Could fascism have been avoided and what can we do now
Agreeing on what went long term wrong is important in case there is another chance for a different America post Trump.
Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
The root cause of our last election has two main viewpoints:
Unavoidable — racism, wild west, and patriarchy was our early DNA and there was a stream of “individual freedom” lovers that led to fascism.
VS
Avoidable — fooled around and found out: if you don’t want to be fascist then Democrats should stop playing with fascism.
Below we explore each and then what we can do now.
NO fascism could not have been avoided
Unlimited growth is essentially fascist. Without Limitarianism it produces strong men and they corrupt the government. It also plays into a wild west masculinity that ends with billionaires riding penis shaped rockets into lower earth orbit.
But unlimited growth was hard coded in American DNA from the start by the willingness to use slaves and slaughter natives to achieve it.
Then there are other indicators that America is irredeemable:
- Former South Africans Musk, Thiel, and Sachs want apartheid 2.0.
- “Southern strategy” a thing because slave heritage never goes away.
- Bill Clinton was the first Democratic president since FDR to win two consecutive terms and that was only possible with his hard right tack.
- The Reagan revolution was already relatively fascist. The combination of reduced government and a growing economy leads to robber baron strong men and pseudo-dictators. When Reagan said, “Fascism was really the basis of the New Deal. It was Mussolini’s success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led early New Dealers to say, ‘but Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.’”, he missed the central point of fascism — dictators. You don’t avoid dictators with less government; you avoid dictators with more and better government.
- Free markets and popular anti-politics are cut from the same cloth — if you don’t trust experts, government institutions, and regular politicians to govern then eventually strong men fill the gap.
- Slavery actually lasted well into the 20th century because of the black codes. Only the fight against communism briefly made America clean up its act — literally as the last American slave was freed because FDR was afraid of image problems.
- It’s true that other countries are also having problems with fascism but like Spain they tend to recover instead of regressing. What other democracy has crippled abortion rights? Okay Brazil and Chile are worse but even Israel is loosening up.
- British “aristo-fascism” has a long history and Japan is always in the running for most misogyny but American exceptionalism really showed up with a majority popular vote for Trump.
Fascism is built on contradictions and so historically falls apart again and again; usually in some very painful outcomes for nations that embrace it. Things will now get a lot worse for the American fascists and there is no need for sympathy.
YES fascism could have been avoided
America is a much the home to regulation and limits as it is to unlimited growth. Many major advances in anti-fascism started in America — ending monarchy, 5 day work weeks, child labor laws, Wyoming was the second with women’s suffrage (behind the Pitcairn Islands), birth control, freedom of religion, etc.
To see how fascism might have been avoided we have to understand Bill Clinton. If “third way” works then you are headed straight for facism no matter what:
Within the field of fascism studies the trope of the ‘third way’ has served as an invaluable asset in terms of granting fascism ideological autonomy and originality; and this is why it is now widely recognised as one of the core ideological components of generic fascism.6
Democrats voting for a fascism pre-cursor came before Trump
But what most people don’t know is that in 1996 — fresh off the heels of signing welfare reform, and two years after signing the “crime bill” — President Bill Clinton signed a bill that overhauled immigration enforcement in the US and laid the groundwork for the massive deportation machine that exists today.
and anyone paying attention knew this was southern strategy
Clinton also visited the Stone Mountain Correctional Facility in Georgia shortly before Super Tuesday to promote his “tough on crime” message. The location of the prison, Stone Mountain, Georgia is notable for its ties to white supremacist movements. Stone Mountain was the birthplace of the second rendition of the KKK and was a “white supremacist mecca.” It is home to Stone Mountain Park which features a massive monument to the Confederacy carved onto the face of Stone Mountain.[17] Clinton’s press conference at the prison was organized to have a group of inmates, mostly black, present in the background. The image of “white political leaders in business suits in front of subjugated black male prisoners in jumpsuits”[18] conveyed a message summed up by another contender for the Democratic nomination, former California governor Jerry Brown:
“Two white men and forty black prisoners, what’s he saying? He’s saying we got ’em under control, folks, don’t worry.”
President Clinton had massive social regimentation policies but he did the same for economic regimentation. On top of finalizing NAFTA that was started by his predecessors, Clinton laid the groundwork for the financialization of the US economy:
Clinton installed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the Treasury, which resulted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild West (not to mention a disastrous strong dollar policy that was a critical and underrated factor in the bubble). He also reappointed Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan, who has as much responsibility as anyone for creating the crisis, as Fed chairman — twice.
Where previous fascism focussed on state control, this fascism focussed on corporate control and the Ayn Rand brand of fascism:
“No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for co-operation among men.”
So you take Reagan style wild west strong men and move them into corporations where now they can ludicrously take credit for the work of thousands and the government a la Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. It’s a form of nationalism that says we win because our 1% is better than your 1%.
Ascribe everything to strong men is not a recent invention. J. Robert Oppenheimer and atomic weapons is a good example:
It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.[135]
The American revolution was somehow ascribed to the “founding fathers” when it was in reality a very broad mass movement. If you believe in the strong man version of history, then the antipathy to workers that Clinton had seems justified. Innovation and productivity rest solely on suppressing labor to make them follow big men.
But once in office, Clinton and his allies turned their backs on the labor movement that had made their careers possible, largely in hopes of discouraging anti-union companies from funding potential rivals or to undermine potential rivals on the left. Although political commentators date the birth of Clintonian triangulation — i.e. adopting some of your opponent’s policies to distance yourself from your base, move to the center, and broaden your electoral appeal — to the aftermath of the 1994 elections, Bill Clinton along with Pryor and Bumpers began employing it in the 1970s and the Arkansas labor movement was the target.
Union busting is fascism 101 and neo-liberals extensively championed it, immigration, both skilled and unskilled, and outsourcing to suppress worker power. Plus examples like big man Steve Jobs reaching illegal non worker compete agreements with other tech companies.
There’s also a strong sexual predator, which Clinton was, aspect to this form of fascism and its patriarchal strong men.
Bill Clinton won the 1992 election with a mandate, 370 to 168, and then four years later 379 to 159. Compare that to Bush 271 and then 286. Obama again had a 365 mandate, but the 2008 financial crisis had begun and arguably it sealed the deal for American fascism.
Plus Obama recycled the President Clinton team including Lawrence Summers. In 2020, Summers said
Increasing worker power must be a central and urgent priority for policymakers concerned with inequality, low pay and poor work conditions. If we do not shift the distribution of power toward workers, any other policy changes are likely to be short-term and insufficient.
When Summers was in power he had very different ideas. He pushed for China’s admittance to the World Trade Organization without any protection for American or Chinese workers. He was an author of “shock therapy” that created foreign oligarchs and ruined workers in other countries, most notably Russia. Plus deregulate everything financial:
The title of one, Simon Johnson and James Kwak’s 13 Bankers, refers to an irate phone call Summers placed to Born, then the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in March 1997, after she proposed issuing a concept paper on the case for regulating derivatives.
“I have thirteen bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II,” Summers told her. These were not just any 13 bankers, but the heads of Wall Street’s largest commercial and investment banks — many of the same bankers who would beg for a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout a decade later.
This sort of big men know best thinking is just as prevalent today. For instance from the NYT’s Paul Krugman,
The Federal Reserve is a quasi-independent institution, not because of any sacrosanct constitutional principle, but because nations have found that in practice it’s important to limit partisan influence over interest rates and money creation.
Of course trusting Jerome Powell does not get you unbiased decisions, as dozens of economists have explained, it just gets you the same old austerity invented in post WWI fascist Italy — if workers are doing a great resignation then you do a great interest rate hike to force them back to work.
That fascist austerity playbook already included bailouts for corporations but not for workers, but Alan Greenspan’s austerity innovation was the “Greenspan put” where he did whatever it took to back up corporations even before they need a bailout (which became more and more aggressive with the Bernanke put and then Yellen put).
Billionaires now have the tight controlling relationship with government that is typical of fascist economics. They also now own Twitter, YouTube, the Washington Post, and even NYT is owned by someone describing themselves with:
I am the publisher of one of the most scrutinized media institutions in the world; a wealthy white man who succeeded a series of other wealthy white men with the same first and last name; and someone whose family has starred in a full century of shadowy media conspiracy theories.
Also typical is the transition from many oligarchs to a single dear leader:
Nevertheless, “once Mussolini acquired a firmer hold of power … laissez-faire was progressively abandoned in favour of government intervention, free trade was replaced by protection[ism] and economic objectives were increasingly couched in exhortations and military terminology”.
Clinton arguably tried to buck the rightward trend:
Even after Clinton was president, his proposed health care reform agenda (pushed by party activists and loyal opposition in the Congressional Budget Office) would have been far more transformational and market-regulating than Obamacare, they argue.
The Clinton administration tweaked the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed to reduce redlining, to offer more affordable housing loans. They expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, raised the minimum wage, and invested in education.
However Clinton was the real revolution — not Reagan. Reagan wanted to reduce the size of government (supposedly), but Clinton wanted to increase the size of government, reduce business regulation, and increase its ability to control workers. That’s fascism steroids and any deviation from that revolution might have prevented the coming of Trump fuller fascism that’s willing to use violence and forego rule of law.
What can we do now?
The patriarchy version of masculinity grew like a weed and if we want a different version it’s up to us to deliberately cultivate it.
We shall fight on the beaches:
- Less management, more unions, and more workers on board of corporation or owning it etc.
- Workers vote on WFH.
- Scrutiny for any big man lifted above a large team — directors of scientific labs or movies, rise of administrators (like administrator not scientist James Webb having a telescope named after him), CEOs, VPs, middle managers, founders that didn’t bootstrap, VCs, sports coaches, pastors, generals, etc.
- No waiting for a progressive strong man (including president).
- Recognize when Democrats are soft on fascism and don’t vote for them.
- Cancel toxic masculinity of the rich — denying women leadership roles continues to plague American industries and usually that atmosphere starts at the top. If a billionaires companies refuse to promote women then cancel him and boycott the company’s products.
- Restoring faith in institutions requires admitting that they don’t run on arcane economic / legal theory magic — the jig was up on that in 2008. Force Democratic candidates to disclose their staff ahead of elections.
- Many immigrants are currently trapped being used as a fascist underclass. Immigration was not historically a holy relic of the Democratic Party and the logic for being careful with the rate allowed was expressed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown long ago:
In 1975, Brown opposed Vietnamese immigration to California, saying that the state had enough poor people. He added, “There is something a little strange about saying ‘Let’s bring in 500,000 more people’ when we can’t take care of the 1 million (Californians) out of work.”
Just as Confederacy monuments are being torn down, we must tear down the pervasive roots of US fascism.