The fascism debate rages on: Here is why it matters, what the main contentions are, and why the arguments of the Skeptics are increasingly untethered from what is happening on the Right
it will come wrapped in the red, white & blue; though the opposition will involve some wrapped in the red, white, blue; unite all those who can be united against an American fascism
This is an exceptionally thoughtful analysis -- thank you. Your argument that what is key is modern fascism's *perception* of the threat presented by a revolutionary left -- regardless of the reality -- is an important corrective. I would suggest, nonetheless, a caveat. In Weimar and Italy, it was the specifically material threat posed by socialists (e.g., high wages, expensive social services, and the threat to property itself) that mobilized industrialists and landowners to financially and politically support fascism -- the socialist threat was urgently "real" to key institutional powers who felt that their profits were being confiscated. The ideational and cultural politics of the contemporary left (e.g., its gender and racial politics) is certainly perceived by the fascist rabble as a revolutionary threat today but such politics are far less likely to mobilize the support of big business. On the contrary, contemporary "woke" politics, as many have noted, is often amenable to big business, who know full-well that they are hardly in need of any saving by fascists. We can of course note that the GOP is already the party of big business (at least massive sectors of it), so perhaps modern fascism's appeal need not be directed to a donor class that it more or less, through the party apparatus, already has (Trump's fundraising disadvantage vis-a-vis the Democrats is another story, as is the ways in which Trump's promised mass expulsions likely scares the hell out of the Chamber of Commerce). I would suggest that we might be able to go beyond the question of "perceived versus actual socialist threat" by adopting the concept, used by Arno Mayer, of preemptive counterrevolution -- in this case, preemptive fascism. Capitalism, the climate, and the global system are in serious crisis, and fascists, knowing that the soil is at least fertile for revolutionary thought and action, are not required to wait for the threat to fully emerge before acting. Anyway, thank you again, as your intervention here was greatly needed (and the ogres flailing against you online likely intuit that they've been fully stripped and demolished).
In our American context, Trumpism is the modern iteration of southern elites/slavers assertion of White Elite rule. We are refighting the conflicts of the 1850s
2) please take three and a half minutes and listen to this short video re: the German public.....I sent it as a letter to the editor a day or so ago, don't know if it will be published. I hope you will listen: Thank you.
"German public shocked, but accepted steps that led to the Holocaust"
"Many of the highly educated persons who were involved in the coordination of the Holocaust
were lawyers. They met at a villa, now a museum, The House of the Wannsee Conference. The museum's former director, Dr. Norbert Kampe, describes, in less than three and a half minutes, how the German public accepted the steps that lead to the Holocaust. At the end, he says he believes the Holocaust would not have happened if the German public had acted differently. Please watch the video and share it : Steps that led ultimately to the Final Solution Dr Norbert Kampe link: https://vimeo.com/25552951
Holy shit! We Democrats have been fighting the wrong battles for a long time. Now we find ourselves with a tremendous disadvantage. Our desires and expectations for voting to save us is like spitting into the wind. No matter how the election turns out, the mechanisms of fascism are already in place. Project 2025 may not be implemented in its entirety (which logistically would be a major challenge) but as we know from the Abortion War it won’t take much to knock the left off our horses. We’ll just be running around with only our lances pricking the opposition but never killing or even wounding them.
I’m certainly not a trained historian but I think I do have some insight into human behavior. And from my chair, I’m terrified.
I took a graduate course on illiberalism last fall and, though this hardly makes me an expert, my take away is: yup. This. All this. I sent it to my professors.
I do think we also need to consider what I call neofascism, which to me better captures the transnational nature of the current illiberal moment. Hyper nationalism was a defining feature of the so called ur fascisms (and I'd include the successful fascist rise in Japan and the unsuccessful interwar fascist movement in China in Interwar period that saw the first true fascist movements). But neofascism is NOT hypernationalistic in my opinion. To over simplify it for the sake of brevity I truly believe if the US election in November 2024 was between Donald Trump and the sitting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin would win the majority of voters on the right in the United States.
The Jugendverführer & Jugendverderber tropes are out in full force and one can rest assured that they'll follow in those footsteps. With trivial amounts of obfuscation, they even openly verbatim declare their intentions to implement «Weimar solutions to Weimar problems» with no apparent opposition of any significant power.
It's tough to make out what sort of epistemology people are working with. It feels like they're less concerned with truth than uttering the right shibboleths to keep friends around, to reduce career risk, to avoid antagonising family members etc. than whether things have any relation to reality.
I foresee the Average Jane and Joe just shrugging, going on with life and forgetting about it when the cops round up all of the easily discernibly LGBT people and haul them off to prison. And the cops are pretty much all far right extremists as things stand who would never challenge such orders. That most likely means a dragnet out for trans people and the old time vice stings for gays. Maybe some people will care, but there just won't be anywhere near enough of them to make a difference, and the few who care with any sort of power to do anything about it will go no further than taking care of their own. And the passable ones will just disappear (likely fleeing the country) and leave everyone else behind like they always have. And I rather doubt the Christofascists will be content to leave someone thoroughly medically transitioned to sit happy with their completely transitioned body in a prison cell as they are, raising the spectre of Mengele.
Nothing I tell anyone is ever going to make a difference, as I'm too bad of a writer and speaker, with a speech impediment, a number of issues with my appearance and more. Hopefully you'll have better luck. Hopefully you manage to sway more than I ever could.
Trump refused to concede a fair election, incited an insurrection, and still claims he won the last election to this day. He wants to deport millions of brown people and hold them in camps at the border, he says they are "poisoning the blood of America" and that the greatest enemy is the "enemy within" the Democratic party and their allies. This is a Fascist movement! Ceaselessly spreading lies and conspiracy theories, encouraging violence and hatred against low-status groups, like trans and gay. This is a fascist movement. This isn't about ideology, this is about seizing power. Listen to Bannon!
Just before reading this, I read a friend's diatribe contra Biden on the grounds of Palestine and the neoliberal order. Equivalencies were made, yet fear of Trump II was acknowledged. I left that piece confused. I don't disagree with its characterizations, but the equivalency leaves me stunned. I cannot gainsay anyone who cannot morally support Biden over Israel's actions in Gaza and US involvement in same, but I also cannot grasp the claim that Trump II would make no difference. Certainly not re. domestic life. I can only conclude as you suggest: such folks have tunnel vision locked on neoliberalism and underappreciate the sea change the Right has undergone. Thank you for this piece. I'll be boosting it.
Curious to read your second part. I certainly get where some of Moyn's and other left-leaning thinkers frustrations come from about the way the debate has been hijacked by more centrist liberals, but I'm not clear on why that means we have to deny there's a rising tide of fascism (or fascistic elements) brewing on the right. There's precedent for leftists pointing to liberals complicity with fascism (or at least their unwillingness to confront it) and integrating this into their analysis and arguments. If Democrats are going to hijack radical accusations, hold them accountable for moderate actions. If Trump is a fascistic threat, why don't liberals treat him as such?
As a start, to me, it would mean halting any further expansion of the security/surveillance state, lest he win in November. Second would be for biden/the dems to stop shitting on the voters who are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but on some level it seems like regarding trump as a fascistic threat is more of an election strategy than any serious attempt to steer the country away from him.
I don't recall saying that. I'm perfectly comfortable calling Jan 6 domestic terrorism.
I just don't wanna expand domestic and/or federal law enforcement as a result, because the anti-liberal left is right about one thing - the feds invariably use any new capabilities to target leftists and marginalized groups. Same as it ever was.
There are people who would take a policy reducing the security state as evidence that Biden isn't serious about fascists, not evidence that he is. What parts of the security state have actually been expanded in response to this?
White Incels
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/why-we-left-the-right/
They really love khakis. Are they dressing like middle managers?
it will come wrapped in the red, white & blue; though the opposition will involve some wrapped in the red, white, blue; unite all those who can be united against an American fascism
Roger Griffin and I go deep on the fascism question:
http://sites.radio.washingtontimes.com/317972/fascists-fascists-everywhere
This is an exceptionally thoughtful analysis -- thank you. Your argument that what is key is modern fascism's *perception* of the threat presented by a revolutionary left -- regardless of the reality -- is an important corrective. I would suggest, nonetheless, a caveat. In Weimar and Italy, it was the specifically material threat posed by socialists (e.g., high wages, expensive social services, and the threat to property itself) that mobilized industrialists and landowners to financially and politically support fascism -- the socialist threat was urgently "real" to key institutional powers who felt that their profits were being confiscated. The ideational and cultural politics of the contemporary left (e.g., its gender and racial politics) is certainly perceived by the fascist rabble as a revolutionary threat today but such politics are far less likely to mobilize the support of big business. On the contrary, contemporary "woke" politics, as many have noted, is often amenable to big business, who know full-well that they are hardly in need of any saving by fascists. We can of course note that the GOP is already the party of big business (at least massive sectors of it), so perhaps modern fascism's appeal need not be directed to a donor class that it more or less, through the party apparatus, already has (Trump's fundraising disadvantage vis-a-vis the Democrats is another story, as is the ways in which Trump's promised mass expulsions likely scares the hell out of the Chamber of Commerce). I would suggest that we might be able to go beyond the question of "perceived versus actual socialist threat" by adopting the concept, used by Arno Mayer, of preemptive counterrevolution -- in this case, preemptive fascism. Capitalism, the climate, and the global system are in serious crisis, and fascists, knowing that the soil is at least fertile for revolutionary thought and action, are not required to wait for the threat to fully emerge before acting. Anyway, thank you again, as your intervention here was greatly needed (and the ogres flailing against you online likely intuit that they've been fully stripped and demolished).
Thanking you for risking slings and arrows to write this post.
In our American context, Trumpism is the modern iteration of southern elites/slavers assertion of White Elite rule. We are refighting the conflicts of the 1850s
thank you. I read this last night and I truly appreciate your work.
2 things:
1) I just listened to this (24 minutes)-
Trump’s Unhinged Ranting At Biden’s FBI Reveals His “Wannabe Fascism”
- Federico Finchelstein in conversation with Greg Sargent. I recommend it: TNR: Sargent's Daily Blast, link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109 (you don't need to use Apple, just go down to the play button next to the listing)
2) please take three and a half minutes and listen to this short video re: the German public.....I sent it as a letter to the editor a day or so ago, don't know if it will be published. I hope you will listen: Thank you.
"German public shocked, but accepted steps that led to the Holocaust"
"Many of the highly educated persons who were involved in the coordination of the Holocaust
were lawyers. They met at a villa, now a museum, The House of the Wannsee Conference. The museum's former director, Dr. Norbert Kampe, describes, in less than three and a half minutes, how the German public accepted the steps that lead to the Holocaust. At the end, he says he believes the Holocaust would not have happened if the German public had acted differently. Please watch the video and share it : Steps that led ultimately to the Final Solution Dr Norbert Kampe link: https://vimeo.com/25552951
I
If you're still drafting part 2, I found Kelly Hayes' piece here better than most I've read. I also do not doubt her motives or sincerity.
https://truthout.org/articles/reducing-fight-against-fascism-to-electoral-questions-overlooks-larger-crisis/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=boost&utm_campaign=120209151239400458&fbclid=IwAR3CsrLOKcmxgCj1-t7d-7dhpzRs5heUNZUAZLtxKsCEac010nYs15kC8fY_aem_AZaXnTItFuq_Gb5XqXuap6JGzESBR9g3FVUlENiP7gPmM1wCJp-2vPlSBxOgnYFCNfKInDgC-MbZeRexhrRsPI3s
Holy shit! We Democrats have been fighting the wrong battles for a long time. Now we find ourselves with a tremendous disadvantage. Our desires and expectations for voting to save us is like spitting into the wind. No matter how the election turns out, the mechanisms of fascism are already in place. Project 2025 may not be implemented in its entirety (which logistically would be a major challenge) but as we know from the Abortion War it won’t take much to knock the left off our horses. We’ll just be running around with only our lances pricking the opposition but never killing or even wounding them.
I’m certainly not a trained historian but I think I do have some insight into human behavior. And from my chair, I’m terrified.
I took a graduate course on illiberalism last fall and, though this hardly makes me an expert, my take away is: yup. This. All this. I sent it to my professors.
I do think we also need to consider what I call neofascism, which to me better captures the transnational nature of the current illiberal moment. Hyper nationalism was a defining feature of the so called ur fascisms (and I'd include the successful fascist rise in Japan and the unsuccessful interwar fascist movement in China in Interwar period that saw the first true fascist movements). But neofascism is NOT hypernationalistic in my opinion. To over simplify it for the sake of brevity I truly believe if the US election in November 2024 was between Donald Trump and the sitting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin would win the majority of voters on the right in the United States.
I look forward to tomorrow's post.
The Jugendverführer & Jugendverderber tropes are out in full force and one can rest assured that they'll follow in those footsteps. With trivial amounts of obfuscation, they even openly verbatim declare their intentions to implement «Weimar solutions to Weimar problems» with no apparent opposition of any significant power.
It's tough to make out what sort of epistemology people are working with. It feels like they're less concerned with truth than uttering the right shibboleths to keep friends around, to reduce career risk, to avoid antagonising family members etc. than whether things have any relation to reality.
I foresee the Average Jane and Joe just shrugging, going on with life and forgetting about it when the cops round up all of the easily discernibly LGBT people and haul them off to prison. And the cops are pretty much all far right extremists as things stand who would never challenge such orders. That most likely means a dragnet out for trans people and the old time vice stings for gays. Maybe some people will care, but there just won't be anywhere near enough of them to make a difference, and the few who care with any sort of power to do anything about it will go no further than taking care of their own. And the passable ones will just disappear (likely fleeing the country) and leave everyone else behind like they always have. And I rather doubt the Christofascists will be content to leave someone thoroughly medically transitioned to sit happy with their completely transitioned body in a prison cell as they are, raising the spectre of Mengele.
Nothing I tell anyone is ever going to make a difference, as I'm too bad of a writer and speaker, with a speech impediment, a number of issues with my appearance and more. Hopefully you'll have better luck. Hopefully you manage to sway more than I ever could.
Trump refused to concede a fair election, incited an insurrection, and still claims he won the last election to this day. He wants to deport millions of brown people and hold them in camps at the border, he says they are "poisoning the blood of America" and that the greatest enemy is the "enemy within" the Democratic party and their allies. This is a Fascist movement! Ceaselessly spreading lies and conspiracy theories, encouraging violence and hatred against low-status groups, like trans and gay. This is a fascist movement. This isn't about ideology, this is about seizing power. Listen to Bannon!
Just before reading this, I read a friend's diatribe contra Biden on the grounds of Palestine and the neoliberal order. Equivalencies were made, yet fear of Trump II was acknowledged. I left that piece confused. I don't disagree with its characterizations, but the equivalency leaves me stunned. I cannot gainsay anyone who cannot morally support Biden over Israel's actions in Gaza and US involvement in same, but I also cannot grasp the claim that Trump II would make no difference. Certainly not re. domestic life. I can only conclude as you suggest: such folks have tunnel vision locked on neoliberalism and underappreciate the sea change the Right has undergone. Thank you for this piece. I'll be boosting it.
Curious to read your second part. I certainly get where some of Moyn's and other left-leaning thinkers frustrations come from about the way the debate has been hijacked by more centrist liberals, but I'm not clear on why that means we have to deny there's a rising tide of fascism (or fascistic elements) brewing on the right. There's precedent for leftists pointing to liberals complicity with fascism (or at least their unwillingness to confront it) and integrating this into their analysis and arguments. If Democrats are going to hijack radical accusations, hold them accountable for moderate actions. If Trump is a fascistic threat, why don't liberals treat him as such?
"If Trump is a fascistic threat, why don't liberals treat him as such?"
This is the real question.
What would qualify as treating him as such?
As a start, to me, it would mean halting any further expansion of the security/surveillance state, lest he win in November. Second would be for biden/the dems to stop shitting on the voters who are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but on some level it seems like regarding trump as a fascistic threat is more of an election strategy than any serious attempt to steer the country away from him.
I dunno...maybe I'm wrong.
So you don't want to use the words "domestic terrorism" in relation to Jan 6, because then they'll just do it to us too?
I don't recall saying that. I'm perfectly comfortable calling Jan 6 domestic terrorism.
I just don't wanna expand domestic and/or federal law enforcement as a result, because the anti-liberal left is right about one thing - the feds invariably use any new capabilities to target leftists and marginalized groups. Same as it ever was.
There are people who would take a policy reducing the security state as evidence that Biden isn't serious about fascists, not evidence that he is. What parts of the security state have actually been expanded in response to this?