"American Fascism": Accurate or Misleading?
Remember When "Liberal Fascism" Was A Thing in 2013?
Fascist! Marxist! These words are back in vogue in America. To their critics, Trump and MAGA are fascist. To their critics, Harris/Walz are Marxist. It all seems cartoonish; it all seems silly.
Back in 2013, I wrote an article for Huff Post on “liberal fascism” when that was a thing; when President Obama, who might be described as “Marxist” by some Republicans, then and now, was dismissed as a “liberal fascist” by some on the left. (By the way, the Obamas now may be worth as much as half a billion dollars, complete with four mansions. Michelle Obama gets as much as $750,000 per speech. I’d say they’re very good capitalists.)
Labels like this are highly emotive—and very misleading. Perhaps we should turn to Sheldon Wolin, who in “Democracy Incorporated” spoke of “inverted totalitarianism.” Having read his book, I think he’s come closest to capturing this American moment. The U.S. still has the trappings of democracy. For example, we have multiple political parties, we still get to vote, we still have many media centers, we still have three branches of government and an apparent balance of powers, we still get to participate in politics and to speak our minds at protests and the like. Democracy, right?
But how much say do we really have? If voters show up in mass protests and no one in Congress responds, did the protests matter? Wolin spoke of a uniquely American form of totalitarianism where an illusion of democracy hides the corporate capture of the government. Essentially, America is a plutocracy in which the richest citizens (including corporations as citizens) rule. Corporate interests and the richest among us pick the candidates, control the media, write laws for Congress, and determine policy. No anti-corporate populist candidate is allowed anywhere near the presidency. Without sacks of cash, you have no say in what your government does.
The business of America remains business, but now everything is business, including government itself. This corporate-state fusion governs America, even as Wolin notes how the rest of us are kept distracted by side issues, most often ideological debates, and kept tractable through wave-the-flag propaganda about how exceptional and indispensable we are. Thus we are allowed to fight over issues like abortion, gay rights, and the like because these issues do not threaten corporate bottom lines and state power.
Challenge the corporate-state fusion of power, as exemplified by the military-industrial-congressional complex, or, even broader, the MICIMATT, and you’ll find yourself out on your ass, or worse. (See JFK and Dallas.)
Anyhow, here’s that article from 2013 where I tackled “liberal fascism.” Is it any different, I wonder, from “Trump fascism”?
Readers, what do you make of all this? How can we break, or at least challenge, the corporate-state dominance of our lives? How do we gain a say in what “our” government does in our name?
'American Fascism': Accurate or Misleading?
Certainly, since the attacks of 9/11 the U.S. has become more authoritarian, more militarized, and less free. But to describe this as "fascism" is misleading.
By William Astore, Contributor
Writer, History Professor, Retired Lieutenant Colonel (USAF)
Sep 15, 2013, 02:33 PM EDT
A recent article by John Pilger in the British Guardian speaks of a silent military coup that has effectively gained control of American policymaking. It features the following alarmist passage:
In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration ... The historian Norman Pollack calls this "liberal fascism": "For goose-steppers substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while." Every Tuesday the "humanitarian" Obama personally oversees a worldwide terror network of drones that "bugsplat" people, their rescuers and mourners. In the west's comfort zones, the first black leader of the land of slavery still feels good, as if his very existence represents a social advance, regardless of his trail of blood. This obeisance to a symbol has all but destroyed the US anti-war movement -- Obama's singular achievement.
Strong words. Is America the land of "liberal fascism"?
Certainly, since the attacks of 9/11 the U.S. has become more authoritarian, more militarized, and less free (witness the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and the assassination of American citizens overseas by drones). The U.S. Supreme Court has empowered corporations and the government at the expense of individual citizens. Powerful banks and corporations reap the benefits of American productivity and of special tax breaks and incentives available only to them, even as average American citizens struggle desperately to keep their heads above water.
But to describe this as "fascism" is misleading. It's also debilitating and demoralizing.
It's misleading because fascism has a specific historical meaning. The best definition I've seen is from the historian Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism
For Paxton, fascism is:
"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
In formulating this definition, Paxton had Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy in mind, but his definition is an excellent starting point in thinking about fascism.
What about it? Is the U.S. fascistic? Plainly, no. We don't have a messiah-like dictator. Our justice system still works, however imperfectly. Our votes still count, even if our political speech often gets drowned out by moneyed interests.
It's true that, in the name of "support our troops," we grant the Pentagon brass and defense contractors too much leeway, and allow our Department of Defense to seek "global power" without reflecting that such ambitions are the stuff of totalitarian states. But let's also recall that our troops (as well as our representatives) still swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a dictator or party.
It's also true that, as a society, we are too violent, too attracted to violence (think of our TV/Cable shows, our video games, and our sports), and too willing to relinquish individual liberties in the name of protecting us from that violence and the fear generated by it. Yet Americans are also increasingly weary and skeptical of the use of military force, as recent events involving Syria have shown.
The point is not to despair, not to surrender to the demoralizing idea that American politics is an exercise in liberal fascism. No -- the point is to exercise our rights, because that is the best way to retain them.
Authority always wants more authority. But as political actors, we deny by our actions the very idea of fascism. For in fascist societies, people are merely subjects, merely tools, in the service of the state.
Don't be a tool. Be an actor. Speak up. Get involved. Work to make your imperfect republic a little more representative of the better angels of our nature. Because it'll be your deeds that keep our country from falling prey to fear and violence and the authoritarian mindset they breed.
Astore writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.
Definition of fascism from my 1963 college dictionary:
"A one-party system of government in which each class has its distinct place, function, and representation in the government but the individual is subordinated to the state and control is maintained by military force, secret police, rigid censorship, and governmental regimentation of industry and finance."
So, some might argue America has a two-party system, class mobility, and that individuals in America aren't subordinated to the state. We don't have secret police in this country! And there's no censorship here either! No fascism here!
Perhaps we're on the way to inventing a "soft" fascism, a comfortable one, a soothing one, not the "hard" fascism that the Nazis enforced.
If there is one thing that people need to get clear on is that words are used now in completely absurd ways in order to elicit negative emotions about whomever or whatever the target de jour is. Everyone in the US government is a capitalist, like the wealthy Clintons, Obamas, Trumps and Bush clan. Saying that anyone in the US government or in US corporations is a Marxist is pure nonsense. In fact, saying any of them is liberal is nonsense. They are all right wing capitalists. There is no other flavor in the power establishment in the US. They use words to get people worked up about a political opponent, like when Trump calls Harris a Marxist. Pure garbage. In case anyone has forgotten, Marx claimed that a mature capitalism would not allow worker exploitation, that it would instead make workers the owners of the corporation so that they all benefitted when the corporation did well. Anyone who claims that Harris is pushing for worker ownership of corporations is just lying. On the other hand, if you define fascism as a collusion between government, the wealthy elites, corporations and the military, then you could easily describe the modern US as a type of fascist state that oppresses workers and uses military force, rather than diplomacy, to get their way. That applies to times when either the Blue Team or the Red Team is in the WH.