America’s flirtation with Fascism

In 1934 the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky said that in times of social crisis “Fascism unites and arms the scattered masses. Out of human dust it organises combat detachments”.  There was plenty of evidence of human dust at the Capitol on Wednesday. 

America is more broken and divided now than it has been for a long time.  But it has always been fairly broken and divided.  Trump was propelled to power by years of economic turbulence, increasing inequality and by racist voters who couldn’t stomach a person of colour in the Whitehouse.  Trump used the racist cesspit of right-wing US politics as his ticket to power. 

Perhaps not all Trump supporters are racists.  Many are, and at the core of his support, at the heart of his base are actual card-carrying fascists.  Some of them marched through Charlottesville early in his presidency chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’.  Some of them followed orders to ‘stand back and stand by’ during the election.  And some of them, egged on by their Commander-in-Chief, led and dominated Wednesday’s riot on the Capitol. 

Racism has always been a feature of American life.  So has the struggle to overcome it.  In the 1960s people in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement mobilised against the racist establishment and its supporters, achieving historic victories.  Some Americans have never forgiven black people and the left for what they did to ‘their’ country.

Some still cannot even come to terms with black people being allowed to vote.  For them, a defeat for Trump in 2020 was never going to be without controversy.  The exact manner of how ‘the steal’ was perpetrated might not be clear to all but for most Trump supporters the fact that it was stolen is beyond dispute.  Liberals, leftists and black people are denying Trump the second term he deserves.  How dare they!

Trump himself may or may not be a fascist but he is happy to flirt with fascism.  Previous Republican presidents have kept the right of the Republican Party at arm’s length.  Trump took it over and made it his own.  Meanwhile much of the US ruling class was ambivalent to Trump.  Stable, credible governance is desirable for trade and commerce but its easier to manage without it when regulations are being cast aside and taxes are plummeting. 

Perhaps mindful of the catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, the American ruling class are again seeking some stability, competence and at least the impression of a functioning democracy.  As the 2020 election approached, US capital made its choice and billions of dollars flowed into Joe Biden’s campaign funds. 

Trump sensed that his time might be up.  His attempts to undermine the election itself, predicting, then declaring election fraud on a massive scale, without providing any evidence, impressed no-one beyond his base.  If anyone still needed convincing that America was desperately in need of a safe pair of hands Trump dutifully obliged by encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol, in the process humiliating the US state both at home and on the international stage.
  
Having now won control of the senate, Biden will ostensibly have more legislative muscle that he could have hoped for in the days following the presidential election.  Nonetheless he may be powerless to address the grievances, many of them legitimate, that pushed his predecessor into power.  Those with wealth and power that donated billions of dollars to put Biden where he is probably weren’t handing over their money to enable universal healthcare, eliminate poverty or to secure effective action on climate change.

Trump might finally be cowed but when he says; “today is not the end, it's just the beginning”, he is not so easy to dismiss.  In many ways Trump was a disaster for American people but for the capitalist class Trumpism has been pretty good.  It looks increasingly possible that Trump himself will be gone from mainstream US politics.  But with the near certainty of more economic chaos to come, Trumpism, with all its dangers may still prove useful to America’s rulers.

Perhaps in 2021 the best of America will come together to begin to sweep all of the human dust from government buildings, whether they choose to dress in combat gear and helmets or, like those politicians that have for so long been loyal to Trump, they wear suits. 

Hopefully America is still some way from contemplating Fascism’s combat detachments.  Let’s keep it that way.