The Return of American Fascism(newstatesman.com)
newstatesman.com
The Return of American Fascism
https://www.newstatesman.com/international/places/2020/09/return-american-fascism
6 comments
I predict this to be the end of an era not the return. The wounded snake is rearing it’s head one last time before finally being lopped off. This is all done in desperation.
Nothing about the past decade of American politics suggests that escalation by any extremum of the political spectrum will do anything but deepen the polarization of their political system.
That's a satisfying bit of poetry, but it's not really how fascism works. I've studied both the ideology and history of this movement, and what causes or is a part of fascism is rising inequality, excessive privatisation, and extreme social shifts, to be very simple about it. Any time a socio-economic crisis happens it can go one of two ways: collectivism or fascism.
Trump is only 'allowed' to exist because he satisfies a particular urge of a quarter of the country. If you truly want to kill fascism you have to actually provide quality public education, financial relief, etc. to all these skinheads for generations to come. This is something republicans will never do, and something democrats only want to do in principle but have a hard time pulling the trigger.
Besides, it's not like those rioters were killed. All this showed them was that storming the capitol is incredibly easy. Fascism is nowhere near gone. In fact it seems to be rising worldwide, and for reasons I noted above.
Oh, another thing. With climate change underway we can expect to see millions of climate refugees. That is going to make fascism even worse, for obvious reasons. Trump ran on the principle of keeping out Mexicans. That was just one country. You're in for some serious trouble if you don't help the global south and the middle east.
Trump is only 'allowed' to exist because he satisfies a particular urge of a quarter of the country. If you truly want to kill fascism you have to actually provide quality public education, financial relief, etc. to all these skinheads for generations to come. This is something republicans will never do, and something democrats only want to do in principle but have a hard time pulling the trigger.
Besides, it's not like those rioters were killed. All this showed them was that storming the capitol is incredibly easy. Fascism is nowhere near gone. In fact it seems to be rising worldwide, and for reasons I noted above.
Oh, another thing. With climate change underway we can expect to see millions of climate refugees. That is going to make fascism even worse, for obvious reasons. Trump ran on the principle of keeping out Mexicans. That was just one country. You're in for some serious trouble if you don't help the global south and the middle east.
Facism requires social acceptance to work and this is more damning than anything. The American people are walking away from people like this, not towards.