Fascism isn’t an isolated event

We must transform society to defeat it

Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

The reality of Trump’s first term came rushing back to me recently. It’s not that I had forgotten, but some of the day-to-day elements had pleasantly slipped away. It wasn’t until the daily and nearly relentless barrage of cabinet nominees, each leaping out of the clown car one after another, hit me that some of the mundane, oppressive aspects of his tenure sunk in once again. This parade of goofs and goons brought back how good Trump is at sucking the air out of the room; his ability to grab the media spotlight, and the corporate media’s eagerness to go along, crowds out other conversation with amazing consistency.

We can, and should, refuse this as much as possible. In her newsletter, Kelly Hayes recently wrote, “Our fixation with Trump’s every horrid public thought was understandable, but it was also dizzying and demoralizing, and reinforced the illusion that an endless slew of condemnations amounted to resistance.” And this latter point is vital. Calling out the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the vulgarity – none of that is resistance. It does not build our capacity to meaningfully push back against fascism, and, as Kelly writes, it tires us out to expend energy on this type of outrage day in and day out. We can, and inevitably will, be outraged, but our charge is to funnel, direct, and mete out that rage in ways that are constructive when need be, and disruptive when that is called for.

And disruption is necessary, but it must be strategic. As Kelly writes, “During the last Trump administration, every unjust policy or action Trump meted out was met with pronouncements that, ‘We should all be in the streets.’” This led to a massive, frequent expenditures of energy with nothing concrete to show for it. That’s not to say these mass mobilizations were a total waste of time, they weren’t. They galvanized people and showed the scope of the opposition to Trump and his edicts. But they were ultimately not disruptive in the ways we need, and didn’t build the organizations we most need to combat fascism over the long haul.

Photo by Maayan Nemanov on Unsplash

There were also targeted disruptions during the first Trump administration, in addition to the massive marches, and they show us one avenue that our work can take over these coming years. Like countless others, I wanted to plug into organizing and action during Trump’s first term, and the work of Never Again Action leapt out at me. The organization describes itself as “a Jewish-led mobilization against the persecution, detention, and deportation of immigrants in the United States.” I’m eternally grateful for the organizers there, and at other groups like Movimiento Cosecha, for leading the way in blocking the arteries of deportation, shutting down roads outside ICE facilities, and cutting off their driveways and vehicles. Those tactics are always valuable against the deportation machine, and as that beast looks set to grow we must shut it down however possible, including with inventive new tactics.

This line of thinking should guide a substantial chunk of our approach these next four years, and beyond. How can we materially disrupt the beast? Mass marches that don’t slow or halt the workings of fascism won’t cut it. And we should go still further. Disruptions to fascism alone won’t cut it either. If we’re pouring all our energy into responding to fascist developments and taking direct action against fascists we are doing something immensely valuable, but we might miss that we also need to build an alternative. The rise of fascism does not emerge in a vacuum. The rise of neoliberalism set the stage for this current far-right surge in too many countries around the world. Countless people feel that the status quo, encapsulating both classical liberalism and conservatism, has led to a point where we’re collectively on the wrong track. Often this manifests most strongly as people being angry at how expensive life has become, but so many of us have a general sense of existential dissatisfaction as well. 

If we don’t factor this systemic dissatisfaction into our response to fascism, which arises in large part out of the ruling class seeing the opportunity to exploit these sentiments, we won’t have a movement comprehensive enough or powerful enough to defeat the right over the long haul. To begin, we must looks at how capitalism has led us here. As Maxine Williams said:

“The growth of fascism in the 1920s and 30s was directly related to the crisis faced by big business. It could solve that crisis only at the expense of the working class: by forcing down wages, by forcing women out of the job market and into the home, by attacking oppressed sections [of the population], and by using state funds to rescue business. To inflict such suffering on the population required that the working class and its organizations be defeated. Both Mussolini and Hitler undertook this task with the back of big business, which did very well out of fascism.”

Now, not everything is identical today, but that part of the story Williams conveys to us should look distressingly familiar. And yet, it also points us in the direction of a more robust and sustained vision for beating fascism. We know that Trump, Musk, and the rest of their sinister clown car plan to go after public workers, and therefore public unions. We know that Musk, Bezos, and the executives at Starbucks and other corporations are going after unions even more broadly. The ruling class and the fascist movement, which are deeply intertwined, are, in other words, ‘going after the working class and its organizations.’

In seeing how our organizations threaten them, we see how we need to build the capacity to threaten them further. This doesn’t mean just letting the opposition dictate the terrain — this isn’t just about being responsive to them and playing defense. In building the mass organizations and the counter-institutions that threaten fascism, we are also building the capacity to sustain ourselves, to replace capitalism with a system that values life, to care for one another. It’s not enough to have organizations that are just “anti-Trump,” they must be pro-liberation, pro-worker, anti-racist organizations that see their work as moving us past capitalism and white supremacy over the long haul, their work continuing until we’re free and long past the end of the MAGA period. Through this long-term work we can, ultimately, build a better world where fascism is no longer appealing because scapegoating seems foolish when juxtaposed with the power, love, and appeal of real solidarity. Fascism loses its luster when people wake up and realize that their bosses are telling them to hate the powerless because the ruling class doesn’t want us noticing the money pilfered from our pockets.

And we have to build that solidarity, we have to foster it. We can tell people about it until our voices go hoarse, but demonstrating the power of solidarity by winning a strike will always be more persuasive. The demonstration of solidarity that is a neighbor with a mutual aid group bringing groceries to your door will always be more powerful. Showing people that together we can stop an eviction will always be more potent than a speech. Solidarity is a verb, and it takes organization to make it a reality. To fight fascism we need to build; we need to build our unions, our community organizations, our mutual aid networks. 

Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

This is a long-term struggle, and we must view the indefinite future as our horizon. That means that while we disrupt the fascist machinery we must simultaneously conceive of a future without fascism. The far-right wants us to think of our future as the past, they want us to think the glory days are behind us and that we’re collectively headed back there. But, as much as this appeals to this base, it also gives the left an opportunity. The right has, in some capacity, ceded us tomorrow. They’ve given us the chance to outline a future free of exploitation and full of human flourishing, a future filled with creativity and actual innovation in terms of how we structure this world, instead of a future that mimics the oppressive days behind us.  

This is not merely thinking big for the sake of thinking big, it’s thinking on a grand and inspiring scale for the sake of winning the war and not just an occasional battle. To win over the long haul we both need inspiration and construction — we need an attractive vision that brings folks in and we need concrete ways to make that vision a reality. You can both talk to your coworkers about worker ownership or a four-day workweek and talk to them about forming a union. This is how the left wins, and why the left is the only site for comprehensive resistance and victory against fascism.

A bland centrism that insists “Never Trump” again and again with little else to offer has proven itself incapable of meeting this moment. It’s lost because it has little to offer and nothing to build. It places propriety above power and sees one man without seeing the systems that created and enable him. We who want to overcome fascism for good must offer a more compelling, motivating, inspiring alternative – a vision of a world where we are not chained to work and not oppressed by race or gender or sexuality or any system of exploitation. And to reach that vision, that future where we’re instead free to explore, flourish, and experience the real liberation that comes from a life not bound to the endless production of profit, we must build. Those of us who want to live out that vision must recruit others into it, and hand them the tools to join us in this work. So let’s get to it.

If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to the sort of building power and communiy that I’ve described in this piece, I hope the resources at the bottom of this previous article are helpful: https://www.jphilll.com/p/choose-your-words