Permanently Deleted
The best definition for fascism I’ve come across is: fascism is the application of colonial control mechanisms to the domestic population.
I dislike this definition because then fascism becomes “settler-colonialism, but also fascist Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.”
There are a couple preconditions that are important to Fascism. First, there must be the merging of finance capital with the state. Second, Liberal Democracy must fail to manage class contradictions within a society.
Finance capital is a product of the age of imperialism, which began to dictate world development in the late 19th century. In the US, there have been attempts to merge finance capital with the state. The creation of the federal reserve in 1914. The attempted fascist coup in 1934. The creation of the CIA in 1947.
There is a perspective that the assassination of JFK was a soft coup by finance capital. It set a precedent that the state cannot contradict their interests. If a president wants to end their wars, he’ll lose half his skull. If a candidate wants implement mild social democracy, there will be voter irregularities, problems with our voting software (which is financed by the CIA), etc.
This gets to the second point, we still have Liberal Democracy. It is controlled, colonized people are routinely excluded from it, but there is still Liberal Democracy. That is not the case in Fascist governments. J. Sakai puts it well:
The main problem hasn’t been fascism in the old sense – it’s been neo colonialism and bourgeois democracy! The bourgeoisie didn’t need any fascism at all to put Leonard Peltier away in maximum security for life or Mumia on death row. They hunted down the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement like it was deer hunting season, while white America went shopping at the mall – all without needing fascism.
I think we seeing the end of Liberal Democracy managing contradictions within the state. Both the Democrats & Republicans have said they will only recognize themselves as the victor in this upcoming election. That may lead to Fascism.
The US is currently in the process of becoming a fascist state.
We are not quite there yet. It’s taking time and it’s been a carefully laid brick road since the Reagan years. You can trace everything back to the 80s and how the government changed and started moving in this direction, beginning with the embrace of Neoliberalism. Why Reagan? Cause both political parties worship that ghoul and based their ideology around neoliberalism that flourished in his era. The “new Democrats” that came around in the 90s were influenced by Reagan’s policies. There is a reason that people often point out how Bill Clinton passed policy that Reagan would’ve approved of, much in the same way that Margaret Thatcher called Tony Blair her greatest accomplishment. The Reagan era is where all the major things we see now first began - militarized police, insanely high military budget, defunding government programs, bailing out banks and wall street, etc etc.
We took a huge step towards fascism with the PATRIOT Act, which funny enough, had parts of it written back in the 90s which just goes to show how this has been a linear path. Another big step was when Obama basically added to the PATRIOT Act back in 2010 or 2011 or whenever it was he passed the NDAA. I still remember when the NDAA first passed and the ONLY people who were screaming about it were the conspiracy theorist crowd and some Libertarians. Trump used the NDAA when he unleashed the DHS on Portland and Kenosha. Trump may have brought it to the forefront, but the powers he has, were given to him and laid out by both Republican and Democrat administrations.
More steps have been taken with voter suppression, gerrymandering and typically making voting useless.
Another thing worth pointing to is the concentration camps. They’ve been there for a while too, and used to go by the more nice sounding politically correct term of “immigrant detention centers” back in the Obama era. This is proof of a genocide happening right in our own country and should scare the living shit out of everyone. Add this to the checklist of fascist state transitioning.
We’re still a few steps away from full blown fascism but we’re getting there and I expect the final bricks in the road to be laid by the Biden and Harris administration. Even before all the riots back in June, they were running a Law and Order campaign. I 100% expect them to push bipartisanship laws with the GOP to give cops more power and some insane measure to deal with protests. Going by Harris’ track record, you can expect it. They’ll lay the groundwork down for our future fascist dictator, who isn’t quite here yet, but is coming in the future. Biden’s presidency absolutely is going to rush us in that direction.
There is no functional difference between “fascist” and “neoliberal with fascist characteristics”. Fascism is an inherently contradictory ideology, it has no core philosophy other than domiantion/hierarchy. Fascism only has aesthetics (strength of military, an enemy who is too strong and too weak, chauvinism, hatred of academia, cult of the hero, etc.) and these all require one thing in: ignorance. To be a fascist you must either ignore the contradictions in your politics or willfully be a hypocrite.
At the end of the day, neoliberalism with fash characteristics is still using methods of control that a fash does. There is no point where the USA crosses the fash threshhold, because there is no obvious line.
Thus fascism can form wherever there is bourgeoisie that fear losing their status and are willing to demonize the weak. Neoliberals have been doing this decades already.
Fucked. Doesn’t really matter what you call it imo, material conditions look mostly the same and resisting the state looks mostly the same so there’s not much to be gained by arguing semantics.
