"This is Fascism" is the title of a Counterpunch Radio show featuring Ralph Nader that aired March 18. Those same words had crossed my mind two days before. The thought must be occurring to millions of US Americans these days. It's one thing to see fascism coming (this cartoon from a recent AVA says it all), and another thing to realize it has arrived.
The F-word hit home when I decided not to post a very informative interview I'd just conducted with a federal employee. My source, an officer and a veteran, still has their job, but in recent weeks they've "had to walk very good people to the door." Funding has been cut for their unit, which has a truly righteous mission. I'm reluctant to even disclose their location.
One grotesque tactic of the Project 25 gang can be reported because they must be using it everywhere. Because only "probationary" workers were being fired –"probationary" meaning less than a year on the job– several workers with years of experience were given sudden promotions. Then they were defined as "probationary" in their new positions, and fired.
Chris Hedges tells it like it is, too: it will take a general strike to turn things around. "The mafia state cannot be reformed. We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a radical militancy, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.
"The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the bloodiest labor wars in the industrialized world. Hundreds of American workers were killed, tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. Unions were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed. We cannot be naïve. It will be difficult, costly and painful. But this confrontation is our only hope. Otherwise, we, and the planet that sustains us, are doomed."
Yep!
For sure!
What is fascism?
The root word is fasces – a bundle of rods which is stronger than the individual rods because they are bound together. (One might recall Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, Stronger Together!) In the Rostrum of the House of Representatives there are two bronze representations of fasces, one on each side of the American flag.
While the term had been in use in Italy since 1915, Mussolini attempted to define it later as “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Later, he refined it by adding, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Sound familiar?
Fascism does not seek, and is opposed to, any sort of permanent peace. It shares this stance with the Trotskyites who later became the Neoconservatives.
Wikipedia goes further, adding that fascism is characterized by autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to Marxism, democracy, anarchism, pluralism, free markets, egalitarianism, communism, liberalism, and socialism.
Trump has certainly brought naked fascism to the US mainstream, but what he and the Republicans do with a frowns on their faces, the Democrats have been doing with smiles. Madeleine Albright openly admitted on national TV that she and Bill Clinton murdered a million Iraqi civilians, including half a million children. Later, after waging radioactive war against Serbia, she founded Albright Capital Management to buy up former Yugoslavian assets for pennies on the dollar. Obama kicked five million families out of their homes in the service of the banks. Biden and Harris presided over the Palestinian Genocide.
Clutch your pearls all you want. It won’t change that most of you have been voluntarily voting for fascism your entire adult lives. Make sure you salute and tear up with pride when they fly over a 49ers game or when the Blue Angels piss off all the dogs in the City.