FASCISM: What It Is and How To Fight It by Leon Trotsky

I've been perusing through this little pamphlet recently (published online here) and have been finding it more and more relevant.

To quote from parts of it:

The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebeian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a "self-made" man arising from this movement.

and later in the text:

The movement in Germany is analogous mostly to the Italian. It is a mass movement, with its leaders employing a great deal of socialist demagogy. This is necessary for the creation of the mass movement.

and slightly later...

At the moment that the "normal" police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium -- the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat -- all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.

and then this piece a part later on is very poignant...

In its politics as regards Hitler, the German social democracy has not been able to add a single word: all it does is repeat more ponderously whatever the Italian reformists in their own time performed with greater flights of temperament. The latter explained fascism as a postwar psychosis; the German social democracy sees in it a "Versailles" or crisis psychosis. In both instances, the reformists shut their eyes to the organic character of fascism as a mass movement growing out of the collapse of capitalism.
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I have been doing my best not to take Donald Trump too seriously so far, but after watching this video, it's hard not to conclude we are witnessing a rise of Fascism in America.



The original Facebook video of this event (link here) contains a commentary that I'll not try to improve on, so I'll just quote it in full:

Excuse my language, but I am fucking furious. Blood boiling. This is in Louisville at an official Donald Trump rally.

This young peaceful Black woman, reportedly a teenager, is shoved and pushed and repeatedly assaulted by grown white men at a Donald J. Trump rally. Police looked on as this happened. White women, like they did with Little Rock 9 and others, screamed in her face with hate in their eyes. Men cussed her out and yelled right in her face as they pushed her to and fro and repeatedly put their hands on her.

If that wasn't enough, the Yahoonews article confirms that the grown men shoving this black teenager are, in fact, self-proclaimed white supremacists and neo-nazis.
i.e. fascists.
I want to repeat that.  This is not political hyperbole on my part.  These men are part of an organization that self-identifies itself with fascist history.

Let this sink in.

The video, above, shows a group of fascists assaulting a black teenage girl at a campaign rally of the man who is now most likely to become the Republican Presidential Nominee.

Add to this the Black Students Forced To Leave Donald Trump Rally At Valdosta State University for apparently no reason whatsoever other than that Donald Trump didn't want them there.

Add to this Trump refusing to disavow David Duke and quoting Mussolini.

Add to this Trump's call to ban all Muslims, and the assertion that all Mexican immigrants are drug dealers, rapists, and murders.

Add to this Donald Trump openly advocating War Crimes--like killing the families of terrorists.

Add to this that not only is Donald Trump advocating torture, he's campaigning on it: “I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”

I'm not quite ready to go all Sinclair Lewis It Can't Happen Here.  I don't believe Donald Trump could ever win in a general election.  (And even if he did, he would quickly find out that the limits on the power of the presidency would prevent him from doing most of the stuff he's threatening to do.)

But, we are now at the point where, barring some sort of political miracle, Donald Trump will be the Presidential Candidate of the Republican Party.

That means the Fascists have hijacked one of two major political parties in the US.  Regardless of whether or not Trump wins the general election, this is still a pretty big low point in American history.

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In a 2010 post, I  said:

A number of media commentators have been implying (or straight out said) that since white America has elected a black president we now live in a post-racial society, and any discussion of racism in America is now taboo.

However the pendulum of history can always swing back unless we stay vigilant.

For example, when Benjamin Disraeli became the first Jewish prime minister of Great Britain in 1868, it did not mean the end of antisemitism in Europe. Or even the end of antisemitism in Great Britain itself.

For a time in 1919, Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Liebknecht and other Jewish intellectuals were among the most powerful people in Germany. But this did not mark the inevitable decline of antisemitism in Germany.


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We are now witnessing the pendulum swinging back.

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I was wrong in this post.  Donald Trump is a serious problem.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - If Trump Becomes President