Iconoclast Media

Click on image to view PDF. Feel free to print and distribute.

Fascism is a political regime, usually totalitarian, ideologically based on centralized government, government control of business, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights. Also by vague analogy, any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting and violence against largely unarmed populations.

Fascism combines a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology. Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement. No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition. Following World War II, the word fascist has become a slur throughout the political spectrum. Some argue that the term fascist has become hopelessly vague over the years and that it is now little more than a pejorative epithet.

Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, organizations, governments and individuals. Most major resistance movements during World War II were anti-fascist. Militant anti-fascists advocate the use of violence against fascists. They are usually supporters of class struggle, and view fascism as an anti-working class political system.

Contemporary antifascism refers primarily to activist groups that seek to dismantle and drive-out “hate groups” that espouse racist and nationalist ideology. Groups like anti-racist action and anti-fascist action call for the exacerbation of divisions among fascists by physically confronting them wherever they stage demonstrations, marches, distribute literature, or hold meetings. Such antifascism embraces the position of “no platform for fascists”, which amounts to a zero-tolerance policy for the presence of groups such as the Aryan Nations, Volksfront, Canadian Heritage Alliance and the Northern Alliance. This willingness to confront fascism also extends to include confrontations with political parties in Germany, in Britain, and in Canada.

The term antifa refers to individuals and groups that are dedicated to fighting fascism, and some anti-fascist groups include the word antifa in their name. During the 1920s to 1940s, the Soviet Union sponsored various anti-fascist groups, usually using the name antifa.

Large-scale anti-fascist movements were first seen during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Amongst others, the International Brigade and the Spanish anarchist militias formed a broad popular anti-fascist movement. The Republican army, the International Brigades, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and anarchist militias such as the Iron Column fought the rise of Francisco Franco with military force. The Friends of Durruti were a particularly militant group, associated with the Federación Anarquista Iberica (FAI). Thousands of people from many countries went to Spain in support of the anti-fascist cause, joining International Brigade units such as the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. Notable anti-fascists who worked internationally against Franco included: George Orwell (who fought in the POUM militia and wrote Homage to Catalonia about this experience), Ernest Hemingway (a supporter of the International Brigades who wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls about this experience), radical journalist Martha Gellhorn and Dr Norman Bethune (undoubtedly the most famous Canadian there, created and led a blood transfusion service).

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee, a precursor to the House Un-American Activities Committee, was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933.

Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government’s treatment of them. Prescott Bush’s group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee’s records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street’s opposition to the New Deal.

General Smedley Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti-interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket. His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

Many of the plotters exposed by Butler, had been boosting their fortunes by investing in the fascist experiments of Mussolini and Hitler. Some of them even amassed great profits by arming the Nazis, both before and during WWII. Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush’s businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America.

Although all of the top U.S. fascists behind this plot are now dead, their corporations carry on. These companies, with their roots firmly planted in the fascist milieu of the 1930s, are now among the world’s wealthiest corporations. They continue to exert enormous influence over U.S. government policies, and – by extension – over global matters of war, peace and human rights.

Although those within the highest echelons of U.S. corporate power were willing to instigate a coup to take control of the White House, their plot against FDR was called off. As it turned out, an overt fascist coup was not actually necessary to attain their goals. The fascists behind the plot did eventually succeed in regaining their long-standing influence over the White House and American politics.

By George Orwell (1944)

Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’

One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.

It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini’s Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years.

Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:

Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.

Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists. This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.

Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a ‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and Trotskyists.

Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky’s own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P

Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;

War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.

Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People’s Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’. Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both denounced as Fascist phenomena.

Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.

* * *

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

We were totally unprepared. ASO (Anarchists of Southern Ontario) was gaining ground by the time April 2011 came around. We had managed to reach approximately six thousand members and we were actively involved in working class struggles. ASO was also federated with anarchist organizations in the northeastern U.S., Quebec and the Pacific Northwest. We had built strong connections with many unions, including the steelworkers union (which had several subsidiary organizations), student associations in several universities, and had made much progress in the newly founded OFSW (Ontario Food Service Workers) in which anarchist politics had a very strong influence. The student associations that embraced anarchist politics were situated at the University of Windsor, the University of Toronto, Fanshawe College, University of Waterloo, and Wilfred Laurier, whereas the University of Western Ontario was inconsistent and had strong liberal tendencies. Our network had allowed us to organize large demonstrations regularly against the constant layoffs and union busting techniques sanctioned by the government. We had managed to provide a consistent anarchist perspective through independent media, Ontario wide anarchist publications and university papers sympathetic to the cause. We were constantly lambasted in the private media, as well as the national television station (CBC). This was no surprise, for the interests that backed those stations were both corporate and statist.

Although Stephen Harper was no longer in office, there was hardly a change with the Liberal Michael Ignatieff. The neo-liberal economic policies that had destroyed workers rights continued unchecked. Until April 2011 our organizations had not been persecuted other than the blatant lies coming from the corporate and state media until a demonstration in Windsor of approximately fifty thousand workers, students, and the unemployed was confronted violently by the pigs. Teargas, rubber bullets, and nightsticks were used liberally and four students from radical organizations were killed (as well as several hundred injured) in fights with the police. We immediately condemned the violent tactics used by the pigs and held Ontario-wide demonstrations in solidarity with the protest in Windsor which were supported by all the student organizations (including that of the UWO) as well as the steelworkers union and OFSW. Then it happened.

The pigs came out full force, confronting the protesters in every city violently while using plain clothed undercover agents to sneak into protest lines to arrest influential speakers and key figures in the ASO and student organizations. There was video footage of the arrests in London and Toronto, where the plain clothed agents had brutally beat those detained - while the media had dismissed the victims as political deviants and troublemakers.

A law was quickly passed in Parliament to legalize the repression of public dissent, which was totally unprecedented in Canada. Bill C-27 (Public safety and economic growth package) was a Trojan horse for regressive civil rights policies. It highlighted economic benefits for those affected by the longstanding economic crisis while totally annihilating free speech and the right of civil disobedience. The day after it was passed, since the law was regressive, anyone proven to be involved in organizing protests could be arrested for compromising public safety. The bill also provided the legal framework in Parliament to sanction the illegal military policing elements of the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership). We found out shortly after that there had been a similar crackdown on our American counterparts. Due to the continuity of government policies already passed by Congress, there was no need for legislative action on behalf of the state; the U.S. government simply revealed its claws.

There were rumours that private contractors from the U.S. had been deployed at an old base just north of Barrie. We would learn that these were the solution to the growing discomfort in the Canadian armed forces regarding their possible deployment in Ontario cities. Most soldiers in the CF (Canadian Forces) had strong sympathies to the growing working class discontent, due to the fact that their friends and families were involved in the struggle. There had already been problems with the redeployment in Afghanistan, which was not supposed to occur but the Canadian government had accepted after intense pressure from NATO. The soldiers began to desert en masse due to the efforts of our organizations to educate and reach out to the soldiers regarding their role in profiting U.S. oil interests through their exploitation of the Afghans. The CF leadership did not have the propaganda resources to indoctrinate their soldiers to the domestic and international interests of the Canadian and American bourgeoisie, especially with the strong independent media presence. Another factor was that the CF officer class was merit based and just like the regular soldiers had connections to the working class through friends and family.

There were several results of the increased repression and presence of foreign mercenaries. Our organization’s principle form of activism at the time was mass demonstrations, which were no longer legal and would be confronted brutally by the pigs. That meant that many of us would have to go underground to continue. Officially the ASO was reduced to a paper organization; we could publish criticisms of the actions of the state and the corporations, but if we were to provide militant solutions in our literature we would be shut down. It was decided at our last delegates council that the ASO would continue to exist only for propaganda purposes and that its finances would be transferred to small and trusted committees to immediately purchase weapons and ammunition from our counterparts in the northeastern United States.

Many voiced disapproval of this decision. Ultimately they were convinced of the necessity of this decision by citing previous revolutions and the crippling dependence anarchist militants had historically placed on other organizations for weapons and ammunition. It was understood that this crackdown was just the beginning and that we would eventually need to defend ourselves against the mercenaries. It was decided that the weapons would be distributed to loyal militants throughout the ASO where they would be held until they were needed. Because the organization had the foresight to act as quickly as it did, the weapons purchase surprisingly went off without problems. Over the period of three weeks, one thousand M4 assault rifles, one hundred and fifty M60 machine guns and five hundred thousand rounds of ammunition were smuggled through Minnesota to northern Ontario where teams then disseminated them by trucks to rural residences of sixty-three ASO militants.

On Labour Day (September 2011), three million people publicly protested bill C-27. The protest erupted quickly into massive confrontations with the pigs in Windsor, London, Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton, and Toronto. The police were overrun by protesters brandishing baseball bats, hockey sticks, and whatever makeshift riot gear they could get their hands on. Large groups of riot police were detained and disarmed by protesters. The mercenaries and the U.S. Marines were called in to take control of the situation. They opened fire on crowds and renditioned key figures to bases nobody knew existed. They killed over three hundred of us that day. The time was beginning to feel right for retaliation.

The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis, but by Indian Affairs Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott in April of 1910 when he referred to how he envisioned the “Indian Problem” in Canada being resolved. Scott was describing planned murder when he came up with the expression, since he first used it in response to a concern raised by a west coast Indian Agent about the high level of deaths in the coastal residential schools. On April 12, 1910, Scott wrote:

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.”
(Department of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG 10 series).

In 1920, under Scott’s direction, it became mandatory for all native children between the ages of seven and fifteen to attend one of Canada’s Residential Schools. In the 1930’s he brought over German doctors to do medical experiments on our children. According to the study the majority of the lives of these children were extinguished. School children are taught his poetry (‘the Battle of Lundy’s Lane’) with no mention of his role as the butcher of the country’s First Nations people.

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” -Duncan Campbell Scott

Between 1920 and 1969, government-sponsored United Catholic Church boarding schools converted ‘savage’ Indian and Eskimo children to Christianity. 10 months of the year the native children were taken away from their families and culture. They were given numbers to identify themselves when they arrived at the schools, severely punished if caught speaking their own indigenous language and never allowed to laugh, to read, to hug or talk of their native heritage, deeply scarring them for life. Now revealed,pedophilia rings, torture, sterilization and experiments at the hands of the nuns and priests were commonplace.

Designed for genocide, many schools had a 50% death rate.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and Corporate power.” -Benito Mussolini

“The historical function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.” - Leon Trotsky

“Fascism was the response of the capitalist world to the challenge of socialism” - Anton Pannekoek

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country” - HERMANN GOERING

“Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born” - Aneurin Bevan

“Much as I loathe Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Franco, I would not support a war against them and for the democracies which, in the last analysis, are only Fascist in disguise.” - EMMA GOLDMAN

“Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place” - IGNAZIO SILONE

“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” - SINCLAIR LEWIS

“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.” - JOESPH GOEBBELS

“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.” - JEAN PAUL SARTRE

“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.” - NOAM CHOMSKY

By Heatscore

It is often pointed out that the F-word is too often employed by the jaded and cynical youth of today. A generation of conditioning by the often lewd and outrageous mediocrity of mainstream television programming, obscene cable news broadcasts, violently corporatized gangster rap and a seemingly constant escalation of ‘shock humour’ has instilled us with a subconscious need to use offensive language in order to drive home the severity of our verbal barbs. Hence, for many of us, the F-bomb has become a cornerstone of our collective vocabulary. Its multiple definitions and widespread application have made it an almost reflexive retort to perceived injustice or unruly authority figures.

No, we’re not talking about the word fuck here… but rather the other F-word so often hurled at pigs and other overbearing public servants; we’re talking about the word fascist.

Activists in North America tend to throw the term around very casually, especially as it relates to the actions and institutions of the United States government. During the Bush administration’s tenure in office, posters and T-shirts bearing Dubya’s smirking visage next to an image of Hitler’s famous scowl became a left-wing cliché. Numerous banners and bumper stickers, more direct in their message, simply featured the tagline “Bush is a Nazi.” The launching of the “War on Terror” and the accompanying attack on civil liberties was viewed by many progressive commentators as evidence that the US was entering a state of overt fascism. The NSA wiretapping scandal and the deprivations of Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo were held up as practices more befitting a modern Orwellian police state than a liberal democracy.

Not to be outdone, from its Bush-era use of the phrase Islamofascist to its current attacks on the Obama administration, the American right has been eager to demonstrate that left-wingers do not possess a monopoly on the term. Under the inane tutelage of froth-mouthed Fox News pundits, stunned Americans have been crashing town hall meetings for months now, voicing with unwavering conviction the confused belief that Obama is both a modern reincarnation of Adolph Hitler and the simultaneous harbinger of American Bolshevism.

As the nonsensical rants of the right-wing populist movement in America are largely coordinated and fueled by Republican mouthpieces and pro-corporate interest groups, we will first focus on the arguments posed by the left before returning to provide some context to the paranoid outbursts getting so much play in the news these days.

Fascism does indeed have roots in America, dating back at least to the 1930’s [1], when members of the country’s corporate elite, angered by FDR’s “New Deal” and impressed by fascism’s crude effectiveness in dealing with the socialist tendencies of the European working class, plotted a coup d’état to overthrow the American constitutional republic and replace it with a fascist dictatorship. The plot was exposed by Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the very man selected by the oligarchs to assume the requisite role of fascist strongman. If not for Butler’s personal loyalty to the American republic, the US could very well have entered World War II on the side of the Axis powers, thus radically altering the history books and potentially contributing to a fascist routing of European (and Canadian) democracy.

Instead of this gloomy scenario playing out, the United States famously entered the war on the side of the Allies to join the fight against German and Italian fascism. Downplaying the much greater sacrifices and advances made by the Red Army in Eastern Europe – the Soviet war dead topped 20 million, and the losses they inflicted on the German army dwarfed those of any of the other Allied powers - the United States constructed a narrative in which their intervention was central in the victory of “freedom” over the “tyranny of fascism.” What was conveniently ignored in this quaint summary was the support American companies had provided the Nazis up until it became illegal to do so, in 1941.

Also glossed over by American revisionists are some of the actions their government took during the period between when the war ended and the Cold War really took off. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, President Truman signed off on Project Paperclip, which called for the importation of top Nazi scientists into the United States – arguing that such action was necessary to ensure that said individuals didn’t fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. The plan was championed by one Allen Dulles, an ardent Nazi-sympathizer up until America’s entry into the war and one of the chief architects of the Central Intelligence Agency. As the CIA’s first civilian director, in 1953 Dulles ordered the creation of a top secret program dubbed MK-Ultra, set up to experiment with different methods of mind control. The program employed information gleaned from Nazi scientists specifically trained in torture and brainwashing tactics. Many of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the US in the current “War on Terror” were born out of this research [2].

But while it would not be a stretch to say that America has been inspired and influenced by fascists, it is worth pointing out that such flirtations have always been carried out behind closed doors and away from the public’s eye. The United States, despite its turbulent history of race relations, domestic repression and hyper-aggressive foreign policy, has continued to function as a representational democracy, for better or for worse. So what then, would American fascism look like? And how do we know that they’re not there yet?

In his seminal work on the subject, entitled The Five Stages of Fascism (1998), historian Robert Paxton outlined seven “mobilizing passions” which, when taken together, provide the conditions under which a fascist movement is born.

1) The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.

2) The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group’s enemies, internal as well as external.

3) Dread of the group’s decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism.

4) Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.

5) An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.

6) Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.

7) The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success in a Darwinian struggle.

Paxton also stressed that fascist organizations grow in a crucible of a perceived crisis – one that is blamed on the failings of liberal democracy. Beginning as a homegrown movement that taps into pervasive feelings of moral decline and victimhood, fascism eventually sweeps aside democratic institutions under the banner of restoring traditional values.

We can certainly use this helpful description of fascism to see where its potential is strongest in the United States – namely, in the rank and file of the country’s Christian right. In a recent article published by The Campaign for America’s Future, Sara Robinson applied Paxton’s analysis of fascism’s five stages to the homegrown proto-fascist movement sweeping town hall meetings at the behest of Fox News pundits and conservative organizations like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Robinson convincingly argues that this phenomenon represents the onset of the third stage of fascist development – during which we see the emergence of “a deliberate, committed institutional partnership” between the country’s conservative elites and “its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde.” This stage is perhaps the most important of all five, as it represents the last chance to stop fascism from taking hold. The fourth stage occurs when the fascists actually seize power – and by then it’s too late.

In next month’s issue, we will examine the roots of the fascist movement currently gaining steam in the US - and what can be done to stop it.

[1]: The KKK predated the outbreak of European fascism, but fit Paxton’s criteria - which would trace the roots of fascism in America back to the 1860s.

[2]: For more information on MK-Ultra as it relates to the “War on Terror”, read The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein or view The Most Dangerous Game online at: www.gnn.tv/videos/3/The_Most_Dangerous_Game

By Darius Mirshahi

Welcome to the rest of your life. Some of you just graduated from high school and have immediately launched yourselves into the poverty of student life. Others are returning to get new training, to work new jobs, to pay old debts, from previous schooling. Welcome to the trap.

We are led to believe that post-secondary education is our way out of impoverished existence, when in reality we are digging ourselves into deeper holes, and for what? So that we can be more efficient workers for our rulers? To become more dependable cogs in their machine?

So let’s get this straight, they want us to borrow money from them, so that we can pay them to be brainwashed and molded into obedient workers by their institutions, so that we can work for their corporations, so that we can pay them back (with interest of course). That’s right, we’re getting fucked, except it’s more like rape, because we never consented to any of this. We had no say in the world we would be born into. We never got to choose between a free joyful existence, and a life-sentence of servitude. The total domination of our lives by those who control capital was imposed on us before we were born.

We are not here to chart our own paths, develop our own skills, expand our minds, or ‘find ourselves’, we are here to work, because if we do not work here, they’ll find ways to put us to work in even more demeaning and unsatisfying positions elsewhere. Coercion is an apt way of putting it. “Go to college or you’ll end up working at McVomit your whole life”.

So yes, we are here to work, because for the moment it is a less depressing existence than the other options our rulers have made available to us. We are here to work in some twisted reverse paid training scheme that drains us of everything we’ve got.

We trade them all our money, all our time, all our mental and physical energy, the best years of our life, for some vague promise of a less miserable future where they might also be willing to lend us cars and houses to keep us passive, subservient, and most importantly indebted to them.

Debt is their most potent form of social control. This is why they’re constantly pushing you to get credit cards, student loans, car leases, and lines of credit. Once your in debt, it’s hard to get out, and you’ve got to work harder and harder just to pay the interest. The more we play by their rules the more entrenched their domination over us becomes. Freedom isn’t in the cards. Knowing this, and to a certain extent accepting it, we steal small portions of our lives back. We skip classes to learn through our own experiences in those stolen moments.

We call in sick to our part-time jobs in order to go to parties. We drink on the street and throw bottles at cops who raid our parties, even burn couches in the street to block traffic (see Fleming Dr. last year). We commit half-revolutions.

We never go far enough. We skip classes instead of dropping out of their institutions and exploiting them in return. We call in sick instead of organizing with our co-workers and taking over our workplaces from our bosses. We burn couches instead of banks and malls.

We break the law, but only on the surface, so as not to challenge the totality of our dominated existences. Half-revolutions allow this domination to stay in place and still dictate our actions as either obedient or reactionary, and are thus not considered a real threat.

But since we’re half-way there let’s step it up. We can start by asserting our desires, dreams and aspirations publicly and demand that the world find a place for them. Let’s steal back our lives openly and with pride.

Instead of fighting for stolen moments of freedom in secret, let’s shamelessly fight for total liberation from their traps and self-determination for our future.

Your future is in their hands, so lets start breaking their fingers.

By Wayne Price [Writing for Anarkismo.net]

“Fascism” is typically used as a cuss-word for disliked policies, such as increased authoritarianism in government. But, based on the experience of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, it means something specific. The Republican Party is not fascist, not even its “conservative“ (reactionary) ideologues. Its members still rely on bourgeois democracy and the system of elections (however corrupted) and its two-party system. Fascism begins as a mass movement which aims to overthrow bourgeois democracy and end, for good, elections and multiple parties. Its members often think of themselves as revolutionaries. It uses populist, even anti-capitalist, rhetoric. If the crisis goes on long enough, the capitalist class may decide to hire the fascists and to try to put them in power. A many-membered fascist movement is capable of being far more repressive than is a military coup or police state. Once in power, the fascists do destroy bourgeois democracy, cancel elections, outlaw all parties besides their own (that would include the Democrats and Republicans), carry out racist policies (exterminating some minorities, such as Jews, and enslaving others such as African-Americans), outlaw labor unions, arresting and murdering their leaders and even members, prepare for bigger wars, and generally establish a capitalist totalitarian state. They would not overthrow the capitalist class but would demand a cut of the profits. This is the history of European fascism in the thirties.

At present, the traditional fascists, such as the U.S. Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, have almost no influence, although they are around. My wife did some Pennsylvania phone calling for Obama (we share certain values but she is not an anarchist). Almost all those she called said they were voting for Obama. But one woman stated bluntly, “I’m KKK and I ain’t voting for no n—–.” So they are out there.

Instead, it is worth looking at elements of fascism which exist on the right . These are not yet fascism but they could coalesce into a genuine American fascist movement under the conditions of continuing recession. Many thousands of people believe the charges made by Republican politicians (who know better) that Obama and his administration is anti-American, secretly Muslim, socialist, Marxist, and/or pro-terrorist. Since the election, there has been an upsurge in white men buying guns due to their fear that Obama intends to set up a Marxist dictatorship, with a special armed force loyal only to him, and to take away people’s guns.

It is more-or-less publically unacceptable to express overt racism, directed at traditional targets such as African-Americans or Jews. But it has been okay to express fears and hatred toward immigrants, particularly Latinos and Arabs and Muslims. This is often expressed in populist terms, as by Lou Dobbs, denouncing big business for bringing in Latinos to undermine the wages of U.S. workers (which has a tiny grain of truth–the capitalists are for “immigration reform” for the sake of their profits, not for the good of the immigrants). All kinds of sexual hysteria is worked up over homosexuals who want to get married or to adopt children and over women who want to control their reproduction (millions of “babies” are supposedly murdered by abortions). Since it is unacceptable to attack Jews, there are ravings against “secular humanists,” who have supposedly been waging a “war on Christmas.” Some, such as Terry Randall of the anti-choice Operation Rescue, have openly advocated a theocratic state, and others, such as Pat Robinson, have come very close to it.

If these fears were combined, they could be a fascist movement (the Nazis and the KKKers would join). It would advocate the overthrow of capitalist democracy, if not (really) of capitalism itself, in favor of a Christian (their interpretation), anti-immigrant, anti-choice, anti-Gay, war-waging, dictatorship.