I see this cliche repeated often, usually with reference to how the average person could never realy predict the 1917 revolution would happen etc.
But I think this is a fallacy in the same vein as nobody considers the opposite. If I were a leftist in Germany in the 1930s and believed there was no hope for a resolution or change of path in European fascism before it is too late(it was already too late?) then I'd be right, in the end we had to go to the very end game bottom of the barrel biggest disaster in history in order for things to change.
If someone is predicting the American future I'd bet on being closer to the inevitable path of European fascism in 1930 then whatever the Russian farmers were hoping for in 1910.
This is closer to my own interpretation of the now; the parallels are not 1:1, but modern America feels more and more like 1920s/30s Germany, where we're all just waiting for that one final election to initiate the beginning of the end, but it must be noted that for fascism's unsustainability, Italy's lasted for 20 years until it was forced out, Gemany's lasted 10 until it met the same fate - Spain and Portugal remained fascist all the way to the 70s as they had the good mind to stay out of the war. The smaller players of the axis (Finland, Hungary, Romania, etc) all had their fascism forcefully removed by the influence of the USSR.
The difference here is that there is no USSR this time, there is no grand antifascist alliance coming together to slay the dragon. The USA is and will be a monstrosity of which the Nazi state couldn't even have dreamed of in terms of its ability to inflict untold suffering and initiate military apocalypse. We are entirely on our own. Any change will have to come from within and from a porous border with the global south.
If fascism is a reaction to the failure of liberalism, liberalism in crisis, or what have you, then I'd say liberalism is in crisis right now. And the liberals have no other option to keep their class advantage.
So what should the American left do? Not a whole lot. If you're in any position of luxury to do so, emigrate as soon as you can. Deprive the state of as much labor-power, brainpower, and economic power as possible. Deprive it of potential suckers to stock its war machine to the point it needs to reinstate the draft. If you can't do that, then lie flat, organize your workplace, go in the woods and create a lefty militia and try not to be immediately assassinated, vote republican in an attempt to accellerate - it doesn't matter what you do because there are mechanisms in place to counter those effects.
Nothing is ever an acknowledged possibility until it happens. Every great step of progress was unlikely.
I see this cliche repeated often, usually with reference to how the average person could never realy predict the 1917 revolution would happen etc.
But I think this is a fallacy in the same vein as nobody considers the opposite. If I were a leftist in Germany in the 1930s and believed there was no hope for a resolution or change of path in European fascism before it is too late(it was already too late?) then I'd be right, in the end we had to go to the very end game bottom of the barrel biggest disaster in history in order for things to change.
If someone is predicting the American future I'd bet on being closer to the inevitable path of European fascism in 1930 then whatever the Russian farmers were hoping for in 1910.
Both are possible but it is not 50/50 at all.
This is closer to my own interpretation of the now; the parallels are not 1:1, but modern America feels more and more like 1920s/30s Germany, where we're all just waiting for that one final election to initiate the beginning of the end, but it must be noted that for fascism's unsustainability, Italy's lasted for 20 years until it was forced out, Gemany's lasted 10 until it met the same fate - Spain and Portugal remained fascist all the way to the 70s as they had the good mind to stay out of the war. The smaller players of the axis (Finland, Hungary, Romania, etc) all had their fascism forcefully removed by the influence of the USSR.
The difference here is that there is no USSR this time, there is no grand antifascist alliance coming together to slay the dragon. The USA is and will be a monstrosity of which the Nazi state couldn't even have dreamed of in terms of its ability to inflict untold suffering and initiate military apocalypse. We are entirely on our own. Any change will have to come from within and from a porous border with the global south.
If fascism is a reaction to the failure of liberalism, liberalism in crisis, or what have you, then I'd say liberalism is in crisis right now. And the liberals have no other option to keep their class advantage.
So what should the American left do? Not a whole lot. If you're in any position of luxury to do so, emigrate as soon as you can. Deprive the state of as much labor-power, brainpower, and economic power as possible. Deprive it of potential suckers to stock its war machine to the point it needs to reinstate the draft. If you can't do that, then lie flat, organize your workplace, go in the woods and create a lefty militia and try not to be immediately assassinated, vote republican in an attempt to accellerate - it doesn't matter what you do because there are mechanisms in place to counter those effects.