Issue #48: Fascism and What is Coming

Past Issues
1. literary mash-up
2. SubGeniality
3. The Amish Trivedi Project
4. Weird books
5. 513 Alphabets
6. Runes & glyphs
7. Glass Bead Game poems
8. The Time Cube dude
9. The Starsky/Hutch Experiments
10. SubGeniality 2
11. Deathlord video game
12. Manifestos
13. The Ali Smith Challenge
14. It was Red Herring!
15. The Wisdom of Gingangon
16. The Naked Paratext
17. Remembering Xanadu
18. Czech sci-fi epic poem
19. Zine reviews
20. God Bless America
21. The Meaning of Life
22. Dear Jacques Derrida
23. Robert Anton Wilson
24. The Elements of METAL
25. The Eye of Argon
26. Found poetry
27. A Weird RPG
28. Wrestling angels
29. Darius speaks
30. SubGeniality 3
31. Laundromat liberry
32. Morte D’Arthur
K●R●Y●P●T●A, the zine from the place over by the 33. HYBRID
thing, is an ongoing series of dubious experiments 34. The Supreme Court
in semi-literary semi-nonsense. The ridiculous is 35. Button Frenzy
36. Einstein’s Cosmic Religion
attempted and the absurd and/or obscure archived, 37. An Anthology of Verse
all in obedience to the inscrutable exhortations of 38. Another Tale of Gilgamesh
39. Highlighting Leonardo
my soul. To find out a little bit more about 40. Fortune Cookies
K●R●Y●P●T●A and related whimsies, please visit 41. Cigarettes to Mars
krypta.neocities.org. You can even sign up for a 42. Flaming Telepaths
43. Spectacular Time
chance to receive freezines in the mail! 44. Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease
45. North Korean nonsense
46. The LeCorbusier Exercise
47. The Disquiet of Pessoa
Hitler's Germany. Such groups also have a long history of civil
resistance, sanctuary-type activities regarding unjust
immigration policies, and otherwise breaking the law or doing
secret work for reasons of conscience. I think we might be
able to learn a great deal from them. I invite responses and
discussion of these ideas. We are printing some here and will
have further responses and dialogue in the next issue of
Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research &
Education.
Fascism and what is coming
Michael Novick, Anti-Racist
Action-LA/People Against Racist Terror
(ARA/PART) with responses from other
ARA and anti-fascist activists, 9 June 2003
There are, roughly speaking, three views of fascism out there:
1) the way fascism presents itself; 2) the way competing
rulers, and competing strategies and ideologies within
imperialism present it; and 3) the way working class oriented
revolutionaries, whether anarchist or socialist, have
traditionally seen it. I think all those views are wrong, but I'll
sketch them out. I think incorrect understandings of fascism
reflect incorrect understandings of class society and
colonialism.
Fascism presents itself as revolutionary, anti-capitalist and
anti-communist, nationalistic and militaristic, a vanguard that
welds together a volk into a fighting machine in which a new
state and social order is created that purges weakness,
sentimentality, and alien influences, particularly insofar as it
defends womanhood.
Competing imperialist ideologies and rulers, generally
speaking, portray fascism as uniquely totalitarian,
nationalistic, militaristic, racist, religiously and xenophobic, to
which anti-gay and anti-woman have been added more
recently.
Communist and anarchist analyses have tended to portray
fascism as reactionary, anti-working class but using racial and
religious scapegoating to manipulate workers into lining up
behind an iconic maximum leader. Sexual repression,
particularly latent or repressed homoeroticism, is often
emphasized. All three views portray fascism as the master of
propaganda and spectacle, (and as noted, as nationalistic and
militaristic).
What's wrong with these views? How can a more correct
understanding guide anti-fascist practice?
Fascists, rival imperialists, and euro/worker-centric
communists and anarchists, all have, for purposes of their
own, reasons to disguise the true nature of fascism, and to
distinguish it categorically from other less evil forms of class
society and oppressive/exploitive rule. Fascists want to
present themselves as revolutionary anti-capitalists (may
even believe they are) in order to cement a mass base and
mass participation in their effort.
Other rulers and imperial ideologies/strategies want to portray
fascism as evil incarnate, the bogey man in comparison to
whom their exploitation, oppression, militarism and repressive
measures look benign or justified. They use fascism as a
threat to dangle if resistance steps up—Look how much worse
things can be; we're the best deal you're going to get. Kind of
apres moi, le deluge—unite with your own bourgeoisie
because fascists would be so much worse.
Euro/worker-centric socialists and anarchists are blinded to
the true nature of fascism—and of their own projects
--because they believe their approach will run their advanced
industrial societies better (that is, deep down they still accept
the empire). In some cases they are actually seeking an
alliance with their own bourgeoisie, with whom they can make
common cause against the fascists.
If all these views are wrong, what is right? People understand
that there is a vital connection between imperialism and
fascism. As the US has become more openly imperialist, there
is a common widespread fear that fascism is on the immediate
the repression. We need to think about building redundancy in
all that.
Organizing and outreach into the prisons and the military are
vital. These spheres, along with workplace organizing, have
always had some of the characteristics of occupation or
fascism that impede open organizing. They are vital areas in
which to work (the degree of state and bourgeois repression
applied in these arenas under normal democracy being a
measure of their strategic importance). They are an important
proving ground of our ability to organize under such
conditions as well as our capacity to craft a message and
practice that engages the people we want to reach. This is
also true for work with high school students, for many of the
same reasons (especially as the military increasingly
penetrates the schools).
A key to understanding fascism is grasping, and countering,
the appeal fascism makes to women. The male-dominated left
tends to discount the revolutionary potential of women, the
need for a strategy to deal with the role of violence in the
lives of women and children, and the efforts of fascists to
present themselves as the answer to women's problems. A
fuller discussion and an attempt to develop practice based on
a deeper understanding of those issues must take place in a
sustained way. They definitely relate to this whole period. The
state has moved into this arena in various ways. Bush's use of
Afghan women as justification for launching his war on Al
Qaeda, the Taliban and Afghanistan is one clear example.
Another notable one is creation by the Pentagon of a network
of organizers out of army wives, whose job it is to maintain
morale and support for the war efforts among the families of
the troops.
Faith-based groups, some of whom are hard-core pacifists,
must be addressed in an anti-fascist strategy, just as White
Rose Catholics formed one base of anti-fascist resistance in
other minority oriented media outlets that still provide a little
room and outlet that is unavailable in general-audience print
and broadcast media.
Relatedly, we need to focus more energy on less public forms
of organizing—something besides demonstrations. I think we
need to organize deeper and more sustained initiatives of our
own away from public scrutiny, not simply reacting to state
and fascist provocations, and. We need to listen more, both as
a means of intelligence gathering on the enemy but also
understanding what's on the minds of the people we want to
work with and among. We need to develop community-based
grass roots anti-racist and anti-empire work that has some
endurance and that rewards people in the doing of it. I am not
saying to abandon confrontation with nazis, but the public
venues are going to be increasingly controlled and subject to
massive repression. The same holds true for anti-globalization
protests at WTO-type gatherings. We need to think about
methods of infiltration and subversion, as well as
counter-organizing a base for anti-racist culture and
resistance among people who would otherwise be drawn to
the nazis.
Organizing Below the Radar
We need to build a legal/self defense component into all our
work, anticipating busts, frame-ups and harassment. We need
to build stronger outside networks of support for people
locked down, materially and otherwise. There needs to be
thought about safe houses, cultivation of supporters who
never do anything public to identify themselves with the
anti-racist movement, secure means of covert communication,
transportation and release and dissemination of information.
In other words, we need to adopt some methods of
organization better suited to conditions of occupation or
fascism, and to the extent we can get at all ahead of the curve
on this, it will be a lot easier to do, and a lot likelier to survive
horizon here, coming from the Bush administration. But to
really understand what is going on, we need to take a step
back to get a clearer and more valid picture of the real context
of empire and class society within which fascism operates.
The Imperial Roots of Fascism
European nation states are better understood as empire
states. Great Britain/UK, France, Spain, Sweden, etc. were
each an empire in themselves, consolidated within a territory
and an economic bio-region through the leadership of the
bourgeoisie (leadership therefore implying the independent
participation of other classes and strata, whose efforts were
cohered and subsumed into the bourgeoisie's project).
Germany and Italy— where fascism emerged most fully and
triumphally— both had failed to consolidate such empire
states completely or in a timely manner. The fascists set
themselves the task of accomplishing what their bourgeoisies
had failed to do—propel Germany and Italy into full domestic
empire state status and full international participation in
carving up the rest of the globe. (This is actually quite similar
to what happened in the Czarist Russian empire, where the
communists set themselves the task of completing the
revolution the Russian bourgeoisie had proven itself incapable
of carrying out, particularly in agriculture).
So, we see that fascism in Europe, particularly German and
Italian fascism, set itself the task of completing the
empire-state building process that their bourgeoisie had
proven incapable of carrying out. For Germany, especially, this
meant redrawing the map of Europe itself, and building an
extensive empire within the heart of Europe. This ultimately
proved intolerable to the British (and the US), who thus
delineated Hitler's Germany in particular as beyond the limits
of acceptable imperialist behavior.
But Hitler's philosophy, ideology and mechanisms of rule were
rooted in imperialism, in lessons learned from US empire
building and 'race relations'—reservations, sterilization, white
supremacist mass organizations, mass merchandising. Some
of the cells which formed Hitler's National Socialist German
Workers Party were actually composed of former members of
the US KKK who returned to Germany in the 20's after the US
Klan collapsed. Nazi views and practices also grew out of the
German colonial experience in Africa, where they carried out a
mass genocide of the Herero people of Namibia (aka German
Southwest Africa). The Nazi party distinguished itself from
other right wing parties and movements, however, in its
willingness to develop armed power outside the alleged
'monopoly' of the state, and to carry forward independent
action based on other class strata, regardless of bourgeois
dictates.
Fascism: Bringing Colonial Rule Home
In general, fascism can best be understood as bringing the
methods of imperial rule in the colonies into the metropole. In
the colonies, genocide has been the rule, not the exception, of
imperial rule. Democracy is only for a select few of settlers;
dictatorship and slave labor applies to the indigenous and
other colonized people. The corporate model developed in
colonial enterprise. The first corporations were the colonizing
corporations—British East India Company, Hudson's Bay
Company, etc.— who could bear the costs and risks of
colonization because of shared and limited liability, and
exercised state power directly over the colonized territories
and populations. The mass base of participation in colonial
rule came via the settler population, who participated actively
and often independently in land grabs and extermination
without waiting for bourgeois legitimacy.
All this was translated to the metropole by Hitler, however he
may have defined or proclaimed his system. Except that the
fascist is arguable—they are responding to pressures from
above and outside their own societies and often have a limited
mass base within. But if we are facing anything close to that,
we need to adjust our organizing dramatically.
I think the current political context in the US, whether we
label it fascist or not, calls for a whole range of things
connected to the idea of more clandestine struggle (I am not
thinking of illegal or armed action here). Nonetheless, we do
need to incorporate the same sense that from-below fascist
forces have long grasped - that independent political action
must make use of all forms of struggle and all means of
exerting countervailing power.
We need to strategize based on an understanding that
mainstream media work is almost entirely pointless, at least
as currently conceived. The FCC has put the finishing stroke
on a set of media regulations that will finalize the
transformation of journalism and entertainment into
corporate/state propaganda. Previous court rulings have made
it clear that freedom of speech and the press are essentially
protected only for corporate interests. Mainstream electoral
work in an era where the Supreme Court and ruled and
enforced the doctrine that there is no individual right to vote
in the US is similarly pointless. I think some alternatives are
happening --developing our own media, pirate radio,
webcasting, using indymedia— but remember, the Internet is
closely monitored and subject to being choked off. I think we
might want to look back into bulletin board systems (direct
connect phone call into a computer storing information). We
need to cultivate media that serve people of color—there was
a significant difference between the attitudes of people of
color towards the war, and the coverage of the war in POC
media (even bourgeois, mainstream, corporate POC media)
than those of the white population and the general media.
Chicken or egg doesn't matter here, but in NY, Chicago, LA,
Atlanta etc. there are Black, Spanish-language, Asian and
the old imperial bribe. They also foresee and openly promise a
period of 'endless war' and increasing militarization of the
entire society. Less openly, but no less relentlessly, they are
girding up for a military showdown with China. The prospect
of taking on that battle, in the context of a dwindling
economic pie of which they are taking a larger share,
necessitates both increased repression and inventive methods
of obtaining consent, for which 'fascism' is as good a code
name as any.
The reason it's important to consider whether Bush is building
a fascist state in the US is not a matter of semantics but of
survival. Or perhaps more currently, we need to understand
exactly how the rulers are transforming the nature of the
state, and what initiatives will be undertaken by or allowed for
non-ruling class forces to push forward fascism independently
of the rulers. In a certain sense, whether we call it fascism is
immaterial. The question is, what room do we have to
maneuver, what timetable do we have to operate on, what
methods of organization and struggle are appropriate or likely
to be successful in the current period? The timetable and
nature of organizing, as well as the means of struggle
appropriate and necessary to pursue, will be affected by the
nature of the state we confront. So will the kind of alliances
we can make and the type of organizations we build.
Withstanding Fascism & Brutality
Fascism, however we define it, has meant a particularly brutal
and harsh form of governance within imperial metropoles, a
much more active pursuit of genocide, a more naked and
totalitarian form of domination of labor and other mass
organizations. This is not a linguistic question. Other forms of
social and political organization are also capable of such
excesses. In the third world, imperialism has long operated
through dictatorial, militaristic puppet regimes that carried out
bloody repression. Whether those can correctly be called
mechanisms— dictatorship, slave labor, corporatization of the
state and society, mass participation in militarism, looting and
oppression independently of the bourgeoisie—were seen
operating directly within the German population at large,
including against its racially and ethnically defined minorities,
and its European neighbors.
To say there is no difference between capitalism and
imperialism in general, and fascism in particular, is wrong.
Fascism is a form of imperialism in extremis, moved to taking
desperate measures in the name of survival (often, but not
only, because of the strength of its conscious opposition). The
degree to which fascism must emphasize its mass appeal and
its revolutionary face is a measure of the weakening of the
grip of normal imperial and colonial thinking within the
working classes, and of their allegiance to the deal they got. It
is important to understand that saying imperialism sometimes
take fascist form is not the same as attributing fascist to a
ruling class plot. All forms of imperialism, especially 'modern'
imperialism and colonialism, have always been cross-class
projects, in which working and other subordinate classes have
always participated independently and directly, not merely
under the direction of the bourgeoisie or ruling class. y Where
there is not a revolutionary anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist
threat manifest in the ranks of working and oppressed people,
fascism may still appear necessary or desirable to the rulers
or other strata because of other threats or other weaknesses
of the bourgeoisie. What's more, fascist regimes are not
necessarily going to ally with each other because of ideological
affinities. Alliances will shift between and among 'democracies'
and 'dictatorships' just as they did before, during and after
World War II. So we may see US Christian fascists opposing
Arab Muslim fascists or Hindu supremacist fascists. This
anti-fascism does not preclude simultaneous fascist initiatives
in their own society. Similarly, state and bourgeois-based
fascist elements may move against other fascist forces within
their own society, particularly those that emphasize the
anti-elitist face of fascism. Fascism has always presented itself
as a competing ideology for state building and economic
advancement in colonized societies in opposition to anarchist,
communist and other socially-liberatory ideologies. While such
fascisms have often been subordinate to larger imperial
forces, to the extent they prove capable of or interested in
independent action, the fascism of imperial powers will define
them as a particularly critical enemy.
The US is a special case because the US is a settler colonial,
as well as an imperial society. It has always had elements of
what became known as fascism operating within its society
and state against internally colonized and enslaved
populations and territories. The mass participation and base
for this has fundamentally been the white settler population
(although people of color have at times been incorporated, in
a neo-colonial or modified settler role).
George Jackson: Fascism is Already Here
This is what George Jackson meant when he said fascism is
already here. It was not rhetorical hyperbole or meaningless
substitution of 'fascism' for 'capitalism.' The Black colony and
especially Blacks within the prison system (the new
plantation/reservation = concentration camp) lived and live
under conditions of fascism (including a cross-class racist
alliance of white supremacist prisoners and guards who
uphold the rule of the bourgeoisie and its state). But this is
not true only in the prisons. The channeling of Black youth
into prisons, parasitic criminal organizations, the military or
neo-colonial regulation systems is a manifestation of
fascist-style domination and incorporation of a threatening
population. The fundamental basis of white privilege is that
white working people are spared such fascist methods of rule
so long as they remain loyal.
So there are substantial mass strata (including among white
workers) for whom fascism of the more modern, European
form has appeal, as well as sectors of the bourgeoisie and of
the bureaucratic governing class who are accustomed to and
predisposed towards fascist style rule. However, the turn to
fascism does imply a change in the composition, structure,
powers and rationale of the state, and in the forms of
domination and exploitation of the metropolitan working class.
The types of oppression and exploitation that have been
directed at the (internally) colonized population begin to make
themselves felt against the settlers as well, even as they are
being courted and propagandized to adopt a new and more
intimate and totalitarian identification with the rulers and
empire.
I think this does describe what is happening in the US today.
How better to understand the consolidation of support for
Bush even as the economy sinks from the toilet into the septic
tank? It is happening primarily from the top down -
orchestrated by the Bush regime and its supportive faction of
the bourgeoisie. Only secondarily is it driven from the bottom
up (more so from clerical fascist forces and neo-confederates
closely allied to the rulers, less so from the white proletarians
and petty bourgeois elements who are drawn into neo-nazi
and other armed and violence prone formations. That means
we must seriously prepare for situations of much more naked
repression, perhaps akin to those which pertain in the colonial
and semi-colonial areas—the dirty war in Argentina, the
Pinochet regime in Chile, the death squads in Central America,
the Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine, etc.
Economic Crisis of the Empire and
Industrialism
These statist, imperial forces see quite clearly that the
economic and environmental crises facing their system require
a re-incorporation of mass support on a different basis than