I looked it up, found my local chapter and joined. I’m looking forward to going to my first in-person meeting and getting newsletters. I am ready to make my voice heard.
I think that one of the reasons why socialism has never taken root in America, unlike elsewhere in the world (I’m writing from London) is that your relatively young country hasn’t had to contend with overt fascism, unlike so many other countries in the world. Also, the election of the Orange Moron is the natural conclusion of a system which demonises collectivity and promotes individualism. Trump’s election is the shock that you all needed to reform your political system. The useless Democratic Party are just a part of that rotten system. All power to the many good, thoughtful people in America in your resistance to the Right wing.
So is it accurate that average Britons’ incomes have tumbled since Brexit? I hear from friends in Portugal that vacancies are up because Brits used to make up over 50% of the tourist demand there.
The UK had the National Front since 1967 but it never really gained power, did it? We’ve had the KKK since long before that but it never obtained a foothold outside of the South. Recent UK polling indicates that large percentages of UK’s young are favorably disposed to authoritarianism. UKIP and Reform UK aren’t actual fascist were/are they? Regardless, you don’t have a Churchill and we don’t have an FDR and neither of our countries have too many citizens left who know the kind of character these men possessed. That’s the problem.
That is not true. In the 1920's during the postwar period, the KKK was very popular in NY, and all over the Midwest, the West, and the West Coast, as well as the South. What dampened the KKK was WWII and the fight against Fascism. People have forgotten about the German American Bund, George Lincoln Rockwell, and so.
Sadly, I think you might be, Starmer is essentially the same as your Cheeto turd. He’s really a Conservative, as he will do whatever he is told to by the establishment. His (Kid Starver’s) only interest is personal power, just like your Orangina. BTW, he’s called Kid Starver - sometimes Granny Harmer - here because he refused to lift a cap introduced by the Tories (Conservatives) on child benefit, More than two children don’t receive child benefit - that was something that the Tories introduced because of right wing rubbish about poor people living like King’s on benefits …!!!! I live on sickness benefits since retiring from work, and it’s crap. Kid Starver, in his infinite wisdom, decided that as a nation we couldn’t afford to lift the Tory cap on child benefits. - But, we can send millions to Ukraine to fight that proxy war. Also BTW, ‘Tory’ is the nickname for Conservative here; it’s largely forgotten that it comes from the Irish toraidhe, meaning robber or bandit. A very appropriate nickname, shame it’s origine has been forgotten. Back to your original point, Kid Starver will go along with whatever crap the Cheeto turd (tee hee!) wants.
Interesting take. I was in Portugal right before the U.S. election and there was a big kerfuffle about members of the Labor Party campaigning for Kamala. It was nothing more than Cheeto Jesus creating excrement again from his mouth. But I got the impression that Labor would stand up to this turd we’ve got here driving us over a cliff. I guess I was mistaken.
I’m not too sure about incomes, as I’m recently retired, but everyone is hard up. There seems to be very little money around and everything is expensive. Going abroad on holiday seems like an unjustifiable expense to many people.
Yep: since the stupidity of Brexit, we don’t have the protection of Europe against the US any longer. Now all the bad social, trade and economic practices from America will come to Britain. Starmer won’t stop it: he’s encouraging it 🤬🤬🤬
The National Front didn’t gain power, but sadly with the last - quite rotten - Conservative administration, they were so right wing that many of the NF policies had become incorporated into their governmental policy. What’s even worse is that the horrible Starmer shows no signs of reversing any of their policies.
Interestingly I tried sharing this post to Facebook, twice, and both times it was removed my Facebook. I'm suspecting you're hitting a nerve for whatever reason...
One difficulty, in Canada at least, is the large unions, although not all of their Locals, have bought into a social democracy concept that promotes a kind of compassionate, fair capitalism. The major labour central in Canada, the CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) is a joint party in the social democratic party (the New Democratic Party - NDP) which does not promote socialism or worker control. Canada has two right wing parties: the Liberal Party currently leading a minority government mostly with support from the NDP, and the Conservative Party, now an extreme right wing/neo-fascist party poised to form government after next year’s election. The labour movement can’t get its members to vote social democrat/NDP and makes very little effort to educate them. There is a huge hill to climb for the left in Canada and today’s labour movement is not up to it so I wonder if civil movements are the better option, hoping labour will follow.
As Lenin notes, union are not revolutionary organisations, they are part of capitalism. Revolutionary unionists, however, have a responsibility to knit unions into a wider class struggle aimed at building socialism. Workers need a working class party that can be their own tool to build their own power. Learning from the bottom up strategies discussed here is part of that process. ✊🏼
Hey Ron- I'm moving back to Canada later this year. If you have resources to share around effect labor movement organizers or anything relevant, could you post them?
It's fascinating as an Australian watching, we normally follow the US politically and we're a couple years behind as usual.
Currently the anti union sentiment from our government is insane. Our government and media has been painting our strongest unions as a criminal organisation implying they're thugs and brutes to justify a government takeover including firing hundreds of unionists.
Watching our government destroy our unions and watching what's happened overseas without unions makes you feel like your government is up to something nefarious and they do not have the best interests of blue collar workers.
Many Australian think we are exempt from global politics and this article has given me language that will help me discuss that with those around me.
Thanks for the reminder of why backing blue collar workers is so important.
Here’s the problem with that. The freedom we all supposedly hold so dear, that tens of thousands have given their all for their very existence. The central core of the ideal that is America is not the average American in today’s world strives for or even covets.
You see, even the intellectually laziest among us somehow understands that freedom requires responsibility. One of the things that’s high on the list of real world dynamics the average American avoids at all cost.
Our supposed longing for freedom is near lip service. The last thing the average ‘Murikkkan covets is responsibility.
Considering that same individual shirks his responsibility of civil duties and every opportunity, I contend at least my theory is correct. The concept speaks for itself.
The American dream of freedom is a bit like a child’s dream of freedom. To be free to not brush teeth and not have to do homework and be allowed to eat ice cream for dinner. It lacks foresight.
Interesting take on Argentina. Keep in mind that not only are there strong unions there, but there are almost daily large protests. There is no class consciousness in the U.S. Maybe just maybe, more will emerge with the billionaire class corruption and power being exposed. But the divisions based on racism and the disinformation here point in a different direction. Must work with the realities we have here. How will tRump voters react to what he is implementing? Don’t think the plans he is implementing are why many voted for him. And apparently in his FOX interview he said he didn’t care about the economy.
I know this is an 'old' post, but I feel it still rings true today. I took the time to write a considered reply. Thank you!
The New Face of Fascism Is Old: Argentina, the U.S., and the Colonial Boomerang
This article lays out a crucial warning: the authoritarian shift in Argentina under Milei isn’t just an isolated event—it’s a template. What’s happening in Argentina is not just a warning for the U.S., but a symptom of something much older and deeper: the cyclical return of fascism, always reshaped to fit the needs of capital, but always following the same fundamental logic.
As The Fascist Disposition points out, fascism isn’t just a political system—it’s an affective structure, a set of desires, fears, and reactions that emerge when capitalism is in crisis (Gordillo, 2024). The libertarian fascism of Milei and Trump is a new mask for an old phenomenon: the fusion of corporate power and state violence, which thrives on racialized scapegoating, the destruction of social safety nets, and the violent suppression of organized resistance. The fact that Milei explicitly wants to destroy the state aligns with a broader fascist impulse: rather than a strong state disciplining capital (as in earlier 20th-century fascisms), today’s authoritarianism seeks to gut public institutions while ensuring the violent apparatus of control—police, military, border enforcement—remains intact.
But if we want to understand what’s happening, we can’t just compare Argentina today with 1930s Europe. As Empire, Colony, Genocide argues, fascism is not some European aberration—it is the boomerang effect of colonial violence returning to the metropole (Moses, 2008). European imperialism, built on land theft, genocide, and racial hierarchy, provided the blueprint for fascist regimes. The extermination of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the brutal counterinsurgencies in Africa and Asia—these were not exceptions to Western progress, but its foundation. As Aimé Césaire famously wrote, Europeans only started calling it fascism when the violence that had been normalized in the colonies was turned back on white Europeans.
This is crucial for understanding Milei, Trump, and the broader global rise of fascism. Their project is not just about deregulating the economy or pushing reactionary social policies—it’s about reinforcing the colonial structure of society, where the wealthiest few extract and hoard resources while the rest are kept in precarity through violence, fear, and misinformation. The gutting of Argentina’s welfare state, the privatization of everything from water to nuclear energy, the rollback of rights for women, workers, and Indigenous communities—these are not just “bad policies.” They are the logical next step in a centuries-old colonial project.
The Role of Trauma in Fascist Resurgence
Trauma studies help us understand why these patterns keep repeating. Colonization and racial capitalism didn’t just create material inequalities—they produced deep psychic wounds, patterns of dissociation, and cycles of harm that persist across generations. Fascism thrives in these wounds. As The Fascist Disposition suggests, people don’t just accept fascism—they desire it (Gordillo, 2024). When people experience economic instability, social dislocation, and the loss of collective meaning, they reach for myths that promise order and control. This is why Milei, Trump, and Bolsonaro can present themselves as “outsiders” fighting la casta while serving the same capitalist elite that profits from their policies. The lie works because it taps into real fear, real loss, real disorientation.
Neoliberalism, by systematically destroying social bonds, sets the stage for fascism. When people lose faith in institutions, when their communities are gutted by austerity and privatization, when they are bombarded by disinformation designed to make them question reality itself, they don’t just become passive—they become reactive. They seek scapegoats. They crave authoritarian certainty. They mistake violence for strength. This is why we see the return of not just economic cruelty, but fascist aesthetics—Milei wielding a chainsaw, Trump rallying crowds with chants of mass deportation, online influencers gleefully celebrating police brutality.
The question, then, is not just how to fight back, but how to interrupt the cycle.
Resistance Beyond Spontaneity: What We Can Learn from Argentina
As the article points out, Argentina’s general strike and mass protests weren’t just spontaneous eruptions of anger—they were the result of organizing. The left in the U.S. has often mistaken mobilization for organization. Massive protests against Trump in 2017 didn’t prevent the right’s further consolidation of power because the infrastructure wasn’t there to sustain resistance beyond spectacle. Vincent Bevins’ critique of the “spontaneity fetish” is crucial here: without long-term structures that can channel outrage into power, uprisings burn out (Bevins, 2022).
Argentina’s unions were able to shut down the country because they have density and cohesion. The U.S. labor movement, though growing, is still fragmented. But the broader lesson isn’t just about unions—it’s about building sustained sites of struggle. Mutual aid networks, independent media, abolitionist movements, Indigenous land defense—these are not just “side projects” to electoral politics; they are the terrain of long-term resistance. The goal is not just to react to fascism, but to build the alternative institutions that make it obsolete.
Decolonization as the Ultimate Anti-Fascist Strategy
If fascism is the return of colonial violence to the metropole, then the true antidote is decolonization. This doesn’t just mean symbolic acknowledgments or policy reforms—it means fundamentally restructuring society so that it no longer relies on extraction, exploitation, and racial hierarchy. It means dismantling carceral systems rather than just opposing the worst abuses of policing. It means restoring Indigenous land and governance rather than just protecting the last remnants of what has already been taken. It means rejecting the neoliberal fantasy of endless consumption and competition in favor of economies rooted in reciprocity and care.
Milei, Trump, and their ilk understand that colonial violence is the key to maintaining power. Their entire project is about reinforcing the divisions, hierarchies, and traumas that keep people from organizing together in solidarity. The only way to defeat them is to refuse those divisions—to build relationships of trust, to defend land and life, to unlearn the myths that justify oppression, and to make the world we actually want now, rather than waiting for the next crisis to wake us up.
Argentina shows us both the threat and the possibility. The question is: which path will we take?
References
Bevins, V. (2022). If we burn: The mass protest decade and the missing revolution. PublicAffairs.
“…If you recall the history of fascism, you might know that a strong state was often a key facet of the programs implemented in the 1930s and ‘40s. The fascist leadership typically sought to limit the autonomy of capitalists and their corporations, and subordinate them to the state. But the iteration of fascism embodied by Trump and Milei prioritizes the interests of the oligarch class to such a degree that limiting the capacity of the state, both to regulate corporations and to provide services that could instead be privatized for profit, becomes the number one priority.”
So what they are doing doesn’t meet the definition of fascism so let’s change it?
Illuminating article. Thank you. One thing that worries me is the union activism angle. Union density has decreased dramatically. I don’t see a willingness among American workers to engage in mass strikes and other disruptions.
So very good. There is much more that we can do than just protest in our capitols. We must organize a labor movement to oppose the privatization of our public entities. GeneralStrikeUS.com is a good place to start.
In a nation of gig workers, myself one of them, how do we unionize? I work for my clients, mostly one on one. I belong to a professional organization for licensing and insurance but I don’t think an association of massage therapists is gonna be where I find the fuel to fight. Gosh. I hope I’m wrong.
Your writing has inspired me to join my local DSA organization. I just went to my first meeting and am feeling energized. Thank you for your work.
I looked it up, found my local chapter and joined. I’m looking forward to going to my first in-person meeting and getting newsletters. I am ready to make my voice heard.
What is DSA? I want to help; to be ready; to be part of the resistance…. But I don’t know what to do.
Democratic Socialists of America. I think J.P. Hill has links to their website in his newsletter. Look for a chapter local to you.
Thank you! I will.
I believe she’s referring to her local Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) org
Rockin! I just joined my local DSA chapter! Planning on going to my first event next week!
Why did you choose DSA over PSL? Just curious.
Cuz I don't know what PSL is:)
Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)
Great book suggestions. I just recently started Let This Radicalize You.
I think that one of the reasons why socialism has never taken root in America, unlike elsewhere in the world (I’m writing from London) is that your relatively young country hasn’t had to contend with overt fascism, unlike so many other countries in the world. Also, the election of the Orange Moron is the natural conclusion of a system which demonises collectivity and promotes individualism. Trump’s election is the shock that you all needed to reform your political system. The useless Democratic Party are just a part of that rotten system. All power to the many good, thoughtful people in America in your resistance to the Right wing.
So is it accurate that average Britons’ incomes have tumbled since Brexit? I hear from friends in Portugal that vacancies are up because Brits used to make up over 50% of the tourist demand there.
The UK had the National Front since 1967 but it never really gained power, did it? We’ve had the KKK since long before that but it never obtained a foothold outside of the South. Recent UK polling indicates that large percentages of UK’s young are favorably disposed to authoritarianism. UKIP and Reform UK aren’t actual fascist were/are they? Regardless, you don’t have a Churchill and we don’t have an FDR and neither of our countries have too many citizens left who know the kind of character these men possessed. That’s the problem.
That is not true. In the 1920's during the postwar period, the KKK was very popular in NY, and all over the Midwest, the West, and the West Coast, as well as the South. What dampened the KKK was WWII and the fight against Fascism. People have forgotten about the German American Bund, George Lincoln Rockwell, and so.
Sadly, I think you might be, Starmer is essentially the same as your Cheeto turd. He’s really a Conservative, as he will do whatever he is told to by the establishment. His (Kid Starver’s) only interest is personal power, just like your Orangina. BTW, he’s called Kid Starver - sometimes Granny Harmer - here because he refused to lift a cap introduced by the Tories (Conservatives) on child benefit, More than two children don’t receive child benefit - that was something that the Tories introduced because of right wing rubbish about poor people living like King’s on benefits …!!!! I live on sickness benefits since retiring from work, and it’s crap. Kid Starver, in his infinite wisdom, decided that as a nation we couldn’t afford to lift the Tory cap on child benefits. - But, we can send millions to Ukraine to fight that proxy war. Also BTW, ‘Tory’ is the nickname for Conservative here; it’s largely forgotten that it comes from the Irish toraidhe, meaning robber or bandit. A very appropriate nickname, shame it’s origine has been forgotten. Back to your original point, Kid Starver will go along with whatever crap the Cheeto turd (tee hee!) wants.
Interesting take. I was in Portugal right before the U.S. election and there was a big kerfuffle about members of the Labor Party campaigning for Kamala. It was nothing more than Cheeto Jesus creating excrement again from his mouth. But I got the impression that Labor would stand up to this turd we’ve got here driving us over a cliff. I guess I was mistaken.
I’m not too sure about incomes, as I’m recently retired, but everyone is hard up. There seems to be very little money around and everything is expensive. Going abroad on holiday seems like an unjustifiable expense to many people.
Labour is no better than Tories which have adopted NF policies? Maybe the UK is as bad off as the US?
Yep: since the stupidity of Brexit, we don’t have the protection of Europe against the US any longer. Now all the bad social, trade and economic practices from America will come to Britain. Starmer won’t stop it: he’s encouraging it 🤬🤬🤬
The National Front didn’t gain power, but sadly with the last - quite rotten - Conservative administration, they were so right wing that many of the NF policies had become incorporated into their governmental policy. What’s even worse is that the horrible Starmer shows no signs of reversing any of their policies.
An American Beast
There’s a pair of cowardly yellow eyes staring out of the heart of the darkness.
Staring up at the moon like a baleful werewolf,
Keeping to the shadows
Well away from the water lest he catch a glimpse of his own bestial reflection.
He licks his lips and drools his greed onto his matted stained hair
An American beast is hungry for the lives of our children
He only feasts on promises as the truth twists his stomach sick.
An American beast charms the habits off of nuns and desecrates their crucifixes to hang burning bodies from.
An American beast prowls the suburbs at night
Spilling the trash cans filled with hypocrisies all over their emerald sprinkler lawns
There is no midway between lies and facts.
There is no halfway between discourse and violence.
There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.
There is no soul beating within the American beast
There is no worth to the MAGA-beast!
Http://igorgoldkind.com
Interestingly I tried sharing this post to Facebook, twice, and both times it was removed my Facebook. I'm suspecting you're hitting a nerve for whatever reason...
Your still using?
One difficulty, in Canada at least, is the large unions, although not all of their Locals, have bought into a social democracy concept that promotes a kind of compassionate, fair capitalism. The major labour central in Canada, the CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) is a joint party in the social democratic party (the New Democratic Party - NDP) which does not promote socialism or worker control. Canada has two right wing parties: the Liberal Party currently leading a minority government mostly with support from the NDP, and the Conservative Party, now an extreme right wing/neo-fascist party poised to form government after next year’s election. The labour movement can’t get its members to vote social democrat/NDP and makes very little effort to educate them. There is a huge hill to climb for the left in Canada and today’s labour movement is not up to it so I wonder if civil movements are the better option, hoping labour will follow.
As Lenin notes, union are not revolutionary organisations, they are part of capitalism. Revolutionary unionists, however, have a responsibility to knit unions into a wider class struggle aimed at building socialism. Workers need a working class party that can be their own tool to build their own power. Learning from the bottom up strategies discussed here is part of that process. ✊🏼
Organize my family.
Hey Ron- I'm moving back to Canada later this year. If you have resources to share around effect labor movement organizers or anything relevant, could you post them?
Great piece.
It's fascinating as an Australian watching, we normally follow the US politically and we're a couple years behind as usual.
Currently the anti union sentiment from our government is insane. Our government and media has been painting our strongest unions as a criminal organisation implying they're thugs and brutes to justify a government takeover including firing hundreds of unionists.
Watching our government destroy our unions and watching what's happened overseas without unions makes you feel like your government is up to something nefarious and they do not have the best interests of blue collar workers.
Many Australian think we are exempt from global politics and this article has given me language that will help me discuss that with those around me.
Thanks for the reminder of why backing blue collar workers is so important.
Here’s the problem with that. The freedom we all supposedly hold so dear, that tens of thousands have given their all for their very existence. The central core of the ideal that is America is not the average American in today’s world strives for or even covets.
You see, even the intellectually laziest among us somehow understands that freedom requires responsibility. One of the things that’s high on the list of real world dynamics the average American avoids at all cost.
Our supposed longing for freedom is near lip service. The last thing the average ‘Murikkkan covets is responsibility.
Considering that same individual shirks his responsibility of civil duties and every opportunity, I contend at least my theory is correct. The concept speaks for itself.
The American dream of freedom is a bit like a child’s dream of freedom. To be free to not brush teeth and not have to do homework and be allowed to eat ice cream for dinner. It lacks foresight.
Our most cherished freedom is the freedom to say and do extremely stupid shit…..
And to have endless uneducated opinions about everything
Fantastic article. Thanks
Interesting take on Argentina. Keep in mind that not only are there strong unions there, but there are almost daily large protests. There is no class consciousness in the U.S. Maybe just maybe, more will emerge with the billionaire class corruption and power being exposed. But the divisions based on racism and the disinformation here point in a different direction. Must work with the realities we have here. How will tRump voters react to what he is implementing? Don’t think the plans he is implementing are why many voted for him. And apparently in his FOX interview he said he didn’t care about the economy.
I know this is an 'old' post, but I feel it still rings true today. I took the time to write a considered reply. Thank you!
The New Face of Fascism Is Old: Argentina, the U.S., and the Colonial Boomerang
This article lays out a crucial warning: the authoritarian shift in Argentina under Milei isn’t just an isolated event—it’s a template. What’s happening in Argentina is not just a warning for the U.S., but a symptom of something much older and deeper: the cyclical return of fascism, always reshaped to fit the needs of capital, but always following the same fundamental logic.
As The Fascist Disposition points out, fascism isn’t just a political system—it’s an affective structure, a set of desires, fears, and reactions that emerge when capitalism is in crisis (Gordillo, 2024). The libertarian fascism of Milei and Trump is a new mask for an old phenomenon: the fusion of corporate power and state violence, which thrives on racialized scapegoating, the destruction of social safety nets, and the violent suppression of organized resistance. The fact that Milei explicitly wants to destroy the state aligns with a broader fascist impulse: rather than a strong state disciplining capital (as in earlier 20th-century fascisms), today’s authoritarianism seeks to gut public institutions while ensuring the violent apparatus of control—police, military, border enforcement—remains intact.
But if we want to understand what’s happening, we can’t just compare Argentina today with 1930s Europe. As Empire, Colony, Genocide argues, fascism is not some European aberration—it is the boomerang effect of colonial violence returning to the metropole (Moses, 2008). European imperialism, built on land theft, genocide, and racial hierarchy, provided the blueprint for fascist regimes. The extermination of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the brutal counterinsurgencies in Africa and Asia—these were not exceptions to Western progress, but its foundation. As Aimé Césaire famously wrote, Europeans only started calling it fascism when the violence that had been normalized in the colonies was turned back on white Europeans.
This is crucial for understanding Milei, Trump, and the broader global rise of fascism. Their project is not just about deregulating the economy or pushing reactionary social policies—it’s about reinforcing the colonial structure of society, where the wealthiest few extract and hoard resources while the rest are kept in precarity through violence, fear, and misinformation. The gutting of Argentina’s welfare state, the privatization of everything from water to nuclear energy, the rollback of rights for women, workers, and Indigenous communities—these are not just “bad policies.” They are the logical next step in a centuries-old colonial project.
The Role of Trauma in Fascist Resurgence
Trauma studies help us understand why these patterns keep repeating. Colonization and racial capitalism didn’t just create material inequalities—they produced deep psychic wounds, patterns of dissociation, and cycles of harm that persist across generations. Fascism thrives in these wounds. As The Fascist Disposition suggests, people don’t just accept fascism—they desire it (Gordillo, 2024). When people experience economic instability, social dislocation, and the loss of collective meaning, they reach for myths that promise order and control. This is why Milei, Trump, and Bolsonaro can present themselves as “outsiders” fighting la casta while serving the same capitalist elite that profits from their policies. The lie works because it taps into real fear, real loss, real disorientation.
Neoliberalism, by systematically destroying social bonds, sets the stage for fascism. When people lose faith in institutions, when their communities are gutted by austerity and privatization, when they are bombarded by disinformation designed to make them question reality itself, they don’t just become passive—they become reactive. They seek scapegoats. They crave authoritarian certainty. They mistake violence for strength. This is why we see the return of not just economic cruelty, but fascist aesthetics—Milei wielding a chainsaw, Trump rallying crowds with chants of mass deportation, online influencers gleefully celebrating police brutality.
The question, then, is not just how to fight back, but how to interrupt the cycle.
Resistance Beyond Spontaneity: What We Can Learn from Argentina
As the article points out, Argentina’s general strike and mass protests weren’t just spontaneous eruptions of anger—they were the result of organizing. The left in the U.S. has often mistaken mobilization for organization. Massive protests against Trump in 2017 didn’t prevent the right’s further consolidation of power because the infrastructure wasn’t there to sustain resistance beyond spectacle. Vincent Bevins’ critique of the “spontaneity fetish” is crucial here: without long-term structures that can channel outrage into power, uprisings burn out (Bevins, 2022).
Argentina’s unions were able to shut down the country because they have density and cohesion. The U.S. labor movement, though growing, is still fragmented. But the broader lesson isn’t just about unions—it’s about building sustained sites of struggle. Mutual aid networks, independent media, abolitionist movements, Indigenous land defense—these are not just “side projects” to electoral politics; they are the terrain of long-term resistance. The goal is not just to react to fascism, but to build the alternative institutions that make it obsolete.
Decolonization as the Ultimate Anti-Fascist Strategy
If fascism is the return of colonial violence to the metropole, then the true antidote is decolonization. This doesn’t just mean symbolic acknowledgments or policy reforms—it means fundamentally restructuring society so that it no longer relies on extraction, exploitation, and racial hierarchy. It means dismantling carceral systems rather than just opposing the worst abuses of policing. It means restoring Indigenous land and governance rather than just protecting the last remnants of what has already been taken. It means rejecting the neoliberal fantasy of endless consumption and competition in favor of economies rooted in reciprocity and care.
Milei, Trump, and their ilk understand that colonial violence is the key to maintaining power. Their entire project is about reinforcing the divisions, hierarchies, and traumas that keep people from organizing together in solidarity. The only way to defeat them is to refuse those divisions—to build relationships of trust, to defend land and life, to unlearn the myths that justify oppression, and to make the world we actually want now, rather than waiting for the next crisis to wake us up.
Argentina shows us both the threat and the possibility. The question is: which path will we take?
References
Bevins, V. (2022). If we burn: The mass protest decade and the missing revolution. PublicAffairs.
Gordillo, G. (2024, July 18). The fascist disposition. Verso Books. Retrieved from https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/blogs/news/the-fascist-disposition
Moses, A. D. (2008). Empire, colony, genocide: Conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history. Berghahn Books.
“…If you recall the history of fascism, you might know that a strong state was often a key facet of the programs implemented in the 1930s and ‘40s. The fascist leadership typically sought to limit the autonomy of capitalists and their corporations, and subordinate them to the state. But the iteration of fascism embodied by Trump and Milei prioritizes the interests of the oligarch class to such a degree that limiting the capacity of the state, both to regulate corporations and to provide services that could instead be privatized for profit, becomes the number one priority.”
So what they are doing doesn’t meet the definition of fascism so let’s change it?
Maybe you are the fascist?
Illuminating article. Thank you. One thing that worries me is the union activism angle. Union density has decreased dramatically. I don’t see a willingness among American workers to engage in mass strikes and other disruptions.
So very good. There is much more that we can do than just protest in our capitols. We must organize a labor movement to oppose the privatization of our public entities. GeneralStrikeUS.com is a good place to start.
In a nation of gig workers, myself one of them, how do we unionize? I work for my clients, mostly one on one. I belong to a professional organization for licensing and insurance but I don’t think an association of massage therapists is gonna be where I find the fuel to fight. Gosh. I hope I’m wrong.
https://generalstrikeus.com/
sign up! They also have a list of partner organizations to get involved in