Don't wanna write a wall of text, but historically fascist movements have come to power under the banner of a charismatic leader with majority support from the population. As fascistic as America is today, I'm not sure there is enough support to sustain a serious fascist movement. Nearly every major city is at least a 50/50 split among liberal democrats and republicans. Many of those republicans are politically uneducated and don't have a real desire for authoritarian dictate. The Republican candidate has won the popular vote in the presidential election once in the last 30 years and the only places where fascists outnumber every day liberals is in rural America.
So can fascism exist without popular majority support in dense urban areas? What does the fall of capitalism look like with no strong left or right movement? Am I naïve and should we expect reactionary attitudes to grow in response to a collapsing economy? My materialist brain is usually pretty good at seeing the direction we're headed but I'm not sure on this one.
I suppose the doomer take is that we haven't actually collapsed yet, and when the jenga tower really starts to fall, libs will be forced to choose between going right and going left. At that point if we don't have a popular workers movement with enough power, actual fascism will become a threat.
it doesn’t need public support, just public complacency, as with capitalism.
It doesn’t need majority support. The base of fascism is the petty bourgeoisie who frustrated by the failing attempts of the proletariat to take power arm and organize to put them down and take power themselves, allied and funded by the big bourgeoisie who they end up doing the bidding of. You don’t need that many armed and organized fascists in the streets for it to work. Liberals at the last minute would much rather cede power to fascists than to the proletariat or communists.
This sounds so simple and it feels like the correct take. But there are also a lot of densely populated left leaning cities. It's hard for me to imagine Portland, for example, ceding ground to a fascist federal government.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the armed bodies of the state will largely cooperate with fascists since they have shared goals of protecting private property and the existing capitalist power structures. So consider things like the Portland cops more or less being in communication with the fascist groups like patriot prayer and allowing them to set up sniper nests on buildings and such which is something that has already happened. The cooperation between the fascist paramilitary types and the cops will only broaden as things get worse and they both work together in terms of fighting proletarian insurrection (like the George Floyd protests ) in the streets. I guess it will come down to who’s able to build power in the streets but the fascists will ultimately have the cops (at probably all levels of gov) on their side and at a certain point cops will not be willing to step down just because a lib mayor tells them to. Communists and anti fascists need to be organizing as many people as possible so that we have the numbers to overcome the combined forces of the state and the fascists (who will also be working to grow their numbers and improve their organization as society breaks down).
Many libs will break fash once they're inconvenienced. I think that's the stage we're in now.
Imagine there's blood in the streets because the fascists are attacking people and leftists and left-aligned people are fighting back. The media is only talking about antifa destroying our homes and restaurants while not mentioning the fascists or even painting them as victims. Would the libs you know support bringing in the national guard to restore the peace? Or support giving police more power to prevent these criminals from making our streets unsafe? The ones I know would support that wholeheartedly.
When the jenga tower really starts to fall, libs will be forced to choose between going right and going left.
As far as I am concerned - the dems are 100% certain to go to the right. Just imagine the baby brain r/politics takes...
"Look, I don't like the democrats moving to the right and it's really, really bad. But they need to win. Not enough people are voting for them. What else can they do? The voters are letting the country down. After they start to win they can move back to the center."
Yep. What else can they do?
Most libs literally believe that the freedom of the internet is what is causing social alienation. Like, I started using the internet because of social alienation, they countinue to mix up cause and effect.
the freedom of the internet is what is causing social alienation... they countinue to mix up cause and effect.
There's a guy I follow on Twitter named Will Stancil who rabid believer of that. He's nothing special. He's yet another generic liberal who probably self-identifies as a progressive because he hopes the democrats will finally listen to people like him.
But his takes are so delusional and he is so obsessed by the idea that tv and the internet warps people's minds - he makes me laugh. Tiktok corrupting the mind of the young is - by far - is favorite bugbear. He has ridiculous thread after ridiculous thread...
People are making fun of this, but they shouldn't. TikTok has 50 million daily US users - undoubtedly vastly skewed towards the young. That's 33 times as many daily viewers as Fox News. If you don't think that's politically relevant, I don't know what to tell you.
I dunno. Maybe people - especially young people - don't need Tiktok or any other site on the net to dislike Biden or even hate him. Maybe they have those feelings because Bidin is worse than fucking useless and the future looks bleak as can be.
If you're young and you have no hope - why would you have positive feelings for the old codger in the White House who won't do anything?
"Carmela, come into the Oval. I've got something to tell you."
She bites her tongue and doesn't correct him. They enter and as Biden rambles she knows something is off. The Old White Guy starts babbling just before he tells everybody something big. But where is everybody? Oh, fuck. But what could it be?
They sit down on the sofas and she knows something is off because the president doesn't even offer her something to eat or drink. It's going to be a very short meeting and he's got his worst, fakest friendly face on. Somebody is getting stabbed in the back?
What could it be? Am I over thinking it? Good news actually? Maybe? Could it be good news for—
He uses his presidential mien and tone: "We've decided that we need to go in another direction in 2024."
"Excuse me? What does that mean exactly?" Rage is building. She doesn't care that she interrupted the Old White Guy. It's something he hates. And he's thinking her rudeness is intolerable. When he was the veep he never interrupted President Obama.
It's the Office of the President. There must be respect for Christ's sakes. Pardon my French. "I'm being gentle here." Man, she hates when he brings out "gentle" when he's talking to the ladies. "I'm letting you go gently so that—"
"Letting me go? Are you actually saying you're pushing me off the ticket?"
"I am the president. I will not be rushed. What—"
"So I'm off the ticket. Just say it." He's more scared of her than an angry 800 pound bull and he starts stammering.
"I... Well... I was going to say... Yes. You will not be on the ticket in 2024."
"And who will replace me, Mr. President?" She says "Mr. President" with venom.
"I'm not ready at this time to—"
"You will tell me right now or so help me as god is my witness I will wreck your presidency."
"Trump."
"What?"
"Trump will be on the ticket as my vice president."
Kamala looks away from him. She feels like she's having an old man heart attack. She happens to see a letter opener on the Resolute Desk. She plays with the idea of running over to it, marching up to Biden, and stabbing him in the neck until he is dead.
It doesn’t need a majority, just a well organized political movement to seize power. Then all they need is the cops and military to go along with it, which they will.
They could have done it on Jan 6th if they were better organized.
They could have done it on Jan 6th if they were better organized.
But they were organized by the FBI. The fash already won, the country with the concentration camps and legal slavery still has popular support, it doesn't make sense that they would coup themselves to establish the same thing.
Sadly I think that raises the most interesting question of the 2020's. Can capitalism's death drive manifest itself or will the weight of everything collapsing prevent it from effectively coalescing and we'll just get total economic breakdown
Fascism is trying it's best overseas, can't say Modi isn't putting in the work. But even Viktor Orban had to suck up to China. There hasn't really been a blood and soil leader/movement that's been able to break free from the dominance of the current capitalist order, and in fact has had to be totally propped up by capital to not devolve into warring groups of separate 8chan cores mailing each other anthrax like in burgerland (it also doesn't help that we're the 4th reich as is)
Even hitler didn’t break free of it. (Not that it would have been good, but he was defeated by capitalism (yes yes and the USSR i know).
I don't know how I feel on that subject either way. I agree with what you're saying, but there was a lot of support from capital even from the US (see: IBM) and I would argue that the US wouldn't have entered the war without the demand from the working class that was given power during the labor surge of that era
but also there is the argument that yeah, they still privatized everything, the caloric intake of germans actually went down during hitler's reign, and that it was still reliant on capital to the extent that it cost them the war. I genuinely don't know either way. I would err on the side of "the working class will win the 2020's" but that's pretty pollyana
It needs some popular support, but definitely not majority. The Nazis never won an electoral majority, they were given power as part of a coalition government with liberals and conservatives who were more comfortable with fascism than the growing socialist movement.
Fascism does not require popular support to exist. It merely needs to support existing power structures of capital.
To that end, support can exist in urban areas. You have to dress it up in protecting property and public safety rhetoric. I've got full blown Hillary-stan in-laws that were extremely against BLM and Defund and pro police crackdown. It didn't even require them to be threatened directly. Footage on the news and fear that it could happen to them was enough.
As for the fall of capital, imo, you can't manage a kind of functioning system. It's going to have to be managed in one of two ways; either doubling down on capitalism or trying to finally move past it which will necessarily require eliminating the profit motive as the economic reason for being.
Economic downturns in modern US history have always led to increases in reactionary attitudes, but it isn't a certainty. When things go to shit, people want a reason for their suffering. They looked to politicians and the news media who were both quick to direct the public's ire away from capital. You see it today with the "Putin Price Hike" rhetoric from the White House. Stoking reactionary fear like this is effective as people don't want to lose what little they have, understandably.
To be bloomer for a moment, the real issue for capital is the unchecked hyper-exploitation that's being created in the millennial and zoomer generations. Doomed to dwindling job prospects, low home ownership, and few with children is a great recipe for people with nothing to lose. The fact that young people are more amenable to socialism is good, but at the same time, dangerous since few have read theory. This opens up lanes for existing power structures to co-opt the idea of socialism, but use it to reinforce themselves.
Capitalism will sell us the rope used to hang it and so on...
It's not about getting the support of the majority; it's not about following most of the regular rules; it's about having a plurality that is strong enough to insert itself into a crisis.
My simple understanding is that for a fascist movement to succeed it needs the uniting of capital and the institutions, but it does not need a majority support from the people. The reason it usually succeeds with a charismatic leader is that they are able to convince the institutions and bourgeoisie to fall in line with their ideology. The US doesn't have that yet. No one is telling Bezos/Gates/Musk what to do and Biden is a senile neolib. I do believe though that it would not take much to get the US to turn fascist because there are many fascist elements already present.
It's pretty hard to define what fascism is and how it works because it's largely been a bunch of garbled nonsense since conception. Hitler would mid sentence stop talking about what fascism is to brag about how many push ups he could do.
Trying to come up with a formal theory of how it all works is difficult as they don't even know what they're talking about
I can’t offer readings because this is what I’ve gathered from long discussions with theory heads and I’m a dumb dumb, but here’s the gist.
Capitalism needs to expand continuously and we are seeing that imperialism will even force it to slowly erode conditions within the imperial core. The expansions happen both outward and inward. Once the rot reaches the bourgeoisie, eventually a large enough segment of them become downwardly mobile that they will collectively gather to redistribute the wealth of the increasingly small faction of upwardly mobile bourgeoisie amongst themselves.
The reason fascism is so nebulous is because A) we keep trying to read fascist theory and make it make sense and B) we keep looking at superstructure when we ought to be looking at the base.
Fascism hijacks disruptions in the superstructure and weaponizes it to jumble power relationships between factions of the ruling class, ideally in their favor. Because every culture and society has a different superstructure, fascism will always adapt to look different. But the material base remains the same.
You can gather a bit of this from Mussolini’s writing, but really fascist theory is much more affective than rigorous. It masks itself in pseudointellectual tone, but a coherent canon or even a synthesized canon is hard to come across. In the same way that leftists say “Read Settlers!” or “Google Murray Bookchin”, fascists say, “Read Siege!”, referring to Siege by James Mason. And it’s really just not a good book. Incoherent, even contradictory sometimes, and I learned almost nothing about modern fascism from it
Trotsky did a pretty good job of describing the class character of fascism.
I think in America, the Democratic party will surely look to the side as the far right grows more powerful and takes off the mask, in the name of civility. Simultaneously a lot, but I don't think a majority, of working class liberals would join a popular labor movement. Whether the number of people in support of this labor movement will outnumber/outgun the fascists is the question.
It doesn't need majority support, but it needs a significant movement behind it.
Fascism, like communism, requires certain social conditions to take control
