Fascism in America Part 1: Defining Fascism

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power” -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936 democratic convention

The recent torture report released by the CIA detailing the practices of “enhanced interrogation” employed during the presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama has proved troubling, to say the least. A far cry from the emphatic denunciation of accusations of torture on the part of American intelligence services by Bush, it seems as if the actions of the CIA, despite internal and external regulation from the Senate Committee on Intelligence, have violated all manner of human rights agreements (the Geneva conventions among them) and constitutional statutes. Despite assurances of accountability and restraint, the CIA has systemically and intentionally obscured the truth of its practices for fear of reprisal.

Despite public knowledge of international “black sites” and skeletal details of the practices themselves, the public is still rocked by these revelations. Rocked because it seems as though every day the gap between American citizens and their political and economic leaders widens, and as we approach a crisis of faith regarding American democracy, these reports seem to confirm a repressed suspicion regarding our role in the War on Terror. If we have already consented to clandestine actions by our military and intelligence forces, if we have cast off the need for evidence and transparency in legal proceedings, if we have disregarded even the most basic human rights of our own citizens, then what “Terror” are we trying to prevent that we have not ourselves inflicted?

The post-9/11 era has seen a severe suspension of civil liberties and public engagement with politics. The philosophy that the struggle our nation faces is too difficult and secretive to be left to democratic whims has led to a rise of autocratic executive powers, like those held by CIA, that are not accountable to the public. In a nation that has long trumpeted the virtues of public accountability and an inherent belief in the democratic process, these actions seem not merely illegal but carried out according to a logic totally opposed to that championed by our public representatives, the president among them. Faced with such gruesome and arbitrary violence, we are forced to ask: what ideology are we dealing with here?

An ideology resting upon political opacity, concentrated political power and increased militancy would suggest Fascism, but before we go tossing around the “f-word” it would be wise to develop an independent definition of the term so that we can intelligently contrast it with present-day affairs. In this post I’ll be putting forward such a definition, based on the work of previous writers, and in my next post contrast it with the American political situation.

What is Fascism?

The question of what, precisely, a Fascist government entails has many answers. Arguably too many, as the term is often used by leftist movements to decry any party they feel violates their principles of legitimacy. As well, communist governments have used the term to defame dissidents of many stripes, sometimes contradictorily so; many subversives in the Soviet Union were labeled “Fascists” and “Trotskyites” in the same breath.

Despite this, scholarship on the issue has agreed on several points. Politically, fascism is a reactionary movement focused on the centralization of power into the hands of elites. Democratic mechanisms may exist, but they are rendered irrelevant to decisions on the part of the government through judicial mechanisms or exclusionary voting practices. In Indonesia under the rule of President Suharto, for example, a legislature remained, though it was totally subsidiary to the president’s power. This system was deemed “Guided Democracy.” Fascist elections will often withhold universal suffrage, instead granting voting rights to members of a specific ethnic or social group, and in extreme cases voting rights are only granted to male heads of households (see Francoist Spain). The focus on an “organic” (traditional) society makes the will of the patriarch dominant over children and women.

This centralization of power can take many forms: it is principally ideological, with officials being members of a single ruling party; sometimes other political parties are allowed but their influence is limited by legal mechanisms and factionalism (again, Suharto’s Indonesia illustrates this, as both Islamist and Socialist parties remained, though with negligible political import). While ultimately benefiting a caste of elites, by appealing to xenophobic, nationalist impulses in the populace the most powerful faction cements their power through a vision of an “organic society” based on traditional values.

Another point of consensus on Fascist rule is that it requires an economic centralization through consolidating wealth into a group of corporate oligarchs, who may or may not directly hold government posts. Even if the oligarchs do not hold these posts directly, the opaque nature of their government permits them to reach clandestine deals with leaders free from public scrutiny. Not only is there academic agreement on this issue, but explicit endorsement from Fascist rulers themselves. As Benito Mussolini writes in Capitalism and the Corporate State: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” The purpose of this is in part to destroy the power of labor, where left-leaning movements can arise to challenge the ruling party’s authority. As well, rewards within a system of factionalism are often conferred through placement within these corporate structures, who are not subject to any form of oversight, save from more powerful rival elites.

This process of political and economic centralization (and cooperation between the two powers) is central to the form of Fascist government. Admittedly it is central to most authoritarian structures, but while Left dictatorships frame it towards the historical goal of a classless society, under Fascism a disparity between the weak and the strong is justified as a necessary outcome of the aforementioned “organic society.”

The lynchpin which maintains this form of government and negates political upheaval is a strong, efficient propaganda apparatus which manufactures popular consent. This is done partly through control of mass media institutions (themselves often corporate entities), that may either be tightly regulated by the government or, if independent, sympathetic to the ruling party. The actions of the elite are consistently cast in a positive light, and failures on the part of the government, as well as social unrest, are frequently under-reported or mischaracterized. Another aspect of the propaganda apparatus is nationalism, which is seeded through slogans, symbols and public displays of military supremacy or some other aspect of national greatness. The work of Joseph Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl (Triumph of the Will) fulfilled this role in Nazi Germany. A cult of personality is also an important characteristic, such as in Francoist Spain or Italy under Mussolini under Italy, where both leader’s (supposedly) awesome capabilities were given semi-religious overtones. In Italian textbooks at the time, Mussolini was implied to have cured a boy’s deafness who had been listening to one of his speeches. This propaganda serves to transfer hostilities towards enemies of the state as a method of maintaining control, while offering the state a redemptive, almost godlike disposition that occupies a symbolic-magical space of Unity, racial and/or ideological.

It is internal violence, however, which marks the ideological keystone of such a system. It is always racist and/or political, and often of incredible intensity. This is most powerfully represented by the Holocaust under Nazi Germany, but is also evidenced by the massacre of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, as well as pogroms of supposed “Communists” and their sympathizers in nearly every case of fascist revolution/coup. This violence is even evident in Fascist movements that have yet to achieve power, such as Golden Dawn in Greece where attacks on Roma, illegal immigrants and LGBT members among others have taken place, or the Ku Klax Klan in the United States that has repeatedly attacked black citizens, among others, during the 150 years of it’s existence. This work is done towards the creation of a more “pure” and unified country, devoid of ethnic and political distinctions.

To summarize, we may give Fascist governments the minimal definition of creating political and economic centralization into the hands of a class of elites heading an authoritarian system, who maintain power through ideological appeals to nationalist, racist and/or xenophobic feelings of an underclass whose power as workers is suppressed. It is differentiated from Left dictatorships in that it’s authority need not be framed as progressive towards a classless society.

In addition to this minimal definition, it should also be noted that Fascist governments will make a concerted effort to build up their military strength, though the project is not always practically effective. While Fascist militaries may not be successful in their conquests, typically their armed forces will either be used to conquer or agitate weaker neighbors, or to quell separatist and ideological uprisings.

In the next post I’ll be utilizing this definition of Fascism as a sort of ideological “measuring stick” for the United State’s political environment and structure. Stay tuned.

The Paradox of the Opposition

As the “mask of authority” slips in Ferguson and elsewhere across the United States to reveal “the fist of force,” the American political sphere finds itself lacking for analysis. While we have had many intelligent commentators speaking on the situation through a lens of personal experience or criticism of rising police militarization, the answers provided are too often calls for “healing”, “re-training,” or “understanding.” Moral answers, largely, or technical ones, are provided, but little is said about the situation in Ferguson as not merely a moral failure of our society, but an inevitable structural failure.

Structural analysis of the United States frequently proves difficult, as our options are limited by two mainstream stances that reflect our suffocating political battleground. For a country so torn by oppression and exploitation along lines of race, class, religion and gender, the last few years have proven remarkably infertile for producing broad political alternatives. By and large, we’re still stuck with the same Pepsi-Coke dichotomy of Democrats (who, by most country’s standards, could be considered a center-right party) and Republicans (who, by pretty much any standard, could be considered far-right).

The answer of the Right, when it is not overt racism from Republicans, comes from the pseudo-radical Libertarians, who call the events in Ferguson an encroachment of state power over the lives of individuals; in this case, they are correct. The Democrats (less accepting of their own “radical elements”) when they offer an answer beyond moral platitudes, draw a broad link between poverty and the crimes rates (again correct). In an expansion of the original discussion, we find the Republican-Libertarians on the side of “Big Business” and the Democrats on the side of “Big Government,” though the designation for both is usually bestowed by their opponents.

Any decent leftist should see the paradox here: The government of any society will reflect the values and desires of that society’s dominant, exploiting class. A capitalist society’s parliament, while on the surface an independent institution, will be dominated by the desires of the bourgeoisie, as the State is a mechanism by which they protect their wealth. So why, then, do many leftists continue fighting for an expansion of the American government’s powers? Of course it’s because government interference is the only real way to provide support for the most exploited members of our society through social programs like welfare and subsidized education, among many others. The historic struggle of the Left has been influencing legislature to provide these benefits for the public.

Yet the method has its limits. The situation brings to mind two instances of political irony: The first being Occupy Wall Street protesters arguing for greater government regulation of the economy and assistance with welfare while the NYPD beat, cajole and arrest them. The second is that of welfare recipients relying on the government for material aid while that same government continues its criminalization of poverty through privatization and the increase of exploitative ticketing practices which fall disproportionately on those least well-off (and non-white) citizens. In this way welfare becomes a sort of servitude, where the basic necessities can only be scrounged together by keeping in step with ever more draconian classist laws. It doesn’t help that criminal enterprise to accrue independent wealth outside of welfare systems and a ruinous job market has led to the rise of criminal institutions (gangs) which have been used to justify the escalation of police armament, which in turn can be used towards a capitalist establishment’s political ends.

For those that would here argue that the situation in Ferguson has nothing to do with corporate power, even a cursory glance into our nation’s history of race relations dispels the notion. Republicans, since their becoming the party of business, have a long history of using racial division to drive a wedge into the working class. Lee Atwater’s historic racial radicalization of politics reflects a long history in the interests of privatization and encroaching corporate power, evidenced in his remarks

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N—–, n—–, n—–.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n—–’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

The endemic poverty, crime, and consequent anger in black communities is the result of long, insidious exploitation from major institutions of political, economic and legal natures. To fully detail them at length would exhaust the length not only of this article, but entire schools of literature.

Atwater’s remarks become all the more chilling when they are coupled with Obama’s own, who assured the Washington Post that the problem now was with “communities of color who often feel they are not being treated fairly by law enforcement officials” and that “we’re not talking about systemic  segregation or discrimination.” Politically necessary as they might be, these sentiments make it clear that a radical change in the lot of black citizens will not be championed by any faction of politicians with enough power to effect it.

More and more we’re seeing that the old approach to politics as-such, where the legislature (while still ultimately functioning under bourgeois interests) and executive branch in the person of the president, was malleable enough to effect significant change, is failing outright. Perhaps the record low turnouts for congressional elections reflect this, but unfortunately the lack of faith has not produced strong new organizations to occupy the public consciousness so much as simple apathy and frustration. Though Congress maintains an approval rating of just over 14%, it also maintains a reelection rate hovering around 90%. Frustrated as we are, new options have yet to emerge.

Perhaps this is because the establishment can no longer be changed by a war of position. Adherence to electoral mechanisms corrosive to our democracy (unrestrained campaign financing, the electoral college, an antiquated first-past-the-post system of voting) coupled with the ideological yoke of our age of terror have concentrated power too thoroughly for a new party to succeed by the same channels Democrats and Republicans have. The exploiting class has too thoroughly tightened its grip on the facade of democracy.

Still, even if we have not yet developed a fitting response, the recognition of this political failure is at least becoming wide-spread. This disillusionment opens the way for the discussion we need to have, which is one regarding the authorship of our law; not merely what is written, but by whom. The difficulty of this discussion, which may explain our reluctance to take it up, is that it excludes the possibility of simple reform. In recognizing that law reflects the interests of an exploiting class the discussion is necessarily revolutionary, even if it remains non-violent. A movement centered around such a discussion will therefore find no support from corporate institutions, and will largely exclude non-profits as well. Its actions will find no allies in the corporate media, nor in state-sponsored outlets. In opposing the married forces of state and capital, the strength of such a movement will come only from the commitment of the individuals which constitute it, as few, if any, powerful institutions will offer support.

Despite these difficulties, there is more hope now than ever for authentic political alternatives to emerge. While the exploitation inherent in our society is decidedly that of the bourgeoisie exploiting the working class, this is far more acutely represented in non-white working class neighborhoods, and black neighborhoods in particular. But in discussing the violence and injustice evident in the state’s handling of Darren Wilson’s murder of an innocent man, we approach the critical answers we need for a transformative political movement. To discuss the exploitation of black communities we are required to dissect the political and economic structures that have shaped their history, and it is not hard to see how such structures, even if they are more damning in black communities, are effective to some degree upon the working class as a whole. Mass incarceration, political disenfranchisement, vastly limited economic opportunities- there is no reason why these oppressive instruments cannot be turned upon other vectors of American society. Many have been applied already, and will continue to be in times of crisis.

What is required now is to keep poking the wound, to expand and examine it so that we can see the shrapnel lodged deep within. Behind “Big Government” and “Big Business” we find the same corrupt individuals writing laws and handing out orders. Sometimes they try and appease the exploited class through critical aid, and formerly their legislatures could be influenced with greater effect, but the structure of power remains the same, and the same crises re-occur. We need an independent option outside of politics as they stand, and with intellectual rigor we may just be on the verge of finding it.