Hey, it's Kay
and this is Skittles! My editor
Today, we're gonna talk about fascism
because I know how to party
I'm not gonna spend too much time on
explaining what fascism is--
despite there being so much rampant misuse of the term,
it has been very thoroughly explained.
I'm going to briefly summarize it,
but if you want a fuller explanation,
I high recommend the article
"Ur-Fascism" by Umberto Eco.
I've linked it below, but it looks like between now
and the last time I read it,
The New York Review locked it behind a paywall.
So, I'd also recommend checking out a video on
the topic by the excellent Angie Speaks, where she
discusses Eco's article and goes into some depth on the topic.
So, in short, fascism is a
hyper-conservative,
nationalist ideology that centers national and,
often, racial unity and purity,
as well as military power,
as the most important aspects of their society.
Fascism idealizes a sort of
warrior culture in which it is not only natural but
necessary for the strong to oppress the weak.
It fetishizes hierarchies
and has a destructive, anti-intellectual streak,
valuing action over theory.
It appropriates much of the rhetoric of collectivism
and champions working in the national interest,
but tends to leave corporate power unchallenged,
working in the interest of economic elites
more than anyone else.
Fascism often wears the mask of revolution
with its talk of destroying decadent and
bourgeois corruption in society,
but is it revolutionary?
Well, you might be wondering why my description of fascism
didn't mention too much of the economic structure
that fascists support. Let's talk about that.
There is no fascist economy.
Facist movements,
much like revolutionary movements, come into existence
in times of crisis, when the wealthy class
of landlords and business owners fears the
possibility of an impending worker uprising,
and/or, when the
monopolies that capitalism produces
leads to a decline in investment and a
possible financial crash.
Fascists ally themselves with these
economic elites, striking deals for their support
and funding in return for them insuring they'll
protect the economic and social status of those elites.
Thus, fascist governments have always protected,
and indeed, championed inequality and corporate interests,
while leaving the option open for state intervention
in the favor of those corporate interests.
(More on that in a minute)
In Italy and Germany, the fascist
regimes guaranteed a return on investment
for these private interest who supported them,
and the wealthy business owners in question were eager to take them up on the offer.
After all, nothing opens up investment opportunities
like a hot new military budget.
A continent's worth of military budget.
Now, you might recognize that way of doing things as
more or less the current status quo.
Why would fascist economies look so similar
to our own, then, if this is meant to be a distinct system?
Well, the answer is... it isn't.
Again, there is no fascist economy.
Fascist governments throughout history have held
economic positions and implemented
policies that contradict other
fascist states,
and often contradict their own stances years and even months prior
but these states are consistently characterized by
privitization
with state interference to smash labor unions and other
working class organizations where necessary.
"And what do they use to destroy these working class movements?"
I hear you ask.
The apparatus of the capitalist state that's already in place, of course!
The police, courts, and military were
incredibly supportive of fascism in these countries.
The police and courts were lenient with
Hitler's Brown Shirts and Mussolini's Black Shirts
who carried out much of the street-level violence,
letting them off the hook for assaults and murders while
imprisoning and executing prominent labor organizers
and socialists for much lesser crimes.
Often, the fascist goons in Italy and Germany would
mysteriously get their
hands on police cars and guns to aid them
in carrying out their violence.
Fascism is often characterized by a
vague promise of economic
and cultural prosperity at an undetermined
later date, when the working class movements have been
crushed and all the undesirable demographics
and degeneracy have been removed from the nation.
It's the promise that after completing a genocide,
everyone will somehow be better off.
You might find fascist leaders have
often been a bit lacking
in explaining how exactly these things will
lead to national prosperity.
So, let's take a look at what becomes
of fascist governments that are not violently overthrown.
How about the fascist Franco regime in Spain?
Franco spent his time enforcing
Catholicism as the state religion, destroying labor unions,
and murdering communists at a horrific scale,
especially during the White Terror
in which an estimated 150 to
400 thousand leftists were killed.
And as soon as he died, his chosen successor
Juan Carlos the first, prince of the
Spanish monarchy, who Franco had been personally
grooming for leadership,
was made King, and put in charge of Spain.
He immediately proceeded to then begin forming the nation into a
constitutional monarchy, like we have now in the UK,
and returning democracy to Spain.
The Post-Franco era was not the
post-purge prosperity that fascism promises.
It was a return to business as usual,
a preserved status quo.
But, with many of the obstacles
to total corporate control conveniently eliminated.
And Spain is not unique in this.
In Chile, the US-backed
fascist regime headed by Augusto Pinochet
was reformed back into democracy with the
blessing of Pinochet himself, who legalized
opposition parties and put his continued leadership
up to a vote, facilitating the return to liberal democracy,
but, not until he was
done purging the political left, who were threatening
the foothold of global capital in Chile
For all the talking fascists do about
how liberal democracy is obsolete,
fascist governments that thwart violent overthrow
tend to give way to the liberal democracy
that they were meant to replace all by themselves.
And therein lies the key to understanding
what the actual function of fascism is,
if it isn't its own distinct economic model.
The truth is, not only is there no fascist
economy, there is no fascist society at all.
Fascism is an aspect
of capitalism, a protective function
within the capitalist system.
Think of capitalism as a body.
Economic crisis is an illness
that threatens to compromise its immune system.
Communism,
and organized worker movements in general,
are viruses that threaten that body.
So, fascism is capitalism's
antibodies. It's task is to defend it
from viruses and repair the economic crisis,
or at least the unrest caused by that
crisis, by any means necessary.
And when its work is complete, it allows
the body, capitalism, to continue functioning normally.
A- an- and if you're a doctor don't at me if that isn't...
how... how that... that works, I do- I don't
I don't give a shit, that's not the point, 'kay?
Whenever a country comes out the other end of fascism
"healing" its crisis, a substantial
consolidation of power will have taken place.
In Michael Parenti's explanation
of the role fascism plays in
capitalist economies in his series "Real History",
he says this:
"According to figures supplied by the Italian press itself,
the already meager wages--you know, the wages weren't all that good to
begin with--for Italian workers in 1927
were cut in half by 1932.
By 1939, the cost of living had risen
30%, and this constituted an additional
increase in--ah, decrease in real wages.
Taxes on wages were introduced.
Regulations were instated against minimum wages.
The minimum wage law was abolished, in other words.
There was no more increased pay for overtime.
In some regions, sanitary and safety regulations
were dropped, occupational
safety regulations were- were eliminated in factories.
In many areas, child labor was reintroduced.
In other words, all the old abuses and all the
evils that the Italians thought were dead at- that- that were-
belonged to a generation ago had returned
under fascism. In Germany, the same story.
It is unlikely that the wealthy
mouthpieces for fascist ideology do not
understand perfectly well that the economic function of fascism
is to further consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the
already wealthy and powerful.
No doubt, they want in on the looting! And they don't care how many people are
hurt in their pursuit of profit. That's the
tragedy of the normal people who are sucked in by
fascist rhetoric.
If they actually achieve their goals,
not only will they have committed atrocities,
but they'll actually be economically worse-off for it.
Under fascism, nobody wins except the rich,
so don't be too surprised when you see
news outlets owned by billionaires using kid-gloves
when talking about people like Bolsonaro.
But we've already seen it throughout America and Europe recently,
haven't we? Fascism embraces
the most dangerous, inhuman aspects of
capitalism in order to protect it, and then, the
capitalists expect us to be grateful when the threat
to capitalism is purged, and we're
permitted to return to business as usual.
Until that threat returns, of course, which, it will,
because the inequality that capitalism breeds
will always produce a certain amount of
anti-capitalist sentiment, and the system of
infinite growth that capitalist economics demands
will inevitably lead to crashes, as
I'm sure anyone viewing this is all too aware of.
So, if the conditions that create threats to
capitalism are inevitable,
the illness in the body of capitalism in inevitable.
The viruses that threaten it are ineviatble.
Therefore, the antibodies that protect capitalism
are also inevitable.
If you're shocked by the
resurgence of fascism in recent years,
don't be.
Capitalism is still here, and still in crisis.
The two have proven themselves to be a package deal.
And that's one of the many great tragedies of fascism, isn't it?
Say you're a working-class white guy and you
*know* you're being screwed. You know you're
working harder for less than your parents had to.
You know something is wrong
broken, in society.
So wealthy men, who have the resources and the
platform to put their ideas out into the wider public
start giving you somewhere to direct your anger.
They start promising that, if you can just get rid of
*those* people, whether it's
people of a certain ethnicity, or maybe it's this
political group reduced to malicious avatars of
political correctness or holding you back from
your full potential,
attacking your very way of life, even--if you can get rid of
them, these wealthy men promise you
a better world, and they promise you power,
something you were told you would have when you were younger,
but society never delivered.
They tell you they'll make good on that promise.
You're given a whole new lexicon to
analyze the world with.
And it all starts becoming so clear
who's responsible for your pain,
your humiliation, as you work your hands
to the bone just to eke out
a meager shadow of a living, separated
from any sense of community and any sense of control.
Maybe, you get your way.
You kill them.
Deport them. Change them.
Remove them by whatever means.
Means that make you sick to think about,
because you have to do it, don't you?
It's the only way to win back the world of your fathers.
When the dust settles, and the graves are dug,
you're told to go back to work.
The union organizers
who had once won you your already-paltry minimum wage,
are in the ground, now.
So you're being paid half as much.
Your boss? Well, he was a sympathizer,
and hasn't been heard from in months.
Your workplace, like so many others,
were bought up by a much larger corporation
during the period of deregulation that you were told was
necessary to drain the swamp.
Now, you check in when you come and go, you check in
when you go to the bathroom.
You're penalized if you take too long. Every aspect
of your performance is monitored and rated.
The people in power, strangely, were never the ones
who were painted as a threat.
And you've won nothing.
You carry on like that for
20, 30 more years
while the papers all wax poetic about this beautiful
democratic era the nation has entered
after the dark times
that we don't talk about in too much detail, certainly not
in polite company.
One day, you start hearing a familiar line in the news, again.
"We're losing our national identity.
Things were so good when our parents were kids, back before
*they* started arriving on our shores."
The paper that's owned by the parent company that
now owns your workplace
begins backing some of the people spreading these ideas.
But you're too ashamed,
too humiliated, to speak up
when your co-workers start nodding along to these men's
passionate speeches on the news.
You know they won't win back the world of their fathers.
This *is* the world of their fathers.
Your boss buys a new yacht.
*unintelligible shouting*
Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!
Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes.
Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a
badge of honor.
We have a new, more intense,
more powerful white identity
precisely because we are under threat.
And, this!
What's he doing?
is to go even further beyond! *screaming*