Is It Fascism Yet?
Is the US facing a fascist threat? It depends on the definition of "fascist" ...
This post is a week and a day behind schedule—because, what a week! The election in Virginia, the Congressional battles over Biden’s agenda, the Supreme Court cases on abortion and gun control, the start of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the QAnon faction waiting for JFK Jr. to reincarnate near the grassy slope in Dallas where his father was killed, in order to become Trump’s running mate in 2024—it was a lot to take in! To make it all feel so much worse, there is a bubbling sense of threat beneath the surface. In the shadow of the repetitive struggles involving anti-tax and spending Republicans, corporate donor funded Democrats and advocates for some semblance of a new New Deal, we find a barely obscured class war. In the midst of battles over critical race theory, abortion and trans rights, race and gender conflicts furiously intensify. Lurking alongside confrontations between cowboy libertarians and supporters of public health, we find the specter of mob action and looming potential right wing violence. When we consider the coup planning uncovered by the January 6 commission, the rising percentage of Republicans who believe political violence may be needed, or the death threats made against school board members who support the teaching of actual history rather than nationalist propaganda—US political culture right now feels scary.
This situation raises two crucial questions: Is neoliberal capitalism collapsing along with US imperial dominance, ecological stability, white supremacy, and gender hierarchy? Will upheavals to come lead to catastrophic violent confrontations? Will looming catastrophes take the form of a genuine fascist threat? The answer to the last question depends on the definition of “fascist.”
Though Robert O. Paxton recently withdrew his objections to labeling Trump a fascist, plenty of historians and political theorists emphasize the differences between “Trumpism” and interwar European fascism—the definitional ground zero for the term. Conditions in the US are strikingly different than those in Germany and Italy when fascist parties seized power during the mid-20th century. Many political analysts especially stress the political weakness of the Trump administration, which fell quickly under the control of establishment Republicans, and the Trumpist movement, which has suffered serious setbacks in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and again after the Capitol putsch on January 6 of this year. There is no shortage of articles outlining these arguments as they morph under changing conditions—a very good summary can be found in Richard Seymour’s comprehensive and illuminating survey in Salvage, “The Year of Prophetic Desire.”
But as Seymour also outlines, there are many ways of conceptualizing the present threat, beyond the question of whether Trumpism is or is not fascist. We can point to inchoate, neonate or incipient fascism, fascist strategies, trends and contagions, or a process of fascistization that unfolds over time. We can also consider the right wing Breitbart News maxim, “politics is downstream from culture,” and think about fascist feeling as the basis of fascist community—the antecedent of organized fascist politics.
A new book by 12 Rules for What, Post-Internet Far Right, draws on Klaus Theweleit’s classic 2 volume study of the psychic lives of the German Freikorpsmen, Male Fantasies, to query the pervasive sense of masculine failure on the far right—the undercurrent of the failure mode of capitalism, fascist feeling. Outlining the yearnings of primarily young men on right wing internet platforms like 4 chan, the book points to the widespread despair of many living in their parents’ basements, yearning for a kind of militarist repair in the context of a mythic community drenched in calls for killing and dying. Experiencing the loss of belief in fantasies of eternal capitalist growth and progress, the loss of status via presumed racial and gender dominance, and the absence of the libidinal fuel of American victories in foreign wars, these mostly downwardly mobile men self-isolate together, at home, in front of the computer. Together they address grief, resentment, anger, and an overriding sense of outraged entitlement—they have been robbed of what they believe is their birthright. On their computers they encounter narratives of overcoming via a self-improvement culture heavy on non-productivist practices like weight lifting (rather than, for instance, job training). A popular “before and after” meme points to aspirational movement from alt right internet debater to armed soldier of the far right:
But these radicalized young male militants are only a small portion of the larger masses of participants in rowdy right wing eruptions around the country. Addressed in their roles as struggling parents, displaced workers, evicted families in an environment of pandemic, severe weather, and political stalemale, so many are called to right wing action who might just as easily be mobilized for the left. Among these are many women—not just the Ashli Babbitts and Marjorie Taylor Greens, but many others less radicalized but still activated via pain and fury, through right wing narratives and fantasies that are productively, usefully incoherent.
Mobilizations on the left have also been significant—Black Lives Matter supporters, Native water protectors, young climate activists and striking workers have moved large numbers to action beyond clicktivism. There’s a lot of seesawing in the balance of forces, but the balance seems skewed rightward.
Today I showed the documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP in my undergraduate class. When teaching I often contrast ACT UP activism with breast cancer organizing. ACT UP was decentered, networked, highly energized and politically mobile—a variety of horizontalist practice, with all the strengths and weaknesses that go with that. Breast cancer organizing, even when it takes the form of marches (or “walks”) is focused on fundraising to support scientific research, without aspiring to intervene in it. Horizontalist practice activates people to act on their own behalf—ACT UP horned into the FDA’s operations, it didn’t just pressure them. It strikes me that large segments of the left in the US are now engaged in that breast cancer philanthropy style of progressive politics—mobilization is for elections, for non-profits, for organizations (including too many labor unions) that manage popular needs and desires rather than incite them. I was and am a full on high emotion supporter of the Bernie Sanders/AOC wing of democratic socialism, despite having political views often well to the left of that formation. But that ACT UP style energy and momentum is most salient on the right at this moment—the horizontalist, networked folks who interfere with business as usual are massing at school board meetings on behalf of backlash politics, or more menacingly training with armed militias.
Of course, this entire scenario is actually global, not national. And the broadest framing context is the crisis of neoliberal capitalism, along with the waning of US/Global North, white supremacist and masculine hegemony. These material conditions of massive global transition underly and shape but do not determine the social, cultural and political changes to come. The declining oligarchic political center is hanging onto power with increasing desperation, as the radically democratic and anarcho/socialist left fuels inspiring upsurges but then drags along without clear direction. Massing on the far right around the world are the forces of…….??
So, is it fascism yet? No. But the fascist trends, contagions, energies, processes, strategies, narratives and feelings are present (see for instance Judith Butler’s alarming article outlining the growing strength of the global “anti gender” movement). The threat is real, if not imminent. And if politics is downstream from culture we are surely in trouble.