Is this implying that we get rid of the current fascism and have a different fascism in ten years?
With the help of centrist liberals rooting out left wing movements, the situation is ripe for fascism to thrive.
While we should be wary of this, it doesn't have to happen. We can fight against it. Being deterministic about this is the least-credible form of doomerism.
Chuds won't drop Trump that quickly, and Trump isn't getting out of politics. If its this close, and Biden has an underwhelming term, Trump could easily run and win the primary again. If he didn't, I don't see Trump taking fondly to the idea of another charismatic figure winning the affection of the MAGA cult. You know he would be too jealous to let that stand.
Trump is also old. And too proud to lose twice. I don't see him coming back. He might even flee the country.
I'm not sure Biden and his handlers have the stones to really crack down on the left. I mean yes. they'll come down hard on blm and antifa, and they'll ramp up anti AES rhetoric, but they don't have the stones to really start up a terror.
My honest opinion? Once Trump is out, the virus is taken care of and the illusion of stability is brought back to America, expect the anti-china stuff to ramp up.
As global warming and late-stage capitalism continues to destroy the west, they'll turn to war with China in some form or another to ramp up patriotism, subdue leftist sentiment through red-scare tactics ("Left? Like the Chinese COMMUNIST party? You're not a commie, are you?") to deflect from the failures of far-right capitalism.
China will most likely eventually win that war and I have no idea what will happen if they do. If the west somehow manages to win they'll do what they always do and use it for cheap labour and resources.
The rich and powerful will be fighting to squeeze as much power and resources they can from the planet while it crumbles around them in a desperate attempt to lifeboat themselves from this sinking ship. Eventually they'll die along with they rest of us as our planets biome collapses from environmental collapse.
Water issues will intervene in the ability to pursue that. They've done no planning or infrastructure building to avert the coming water and food shortages outlined in this report: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmkz8/us-military-could-collapse-within-20-years-due-to-climate-change-report-commissioned-by-pentagon-says
With that in mind, the US machine is just not going to be functional enough to do much abroad. They will have to turn inwards to get the house in order. Isolationism is more likely in my opinion.
I think Matt said it best in his stream today: Fascism implies that a nation has a mass politics already established, which America doesn't have anymore, if it ever really did. Because our politics as most people perceive it is based on culture and not class now, textbook Fascism will never come to the US, but we are currently in this state of Post-Fascism. Politics has completely become a spectator sport, a popular sign for Fascism, but instead of brownshirts we have amazon drones or whatever other subtler form of control there is. So even if we elect president Death Incarnate with 5000% of the popular who runs on a platform of nuclear holocaust and murdering literally everyone who isn't white, we're never going to feel like we're in Nazi Germany.
This applies to Europe too - Poland might become truly fascist but if what Macron is doing in France continues it will just be Neoliberalism with the racism dial cranked up. It was late for me when I wrote that and I was tired, but what I was trying to say was:
We lack a major part of what made fascism fascism; mass politics, which the USA will foreseeably never have. barring that, we're basically already there.
Mass politics would be an understanding by the working masses that politics is about power and affects their material conditions and believing they can change things, resulting in grassroots political movements. Not necessarily class conscious, but class informed at least. Matt argues that the republican/democrat divide is mostly cultural at this point, and people are checked out of believing in politics, so therefore, no mass politics.
There won't be real fascism without a failed revolution, or attempt at one.
