. I will not discuss this definition, and also leave aside the appropriation of the concept of populism by Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and Pierre Dardot, as the question of defining populism is beside the scope of this text.

[2] The main instrument of Corbyn's downfall was a report that accused him of not handling antisemitism accusations within the Labour Party appropriately. Later, Al Jazeera revealed that the party bureaucracy actively worked to undermine his leadership, which included drafting the antisemitism report. Corbyn was later suspended from the party.

[3] In 2009, the Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was forcefully removed from office by the army, in a traditional coup d'état. In Paraguay, President Fernando Lugo was ousted after a summary impeachment process with only two hours to prepare his defense. The cause was allegedly the insecurity in the country after a bloody conflict between landless workers and the police. This inaugurated the series of “parliamentary coups” that reached Brazilian Dilma Rousseff in 2016. The Bolivian case is different in that it involves the questionable decision by the Supreme Court to allow President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term. After he won the election, accusations of electoral irregularities emerged and the military forced him to resign.

[4] “Peronista” designates the political groups that claim the legacy of Juan Domingo Perón, president in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The reason why one must specify that these “Peronistas” are left-leaning is that there are “Peronistas” of all tendencies, including the conservative Carlos Menem, who introduced neoliberalism to the country in the 1990s. Perón himself tended to favor the right-wing Peronistas. In the 1960s, when exiled in Spain, Perón gave an interview where he was asked to explain how he saw the Argentinian political landscape. He listed the parties but did not include “Peronista” as a category. The reporter reminded him of that, to which he replied: “Oh, but they are all Peronistas.”

[5] I will leave aside the cases of Venezuela, El Salvador and Nicaragua, whose paths are outliers.

[6] A possible reason for this is that the neoliberal agenda transformed living conditions gradually — except in transitioning countries subjected to “shock doctrine” — progressively eroding labor's position in the distributive conflict, in order to uphold Western capitalism's competitive edge. The slow, but sure erosion of the Welfare State and the possibility of what the International Labour Organization names “decent work” seems to sustain the hope for a return to managed capitalism.

Global Ruling Classes Welcome Fascist-Led Government in Italy

By Luca Tavan

Republished from Red Flag.

The Italian general election was a historic win for the far right. A coalition of the three major parties won 44 percent of the vote, enough in Italy’s byzantine electoral system to form a clear majority in both houses of parliament. Most importantly, it was driven by the meteoric rise of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in the post-Mussolini fascist tradition, which secured 26 percent of the vote, making it the single largest party in parliament. 

For many, the ascension to power of a fascist party in the centre of Europe seemed unthinkable. But decades of grinding economic crisis, state-sponsored racism and the discrediting of parties of the neoliberal centre have created a dangerous situation of far-right advance. With Europe on the brink of yet another recession, the prospect of further descent into authoritarianism and barbarism is alarming. 

If you listen to the capitalist press and politicians, however, you would think that there’s nothing to worry about. A headline in the Australian exhorts: “Relax, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers aren’t fascist”. The Australian Financial Review carried the line, “Victory to Italian right is no lurch into extremism”. This is despite Meloni’s pledge to institute a naval blockade to stop refugee ships, roll back abortion and LGBTI rights and dismantle social welfare. 

Speaking to an Italian journalist at the Venice Film Festival, US former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even praised Meloni: “The election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing”. It’s remarkable to speak of “breaking with the past” as Mussolini-nostalgists return to power in the birthplace of fascism. 

A statement from Lorenzo Codogno, a former director-general of the Italian Treasury, reveals the real reason for establishment nonchalance in the face of fascism. “They want to be perceived as a party that you can do business with and can govern the country.” Business has taken a look at this coalition of far-right racists and fascists, and decided it’s a government they can deal with, potentially making a great deal of money. 

Aided by a wave of apologetics from the media, Meloni has attempted to sanitise her image to present a respectable face. During the election campaign, she reassured voters that her party had “handed fascism over to history for decades now”. But Meloni has maintained a commitment to fascist politics throughout her life. At the age of 15, she joined MSI (Italian Social Movement), the party founded by leading fascists who survived the fall of Mussolini’s regime in 1943 and wanted to work for its return. Along with a series of other former MSI leaders, Meloni founded Fratelli d’Italia in 2012 as the latest iteration of this project. 

In her autobiography, I am Giorgia, she espouses the “great replacement theory”, claiming that the left is attempting to destroy Western civilisation by flooding the continent with African and Middle Eastern migrants and undermining traditional family structures. In local government, Brothers politicians have passed legislation making it harder for migrants to access social housing, and proposed laws that would make it compulsory to bury aborted fetuses in cemeteries. 

Meloni will rule in coalition with the Lega, led by Matteo Salvini, who as interior minister in a previous government blocked the entry of NGO ships carrying rescued refugees to Italian shores, and Silvio Berlusconi, the infamously corrupt and venal media magnate whose Forza Italia was once the leading light of the populist right. 

While the far right has been advancing in Europe since the 2008 global financial crisis, Meloni’s victory is a significant milestone. It’s the first time a party with neo-fascist roots has led a government in a major European economy. This gives a boost to the rising tide of far-right politics internationally. 

Meloni’s victory comes in the immediate aftermath of the major win for the far-right Sweden Democrats. She has been a vocal supporter of the Spanish Vox Party and Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian government in Hungary. Both Meloni and Orbán were guests of honour at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the most important gathering of the American right.

Meloni’s victory was assured by the craven support that every party of the political mainstream gives to unpopular and brutal neoliberal policies, which have created massive poverty and youth unemployment and savaged living standards. The 25 September election was triggered by the collapse of the Draghi government, an unelected technocratic cabinet headed by a former European Central Bank president to oversee further cuts to social spending. 

Every major party from the centrist Democratic Party to the Lega participated in this “national unity” government. Meloni’s group was the only significant force that remained outside of the coalition. As the government slowly but inevitably collapsed, the Brothers gained credibility.

The high level of abstention in the election was another important factor in Meloni’s success. The rise of the right can be put down to widespread revulsion at the political mainstream, rather than a popular endorsement of Meloni’s program. Fewer than 64 percent of the eligible population voted, the lowest turnout in history and down from an average of 90 percent in the post-WWII period. Meloni increased her vote largely by winning voters from the other right-wing parties. 

Despite a history of shallow anti-establishment rhetoric, a hallmark of the far right, Meloni will likely continue Draghi’s economic agenda. Meloni has also reassured the capitalist class that her government will support NATO. Internal divisions could emerge within the coalition over the war in Ukraine—Salvini’s Lega has ties to Italian capitalists with heavy investments in Russia, and he has questioned the continuation of sanctions. Meloni will have to balance the fragile and conflicting interests of her coalition partners with her desire to remain a reliable ally of European capital at large.

What is certain is that the new right-wing coalition will intensify attacks on workers and oppressed people. It can’t be ruled out that they will attempt to curb civil and democratic rights. The Brothers have already signalled their desire for legislation to ban what they term “totalitarian” or “extremist” ideologies, by which they mean communism and Islam.

The far right’s victory is a harbinger of things to come. A recent opinion piece by Edward Luce in the Financial Times noted: “Western liberalism is still skating on thin ice”, with war and looming recession in Europe, a protracted energy crisis and far-right electoral advances making for destabilising factors in world politics. 

The capitalists realise that in a crisis-ridden and polarised world, far-right governments may increasingly be an option for defending their power and privilege. They think that they are playing a clever game by normalising the new government in Italy. They believe that they can keep the fascists under their thumb, use them to absorb discontent at unpopular austerity measures and advance their economic agenda. 

History tells us that fascists like Meloni, who are inspired by the monstrous dictatorships of the 1920s and ’30s, may harbour even darker aspirations for the future.

Their Freedom, and Ours: A Case Study on Morality, Inequality, and Injustice Amid a Pandemic

Photo: Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune

By Peter Fousek

David Hume opens his essay “Of the First Principles of Government” with the statement that “Force is always on the side of the governed.”[1] Though she uses different terminology, Hannah Arendt’s understanding of power is analogous to Hume’s “Force.” In On Violence, she asserts that “[i]t is the people’s support that lends power to the institutions of a country, and that this support is but the continuation of the consent that brought the laws into existence to begin with.” Both accounts consider social power to be something fundamentally popular, rooted in collective action undertaken in accordance with a shared will. Thus, “[a]ll political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power,” which “petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them.”[2] This understanding of power is consistent with the nature of the social world: institutions do not come into existence of their own accord, but are created and maintained by the actions of people. Laws do not exist as natural truths—they are established in accordance with shared beliefs and modes of understanding, and retain their jurisdiction only insofar as people assent to them. Therefore, those social structures and formations which hold significant influence over our world, do so because they have substantial, popular support underlying their authority and answering their commandments with corresponding action.

Given this notion of power, “[n]othing appears more surprising…than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”[3] If the governed possess a constitutive power over their social world, how is it that institutional authority so often supersedes the will of the masses with that of its ruling contingent? I will argue that this counterintuitive state of social organization, in which the few hold dominion over the majority, must rely on an imposed, hegemonic system of belief capable of convincing the general population that their oppression is just and their liberation villainous. Such a system of belief, while certainly instrumental in the maintenance of totalitarian states, is especially important in the context of ostensibly representative systems of government like that of the contemporary U.S.

In these contexts, voters must be convinced not that it would be amoral for them to overthrow their rulers, but rather that it is moral for them to continue to formally reproduce the power of those rulers year after year, by way of the voting booth. In the United States, that process of coercion has proved quite successful. According to exit polls, over 42% of voters with household incomes under $50,000 per year voted for Donald Trump, despite his promises to cut taxes for corporations and the super-wealthy while defunding already limited social services; in 2020, that contingent rose to 43%.[4] Over half of the Kentuckians in that income bracket voted to reelect Mitch McConnell in the same election cycle.[5]  In a country where well over half of the population has a household income of under $75,000,[6] our governing authorities consistently promote the aims of the wealthiest few, often at the expense of the many. While the United States incarcerates more people than any other country, and while 969 people have been killed by U.S. police this year alone,[7] the State does not rely solely on such direct repressive force to achieve its inequitable ends. As the electoral data shows, the electorate consents to its own socioeconomic oppression; with shocking frequency, we as a nation “resign [our] own sentiments and passions to those of [our] rulers.”[8]

What system of belief is responsible for convincing American citizens, whose collective sovereignty is systematized in electoral systems, to continue voting directly against their economic interests? If we are to build a better world by overcoming the oppressive systems and structures of the established order, we must first understand the mechanism by which that implicit consent of the oppressed is elicited. A society designed to pursue the aims of a small and exclusive minority at the expense of the majority cannot rely on force alone to sustain itself, since institutional authority possesses the apparatus of force only so long as a substantial contingent of the people are willing to follow its orders. Instead, it requires the tool of an official moral framework capable of securing the popular mandate upon which its dominion is established. It is possible for a small ruling class to maintain its jurisdiction over a much larger oppressed one only when the dominant segment promotes its ends as necessary, and thereby convinces its society that anything which goes against those ends is immoral. The ruling class perpetuates its existence by convincing the ruled majority that their subjugation is just, according to supposedly universal moral precepts.

That moral indoctrination is possible because, to use Marx, the economically dominant class “rule also as thinkers and producers of ideas and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age. Their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.”[9] Therefore, the ruling class is able to disseminate its own beliefs and understandings as comprehensive fact, absorbing, in the words of Barthes, “into its ideology a whole section of humanity which does not have its basic status and cannot live up to it except in imagination.”[10] The universality of the established ruling order and its corresponding cultural norms supersede any alternative worldviews or systems of belief, and thereby create the illusion that the entire social formation lacks meaningful class differentiation (the absence of ideological stratification is implied as evidence that social class does not cause a fundamentally different experience of the world). So, using its near monopoly on the dissemination of far-reaching ideas and discourse, through channels including broadcasting companies, social media platforms, and the national political stage, the economically dominant class convinces its entire social world that its particular morality, corresponding to its particular class interests, is in fact universal, natural moral law, obligatory for all.

Any system of official morality imposed on a society is necessarily repressive on account of that claim to universality. Morality is the product of social development in the same sense that the institutions, laws, and norms of our societies are, as Arendt notes, the products of beliefs held by the popular masses. As social institutions etc. exist to achieve defined ends, such as the preservation of property rights and relations, morality also serves social interests. We see this to be the case in moral precepts as basic as the commandment that “thou shall not kill,” which provides a foundational basis for social cohesion by establishing a normative framework in which a might-makes-right paradigm becomes condemnable. Nonetheless, even so fundamental a moral tenet as that one fails to prove universally applicable in the context of the real and dynamic world. History shows that societies which condemn killing in times of peace often herald it as the most honorable task of their soldiers in times of war. Therefore, the presentation of any system of morality as something universal, and so too ahistorical, is deceptive, given the necessarily specific and dynamic nature of moral analysis (and thus the impossibility of truly natural and universal morality).

Still, such universal moral precepts do serve social interests, even if those interests differ from those which the popular majority perceive as the purpose of their moral laws. The imposition of a particular morality onto the whole of society establishes a moral hegemony, wherein only that which promotes the aims of the social class who defines the moral system is considered right and just. Such a process serves the social interests of the dominant class, allowing the many to be subjugated by the few: the universal application of specific moral norms is all too often employed to prevent the oppressed from striving towards their own liberation. During times of relative historical calmness, that morality-mediated oppression may be concealed to the point of near-invisibility. In the United States, a nation satiated with spiritual and secular prosperity gospels, whose popular consciousness is inundated with myths of the American Dream predicated on the principle of productivity (the notion that an individual’s success is the reflection of their efforts), the illusion that social mobility is always possible—if only for the “most industrious” among us—lends credence to a moral framework that condemns the poor as lazy people suffering from self-imposed shortcomings, while celebrating the wealthy as tenacious and driven individuals whose opulence is merely the manifestation of their moral virtue.

On that basis, cycle after cycle Americans vote against their economic interest, without even understanding that they are doing so. When we are taught that poverty is personal iniquity embodied, and wealth the reflection of the opposite, then those who are not wealthy must identify “not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires,”[11] if they are to consider themselves virtuous according to the official moral framework. Thus, as they have for decades, millions of working-class Americans continue to vote for “representatives” who facilitate their exploitation for the sake of the wealthy elite. When we fail to recognize the foundational social power we hold as a class, or even our position as members of the working class as such, we unwittingly provide consent for our continued oppression. The underlying misconception of the meritocratic nature of our society is bolstered by the perception that our political and legal institutions are egalitarian, and therefore that all members of our citizenry have an equal shot at financial success, free from any undue external influence or restriction. In other words, we are told that the official morality of our society is just, because all members of our society share equal freedoms under the law. However, I will argue that even if we use that politically conservative understanding of freedom, labeled negative liberty by Isaiah Berlin (that is, the understanding of freedom as freedom from interference in an individual’s exercise of her rights), supposedly universal freedom is not, in fact, shared universally across class divisions.[12] For that reason, the official morality imposed by one class onto all cannot validly substantiate its claims to universality, and can only be understood as a repressive apparatus implemented to ensure the continued self-subjugation of the oppressed. 

The contradictions of normative morality often appear more sharply when contrasted against a backdrop of historical tumult and upheaval. Such has been the case over the past fourteen months, as the national response to the pandemic in the United States has exposed the degree to which our official morality is willing to sacrifice the wellbeing, and even the lives, of the working class, in order to promote the interests of the possessing one. In this time, it has become clear “that lack of money implies lack of freedom,” even in the sense that it is defined by Berlin and the political Right, as “the absence of obstacles to possible choices and activities.”[13] This inequitable distribution exposes the class-interestedness of an official morality which heralds such freedom, by which is meant, for the most part, negative liberty, as the most just and morally virtuous ideal to be promoted by our norms and institutions. Our socioeconomic order is one predicated on the value of individual productivity and wealth accumulation. Resultantly, the freedom of the individual to exist in such a way that they might promote their own wellbeing without restriction by external influence is foundational to the American sociopolitical psyche. Hence Berlin’s explanation of the moral condemnation of the poor, whose wellbeing, we are told, is not our concern, since “it is important to discriminate between liberty and the conditions of its exercise. If a man is too poor or too ignorant or too feeble to make use of his legal rights, the liberty that these rights confer upon him is nothing to him, but it is not thereby annihilated,” (Cohen 4). According to the Right, that is the freedom of which this nation’s founders wrote, the liberty to which the United States declares its dedication, our ultimate moral value: the nominal liberty to act without restriction in pursuit of a given set of possibilities, with no guarantee to the outcome or ease of such a pursuit.

In times of crisis, like that brought on by the pandemic, the most crucial exercise of such freedom involves the liberty to protect oneself and one’s family from immediate threat of harm. The relative ability or inability of American citizens to do so, depending on their socioeconomic status, provides a tragic illustration of the fact that in the United States, “lack of money implies lack of freedom.”[14] In contemporary America, as in any capitalist society, right (as either or both ownership and access) to any object or pursuit is conferred largely by money. This claim is exceedingly apparent: for example, one does not have the freedom to sleep in a hotel room that they have not paid for, and their attempt to do so would likely be met with interference regardless of their otherwise complete ability, will, and legal allowance. In Cohen’s words, “when a person’s economic security is enhanced, there typically are, as a result, fewer ‘obstacles to possible choices and activities’ for him.”[15] Even under the dictum of nominal or negative freedom, an individual’s liberty is largely determined by their wealth. During the COVID crisis, the limits to liberty begotten by poverty have become a visible, existential threat to the marginalized poor.

In the early months of the pandemic, when we knew little about the life-threatening contagion sweeping the globe, many state and local governments to attempted to secure the safety of their citizens through mandatory stay-at-home orders and economic closures. However, the Trump administration, along with countless others in positions of power and influence, were quick to employ the tools of their official morality to an antithetical end. Mask mandates designed to promote some degree of communal security were decried as unjust, immoral attacks on freedom,[16] and as to shutdown orders, these guarantors of liberty held at best that it is the prerogative of an individual to stay at home if she so chooses, but that the State should have no say. As a result, sections of the country opened prematurely, well before the prevalence of testing, much less the existence of a vaccine.[17] Even in places where that was not the case, the categorization of almost 74 million working class Americans as “essential workers” forced them and their families into positions of very real, potentially life threatening, risk.[18] That undue burden placed on the working class was deemed the necessary condition for the restoration of moral equilibrium, according to the language of negative liberty. The resultant dichotomy of freedom as a function of wealth is substantiated by New York Times polling. Higher earners, far more likely than their lower-income counterparts to hold substantial savings, were largely free to continue working from home without risk of job loss or pay cuts. Lower earners were not afforded the same security, financially or otherwise.[19] In this, we see that the working class were compelled to observe moral norms established by the investor class, and thereby to sacrifice of self in accordance with precepts that the wealthy members of our society did not observe themselves. Through the mechanism of universalized official morality prescribed by the dominant contingent, the subjugated were convinced to accept their own suffering while those who demanded their sacrifice refused to do the same.

And to what end? While many essential workers were employed in healthcare or public infrastructure fields, millions of others included members of the food service industry,[20] Amazon warehouse laborers,[21] Tesla factory line workers[22]—in short, the exploited employees of massive, profit-seeking firms focused solely on their goal of increasing shareholder’s returns. In pursuit of profit, these firms compelled countless workers, for pitifully inadequate wages and often without even the most basic protective measures, to sacrifice their safety,[23] and in many cases even their lives.[24] These efforts by executives for the sake of their investors certainly did pay off: according to Inequality.org, “between March 18, 2020, and April 12, 2021, the collective wealth of American billionaires leapt by $1.62 trillion, or 55%.”[25] All this, as thousands died preventable deaths and millions in the world’s wealthiest country faced hunger and eviction. But what of the workers’ freedom? Surely, they were not literally forced to come into their workplaces. The answer to that depends on how we define force. Essential workers, as well as employees of businesses allowed to preemptively reopen, were barred from receiving unemployment benefits if they refused to work, as our legal framework for employment regulation deemed such refusal voluntary even when motivated by fear of death.[26] So, these workers, many of whom would have received more money through unemployment insurance than they were paid at their “essential” jobs,[27] were compelled—quite literally under threat of starvation—to put themselves and their families in harm’s way so that the rich were able to continue amassing wealth at as aggressive a rate as possible.

The hypocrisy of the official morality, and thus its repressive class-interestedness, is evidenced by the fact that this shockingly inhumane restriction of the right of the working class to self-preservation was undertaken under the guise of “freedom,” and thereby given a “moral” justification. In April 2020, Congressman Trey Hollingsworth echoed widespread convictions with his statement that “in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.”[28] That stance was, and remains, a truly popular sentiment—protests in opposition to shutdowns were prevalent across the country last spring, populated largely by working class Americans who had been convinced that economic closures represented government overreach and a restriction of individual liberty.[29] To foster that sentiment, members of the investor class funded media campaigns to promote the notion of the shutdowns as morally wrong[30] These campaigns serve as a tragic example of the investor class forcing its ends onto the whole of our society, portraying anything that interferes with the pursuit of those ends as morally condemnable. The campaigns, of course, concealed their class interestedness to preserve the supposed universality of their precepts. In their polemics against “unfreedom,” they were careful to omit the fact that the “immorality” of the shutdowns, the restriction of liberty which they constituted, was a restriction of the freedom of wealthy firms to force their workers into life-threatening conditions for the sake of profit margins.

Only in being justified by the official morality of the dominant class was such blatant disregard for human life allowed to occur. During the initial months of the COVID pandemic, the foundational social power of the working masses could have been utilized to substantial and life-saving effect, if only there had been sufficient organization for the development of a collective will to do so. Consider the power represented by the opportunity of essential workers to join together in a general strike in protest of unsafe conditions, or in opposition to unjust regulations which cut them off from unemployment insurance if they refused to work. Consider the power of the voting population to hold their elected officials accountable for refusing to put such protective measures in place, or that of the consumer base to boycott companies engaged in blatantly exploitative and dangerous labor practices. These collective actions were not taken because the iniquity of the situation was masked by a veil of official morality, which labelled the direct repression of the working class—the elimination of its most basic liberties—as itself a crusade for freedom. Such “moral” manipulations enable the paradox of power noted by Arendt and Hume, in which “the living power of the people,”[31] despite its foundational importance, is restrained and left unrealized by the amplified repressive force of a small but economically dominant social contingent.

It is important to note the role of the State in this process of moral imposition on behalf of the ruling class. By debating and legislating in accordance with the official morality, institutional authority reifies it, providing those precepts of ruling class interest with an appearance of naturalness and thereby working to validate their claims to universality. Representative Hollingsworth was not alone in expressing the sentiment that the flourishing of the stock market is more important than the lives of American workers; instances as brazen as the vehement attempts of conservative politicians to prevent an increase in food stamp funding despite the staggering number of children going hungry represent efforts to embody the official morality. [32] The success of such reification is heartbreakingly clear: ours is a country in which Nobel laureate economist Angus Deaton “explained the anomalous mortality rates among white people in the Bible Belt by claiming that they’ve ‘lost the narrative of their lives’,”[33] having failed to realize their own “moral value” in the terms imposed on them, unable to earn anything above a starvation wage regardless of their efforts.

Such is the outcome of the ruling class indoctrinating “into its ideology a whole section of humanity which does not have its basic status and cannot live up to it,”[34] using the apparatus of authority as an aid in its illusion. The supposed truth of the official morality, that most insidious of the “ruling ideas”[35] disseminated by the dominant class, holds a devastating weight in the popular psyche because it is manifested by our systems of power and thereby made to seem concrete. To that end, our political representatives, armed with the formalized consent of their constituents, speak and legislate in a manner that serves to enshrine official morality in the rule of law. In the face of the pandemic, they declared that the just action on the part of the working poor was to accept their loss of liberty for the sake of their country. And, faced with that reactionary mandate justified by an apparently eternal morality, we chose not to oppose oppression, but instead to clap for the essential workers as they made their way home.

“The price of obedience has become too high,”[36] writes Terry Tempest Williams, following a vivid illustration of the destruction wreaked by U.S. nuclear arms tests in the Southwest on American lands and American people. Such state-sanctioned harm is the norm, rather than the exception, as we have seen in examples ranging from the Tuskegee Study to the COVID pandemic response. It is enabled by the “inability to question authority,”[37] on account of its justification by official morality, which would have a repressed populace rather accept the rule of their oppressors than challenge it in the hope of change. But this does not have to be the case; ours could be a better world. A governing body loses its legitimacy if its commands are not carried out; its orders are not heeded if the popular masses refuse to recognize its sovereignty. Strikes, protests, and other acts of defiance, in which participants utilize their communal power by refusing, in unison, to conform to the commands of their oppressors, demonstrate the ability of an organized populace to make authority impotent and annul its influence. That transformative kind of resistance is only possible when the official morality which condemns it is recognized as a tool of reaction, when the oppressed declare a morality of their own, oriented towards the liberation and collective betterment of the social world. “[A]nd even then, when power is already in the street, some group…prepared for such an eventuality is needed to pick it up and assume responsibility.”[38] These tasks: the revocation of repressive morality, its replacement with a conviction for true justice, and the development of leadership capable of organizing such a movement, are all possible. It is imperative that we undertake them if we are to liberate ourselves by realizing our collective power.  

References

Arendt, H. On Violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970.

Barthes, R. Mythologies. Trans. Jonathan Cape. Paris: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1957.

Blake, A. “Analysis | Trump's Dumbfounding Refusal to Encourage Wearing Masks.” The Washington Post.      Washington, D.C.: WP Company, 25 Jun. 2020: Digital Access.

Cohen, G.A. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Scholarship Online, 2011.

Collins, C., Petergorsky, D. “Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S. Job Losses and Pandemic Profiteers.” Inequality.org. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 29 Apr. 2021: Digital Access.

DeParle, J. "As Hunger Swells, Food Stamps Become a Partisan Flash Point." The New York Times. New York: The New York Times, 6 May 2020: Digital Access.

Desilver, D. "10 facts about American workers." Fact Tank. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2019. Aug. 2019: Digita Access.

Diaz, J. “New York Sues Amazon Over COVID-19 Workplace Safety.” The Coronavirus Crisis. Washington,     D.C.: National Public Radio, 17 Feb. 2021: Digital Access.

“Essential Workers and Unemployment Benefits Do Not Go Together.” Occupational Health & Safety. Dallas: 1105 Media Inc., 7 May 2020: Digital Access.

“Fatal Force: Police Shootings Database.” The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: WP Company, 22 Jan.        2020: Digital Access.

Flynn, M. “GOP congressman says he puts saving American ‘way of life’ above saving lives from the coronavirus.” The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: WP Company, 15 Apr. 2020: Digital Access.

Hume, D. “Of the First Principles of Government.” Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Hume Texts Online,   2021: Digital Access.

“Kentucky 2020 U.S. Senate Exit Polls.” CNN. Atlanta: Cable News Network, 2020: Digital Access.

Maqbool, A. “Coronavirus: The US Resistance to a Continued Lockdown.” BBC News. London: British         Broadcasting Corporation, 27 Apr. 2020: Digital Access.

Marx, K. Selected Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994.

McNicholas, C., Poydock, M. “Who Are Essential Workers?: A Comprehensive Look at Their Wages,             Demographics, and Unionization Rates.” Economic Policy Institute. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy             Institute, 19 May 2020: Digital Access.

Nuttle, M. “Essential Workers Accounted for 87% of Additional COVID-19 Deaths in California, Data         Shows.” abc10.com. 30 Apr. 2021: Digital Access.

Reinberg, S. “Nearly 74 Million Essential Workers at High Risk for COVID in U.S.” U.S. News & World        Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. News & World Report, 9 Nov. 2020: Digital Access.

Siddiqui, F. “Hundreds of Covid Cases Reported at Tesla Plant Following Musk's Defiant Reopening, County            Data Shows.” The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: WP Company, 13 Mar. 2021: Digital Access.

Tankersley, J. "Job or Health? Restarting the Economy Threatens to Worsen Economic Inequality." The New York Times. New York: The New York Times, 27 Apr. 2020: Digital Access.

Tempest Williams, T. "The Clan of One Breasted Women." Psychological Perspectives (23): 123-131. Los Angeles: C.G. Jung Institute, 1990.

“U.S. Income Distribution 2019.” Statista. Statista Research Department, 20 Jan. 2021: Digital Access.

Vogel, K. P., et al. “The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests.” The New York Times. New York: The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2020: Digital Access.

Wright, R. A Short History of Progress. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2004.

Wronski, L. New York Times|SurveyMonkey poll: April 2020. New York: The New York Times, 2020: Digital Access.

Zhang, C. “By Numbers: How the US Voted in 2020.” Financial Times. London: Financial Times, 7 Nov.        2020: Digital Access.

Notes

[1] Hume, 1

[2] Arendt, 41

[3] Hume, 1

[4] Zhang

[5] “Kentucky 2020 U.S. Senate Exit Polls.”

[6] “U.S. Income Distribution 2019”

[7] “Fatal Force: Police Shootings Database.”

[8] Hume, 1

[9] Marx, 129

[10] Barthes, 140

[11] Wright, 124

[12] G.A. Cohen provides a proof of this in his essay “Freedom and Money.” 

[13] Cohen, 9

[14] Cohen, 9

[15] Ibid., 10

[16] Blake

[17] Tankersley

[18] Reinberg

[19] Wronski

[20] McNicholas

[21] Diaz

[22] Siddiqui

[23] McNicholas

[24] Nuttle

[25] Collins

[26] “Essential Workers and Unemployment Benefits Do Not Go Together,” 1

[27] Ibid.

[28] Flynn

[29] Maqbool

[30] Vogel

[31] Arendt, 41

[32] DeParle

[33] Livingston

[34] Barthes, 140

[35] Marx, 129

[36] Williams, 128

[37] Ibid.

[38] Arendt, 49

Enabling a Fascist Putsch and Empowering a Big Lie

[PHOTO CREDIT: KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/POLARIS]

By Werner Lange

January 6, like December 7 eighty years earlier, will forever live in history as a day of infamy. Yet unlike the foreign military attack on the US base in Pearl Harbor in 1941, the domestic terrorist attack upon the US Capitol in 2021 enjoyed the objective support of nearly one-third of the US Congress and vast sections of the US population. “Stop the Steal”, the rallying cry of the violent mob which invaded and ransacked the US Capitol was officially echoed by 147 members of Congress, all Republicans, later on that infamous day and trumpeted loudly throughout the land for months by none other than the President of the United States and his regime. Fascism in America reared its ugly head simultaneously at the top and bottom of the power hierarchy on January 6, 2021. And its decapitation is nowhere in sight.

There was, of course, no realistic possibility that this dramatic and diabolical last ditch effort would succeed. Over 50 failed lawsuits and negative rulings by some 80 different judges have secured the legitimacy and integrity of the November election results in the eyes of the law, but not in the polluted minds of Trump’s enablers in Congress and his rabid followers in the public. In fact, with each successive filed and failed lawsuit, the conviction of a stolen, not lost, election took greater hold of greater numbers of those 70 million citizens who voted for Trump. According to a nationwide survey conducted just prior to the November election, about 65% of the registered voters (whether Republican, Democrat or Independent) all agreed that they trusted the US election system. By late December that trust had risen to 80% among Democrats, but plummeted to 45% and 30% among Independents and Republicans, respectively. Similarly, by year’s end, 90% of Democrats said the 2020 presidential election was free and fair, while only 28% of Republicans agreed. In mid-November 27% of Republican voters said Trump should never concede, whereas by late December 36% held that position. In other words, there is a direct positive correlation between the number of lawsuits filed challenging the election results and the number of Americans, primarily Republicans, who firmly believe that the election was stolen.

So. what was the real purpose of this bizarre parade of DOA lawsuits? It was not to overturn the election results. It was to convince increasing number of Trump supporters to embrace the Big Lie that the election was stolen and that a Biden presidency is illegitimate. The manifest function of these frivolous lawsuits was an abysmal failure, but their latent and real function proved to be a resounding success.

And therein lies the ongoing and growing danger.

At his “Save America” rally in front of the White House, Trump not only openly incited the violence that followed at the US Capitol that fateful day, but more ominously he declared that “today is not the end, it’s only the beginning” and that “for our movement…the best is yet to come”. That movement is a fascist one. He and his enablers in the suites of Congress and his cult followers in the streets of America are hell-bent on creating a fascist America in the future.

The effort and tactic are not without historical precedent. One of the Big Lies effectively used by fascist forces and assorted masters of deceit in Weimar Germany was that of the “dolchstoss”, the “stab-in-the-back” that unpatriotic liberals and a corrupt ruling elite supposedly inflicted upon the German people causing a great nation to lose WWI. Those alternative facts launched by an effective propaganda enterprise helped pave the path toward the Third Reich. That Big Lie then, like the stolen election lie now, resonated among vast sections of an angry and frustrated populace. Stable governments rest upon the secure foundation of the consent of the governed, something that the Biden Administration lacks in the minds of tens of millions of Americans who are absolutely convinced his presidency is illegitimate, and that they were, in effect, stabbed in the back by a rigged election controlled by liberals and traitors. Those behind the “Stop the Steal” effort have officially, as of January 6, lost the battle; but they are more determined than ever to win the ongoing domestic war.

In his antifascist satirical play, “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”, Bertolt Brecht poignantly portrays the criminal actions of a ruthless Chicago mobster (representative of Hitler) to gain control of the “cauliflower trust” (representative of Prussian landlords) and through crime and deceit expand his protection racket to engulf the whole region, which ultimately fails. This 1941 play ends with the Ui actor dropping his character and earnestly addressing the audience directly with a dire warning: “Let’s not drop our guard too quickly; for the womb from which this barbarism crawled is fertile still”. Now, 80 years later, that warning must be heeded like never before in America, or we are doomed.

The Fascist Farce on Washington

By Josh Lees

Republished from Red Flag.

Far right protesters forced their way into the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on Wednesday to support Donald Trump’s failed attempt to cling to a second presidential term in the face of his election defeat. Many people, from across the political spectrum, labelled the event a coup, or an insurrection. It is the exact threat, apparently, that the pro-Biden establishment and the major US TV networks have been warning about: a major attack on US democracy.

But far from some serious “coup” or “insurrection”, this was a pathetic display highlighting the weakness of Trump and the right. The outgoing president won 74 million votes in November. He has spent nine weeks campaigning to overturn the election result. The rally in Washington was supposed to be the culmination of these efforts. Trump urged his supporters to attend the rally and he spoke at it. Yet the turnout could be counted only in the thousands. The rally was a flop—the “popular” equivalent of a Rudy Giuliani press conference.

Trump failed to win any institutional support for his bid. No section of the military has backed him, nor any other section of the US state apparatus. He has lost every court case filed. Fox News has distanced itself, along with the bulk of the Republican Party establishment. Even those, like Senator Ted Cruz, who objected to accepting the electoral college votes from Arizona, made clear that they were not trying to prevent a Biden presidency. Even Trump’s closest political allies seem to have abandoned him, while they nevertheless try to hang on to his supporters. Trump failed to mobilise any serious numbers on the streets and eventually called on them to go home.

The “storming” of the Capitol was hardly the stuff movies are made about (although I’m sure someone will try). A few windows were broken, and the only person killed was one of the far-right protesters. No real damage to the building was done. Someone sat in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chair (the horror!). To call it a riot is generous. Perhaps “theatre” would be a better word.

Their success in gaining entry had more to do with the sympathy that the cops and other security agencies have with the far right than the protesters’ actual strength. While Black Lives Matter protests have been met with thousands upon thousands of riot police and the National Guard, tear gas, flashbang grenades, beatings, mass arrest and shootings, the fascists were met with very few cops, some of whom took selfies with the protesters as they wandered around not really knowing what to do now that they had miraculously gained entry.

We should be clear: the US state backs Biden. Besides their sympathy with the far right, this is the other reason the security apparatus was unprepared for the protesters entering the building—authorities knew that there was no coup, so they were quite relaxed. They will be ruing that it got out of hand—but in the same way all police departments are embarrassed when a protest gets out of their control when they weren’t expecting it. In the wake of the protest, Trump, having encouraged his supporters, is now more isolated than ever. 

The pathetic death-throes of his presidency does not of course mean that the far right in the US is finished. It is much weaker than the Democrats make it out to be (to cynically herd the broad left into supporting their right-wing corporate candidates). But it has certainly grown under Trump. It may grow into a more serious force still. Even if the far right doesn’t grow, its isolation and demoralisation could push some in its ranks in the direction of terrorism, as we saw with the wave of fascist shootings in the wake of successful anti-fascist mobilisations following Charlottesville. So there is a need to build movements against fascism in the US, and it would be great if there were mass protests in the coming days in response.

But a myopic focus on the far right is misorienting—a result of the highly successful campaign by the US liberal establishment to focus on Trumpism as a unique threat to the working class and people of colour, and ignore the structural features of US capitalism that the Democrats uphold and against which so many rebelled in 2020.For the last four years we heard that it was the Democrats versus fascism. Perhaps that broken record is going to play for a little while longer, albeit while the Democrats control the executive and both branches of the legislature.

The main political outcome of the far-right farce in Washington is likely to be a strengthening of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party and an attempt to use these events to rally the population around all the key institutions of US capitalism and imperialism that have copped such a battering in recent times.

The US ruling class and its state apparatus backed a Democrat presidency to better “rebuild trust” in US institutions, “unite the nation”—i.e., co-opt and crush internal resistance—and rebuild US imperial might abroad. The Democrats agree with the bulk of Trump’s policies and have often legislated worse themselves, from neoliberal attacks on workers, to racist border policies, killer cops and launching or backing wars. Hence why they have opposed Trump as an aberration—a result of Russian interference and the uneducated “deplorables” who fell for his fake news—who is weakening and dividing their otherwise wonderful country and its institutions. Biden is the saviour to, essentially, make America great again.

The main enemy in the US remains the US state, US capitalism and the new imperial presidency of Joe Biden and his Democratic majority. The more liberal wing of the Democrats is doing its best, as it has all along, to play the role of herding left-wing opinion behind Joe Biden. 

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, celebrated hero of “the squad” among the pro-Democrat left, responded to the events by tweeting, “We will not let our Constitution be trampled on by a mob and threatened by a tyrant. Democracy will prevail”. This is nationalist blather. She and her fellow squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have now called for Trump to be impeached, a laughable manoeuvre to keep the focus off the incoming Biden administration.

You would be hard-pressed to come up with a duo who more personify everything that is rotten about capitalism than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. One has spent his life getting rich off a political career based on campaigning to lock up as many of the poor and people of colour as possible. The other has carried out that agenda as the top cop of California. They are loyal servants of the rich and enemies of the working class, and their key mission is to strengthen the bloodiest empire the world has ever suffered. We cannot forget this amid the breathless talk of imagined coups by small fascist groups.

COVID-19 Discussions Over The U.S. Healthcare System

Pictured: Volunteers from the International Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse set up an Emergency Field Hospital for patients suffering from the coronavirus in Central Park across Fifth Avenue from Mt. Sinai Hospital on March 30, 2020 in New York. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP)

By Ekim Kılıç

Since the beginning of January 2020, COVID-19, aka Coronavirus, has continued to devastate peoples’ lives, specifically working classes across the world. Internationally, a prominent aspect of the pandemic is that all working people feel a similar level of fear and anxiety, even to some extent petty-bourgeois classes despite their considerable economic privileges. It has created an unprecedented platform in which more working people and intellectuals tend to see and discuss the inability of capitalist political economic system to address itself to a health crisis and its understanding of public health system.

One of the most affected countries is the United States, which has almost one-third of the international cases, with 815,491 as an outcome of 4,162,922 tests by April 21. On this date, the number of death reached 45,097. The total number of recovered patients is 82,620. This means that there are 2,464 cases and 136 deaths per 1M people.[1] One-third of the national cases are from the State of New York.[2] In the U.S., the primary reason that the epidemic spread like a wildfire is the weak healthcare system along with several other political and social problems here. Especially, the pandemic shook the base, revealed lack of organized working class, fetishism over individualism combined with puritan work ethic, a healthcare system abandoned at the mercy of banks and companies, widespread and dire mental health problems, homelessness, structural racism, a violent prison-industrial complex, a divided American political system over extremely libertarian federal system, and the discourses of nationalist functionalism and blind petty bourgeois ethicism.

The pandemic came as if a “god’s gift” in a time when economic measures have been taken by and for capital to prevent the deepening consequences of the 2008 financial crisis and the present galvanizing crisis. The extortion of abortion rights in several states and the elimination of union elections by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), escalating interventionist moves against Venezuela, cutting financial support to World Health Organization (WHO), and expectation for the presidential executive order to suspend immigration reveals for whose benefit the pandemic process was used.[3][4][5][6][7] Even American exceptionalists face stark contradictions, as countries such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, and Cuba have effective attitudes towards the epidemic, Russia’s military aircraft to aid the US with medical equipment, then from Vietnam, and the US’s seizure of medical equipment to Barbados, called modern piracy.[8][9][10][11][12]Also, President Trump’s attempts to blame the pandemic on Chinese conspiracy remark their unpreparedness and desperation to get away with their responsibilities, later framed COVID-19 as “Chinese Virus.”[13]

Although unions, which have a strong bureaucracy, cannot lead the workers, and the government disregards urgent measures for “essential workers,” they, especially healthcare and logistics workers, feel compelled to struggle for vital, urgent demands.[14] In that sense, the working class politics’ wave of the last years definitely shows its effect. Coinciding with the Bernie Sanders campaign in a country where even the limited healthcare demand of “Medicare for All” was almost a joke, universal healthcare became a major part of public agenda. However, in a country where nurses have to make protective uniforms out of big garbage bags due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), it turned out that the lives of workers and laborers, who are called “essentials,” hypocritically, are worthless. One has to remember that political elites have always been shamelessly outspoken with their disdain for workers.[15][16][17]

Even after the $2 trillion stimulus package is distributed, details reveal the gap between what was promised and what the reality is. For example, $1,200 aid for individuals and $2,400 for couples is much more meaningful in the Southern states, where the taxes are lower than the states like New York and California. It has to be said that these checks will almost certainly go for student loans, and rent, besides given the fact that almost 1/3 of the country didn’t pay rent for the last month and has that rent due.[18] Students that were graduated last summer or winter, are not be able to get checks. In this regard, and in these new and challenging times, it is a calamity that will trigger millennials and generation Z to question “meaning, morality and mortality in ways they never did before.” This generation has experienced life-altering disruptions, such as 9/11, the Great Recession, the decline of American prestige to a housing affordability crisis, global warming to crushing student debt according to academics at the University of Southern California.[19]

An Overview of the U.S. Healthcare System

The U.S. has always been named as the most developed capitalist country with a liberal democracy that has been perceived alongside western European liberal democracies.[20] Relying on individual liberty in a libertarian sense, the U.S. understanding and structure of organizing daily affairs leave everything to the individual, including healthcare services. Healthcare is a responsibility of the individual, not the state and society. Because of this individualistic conception, it can be said that the U.S. is the most developed country with the worst skewed and insufficient healthcare system.

Becoming an emergent discussion in the wake of former Democratic 2020 presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign, healthcare has been a privilege in the U.S. for a long time except for some reforms called Obamacare, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law on March 23, 2010. Nevertheless, the main requirement of having health insurance with sufficient coverage is to have a full-time employment.

After emerging from the 1929 Great Depression, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) government and state institutions utilized the conditions of World War II to provide opportunities for the social democratic expansion of capital. In 1942, the Stabilization Act “limited the amount of wage increases employers could grant, but at the same time permitted the adoption of employee insurance plans.”[21] By 1949, employers benefits programs became common in collective bargaining agreements.[22] In the meantime, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) decided that, “employer contributions to health insurance premiums were tax free, which meant workers paid less out of their pocket.”[23] After FDR, President Harry Truman signed the National Mental Health Act, which called for the establishment of a National Institute of Mental Health.[24] Under the Johnson presidency, Medicare and Medicaid programs were set up in 1965. By accepting the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, the Nixon government unleashed healthcare as a profitable industry.[25]

The Obama presidency evoked hope among the US people over the crumbling healthcare system. However, insurance companies were the one which benefited from a developing market, although his reforms alleviated the situation a little by extending children on their parents coverage and mandating mental health coverage one very plan, those without insurance were burdened with the tax penalties and forced into high deductible plans.[26] Since 2016, the Trump government began to repeal Obamacare by redoing the enabling acts.[27] While it is claimed that it lessens the tax burden coming from healthcare payments, it is also constricting the accessibility to healthcare.[28]

Recently, there were around 800,000 people with “freelance contracts” working in New York. According to the contract, the employer does not have to make a person’s health insurance because the character of their job is temporary and in a limited time. If the person works at or above the 32-33 hour limit, it is considered full-time. Therefore, bosses are able to force flexible employment without any reservations, being aware of the fear of unemployment or underemployment that dominates the US job market. This exemplifies how the messy system has worsened the crisis substantially.

federal As another example, unemployment climbed by another 5 million people this week, increasing the total number of people who have applied for unemployment to 22 million in the last month. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “approximately 9.2 million workers have likely lost their employer-provided health care coverage in the past four weeks.”[29]

Neo-liberal policies in the healthcare system have left the working class and laborers vulnerable to the epidemic. However, the Trump administration focused on the economy to function as smoothly as possible, rather than taking measures that could be taken more or less against approaching epidemic. They refrained from taking the necessary precautions. Even then, for example, the statements of Trump continue to insist for reopening country on May 1, despite major obstacles from authorities.[30] His persistence on reopening the country was also a matter on April 12.[31] Several expressions of political and economic elites are supportive of this: “I’d rather die’ from coronavirus ‘than kill the country.”[32][33][34] As one of the countries that experienced the 2008 crisis deeply, the sensitivity of the USA to the capitalist capital accumulation in the face of the epidemic caused more people to die.

 An article from the American prospect addresses, for example, the share in the stimulus package for businesses. Out of $2 Trillion package, $500 billion will be used for companies. $75 billion goes to the airline industry and the mysteriously named “businesses critical to national security.” The rest $425 will be used to capitalize a $4.25 trillion, leveraged lending facility at the Federal Reserve.[35] Additionally, seven other industries are lobbying for more stimulus, such as tourism, restaurants, mortgage servicers, hotels, airlines, franchises, and distillers.[36]

Other Aspects of the Crisis

Although we have listed the other problems that have accelerated the severity of the crisis, once again, those have to be elaborated to make sense in their context. To begin with, fetish over individualism elicits an “I don’t care, no-one can decides for me” mentality, which disregards social well-being and solidarity. This fundamental bourgeois idea frustrated many people at the beginning due to its ignorance of the crisis, and refusal to heed the advice of healthcare workers. Different aspects of this same idea might be felt over the larger, individual based healthcare system: “It is every (hu)man for himself.”

Similar to this “I don’t care” individualism, even the excessive mental health problems have been treated “as an individual’s incapacity to function normally within a given setting” by serious academic researches. These problems can be found mostly among poor whites and blacks who are more prone to mental disorders than richer classes.[37] Combining with homelessness, and other problems stemming from unemployment, the mental health question requires urgent social attention, especially during the crisis. People, who are relying on social circles, families, and solidarity, are isolated, trapped, and helpless. On the other hand, homelessness, specifically student one, made states hesitate to cancel schools at the beginning. Many college students were also thrown out of their dorm, with nowhere else to go.

Over all these, as another aspect of “American” values, nowadays, right-wing demonstrators have called to end quarantine by blocking roads with caravans, carrying Confederation and Nazi flags, utilizing the 18th century American revolutionary slogan of “Give me liberty, or give me death!” The other, “liberal” side of American nationalism is not innocent in weaponizing the crisis and its human costs, framing healthcare workers as “heroes,” food and workers from other vital industries as “essentials,” “frontliners,” “soldiers,” who are, fundamentally, expendable. Even the liberal call for “stay home” and “practice social distancing” is full of lack of consideration and clarity, solely blind ethicism, a performative virtue.

Workers’ and the lives of the poor are at the stake, which involves racial and gender issues, too.[38] In the center of epidemic in the country, New York City, most of cases and deaths are coming from poor working class neighborhoods.[39] According to formal data, those who have died have been 34% Hispanic, 28% blacks, 27% white and 7% Asian.[40] Economically and racially segregated neighborhoods are particularly vulnerable in this crisis. These groups’ share in the population are 29%, 22%, 32%, and 14%, respectively. The prison-industrial complex also has figured prominently in the crisis. According to activist and journalist Shaun King, the U.S. is the only nation in the world with 250% more prison cells than hospital beds.[41] That complex is another example of structural racism: “These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents.”[42] In other words, it is not surprising that places where COVID-19 has been most devastating, are generally black neighborhoods and towns.[43] Beyond racial lines, the rate of incarceration for women incarceration follows that of the black population: “The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men’s, and who are often behind bars because of financial obstacles such as an inability to pay bail.”[44] During the pandemic, the issue of rising domestic abuse of women trapped at their home receive almost no public or media attention. Additionally, the LGBTQ population is not independent from same abusive behavior. They are also vulnerable to discrimination, homelessness and other economic problems that increase the likelihood of contracting COVID-19.[45]

There are a considerable amount of cases and deaths especially among transportation, food and market workers.[46] Lack of protective equipment and the government’s token appreciation to workers has pushed many workers to take several actions, from warehouses to hospitals. Until now, over 100 workers’ actions are recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.[47] The most unique one is that General Electric workers’ struggle for their company to shift to produce ventilators.[48] Beyond all, the common quality of workers actions are mostly led by millennial generations. In that sense, it can be counted as a sign which generation of the working class might lead advanced struggles post-pandemic. However, in terms of youth struggle, it is hard to say what might happen, because online education may continue in fall 2020, and beyond.

All in all, other aspects of the crisis are complex and entangled, and reflect all the emergent demands of the US people and working class. However, the struggle against pandemic has been shaped by the political struggle between democrats and republicans towards the 2020 Presidential Elections. The governors of Illinois, New York and several other state governors’ have critiqued president Trump for not utilizing the Defense Production Act exemplifies the tension between democrats and republicans along with federal and state fault lines.[49] For instance, while some smaller states have made commitments to end quarantine on May 1, New York and California are against that, and the federal government doesn’t necessarily intend for imposing an extension to quarantine.

Conclusion

It has been discussed that the working class as we know it is gone, especially by the liberal intellectuals of all spectrum in defense of cold war theories. There was also an illusive reality, in which public spaces has been dominated by petty bourgeoisie and some upper sections of working class. It should be noted that another reason to this for the USA and Western Europe is the surplus value they transfer from the dependent countries through the imperialist exploitation mechanism. While this post-cold war argument has lost credibility for a long time now, it is shattered with the COVID-19 crisis.

The U.S. is experiencing a moment of “the king is naked,” where petty bourgeois classes retreated from streets, and left working class people to fulfill busses, train cars, factories, warehouses, workplaces, and unemployment lines. On the one hand, framing some sections of working class as “essentials,” primarily “hero” healthcare workers, and on the other, failing to provide essential protective equipment to these “essentials,” shows one certain aspect in the contradictions of classes: “Workers’ lives do not matter.”

Due to the same reason, it can be said that president Donald Trump is backing up right-wing demonstrators, who wants to lift the quarantine. Concurrent with deepening polarization of the U.S. political system through several impasses between the Democrats and Republicans, the presidency plays with the libertarian positioned citizen-against-the-government to take advantage of the crisis to gather and energize its avid supporter base for the upcoming elections. However, the statements of the government to end quarantine aim to make people reconcile the situation, while continuing to infuriate workers and saturate the air with fear and resentment.

Ekim Kilic is a Kurdish journalist from Turkey, and regularly reporting to the daily working-class newspaper of Turkey, Evrensel Daily. He also takes an active role as a member of the NY steering committee at the National Writers' Union UAW Local 1981. He is an MA graduate from International Affairs and Global Justice major at CUNY Brooklyn College / New York. He wrote a master thesis on a comparative analysis of working class support for right-wing nationalism in the U.S. and Turkey.

Notes

[1]  United States. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Smith, K. (2020, March 25). Abortion-rights groups sue Texas over abortion ban amid coronavirus outbreak. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abortion-rights-planned-parenthood-lawsuit-texas-non-essential-ban/?fbclid=IwAR2biSYvfz_dejWzV5P1bzlwQBCm24yeV5zmrmt9klpVFcoE8-tpUynR8hI

[4] In Midst of a Pandemic, Trump’s NLRB Makes it Nearly Impossible for Workers to Organize a Union. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://portside.org/2020-04-02/midst-pandemic-trumps-nlrb-makes-it-nearly-impossible-workers-organize-union?fbclid=IwAR24Xbuzw2sHuLdM155e96xVuX6RntvpQgsDLOMIxbMhLM57Z2H570q8M7I

[5] Borger, J. (2020, March 31). US ignores calls to suspend Venezuela and Iran sanctions amid coronavirus pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/us-ignores-global-appeals-suspend-sanctions-coronavirus-pandemic-iran-venezuela

[6] Sullivan, P. (2020, April 15). Trump WHO cuts meet with furious blowback. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/492997-trump-who-cuts-meet-with-furious-blowback

[7] Stelloh, T., Welker, K., Pettypiece, S., & Bennett, G. (2020, April 21). Trump says he is suspending immigration over coronavirus, need to protect jobs. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-he-suspending-immigration-over-coronavirus-need-protect-jobs-n1188416?fbclid=IwAR1GpqyKHb9TJHPDs4f5yQSq8jAu9ui4N-S2CByFRp9mdVE_qGy9sADrYwM

[8] Lisnoff, H. (2020, April 6). American Exceptionalism in the Face of Covid-19. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/09/american-exceptionalism-in-the-face-of-covid-19/

[9] Kuttner, R. (2020, March 24). The End of American Exceptionalism. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://prospect.org/coronavirus/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism/

[10] (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/putin-sends-military-plane-with-coronavirus-aid-to-help-u-s

[11] Sweeney, S. (2020, April 16). Vietnam ships 450,000 protective suits for U.S. health care workers. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/vietnam-ships-450000-protective-suits-for-u-s-health-care-workers/?fbclid=IwAR3cV9CBQMWO-TS1ehCi_rXl5jhmqXDO31gv35qz9P9oSYupMg6Ki6a49Lg

[12] Steve SweeneyMonday, A. 6. (2020, April 6). US accused of ‘modern piracy’ after seizing ventilators bound for Barbados. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-accused-modern-piracy-after-seizing-ventilators-bound-barbados

[13] Tisdall, S. (2020, April 19). Trump is playing a deadly game in deflecting Covid-19 blame to China. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2020/apr/19/trump-is-playing-a-deadly-game-in-deflecting-covid-19-blame-to-china

[14] Chediac, J. (2020, April 20). Essential worker strike wave: ‘We fight COVID-19 for ourselves &… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.liberationnews.org/essential-worker-strike-wave-we-fight-for-ourselves-and-for-the-public/?fbclid=IwAR3aVocvBL2JZCLrY04peKRVpMR3UyHc2fbgqfw6OATRFp7IYc0JVWONzz4

[15] Montanaro, D. (2016, September 10). Hillary Clinton’s ‘Basket Of Deplorables,’ In Full Context Of This Ugly Campaign. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2016/09/10/493427601/hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables-in-full-context-of-this-ugly-campaign

[16] Gruenberg, M. (2019, April 25). GOP lawmaker’s idiotic remark about nurses goes viral and backfires. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/gop-lawmakers-idiotic-remark-about-nurses-goes-viral-and-backfires/

[17] Alternet. (2019, April 9). When the GOP uses the word “bartender” to mock Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it shows its ugly classism. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.salon.com/2019/04/09/when-the-gop-uses-the-word-bartender-to-mock-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-it-shows-its-ugly-classism_partner/

[18] Bahney, A. (2020, April 11). New data shows more Americans are having trouble paying their rent. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/business/americans-rent-payment-trnd/index.html

[19] Polakovic, G. (2020, April 3). How does coronavirus affect young people’s psyches? Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://news.usc.edu/167275/how-does-coronavirus-affect-young-people-psyches/

[20] The Economist Intelligence Unit. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index

[21] Scofea, L. A. (1994). The development and growth of employer-provided health insurance. Monthly Labor Review, 3–10. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1994/03/art1full.pdf

[22] Ibid.

[23] How did we end up with health insurance being tied to our jobs? (2019, April 29). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.marketplace.org/2017/06/28/how-did-we-end-health-insurance-being-tied-our-jobs/

[24] National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2017, February 17). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/national-institute-mental-health-nimh

[25] Gruber, L. R., Maureen, S., & Polich, C. L. (n.d.). From Movement To Industry: The Growth Of HMOs. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.7.3.197

[26] Amadeo, K. (n.d.). Pros and Cons of Obamacare. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.thebalance.com/obamacare-pros-and-cons-3306059

[27] Simmons-Duffin, S. (2019, October 14). Trump Is Trying Hard To Thwart Obamacare. How’s That Going? Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/14/768731628/trump-is-trying-hard-to-thwart-obamacare-hows-that-going

[28] Gonzales, R. (2019, October 5). Trump Bars Immigrants Who Cannot Pay For Health Care. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767453276/trump-bars-immigrants-who-cannot-pay-for-health-care

[29] 9.2 million workers likely lost their employer-provided health insurance in the past four weeks. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.epi.org/blog/9-2-million-workers-likely-lost-their-employer-provided-health-insurance-in-the-past-four-weeks/

[30] Trump’s plans to reopen the country face major obstacles. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/18/trump-reopen-country-coronavirus-193182

[31] Harris, J. F. (n.d.). ‘I’d love to have it open by Easter’: Trump says he wants to restart economy by mid-April. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/trump-wants-to-restart-economy-by-mid-april-146398

[32] Samuels, A. (2020, April 21). Dan Patrick says “there are more important things than living and that’s saving this country”. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/21/texas-dan-patrick-economy-coronavirus/

[33] Fredericks, B. (2020, April 15). Congressman says US should reopen economy – even if more would die. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://nypost.com/2020/04/15/lawmaker-says-us-should-reopen-economy-even-if-more-will-die/

[34] Concha, J. (2020, March 25). Glenn Beck: ‘I’d rather die’ from coronavirus ‘than kill the country’ from economic shutdown. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/homenews/media/489472-glenn-beck-id-rather-die-from-coronavirus-than-kill-the-country-from-economic

[35] Dayen, D. (2020, March 25). Unsanitized: Bailouts, A Tradition Unlike Any Other. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://prospect.org/api/amp/coronavirus/unsanitized-bailouts-tradition-unlike-any-other/

[36] Gangitano, A. (2020, April 2). 7 industries lobbying for more stimulus. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/490736-7-industries-lobbying-for-more-stimulus

[37] Baran, P. A. & Sweezy P. M. (2020, March). The Quality of Monopoly Capitalist Society: Mental Health. Monthly Review. Volume 71. Pg. 41-43.

[38] Conn, M., Kelly, J., & Heimpel, D. (2020, April 3). Lack of Shelter Beds in New York for LGBTQ Youth During Pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/coronavirus/lgbtq-youth-struggle-for-shelter-from-coronavirus/41999?fbclid=IwAR0Rko479SG4K9eBvZZTWNXVZxo0Xa4HYpxoyUSNYc-xhWUD2Ri0GO35B80

[39] Virus Hits NYC Hardest in a Few Working-Class Neighborhoods. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-04-02/coronavirus-hits-harder-in-poorer-nyc-neighborhoods

[40] Workbook: NYS-COVID19-Tracker. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?:embed=yes&:toolbar=no&:tabs=n

[41] SHAUN KING: The United States is the Only Nation in the World with 250% More Prison Cells Than Hospital Beds. (2020, March 30). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.thenorthstar.com/shaun-king-the-united-states-is-the-only-nation-in-the-world-with-250-more-prison-cells-than-hospital-beds/

[42] Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (n.d.). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

[43] Johnson, A., & Buford, T. (n.d.). Early Data Shows African Americans Have Contracted and Died of… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.propublica.org/article/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate

[44] Ibid.

[45] Conn, M., Kelly, J., & Heimpel, D. (2020, April 3). Lack of Shelter Beds in New York for LGBTQ Youth During Pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/coronavirus/lgbtq-youth-struggle-for-shelter-from-coronavirus/41999?fbclid=IwAR0Rko479SG4K9eBvZZTWNXVZxo0Xa4HYpxoyUSNYc-xhWUD2Ri0GO35B80

[46] Chediac, J. (2020, April 20). Essential worker strike wave: ‘We fight COVID-19 for ourselves &… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.liberationnews.org/essential-worker-strike-wave-we-fight-for-ourselves-and-for-the-public/?fbclid=IwAR3aVocvBL2JZCLrY04peKRVpMR3UyHc2fbgqfw6OATRFp7IYc0JVWONzz4

[47] Elk, M. (2020, April 23). COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://paydayreport.com/covid-19-strike-wave-interactive-map/?fbclid=IwAR0hqgq8wEeYT-Y8VRFcaJocbzRNd4vb_13bd32_3fZFxqYv3OO7gf6uynQ

[48] GE Workers Protest, Demand to Make Ventilators. (2020, April 16). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://labornotes.org/blogs/2020/04/ge-workers-protest-demand-make-ventilators?fbclid=IwAR2_qnmATx97jmyVzESlZ_B7KGce1YtQV4uH86rHXxHEOs3s1G0r-ygXF1w

[49] Trump, Facing Criticism, Says He Will Increase Swab Production. (2020, April 19). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/us/coronavirus-updates.html

The Right Comes for the Parkland Shooting Survivors

By Sean Posey

Only hours after one of the ten deadliest mass shootings in modern American history, an outpouring of national grief was accompanied by a concerted attack on the credibility - and even the existence - of the victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The assault on a group of underage student survivors encapsulates all the worst traits of the alt-right, in a campaign of hate and disinformation that stretches from the putrid bowels of 8chan to the halls of the nation's capital.

In the days after Nikolas Cruz murdered seventeen students in Parkland, the Washington Post reviewed thousands of posts on 8chan and 4chan (popular message boards for the alt-right and right-wing conspiracy theorists), as well as Reddit. They found an orchestrated disinformation campaign, sometimes referred to as "4chan attacks," aimed at destroying the creditability of news reports about the incident.

That campaign soon spread to attacking the survivors themselves, the Post shows.[1] "They began crafting false explanations about the massacre, the Post explained, "including that actors were posing as students, in hopes of blunting what they correctly guessed would be a revived interest in gun control."[2]

Within a very short period of time, wild alt-right conspiracy theories spread throughout social media and into so-called news outlets. Gateway Pundit, a bizarre, conspiracy-oriented website that actually gained White House press credentials in 2017, tweeted a fake BuzzFeed news story in the wake of the shooting. Reporter Lucian Wintrich, who holds White House press credentials, retweeted an article entitled, "Why We Need To Take Away White People's Guns Now, More Than Ever," which itself emanated from 4chan and was picked up by the Twitter account MagaPill. The account is known for spreading untruths, from the infamous "Pizzagate" story of 2016 to accounts of various so-called "false flag" attacks.[3] Sean Hannity and the Drudge Report, among others, have linked to or referenced articles in Gateway Pundit.

YouTube has played an important role in disseminating false information about the shooting, particularly the idea that students were actually "crisis actors," paid to act out a staged event. Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, looked at 256 videos on YouTube on the subject of "crisis actors." He then followed the videos suggested to him by YouTube's recommendation engine. This ultimately revealed a network of nearly 9,000 conspiracy related videos. A video that suggested that the Parkland students are crisis actors (paid by George Soros and CNN) actually became the top trending video on YouTube before it was removed. [4]

According to Albright's study, "the view count for 50 of the top mass shooting-related conspiracy videos is around 50 million. Not every single video overlaps directly with conspiracy-related subjects, but it's worth pointing out that these 8842 videos have registered almostfour billion (3,956,454,363) views." [5]

The idea of suggesting that recent mass shootings are either hoaxes or "false flag" attacks, that is attacks orchestrated by the "Deep State" or other forces, dates back at least to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Perhaps the most well known purveyor of these types of conspiracy theorists is Alex Jones, who runs a daily radio show on Infowars.com. "The Alex Jones Show" reaches millions, and Jones, a close friend of Trump ally Roger Stone, actually hosted Trump on his show in December 2015. After the election, Trump called Jones to thank him for his support.

Jones called the Sandy Hook shooting a "hoax" and has refused to apologize for his assertions.[6] "I've watched the footage, and it looks like a drill," Jones said. [7] He has taken a similar approach to the Parkland shooting. After initial reports that gunman Nikolas Cruz was linked to a white nationalist group were corrected, Jones claimed the mistake was part of a liberal conspiracy against gun owners. "We said the perfect false flag would be a white nationalist attacking a multicultural school as a way to make the leftists all look like victims and bring in gun control and a war on America's recovery, and now, right on time, what we've been warning of, their main card, the thing we said was imminent, appears with all the evidence." [8]

Since then, Jones has run a segment showing footage of Parkland survivor David Hogg speaking with an Adolph Hitler speech dubbed over his voice. Instead of showing footage of the actual crowd at the 'March For Our Lives Rally,' the video instead cuts to historic footage of Germans saluting Hitler with outstretched arms. Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez, a bisexual woman of color, is also shown spliced together with footage from Nazi rallies. Incredibly enough, Jones goes on to say that he is not actually calling the students Nazis. [9] This is the level of rhetoric going out across the nation from a show that garners an estimated two million listeners a week. One of Jones's followers has even started a website solely aimed at besmirching Hogg's character. [10]

Conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza also quickly got in on the act. "Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs," he tweeted after a bill calling for a ban on military-style weapons failed in the Florida Legislature in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Even the blog RedState, edited by Caleb Howe - who has positioned himself as an anti-Trump moderate - published an article that questioned whether David Hogg was actually on campus during the time of the attack. (Journalist Sarah Rumpf later walked her claim back.) Former Congressman Jack Kingston, who now appears regularly as a pro-Trump talking head on CNN, questioned whether students could really organize a march on Washington - instead suggesting that George Soros, Antifa and the Democratic National Committee were behind the rally.

Nor have these kinds of attacks been limited to right-wing media. Benjamin Kelly, an aide to Representative Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa), claimed that surviving Parkland students pictured in the media were not actually students "but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen." Leslie Gibson, a Republican candidate for the Maine House of Representatives, referred to Emma Gonzalez as a "skinhead lesbian" before a popular backlash led to his quitting the race.

An even more appalling attack came from Representative Steve King (R-Iowa), a darling of the alt-right. A post from King's official Facebook page attacked Gonzalez's heritage and attempted to tie her to Communist Cuba. Conflating Gonzalez's jacket patch of the Cuban flag with support for communism quickly led many to question King's basic knowledge of history, not to mention his decency. Rebecca Bodenheimer explains that the Cuban flag "has been deployed by both sides of the political spectrum and whose meaning has been perhaps more contested than at any other time in Cuba's history."[11]

It should not come as a surprise that King is involved in the assault on the Parkland students. After he quoted Dutch far right-politician Geert Wilders on Twitter in 2017, Andrew Anglin, editor of the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, called King a "hero" who "is basically an open white nationalist at this point." [12] "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," is the King quote Anglin was referring to. Perhaps that is why King is attacking Gonzalez, who is the daughter of an immigrant.

But the Parkland teens have not taken these attacks lying down. After Fox News Host Laura Ingraham ridiculed Hogg for speaking publically about his having failed to gain entrance into several California colleges, he called for companies that advertise on her show to withdraw their ads. After over a dozen advertisers pulled their ads, Ingraham conveniently began a week-long vacation. Hogg has since rejected her subsequent apology. However, as the Parkland students continue their activism, and as calls for gun control grow louder, there is little doubt that forces on the far right will continue to launch attacks on Hogg, Gonzalez, and anyone else who attempts to stand up to the NRA - regardless of their age. It will be up to us to have their backs.

Notes

[1] Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell, "We Studied Thousands of Anonymous Posts About the Parkland Attack - And Found a Conspiracy in the Making," Washington Post, February 27, 2017.

[2] Ibid.,

[3] See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/buzzfeed-white-people-guns/

[4] Jefferson Graham, " 'Crisis Actors' YouTube Video Removed After it Tops 'Trending' Videos," USA Today, February 21, 2018.

[5] Jonathan Albright, "Untrue-Tube: Monetizing Misery and Disinformation," Medium, February 25, 2017.

[6] NBC, "Megyn Kelly Reports on Alex Jones and Infowars," NBC News Web site, https://www.nbcnews.com/megyn-kelly/video/megyn-kelly-reports-on-alex-jones-and-infowars-970743875859 (accessed March 30, 2018).

[8] Genesis Communications Network, "The Alex Jones Show," February 15, 2018.

[9] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSdtT_TdkRE (accessed March 30, 2018).

[10] www.hoggwatch.com

[11] Rebecca Bodenheimer, "Emma Gonzalez Isn't Endorsing Communism, She's Living Her Truth," CNN, March 28, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/28/opinions/steve-king-has-emma-gonzalez-cuba-flag-wrong-bodenheimer/index.html (accessed April 1, 2018).

[12] Andrew Anglin, "Hero Steve King Calls for White Racial Supremacy in America," The Daily Stormer, March 12, 2017.

Americanism Personified: Why Fascism Has Always Been an Inevitable Outcome of the American Project

By Colin Jenkins

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." This quote, which has often been misattributed to Sinclair Lewis , is wise in its recognizing the authoritarian potential of both nationalism and organized religion. In slight contrast, Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University said in a 1938 interview , "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" Luccock's view was that of a Christian theologian during the height of Nazi Germany, likely meant to not only downplay the role of religion but perhaps more so warning against the false idolatry of nationalistic reverence.

Despite the tidbits of insight offered, both quotes underestimate Americanism as a highly-authoritative and dominating national project in and of itself. At the time of both quotes, America had already cemented strong elements conducive to fascism: an economy based in capitalist modes of production, a geography created through mass extermination of Native American populations, white supremacist ideals rooted in both dominant culture and pseudoscience , and aggressive expansionist and imperialist projects throughout the Western hemisphere. It should come as no surprise that Adolf Hitler studied, admired, and was inspired by the US genocide of Native Americans as well as its subsequent reservation program. "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history," John Toland wrote in his book, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography . "He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity."

This notion of American fascism is certainly nothing new. As Steve Martinot explains in his invaluable essay on " Fascism in the US ," this discussion has been around for a long time:

"In an early, now canonical discussion of racism in the US, Pierre Van den Berghe (1967) pointed out that a prevalent racial despotism coexisted with constitutionality, a confluence he characterized as 'herrenvolk democracy' - 'democracy for white people.' In his book, Friendly Fascism, (1980) Bertram Gross argues that the US under Reagan began moving toward a form of governance closely analogous to 1930s European fascism; he compares the social consequences of corporate influence to Mussolini's 'corporate state.' George Jackson finds no better word than 'fascism' to describe the psychotic use of power and violence by which white prisoners relate to black, or by which the prison administration maintains its hierarchical system -- and which he sees mirrored in white-black relations outside the prison."

As a settler-colonial project steeped in white supremacist domination and capitalist ideals, America is and always has been an ideal fascist breeding ground. The current rise of Donald Trump, the "alt-right," neo-Nazism, and white nationalism is nothing new, it is merely Americanism becoming further personified through the vulnerabilities opened by the failures of capitalism and the weakening of liberal democracy - systems that were constructed on shoddy, hypocritical foundations to begin with.

Fascism as a Capitalist Phenomenon

"People that are more concerned with the trappings of this pseudo mass society and its spectacular leisure sports; parades where strangers meet, shout each other down and often trample each other on the way home will never see the ugly reality of fascism. Amerikkkan fascism is so effective in emotionally appealing to people's desires and fears that when we point out to them that Amerikkkan capitalism has had 200 years to disguise and refine its face, and 50 years to consolidate fascist control of the country, they would simply dismiss us."

- Shaka Sankofa Zulu

Fascism, as a conscious and working ideology, was intentionally constructed to serve as a polar opposite to the materialist conception of thinking that scientific socialism (Marxism) was based in. Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, specifically noted this in his Doctrine of Fascism, which he wrote with Giovanni Gentile. Fascism is a collectivist ideology, much like socialism; however, fascism calls on a societal tie that differs greatly from that of socialism. While socialist collectivism is rooted in an inclusive, communal responsibility to have basic material needs met for all, fascist collectivism is rooted in an exclusive, nationalistic responsibility to dominate and conquer peoples who are viewed as not belonging. While socialist collectivism is based in worker-control of the means of production, fascist collectivism is based in a natural adherence to corporatism, which takes form in concentrated control of the means of production (mimicking that of capitalism). While socialism seeks to undermine and ultimately destroy the capitalist system, fascism seeks to fortify the late stages of capitalist accumulation by merging corporate power with the State.

As socialists view the working-class struggle as the primary vehicle to creating self-determination, fascists flatly reject economic (material) motives as a potential driving force for societal change. The authoritarian nature of capitalism is an ideal precursor to fascism. Because of this, fascism seeks to take the reins of the system and use it to carry out its nationalistic project that is based in a form of heritage or national identity as determined by the fascists. The Doctrine of Fascism explains ,

"Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, [which posits] the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society."

The authoritarian nature of capitalism is rooted in its most elemental relationship - that between the owners and the workers - which naturally creates minority class dominance over the majority class. Fascism seeks to transform this class dominance into national dominance. Because of this, parasitic billionaire exploiters of the capitalist class (like Donald Trump) become welcome members of this nationalist project, and exploited workers who embrace fascism are more than willing to overlook the complicity of the creators of their own misery as long as these overseers are willing to repent through an embrace and renewal of ethnic nationalism.

The natural extension from capitalism to fascism is impossible to ignore. In structural terms, as concentrations of wealth and power are created through the mechanisms of capitalism, so too are widespread dispossession for the masses of people who exist under the system. Despite the construction of robust welfare and police states, which have been implemented to prevent this widespread dispossession from transforming into civil unrest, the weight of such unequal power dynamics is bound to crush the experiment we've come to know as "liberal capitalist democracy." This has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era, where both globalization and so-called "free-market" ideology have unleashed the system to do what it is designed to do.

An anarcho-capitalist (American "libertarian") analysis of fascism, presented by Sheldon Richman in the Library of Economics and Liberty, recognizes at least a part of the natural connection between capitalism and fascism, without overtly saying so:

"Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the 'national interest'-that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions."

While Richman would surely argue that such elements - autocratic control, currency manipulation, and the end of entrepreneurship - are not natural byproducts of capitalism, they perfectly describe the stage of monopoly capitalism (actual existing capitalism) that has inevitably developed as a result of the most basic mechanisms of the system: the labor-capital relationship and the private ownership of land as a means to exploit. In other words, what American "libertarians" like Richman describe as "corporatism" or "crony capitalism" is really just a mature and naturally developed stage of capitalism. The "cronies" are merely the beneficiaries of this inherent process. This point has been illustrated by many economists outside of the establishment , and perhaps most effectively and intensely by the Monthly Review school.

The insurmountable weight that capitalism has brought down on "democracy" has demanded the need for more authoritarian adjustments within government, as societal unrest becomes more likely. This mature stage of capitalism creates a ripe environment for fascism, both in its creation of a highly-centralized State apparatus that has already meshed with corporate power , as well as in its need to recruit masses of foot soldiers from within the systematically dispossessed population. The Fascist Doctrine describes the transfer of the "Liberal State" to the "Fascist State":

"The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State."

The transformation that Mussolini and Gentile describe is that of a capitalist state with pluralistic tendencies that are conducive to capitalist growth to one of a corporatist state with homogenous tendencies that are designed to protect and grow nationalist interests. While modern fascists in the United States tend to focus on "multiculturalism" and what they refer to as "cultural Marxism," they fail to realize that the same structure which shaped these social dynamics happens to be a prerequisite for the fascist transition. The Western capitalist system required a massive, intercontinental slave trade to get started, centuries of internationalist/globalist expansion to spur continuous growth, and an imperialist agenda that has displaced entire societies throughout the global South. In other words, the tactics that have been used to feed the capitalist system, most of which could be characterized as crimes against humanity , not only created the incredibly unequal distributions of wealth and power both nationally and internationally, but also created the societal makeups that fascist foot soldiers decry. In this sense, capitalism has not dug its own grave, like Marx once promised that it would; it actually has birthed the inevitability of fascism.

From "Liberal State" to "Fascist State"

Through capitalism's reliance on imperialism, the transition from Liberal State to Fascist State has already begun. In order to be formally transitioned into fascist control, it merely needs time, political direction, and a forceful wresting of power from the entrenched Liberal State. Once completed, the nature of imperialism shifts from one of economic motivations to one of nationalistic motivations. The doctrine discusses this process:

"For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and it's opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order. If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it."

While gaining control of the State is formally accomplished through the emergence of electoral movements, it still requires a groundswell of support from the lower classes. The class divisions created by capitalism, especially within post-industrialized societies like that of the US, present the most opportune dynamics for what is sometimes referred to as "right-wing populism." Not only is the emergence of an industrialized middle class a key component in this development, but even more crucial is the subsequent collapse of this middle class. This second stage has been occurring in the US since the 1980s, with the onset of neoliberalism and globalization. Politically speaking, it has manifested itself in Reagan's neoliberal blueprint, the neoliberalization of the Democratic Party, the complete economic abandonment of the American working class by both major parties, the rise of proto-fascist groups like the Tea Party, the triumph of lesser-evilism, and now in the rise of 21st-century neo-Nazism and white nationalism, both of which have helped buoy an actual billionaire capitalist to the White House.

Gaining political support from the working class seems like a difficult proposition for those running for office, since the political parties in power are the same parties which have abandoned most Americans for the past several decades. However, this is where fascism's reliance on emotion and identity, or what Mussolini refers to as "duty," "holiness," and "heroism," over material need becomes so powerful. The structural dispossession of masses of people by macro-systems like capitalism is difficult to pinpoint, especially when systemic understanding is absent. Left-wing populism relies on these understandings, as well as the expectation that material conditions will motivate the working class to act in its own best interests, which are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, bourgeois politicians from within the liberal democratic system, and of course billionaire businessmen. Fascism makes things easier, focuses on a national/racial identity, and deems all who exist outside of that identity to be enemies of the State. The structural pressure created capitalism, especially against that of the former middle class, or against anyone feeling as though they're losing privilege, creates an environment conducive for recruitment. This process was never explained more succinctly than by George Jackson :

"The shock troops of fascism on the mass political level are drawn from members of the lower-middle class who feel the upward thrust of the lower classes more acutely. These classes feel that any dislocation of the present economy resulting from the upward thrust of the masses would affect their status first. They are joined by that sector of the working class which is backward enough to be affected by nationalistic trappings and loyalty syndrome that sociologists have termed the 'Authoritarian Personality.' One primary aim of the fascist arrangement is to extend and develop this new pig class, to degenerate and diffuse working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man's herd instincts. Development and exploitation of the authoritarian syndrome is at the center of 'totalitarian' capitalism (fascism). It feeds on a small but false sense of class consciousness and the need for community."

The authoritarian nature of fascism is found in its reliance on identity, a fluid concept that allows for some maneuverability within the minds of its adherents, while also shoring up the herd mentality that becomes rooted in its perceived national agenda. In other words, the individual within a fascist movement may perceive themselves, the movement, and even the ultimate goal of the movement in varying ways; however, when called upon to act, their actions will always fall in line with the national agenda as set by its directors. This is why fascism requires the presence of strong leaders. Much like the Orc armies in JRR Tolkien's famous Hobbit series, the foot soldiers of fascism are easily swayed into violent action for a greater good that is constructed by a strong, charismatic leader. And with this support, those leaders can accomplish electoral feats previously unheard of.

Punching Down: The Fascist Engine of White Supremacy and Xenophobia

Despite the structural failures of both capitalism and "liberal capitalist democracy," American fascism would find difficulties materializing without a strong element of identity. Whereas left-wing populism clearly relies on the material desperation of the working class under capitalism, fascism's reliance on the vague concepts of "holiness" and "heroism" needs a constructed and recognizable identity. In America, the structural and cultural phenomenon of white supremacy serves as this identity, and therefore acts as the engine needed to redirect the widespread angst developed through the systematic dispossession created by capitalism and "democracy" into a nationalistic movement.

It is important to understand that white supremacy is not something only reserved for jackbooted neo-Nazis giving "Heil Hitler!" salutes, but that it is a systemic phenomenon which is heavily seeped in American culture. It is both a conditioned mentality and a material reality. The conditioned mentality that Black lives are substandard has been shaped through centuries of popular culture, from the racist Minstrel shows of the early 19th century, which utilized the " coon caricature" to lampoon Black people as dim-witted, lazy, and buffoonish, to modern TV shows like COPS, which perpetuates the racist stereotype that Black people are more prone to debauchery and criminality. The material reality has been shaped by two and a half centuries of chattel slavery followed by various forms of legalized systems of servitude and second-class citizenship, including sharecropping , convict leasing , Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. This history has built complex layers of institutional racism carried out under the guise of legality, and a systematic ghettoization supported by both " white flight" and widespread discriminatory housing and employment practices, all of which have combined to shape a uniquely intense experience for Black Americans who must face both class and racial oppression.

The two factors (conditioned mentality and material reality) interplay with one another in a way that is increasingly disastrous for the ways in which American society views and treats its Black citizens. Because of the perpetuation of racial stereotypes, people on average are less empathetic toward their Black counterparts. Studies have shown that white children as young as seven years old believe that Black children feel less pain than them; that emergency medical personnel are less likely to give pain medication to Black and Latinx children who are in pain; and that "Caucasian observers reacted to pain suffered by African people significantly less than to pain of Caucasian people." The material reality shaped by institutional racism has created a landscape where Black people are disproportionately poor, unemployed, and in prison. Martinot talks about this seemingly never-ending cycle that is centered within a highly racialized criminal punishment system:

"The social effects of this process are catastrophic, yet familiar. Not only does felonization of a population insure massive unemployment (a general tendency not to hire people with a record), but routine felony charges amount to systematic disenfranchisement (14% of black people by 1998, according to Fellner and Mauer). Recent studies indicate that one out of every three black men under the age of 30 has been through the judicial system in the last 25 years. To continually remove a sizable number of people from a community in this way constitutes a massive disruption of its social coherence. This disruption buttresses its criminalization as a community in white society's eyes, and rationalizes the disinvestment of capital and a general financial obstruction of community asset accumulation. Racial oppression, impoverishment, imprisonment and police impunity are all of a piece.

Ultimately, the increase in prison population has become one of the arguments, in social discourse, for further drug laws and racial profiling. It is a self-generating cycle. What is significant about it is that it is not perceived by white society at large as an extant injustice. Instead, more prisons are called for and accepted, again with a sense form of cultural familiarity ("how else are we going to deal with crime?"). This acceptance euphemizes itself in political campaigns as being "hard on crime" as opposed to addressing the social conditions that generate crime. It inhabits a white consensus in solidarity with the police and prison industry that have allowed for their untrammeled growth -- a consensus whose content is white racialized identity."

When turned on its head, white supremacists can use this current reality to support their arguments that Black people are in these positions because of "poor decisions," "a lack of personal responsibility," "a lack of work ethic," "laziness," or even some type of biological shortcoming, as is argued by so-called "race realists" (the modern term for pseudoscientific racism). Individualizing systemic problems is both a convenient way to blame victims of societal oppression, by basically ignoring history, and the result of a general lack of historical and practical knowledge regarding how systems shape lived realities for people within those systems.

The latter point helps explain why ignorance is naturally drawn to reactionary politics, and why fascism has always been the likely outcome for America. As most Americans suffer from extreme deficits in sociological, historical, economic, and systemic understanding, any reaction against personal misgivings (which are experienced by the working class as a whole under capitalism) will surely default into raw emotion for many. This is fascism's advantage, as it feeds off aimless frustrations. Ignorance is easily swayed; and guiding these frustrations into an intense anger against women, immigrants, Muslims, Black people, Brown people, or LGBTQ people, is easily accomplished.

Ignorance is also a harbinger to cowardice. Due to a lack of general understanding of the world around them, such people grow to see the world as a dangerous place. So they must back themselves into a corner, stockpile guns, become suspicious of any and all who do not look like them, and brace themselves for the globalist, Illuminati-led, Bilderberg-planned, Soros-funded, politically-correct, cultural-Marxist New World Order. Their lack of understanding leads them down a delusional rabbit hole, and their vulnerabilities and insecurities breed a cowardice that drives them to "punch down" at those who appear even more vulnerable than they. This authoritarian stance taken against class peers, and its need to dominate and brutalize marginalized people, is just waiting to get swept up in the fascist tide. And for many Americans, it inevitably has.

The Struggle Against Inevitability

Since the inevitability of American fascism is deeply rooted in both capitalism and white supremacy, any resistance against this fascist tide must be focused on destroying these two systems. Therefore, the only suitable orientation to embrace is one of a left-wing populist, internationalist, working-class, anti-racist ideology. The black-clad, masked anarchists and anti-fascists who have been physically confronting Trump's shock troops in the streets are firmly rooted in this orientation. They are the front lines of this struggle, but their effectiveness will ultimately be dependent on a mass, organized movement that includes political and labor-oriented groups on the left, and most importantly liberation groups that are rooted in justice for people of color and immigrant populations.

The upcoming war against American fascism will occur on multiple fronts. First, ground troops of the left (antifa and others ) are desperately needed to confront the violent, bigoted, gun-obsessed right wing that has formed under the banner of Americanism. These ground troops must be armed and proficient with guns, physically conditioned, and trained in hand-to-hand combat skills. A guerilla orientation influenced by the teachings of Che Guevara and Abraham Guillen , among others, and rooted in the approach of the original Black Panther Party and Fred Hampton's rainbow coalition (the BPP, Young Lords, and Young Patriots) is vital. Included in this need are community defense projects that can protect working-class people from the immediate dangers posed by right-wing militia groups, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and police.

Second, a multi-pronged attack against the capitalist system is needed. This must include a return to militant labor organizing and the inclusion and politicization of low-wage service sector workers. This must also include a left unity project that creates a coalition of anti-capitalist political, labor, and social justice groups that can effectively bring in and give the reins to immigrant laborers, the unemployed and underemployed, and specifically those who are most marginalized due to their racial, gender, or religious identity. A rejection of both capitalist political parties (Democrats and Republicans) is necessary in this struggle, as is a rejection of the lesser-evil approach to electoral politics that has brought the entire system rightward over the past 40 years.

Third, a struggle against government repression is unavoidable. The American government has a brutal history of crushing anti-capitalist dissent: the Haymarket martyrs , the execution of Joe Hill, the targeting and forced exile ofBill Haywood, the Palmer raids, the framing of Sacco and Vanzetti , McCarthyism, Communist blacklists, COINTELPRO , the MOVE bombing , the imprisonment of folks like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Oscar Lopez Rivera, and the forced exile of Assata Shakur , are a few examples. Legitimizing the movement with a formidable, nationally-based political wing can help with this. A third party rooted firmly in anti-capitalism is needed to serve as a vehicle for spreading class consciousness among an American working class that has been strategically and historically shielded from this. While electoral victories would be nearly impossible and largely ineffective in the current structure, political pressure and education is a crucial tool that should be used to create legitimacy and transparency.

This struggle must be carried out with an understanding of the role that liberals and many progressives play in protecting the fascist movement. While conservatives and those on the "alt" and far right represent a clear enemy, liberals can sometimes pose as allies when it comes to mainstream political rhetoric. History shows this is not the case. It shows that no matter how progressive their platforms may appear, liberals will always side with the capitalist system and, most importantly, with their own stability and comfort within the system. This has never been more evident than in their recent support of a proven corporatist and war hawk in Hillary Clinton, their red-baiting propaganda since the election, their blanket condemnation of anti-fascists, their constant cries against counter-violence, and their false equivalencies against "extremists on both sides." The fact that the Democratic Party sabotaged Bernie Sanders, a politician whose platform is nothing more than that of a New Deal liberal, shows how far to the right they have moved since the inception of neoliberalism. Nancy Pelosi's honest proclamation that "we're capitalists and that's just the way it is" while answering an unscripted question from a student at a January "Town hall" appearance perfectly captured the smug elitism of the party, especially when considering Pelosi herself is married to a wealthy "businessman/investor" and has a net worth in the range of $43 to $200 million. Capitalism has been great for her and her family; however, not so great for 200 million Americans. And now we have a war on our hands.