Fascism Is Underway, and We’ve Been Here Before

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

2. The role of capitalism

Corporate power is protected under fascism, but labor rights and power, democracy and the rule of law, equal rights and human rights are suppressed. The wealthy put the fascists into power. There is rampant cronyism, corruption and fraudulent elections.

Today it is Elon Musk and Tesla, a cabinet of billionaires and a techbroligarchy that has signed up for the fascism in the name of profits, deregulation and tax cuts. Hitler had Henry Ford. The Ford Motor Company used slave labor in Germany to build military vehicles for the Third Reich.

Fascists appeal to a frustrated middle class, and capitalize on an economic crisis or a sense of humiliation or victimhood.

Today we see law firms, universities, liberal institutions, media companies and others trying to appease and comply with fascists and maintain their power and profits. Martin Luther King spoke in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” of white moderates who hinder social progress more than the Ku Klux Klan and care more about maintaining order than justice.

3. Imperial boomerang

Aimé Césaire in Discourse on Colonialism (1950) wrote of a “terrific boomerang” to explain the origins of European fascism in first half of the 20th century. Similarly, Hanna Arendt spoke of the “boomerang effect” in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Nazi Germany was the barbarism of colonization of non-Europeans turning inward on Europe. In other words, the West gets a taste of the way they treat the Global South, colonized Black and Brown people.

4. The fascism that always existed in America against marginalized people in America

Fascism always existed for Black, Brown and indigenous people in this country, the internally colonized people, and now it is being visited upon white people.

People claim we are better than this, that this is not who we are. But we have BEEN like this since day one.

Consider the genocide of Native Americans and abduction and placement of children into torture centers known as boarding schools, where thousands died and were raped, beaten, starved, murdered and buried.

Black people were enslaved, then after the Civil War there was a real promise of democracy and voting rights. During Reconstruction, there were 2,000 Black elected officials, a governor, senators, members of Congress, and Black majorities in the Mississippi and South Carolina legislatures. When the federal troops that were protecting Black people were removed from the South, white lynch mobs and the Klan were able to take it all back. They assassinated Black elected officials, lynched, destroyed Black communities and rewrote state constitutions banning Black folks from voting.

There was a mass deportation of 1.8 million Mexican Americans during Great Depression, stemming from anti-immigrant sentiment and the belief they were taking jobs from white people. During World War 2, America interned 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps.

Further, Nazi Germany was inspired by the U.S. when it enacted its Nuremberg laws that segregated Jews from Aryan Germans, using the Jim Crow segregation laws and American genocide of Indigenous people as a guide.

5. Universities in an authoritarian regime

Keep in mind that authoritarian regimes do not have liberal arts colleges. There is a disdain of culture and the arts and intellectuals.

Fascism looks down on education, critical thinking, and any challenges to the leader’s power. You can’t have people thinking for themselves, and can’t have people learning about ethnic studies, queer studies or women’s studies lest they get ideas about challenging the status quo and disrupting the social hierarchy, thinking about revolution, and the like.