On Fascism
For many, this past week has been an eye-opening one. Protests on Saturday against the removal of Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, led by white nationalists and Neo-Nazi groups, left three dead and dozens injured.
On Monday, Vice published a shocking, almost terrifying, look into the minds and actions of white supremacists in Charlottesville. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump, in a press conference that was supposed to announced his proposed infrastructure bill, blamed both sides of the protest — falsely equivocating white nationalists and Neo-Nazis with… people who think racism, hate and fascism is bad? The only person who seemed delighted at the president's reaction was former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. By Friday, both sides of the aisle were trying to get Trump to walk back his statements supporting white nationalism.
By now you've likely seen dozens and dozens of tweets, stories, Facebook status updates, cable news segments all trying to make sense of the past 7 days. A fair amount have mentioned an ideology that hasn't been brought up this urgently since the '30s: Fascism. It's not exactly a stretch. President Trump defended the actions of a group of white nationalists. You know who else was a leader of a large nation and also defended the actions of white nationalists?
To most, fascism is something relegated to the history books and the dark corners of the internet. But the thing is, it's been a creeping threat since the end of WWII. And the way it's been fought is unlike any other ideological struggle we've come to know in the Marketplace of Ideas.
The aim here is to not rehash what you've already learned about Hitler and Nazism, but rather grant a deeper understanding how it functions as an ideology, how it spread and manifested over the years and how a dedicated few have managed to keep it at bay over the years.
On Fascism
A solid starting point for all of this is to read Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. Though arguably it starts out slow, with Eco recounting his youth as a young fascist under Mussolini, he eventually provides perhaps the most coherent and distilled summation of how Fascism works. Because fascism, Eco argues, is hard to define. Mussolini's fascism is different from Hitler's fascism which differs from Franco Fascism.
In short, they all borrow competing ideologies, iconography and mythology in order to project and legitimize their power. In order to cut through the rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco, Eco presents Ur-Fascism, a through-line between all forms:
But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
Over the course of 13 points, Eco lays out the base principals of fascism. You should really read them all; just about every trait described can be seen in our current political climate. But in short: Fascism borrows from many ideologies and belief systems in order to appear older than it actually is; it uses this traditionalist stance to shun new ideas and critics; it capitalizes on fear in order cement groupthink and create enemies; and it reasserts itself by celebrating a fabricated will of the people rather than celebrating the rights of the individual.
How might this take shape in America? Well you'll be glad — or more accurately shocked — to learn that experts were predicting fascism might take root in The Land Of The Free as early as 1944. In an op-ed penned for the New York Times, Henry A. Wallace, FDR's vice president, laid out how the American Experiment might be infected with a strain of fascism. Like Eco's Ur-Fascism, Wallace's The Danger of American Fascism still holds up to a reading here in 2017 — in fact, it almost reads as prophecy:
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.
Sound familiar?
Earlier this year in the New York Times the grandson of Henry A. Wallace, Henry Scott Wallace drew direct parallels between his grandfather's words and Trump's politics.
Autocrats "give currency to snide suspicions without foundation in fact." That sounds like birtherism. There are other examples. "Largest" inaugural crowd ever. "I won the popular vote" and "Obama had my 'wires tapped.' " Climate change is "nonexistent" and "mythical." "The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax" and the F.B.I.'s investigation into it — now jeopardized by the firing of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, this week — was a"taxpayer funded charade."
One last thing to consider is this analysis of "Triumph of the Will" by YouTuber Folding Ideas. Culturally, "Triumph of the Will" is seen as a seminal work in filmmaking; a work some contrarians bring up in order to make the argument of "Say what you want about the Nazis, but they produced ' 'Triumph of the Will'," which, to oversimplify the point of this video, is a bad argument.
In his criticism, host Dan Olson argues that "Triumph of the Will" is, at its core, a work of propaganda. That it's still used to inform our understanding and image of Nazism is, to put it lightly, troubling. "Our idea of the Nazis is deeply informed by a propaganda film produced by the Nazis for the explicit purpose of creating that mental construct," says Olson. "This right here, is exactly the image they wanted you to think of when you thought of them."
Further Reading
How modern fascism runs on idiots
Academics respond to the question "Is Donald Trump a fascist?"
How modern fascism ties to the fascism of the 1930
On Anti-Fascism
In the wake of Charlottesville, another term has made its way into the common lexicon: Anti-fascism, or more commonly, Antifa. Part of the counter-protest in Charlottesville, their name should make their goals pretty self-evident: They oppose fascism.
Though partly through the relative underground nature of the Antifa movement, and partly through the President's false equivalence between white nationalists and those who oppose them — "You had a group on one side that was bad and a group on the other that was also very violent… There's blame on both sides," said Trump is his bonkers-as-heck press conference on Tuesday — there's this misconception that Antifa are this left-leaning terrorist organization.
The truth is, Antifa isn't an unified organization like Neo-Nazis or white nationalists. They don't have an agenda insofar as their agenda is to just oppose fascism. Here, Mark Bray lays out the aims of Antifa for the Washington Post:
There are antifa groups around the world, but antifa is not itself an interconnected organization, any more than an ideology like socialism or a tactic like the picket line is a specific group. Antifa are autonomous anti-racist groups that monitor and track the activities of local neo-Nazis. They expose them to their neighbors and employers, they conduct public education campaigns, they support migrants and refugees and they pressure venues to cancel white power events.
The vast majority of anti-fascist organizing is nonviolent. But their willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly distinguishes them from liberal anti-racists.
The reason why you're suddenly hearing about them now is, well, the fascists came out to play in Charlottesville. Normally, fascist groups sit under the radar, either speaking in coded language and dogwhistle racism. This Political Research Associates essay lays out the deep and complex struggle of Antifa against nascent fascist outcroppings here in the US:
Today, White separatists don't always come in such easily identifiable forms, either in their dress or politics. A part of the White separatist and related Far Right movement has taken some unusual turns. Some fascists seek alliances with ultranationalist people of color—a few of whom, in turn, consider themselves fascists. New types of groups embrace White separatism under a larger banner of decentralization. For many decades, the Far Right has disguised or rebranded its politics by establishing front groups, deploying code words, or using other attempts to fly under the radar.3 As the years pass by, some of these projects have taken on lives of their own as these forms have been adopted by those with different agendas. Simultaneously, there is a revival of fascist influence within countercultural music scenes. And intertwined with these changes is a renewed attempt on the part of some White separatists to participate in, or cross-recruit from, progressive circles.
The crucial difference between antifa and, say, the general counter-protest of fascism, racism and white nationalism is that antifa firmly believes these ideologies cannot be reasoned with. They aren't afraid to resort to violence if necessary. You might recognize this ideological debate — whether physical violence is a necessary tool against fascism — when internet-famous white supremacist Richard Spencer got decked at Trump's inauguration. Is it okay to punch a literal Nazi? Does it make you no better than them if you do? Here's how the New York Times described the antifa viewpoint:
The closest thing antifa may have to a guiding principle is that ideologies it identifies as fascistic or based on a belief in genetic inferiority cannot be reasoned with and must be physically resisted. Its adherents express disdain for mainstream liberal politics, seeing it as inadequately muscular, and tend to fight the right through what they call "direct actions" rather than relying on government authorities.
This leads us to our next, and final subject — breaking the law to fight fascism.
Further Reading
Interview with Mic Crenshaw, Antifa activist and co-founder of the Anti-Racist Action Network
The Southern Poverty Law Center's history of fascist and anitfa conflict
How fascism and antifa spread in punk and hardcore scenes
On Breaking The Law To Fight Fascism
One of the very first things one learns in ethics class is that what's ethical and what's legal don't always overlap. So when it comes to opposing groups that threaten violence, just what is the right way? Do you let a group "peacefully" advocate genocide? Do you stand next to them and shout that genocide is bad, actually, and hope that others see reason? Or do you try and exclude and silence their point of view?
The conflict here is between two left-leaning goals. Do you advocate for civil liberties, or social justice? When it comes to protesting fascists, Natasha Lennard writes in The Nation, there's a fine line to balance:
This is more than a question of effectiveness, however. If we reduce the question of whether to give neo-Nazis a platform to the question of whether they should have a right to a platform, we invoke the state as giver or denier of this right. And I agree with Greenwald et al. here that this is a slippery slope to avoid, especially under Trump.
In other words, it's the antifa belief that fascism cannot be debated, and it cannot be left up to the state to police fascism — as the political mechanism used to silence fascists would no-sooner be used against any other political group. The only recourse is to confront it directly.
We're seeing a similar argument unfold as a wave of Confederate monuments are torn down in response to decades of protest punctuated by Charlottesville, legally or otherwise. Should citizens wait for the government to legally remove them, or just do it themselves? In the Outline, Paul Blest argues that it's a good thing that citizens are taking matters into their own hands:
Monuments to the Confederacy are being torn down precisely because protesters rightly felt that they don't — or shouldn't, anyway — represent America anymore. The removal of monuments doesn't just eliminate a physical reminder of what we have been in the past; it reduces the status of Confederate officers from stoic heroes of the Lost Cause to faceless members and pawns of the slave-owning class, which is what they deserve to be.
Following that same logic, protestors shouldn't feel like they have to "debate" Nazis. Doing so only legitimizes their rhetoric. Like citizens tearing down a statue, punching Richard Spencer in the face doesn't impinge on his First Amendment rights, but it does pull into stark relief how violent his beliefs are.
One last final wrinkle to all of this is the role of the internet. Watching Spencer get punched again and again and again might elicit a sense of catharsis, but some warn that it might have the opposite effect. As Whitney Phillips argues for Motherboard, fascists must be confronted, but making a public show out of it only plays into their hands.
Let's be humans for a moment. It is undeniably satisfying to think that the Charlottesville marchers will have to face the consequences of their choices. That they will face judgment and condemnation. It is infuriating to think that they wouldn't, and irresponsible to even propose letting them off the hook.
At the same time, amplification of these kinds of images and videos is good for the fascist cause. It raises their cultural visibility, provides a warped confirmation of their cry-bully martyrdom (this is the entire basis of the "on many sides" argument), and helps cohere an even deeper sense of the collective fascist us.
Further Reading
