“Over the past few years,discussions of fascism in the United States have, unsurprisingly, followed an electoral cadence, focused more on the presidency of Donald Trump — past and possibly future — than on the formidable far-right mobilization taking place through private foundations and state legislatures. In many ways, that’s justified, considering fascism has historically required, for its successful seizure of power, an electoral and constitutional process, in tandem with militias and vigilantism. But today’s so-called “fascism debate <https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/fascism-debate/>” — an academic and intellectual dispute <https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-24-american-fascism-john-ganz/> over whether* it* *can*, or already did, *happen here*—is taking place against a different backdrop than four or eight years ago: that of a growing movement <https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/student-protest-history/>, led by university students, to stop a genocide funded and sustained by the U.S. government.
Many of those who have challenged the idea that a serious threat of fascism exists in America argue that focus on this potential both distracts from home-grown anti-democratic tendencies and serves a Democratic Party narrative in which the choice is either Joe Biden or Trumpian dictatorship. But the skeptics’ arguments rarely consider that any full discussion of the fascism question requires reflection on the link between political violence abroad and at home. And as today’s anti-war student movement is met with intense repression — part of a broader attack <https://inthesetimes.com/article/war-protest-standing-rock-cop-city-repression-criminalize-dissent-political-rights-first-amendment> on collective dissent — it forces us to think about our increasingly authoritarian present beyond the national electoral cycle… Especially when it comes to the United States, the words of the great Marxist theorist of fascism, Nicos Poulantzas <https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/1030-fascism-and-dictatorship>, still ring true: “He who does not wish to discuss *imperialism *… should stay silent on the subject of fascism.” Historical fascist movements and states arose as late-imperial powers, with aspirations to revive settler-colonialism in the age of mass industry and mass politics. After the downfall of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, critics of U.S. empire abroad and racism at home repeatedly invoked the specter of fascism. In his 1952 piece “Fascism in America <https://monthlyreviewarchives.org/index.php/mr/article/view/MR-004-06-1952-10_2>,” economist Paul Baran (notably writing under a pseudonym to shield himself from McCarthyism), explained how a U.S. corporate-military coalition could carry out all the tasks of a fascist regime: securing through state power a mass basis for capitalist domination, while undermining any challenges from below, and only adopting fascism’s “classic forms” abroad. “As yet they need no storm troopers in the United States, slaughtering the wives and children of revolutionary workers and farmers,” Baran explained. “But they employ them where they are needed: in the towns and villages of Korea.” A quarter of a century later, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky would detail the way the “Washington Consensus” reproduced itself by supporting “third world fascism <https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/632-the-washington-connection-and-third-world-fascism>” abroad, from Indonesia to El Salvador. Postwar Black radical thinkers <https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2223-the-black-antifascist-tradition> sharpened these insights, by connecting the role of U.S. political violence overseas in maintaining American hegemony to the function of racial terror at home in quelling movements for Black and Brown liberation. When it comes to today’s fascism debate, we must look beyond U.S. borders. Or at least look *at* them, recognizing that violence against migrants is a key manifestation of contemporary authoritarianism. As the current moment exemplifies, the scale at which our language works is related to the scope of our moral and political imagination. If we believe that fascism is something that takes place only at the level of the nation-state, we might be persuaded that resisting fascism at home necessitates ignoring complicity with genocide abroad. But it is exactly this hopelessly cramped horizon being challenged in solidarity encampments worldwide… More @ https://inthesetimes.com/article/fascism-debate-trump-democrats-gaza-campus-protest -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30284): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30284 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106014547/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
