Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Fascism

When George W. Bush was president I dropped the F bomb with great frequency. Bush was fascist, Cheney was a fascist, the Iraq war was fascist, the patriot act was fascist,etc. I don't take back what I said but I am rethinking how fascism would look in the 21st century.

Donald Trump is a racist. He is vulgar. He is misogynistic. But he isn't a fascist. We already have fascism in this country. The government goes to war without declaration of congress. Police kill with impunity. The mass incarceration system rolls along with little political opposition. Public education has been privatized. Free trade agreements which make governments the servants of corporations are fascistic and democratic presidents are the ones who get them passed in congress.The ruling classes get what they want from municipal legislatures right up to congress and the white house and the corporate media are in the tank for all of it.

It seems that everyone expects a Hitler like figure to emerge, hence the panic about Trump. You don't need a guy on a balcony giving speeches to fanatical followers in order to say that a system is fascist. Every political issue is turned into a diatribe against what many people are quick to label as fascism when we really need useful analysis of our current condition. Neo-liberalism is fascism and it is causing tremendous suffering around the world. It will exist whether Trump is president of the United States or not.

By the way, the Brexit vote isn't fascist either. The European Union is fascistic. It destroyed a poor country (Greece), tore another in two (Ukraine) and paid off another (Turkey) to stop the flow of refugees who wouldn't exist if the U.S./NATO/EU hadn't destroyed the nations of Libya and Syria.

So don't lose sleep over Donald Trump. For one thing he is toast. He can't raise money because the republican party has turned its back on him. Last week Hillary Clinton had $40 million on hand and Trump had just $1 million. She will win and it isn't going to be close. But even if he did have a better chance of winning he wouldn't bring fascism into government. It is there already. We have a president who invented a right to assassinate us without charge or trial. Now that sounds pretty fascistic to me.