This following on reflections today I've been thinking/posting about all day. With the in-progress major realignment of the Democrats and Republicans the conditions for the emergence of a genuine American fascism are now possible save for the existence of an organized left. Arguably, this can be taken up by the existence of a "phantom" organized left in the form of AntiFa and Soros type conspiracy theorizing and scaremongering.
Essentially, the Republicans, as representing the factional interest of the provincial "national bourgeoisie" are, by some nightmarish convergence of factors, becoming the primary voice for genuine working-class interests. They are achieving this through appeals to several sentiments:
- Anti-Intellectualism
- Performative Anti-Elitism
- Anti-Cosmopolitanism
- Anti-Free Trade Protectionism and Autarky
- Single-Issue Cultural Grievances
- Ultra-nationalistic patriotism
- Appeal to "traditional values"
- The accelerating spread of conspiratorial thinking
Trump overperformed in non-white demographics. Arguably the single most important takeaway from this election is that identity is no longer a highly deterministic factor in partisan affiliation and voting behavior. Already-incoherent political beliefs of the average American is making individual non-white voters fixate on single issues and emotional impulses, and in the absence of a heavily class-based economic appeal to the working class (which the Democrats have now definitively and explicitly rejected to exploit), this is causing the non-college-educated to respond favorably to the sentimental appeals of the Republicans. Trump overperformed with African-Americans and Latinos by between 3-5 points. His share of the LGBT vote doubled from 2016. Clearly, these people care about something more than him being an obvious and overt racist and bigot. Clearly, they are gravitating to him because he is voicing their legitimate grievances that no other politician has been.
Trump's proto-fascism actually holds back the emergence of a genuine American fascism in two key aspects. Firstly, despite being a demagogue Trump is personally ideologically incoherent. He most just says what immediately comes to his mind or thinks will play well to the crowd. You can't imagine Trump writing a manifesto like Gentile or Hitler. Secondly, Trump's nativist populism is overly inward-looking. It is about closing off the frontier from invaders, not expanding them indefinitely. It lacks the inherent fascist drive toward self-annihilation.
But what does embody the fascist drive toward self-annihilation within the Republican Party? Bush-era neoconservatism, and the ideological paradigm that led us to invade Iraq. Trump's administration in practice degenerated into a bog-standard neoconservative administration, but without the overt drive to outright invade other countries and "spread democracy". He has largely continued to rely on Obama-style tactics centering air power, covert operations, and backing color revolutionaries. Again, this is in large part due to the personality of Trump himself. He is averse to actually starting wars he could possibly lose. He is anti-imperialist, at least purely at the rhetorical level. He is ideologically incoherent. His foreign policy has actually weakened empire abroad, despite laying the foundations for a new cold war with China, and the Democrats have laid the foundations to include Russia in that cold war.
The stage is now set for some post-Trump figure to emerge. Someone who synthesizes the populist appeals outlined above that derive from Trump, with Bush-era neoconservative ideology and foreign policy. Because the Republicans, in this realignment, are becoming an otherwise incoherent coalition of big business interests (chiefly in the fossil fuel and defense manufacturing sectors), petty bourgeoisie, rural reactionaries, and genuine working-class people who have had their lives destroyed by neoliberal free trade and are now turning to Trump and what he represents if they are not retreating from politics altogether. They are becoming a party of the class-collaborationism that is inherent to fascisms.
10/10 write up
anyone who isn't banned pls post this to as many reddit lib politics subs as you can, they need a wake up call, good shit
unironically yes, plus regime change which Trump was also too incompetent to do right
we alrdy know Biden is going to be worse for South America
Agree with all of this but Trump is no way anti-imperialist, not even in rhetoric. You could say anti-intervention, maybe even just anti-invasion, but I don’t think we should equate these things to any form of anti-imperialism
I mean he will leave office having started less wars than Obama so...
Not for lack of trying.
Did we all just memory hole that he tried to start a war with Iran this year?
Did we all just memory hole that he tried to start a war with Iran this year?
holy shit that was this year wasn't it? basically every week for the past 9 months has been a decade
To be fair there were a few significant conflicts with Iran dating back to the summer of 2019.
yeah but the summer of 2019 was like 15 years ago, at least that's how much i've aged since then
I really feel like I should re-read Orwell lately, I keep seeing things in the media that remind me of his work.
Trump bombed Iran in 2017 and it was when all of the left was screaming that we were about to go to war with Iran.
One of the biggest problems with the left is how they analyze everything in terms of foreign policy and imperialism like it's still 2004. The war machine is not even close to full strength anymore. Anyone who has actually paid attention to American intervention and NATO in the middle east for the past 10 years can see where they have been getting their asses kicked in Afghanistan, and Syria was a major failure for them.
Ask neo-liberals what they dislike about Obama and they'll bring up his foreign policy and what a failure he was to them with upholding the empire. Trump gets all this blame for mishandling the empire and all this BS about a decline, but it was happening before he came around. In 2014, Obama was heavy criticized for looking weak against Russia after they invaded Ukraine and did nothing about it, and Syria was considered a huge blunder for him too.
The US war machine has been declining for years. It didn't just begin with Trump. The only difference is that the neo-cons around him were willing to defund NATO if it could make them a profit, cause that's how they operate individually.
Woodrow Wilson was arguably the first fascist president and presented a model that was later copied by the likes of Mussolini and Hitler. There were other American presidents that also were affiliated with such things, but what made Wilson unique was the shear size of the second KKK. Something like 20 percent of eligible american men were members.
Should the proudboys and related grow into something comparable to that than fascism is a real concern, but fortunately we have a very long way to go to until the right wing is better organized like this. This past summer has showed the left is more organized than otherwise thought.
Okay I need to be blunt
"Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist president" is literally an argument by the reactionary crank Jonah Goldberg in his book Liberal Fascism. It is not true.
HOWEVER
Woodrow Wilson being aligned with the capital-P Progressive movement, there are superficial similarities. Chief among being two central aspects of the Progressive Movement - an obsession with eugenics and social engineering, and explicit class-collaborationism. He is also associated with expansion of government to act as economic planner and mediator-manager of capital and labor in a wartime situation. These are aspects superficially in common with fascisms, but there the similarities really end.
Probably the most obvious rebuttal to this thesis is that Wilson was arguably the first liberal internationalist, very ahead of his time. He was the foremost advocate of building a managed, institutional world order along liberal lines. This is vehemently at odds with historical fascisms, which are intensely anti-internationalist and tend to be intensely hostile even to each other because their irredentist aims and drive to self-annihilation drive a wedge between them.
“Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist president” is literally an argument by the reactionary crank Jonah Goldberg in his book Liberal Fascism. It is not true.
Of course not. George Washington was the first fascist president.
He is also associated with expansion of government to act as economic planner and mediator-manager of capital and labor in a wartime situation.
Wilson was arguably the first liberal internationalist
Creating ruling institutions rather than relying on and solidifying one's personal ruling power is also very different from fascism.
What's your explanation for how the dude allowed the KKK to grow and how he leveraged them to advance some of his political goals?
I'm less familiar with the period in this specific regard (Tindall's The Emergence of the New South, 1913-1947 is deep in my backlog) but from my understanding the resurgence of the Klan at the time was a direct response to several factors, including but not limited to:
- Anti-WWI sentiment
- Waves of European immigration (especially Catholics such as Italians and Eastern Europeans)
- The First Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural South to industrial cities in the North
These were organic phenomena that emerged independent of and uncontrollable by Wilson's direct actions
This resurgence made the Klan an important faction within the Democratic Party, since it was still heavily tied to the Solid South and the Dixiecrats. For example, while I don't know the specifics I know the Klan and their opposition to Catholic NY Governor Al Smith played a central factional role in the infamous 1924 Democratic Convention. I'd argue in the absence of specific knowledge that their rise and abetment was less due to Wilson individual than structural forces in general and the Democratic Party as an institution.
I'm talking about street organizing not electoral organizing fwiw
Absolutely, this is actually something I didn't mention here specifically that is a major aspect of the main danger. That being that I view the driving mobilizing passion of the Republican today, both elite and rank-and-file voter, as performative spite. This is contrast to the Democratic mobilizing passion of performative virtue
Coming to understand that mobilizing passion and just how tempting it absolutely is after the Dems crushed Sanders was an extremely important revelation for my conception of our political system today. Everyone feels that way at some point or another in this broken fake democratic system.
As an addendum, I'm listening to the Election Day postmortem Cushvlog right now and Matt is essentially saying the exact same thing I just did but in different language. The Democrats being the "Don't be an asshole" party and the Republicans being the "Don't be a pussy party".
ie, Biden: "Trump is putting kids in cages" Trump: "Who built the cages?" ----> We're always going to have the cages, ergo "Dont be an asshole about building the cages" vs "Don't be a pussy about building the cages"
Dont be an asshole about building the cages” vs “Don’t be a pussy about building the cages”
also listening to Matt?
hey, as a liberal you can't expect me to have object permanence beyond a sentence
Not disagreeing with most of your thesis, but
identity is no longer a highly deterministic factor in partisan affiliation and voting behavior.
It still is though... From what I saw, non-white groups are still heavily biased towards Democrats ranging from high 80s to mid-60%. that ain't nothing. Also, all the data we've seen today is from exit polls. As we know, in person voting was heavily favored by Republicans. How were the exit polls handled? Was the data normalized to account for the skewed turnout on the day? I dunno... Just saying, give it more time until the picture clears.
Sounds like the left needs to stop having struggle sessions and just accept people in.
Having struggle sessions and accepting people are not mutually exclusive.
The goal of struggle sessions is to get people thinking in a more sensible and ideologically coherent direction.
Edit: what you are saying essentially is that we should embrace anti-intellectualism.You may see struggle sessions that way. But I just see a bunch of people raging the fuck out.
And yes. Accept in the uninformed that agree with some of our big ideas and than mold them.
Other wise lose
Guess I'm just too used to seeing "heated online debate"
If nobody is getting doxxed then it is all rather cordial really.Lol really?
They aren't heated, it's people raging the fuck out.
The reason the right grows is becuase they accept people that hold a smidge of their beliefs than push them further right.
Wait that was too friendly, here let me try again...
If people cannot handle an effectively anonymous completely voluntary online struggle sesh, then they're almost useless as leftist comrades anyway :elmofire::elmofire::elmofire: they should go out and vote instead.
What is leftism without confrontation? Might as well send thoughts and prayers.
dOn'T BriNg PoLiTiCS tO My mEmE PaGe!That is exactly the point. You act like people that argue about things are "dividing the left" but all it takes is a joke for you to be the one that is overtly exclusionary.
You don't have the guts to say which struggle sessions you have a problem with.
Should we just stop educating people about China? Is that the one you were thinking about?I have a problem with the way people conduct them selves with in struggle sessions. It's mostly a rage fest. As I have now said for the 3rd time
See "left needs to stop having struggle sessions" is very different from "a problem with the way people conduct themselves within struggle sessions"
In that case a better approach would be something like guidelines, encouraging people to walk away, or just more practice honestly.I noticed @Civility replying to comments that are too much with just emojis sometimes, that might be a good thing to normalize.
Struggle sessions are a legit joke at this point. They are joke becuase most people know that it's just a bunch of leftist going after each other.
OH NO INTERNET LEFTISTS CARE ABOUT DIALECTIC SO CRINGE!!!!!
Struggle sessions on ChapoChat are fun and interesting and if dislike those so much then do not participate.
His foreign policy has actually weakened empire abroad, despite laying the foundations for a new cold war with China, and the Democrats have laid the foundations to include Russia in that cold war.
US imperialism has been weakening for years before Trump. I don't think many of you actually paid attention to all of Obama's foreign policy failures that made his critics scream at the top of their lungs about him. "Boots on the ground" was a common saying from conservatives and even some liberals regarding how he squandered the US's real chance at taking over Syria. He was heavily criticized back in 2014 for sitting there with NATO and doing nothing about Russia invading Ukraine and taking back the Crimea. Conservatives accused him of squandering Syria and long before Russiagate, it was actually the Republicans who used to say Obama was weak and wasn't tough enough on Russia when they started making moves with invasions.
On the other hand, we need to stop analyzing US imperialism like it's still 2004 and the war machine is at full strength. They've pretty much lost in Iraq to the point that the puppet government they tried to prop up failed and Iraq has become a failed state and the same goes for Afghanistan. All this talk about how Trump has supposedly weakened the empire; he increased drone strikes and also took out a law that made it how the military isn't required to disclose the numbers of civilian casualties. He removed some troops in Afghanistan but has continued the wars and if you've actually paid attention to news over there, the Taliban have been making considerable gains for the past 4 years to the point they've outright threatened the US to finally withdraw and leave.
I know, you guys like to fap yourselves to the idea of a China/US war and all this talk about a new cold war, but it's highly unlikely. Just because the liberal media runs anti-China stories really don't mean anything, cause they've been doing that for decades. Both parties have been accusing the other one of not being tough on China since the fucking 90s. You're about to witness Republicans yelling "Biden isn't tough on China!". It's the same tough language they throw around in terms of foreign policy just to sound pro-nationalist and then the other party accuses them of being a puppet for China and vice-versa. If you paid attention to any conservative media between 2008-2016 you would've seen this with how they painted Obama out to be weak, and a puppet to China and around 2011-2013 is when the Chinese economy began to surpass the US and conservatives were the only ones really talking about it then.
I fully agree with this take, I have been thinking a lot about what motivates people to support trump. Its interesting how liberals are always at a loss to explain why people would vote for him but from a marxist perspective its a lot easier to explain.
Given that Trump supporters are far more disillusioned with the system than liberals are, do you think they have any potential for radicalisation? I realise that those 8 points you listed are diametrically opposed to what we value as leftists, but we are also very disillusioned. I wonder if many of them are in the Trump camp because they want to oppose the status quo and Trump is the only viable way to do that.
Just want to say string posting comrade. I agree with the thrust bust disagree on a couple of finer points:
He has largely continued to rely on Obama-style tactics centering air power, covert operations, and backing color revolutionaries. Again, this is in large part due to the personality of Trump himself. He is averse to actually starting wars he could possibly lose.
This air war is not because of any executive preference, Obama or Trump. This is because of the geo positioning the US military needs to take to contain the Eurasian land mass against increasing Chinese influence. The effect of NATO, positioning in he Middle East, the Asia pivot is just this. China is bridging the land mass and staking claims in key fisheries. Empire is too costly to maintain, and the writing is on the wall. Control of the atmosphere, exosphere etc with drones are the death throes of empire aware if its decline.
Great post comrade.
