Prominent in the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were white supremacists, Christian nationalists, neo-Confederates, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, antisemites, and various other far-right extremists. Were these groups correct in seeing Trump as their champion?
You are right that Donald Trump is a fascist. But I think we ere when we emphasize too much the role that individuals can and do play in history; just as often they are the instruments of “history.” The fascist movement in the U.S. has been developing over a number of decades now in response to the slipping position of the U.S. in the world, the deindustrialization of the U.S., and the dramatic demographic changes in the U.S. in just our lifetime.
The U.S. fascist movement is built around a classic redemptionist program: the restoration of the white, Christian, patriarchal, free-market America, characteristic of the period from the end of Reconstruction through World War II. At its core is a uniquely American Christian fascism. Millions of people who loathe Trump as an individual voted for him because they agree with this program. And his national rise to power was made possible because for a significant section of the ruling class, fascism is an increasing acceptable resolution of what was seen as an intractable national crisis.
Another defining aspect of the fascist movement is its determination to destroy “the Weimar Republic,” the institutions of liberal bourgeois democracy that are seen as weak, effeminate, atheistic, and internationalist (what the German Nazis called “cosmopolitanism”). “Weimar on the Potomac” is seen as facilitating abortion, homosexuality, open borders, gun laws, and the loss of “love of country.” From a domestic policy perspective, there is a straight line from the Confederacy to the Trump movement. From a real-politik perspective, there is a straight line from “Lock Her Up!” to the January 6 putsch attempt.
At this point, the election results have bought us some time—but only a little time. Reliance on the Democrats, who can’t even bring themselves to use the “F” word to describe the Trump movement, will prove fatal. Would the proper approach to Hitler’s loss in the 1932 election have to extend the hand of “bi-partisan compromise”? It is a characteristic of fascists that they only accept “compromise” on their own terms.
The most serious analysis out there at this time is “A New Year, The Urgent Need for a Radically New World—For the Emancipation of All Humanity” by communist thinker and leader Bob Avakian (available at www.revcom.us). A good background book is How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley at Yale.
This is a very fraught moment in our history. So let’s keep this discussion going.
You are right that Donald Trump is a fascist. But I think we ere when we emphasize too much the role that individuals can and do play in history; just as often they are the instruments of “history.” The fascist movement in the U.S. has been developing over a number of decades now in response to the slipping position of the U.S. in the world, the deindustrialization of the U.S., and the dramatic demographic changes in the U.S. in just our lifetime.
The U.S. fascist movement is built around a classic redemptionist program: the restoration of the white, Christian, patriarchal, free-market America, characteristic of the period from the end of Reconstruction through World War II. At its core is a uniquely American Christian fascism. Millions of people who loathe Trump as an individual voted for him because they agree with this program. And his national rise to power was made possible because for a significant section of the ruling class, fascism is an increasing acceptable resolution of what was seen as an intractable national crisis.
Another defining aspect of the fascist movement is its determination to destroy “the Weimar Republic,” the institutions of liberal bourgeois democracy that are seen as weak, effeminate, atheistic, and internationalist (what the German Nazis called “cosmopolitanism”). “Weimar on the Potomac” is seen as facilitating abortion, homosexuality, open borders, gun laws, and the loss of “love of country.” From a domestic policy perspective, there is a straight line from the Confederacy to the Trump movement. From a real-politik perspective, there is a straight line from “Lock Her Up!” to the January 6 putsch attempt.
At this point, the election results have bought us some time—but only a little time. Reliance on the Democrats, who can’t even bring themselves to use the “F” word to describe the Trump movement, will prove fatal. Would the proper approach to Hitler’s loss in the 1932 election have to extend the hand of “bi-partisan compromise”? It is a characteristic of fascists that they only accept “compromise” on their own terms.
The most serious analysis out there at this time is “A New Year, The Urgent Need for a Radically New World—For the Emancipation of All Humanity” by communist thinker and leader Bob Avakian (available at www.revcom.us). A good background book is How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley at Yale.
This is a very fraught moment in our history. So let’s keep this discussion going.
C. Clark Kissinger