I am departing from my usual theoretical pontifications to send out a rather urgent discussion for folks who find themselves suddenly taken by surprise by how rapidly and forcefully the authoritarian regime and its corporate fascism have taken over the United States. If you feel like the rug has just been pulled from underneath you, and if you thought, “it couldn’t happen here, ” this post is for you.
ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE – Holzer
Without wading into all the Constitutional violations, lawlessness, and general cruelty of the current US authoritarian regime, I would like to use this post to skip ahead to what’s next, what to expect, and how to get your head into the game. My goal with this post is to get the reader into the proper headspace to recognize and respond to these rapidly decaying political conditions.
The first element that needs to be addressed is the sheer unbelievability that most people, particularly scholars, professionals, government workers, and academics, are experiencing. As shocking and as personally disastrous as these recent events may be, there has been a decade or more of scholarship specifically focused on the rise of fascism in the Trump era and another body of scholarship highlighting the weaknesses in the system of US checks and balances, which have been exacerbated and overwhelmed in the neoliberal age. Since the New Deal, the corporate dismantlement of legal, institutional, and social norms has been a long-term project both sides of the political aisle facilitated. No party or politician is innocent of this outcome; they are all complicit to one degree or another. There is a history there. One you should learn.
I say this not as an “I told you so” to the recently unemployed government scientist and now unfunded academic. It is simply to say that the manifestation of full-throated corporate fascism was highly probable and predicted. Scholars who study such things have been raising the alarm for over a decade. There is exhaustive research on this that the newly unemployed and disenfranchised may want to catch up on – because within that research are the known factors, ways to address the core foundation of fascism, and key concerns about how to resist and revolt against fascism. Most importantly, such literature provides the means to put together a coherent vision and cohesive platform for the resistance now and in creating what comes next after fascism. Returning to the status quo is not going to be an option. A new country must be formed and fought for. Knowing the literature, history, and theories that political and historical scholars have offered will provide the guidance needed to envision a new future. As with anything, getting one’s mind right involves understanding the problem, reviewing the literature, and taking the responsibility to know and share knowledge. In short, step one is a lit review.
Background
Critical scholars should not be surprised by the rise of corporate fascism in the US. In the Powell Memorandum, 1971, Louis Powell proclaimed to the Chamber of Commerce that any criticism of business amounted to an assault on the so-called “free enterprise system.” Powell decried the criticisms of business practices in the US; he decried what he saw as the corruption of “respectable institutions” like universities and dramatically sought to call out what he considered “apathy” by the “business community” toward critics and scholars. Powell’s rhetoric is eerily familiar today, and the insistence of neoliberal proponents to erase class consciousness can be heard throughout the memo. To quote
“This setting of the “rich” against the “poor,” of business against the people is the cheapest and most dangerous kind of politics.” (Powell, 1971: p. 7)
What is apparent in the Powell memo is an absent but implicit desire to punish those who call into question the “nobility” of the so-called free market. There is a desire to punish institutions, professors, young people, and politicians who dare raise the specter of class consciousness. This desire echoes through every line of the memo. This desire to punish all those who stand in the way of profit and the exploitative power of capital is now coming to full fruition in the United States.
Understanding the hateful and profit-fueled desire to destroy any and all critics of the corporate state is key to understanding what is happening at this very moment. Today, it is not just about destroying criticism, resistance, or differences in political opinions. The current regime is about destroying the very bedrock upon which such critique arises – by destroying systems of knowledge production, public goods and services, and enacting a hostile takeover of all elements of governmental power that could stand in the way of corporations – be that impoverishing the intelligentsia through mass layoffs, or taking over the very departments of government meant to enforce laws, ensure fair practices, and support labor rights. In short, today, the corporate fascists have almost wholly captured and subverted the one thing that could stand in the way of total market exploitation of American life – the government.
The Reality
There is nothing now to stand in their way. They can fire at will, they can freeze funding at will, they can access all of your information, they can exploit all personal information against you, they can openly rip you off, throw you off insurance, they can deport you, they can lock you up, they can doxx you, and finally, they can and will crash the entire economy to profit themselves, all at the expense of the American public. There is not one single thing that the American public will be able to do about it through traditional legal, political, or governmental channels.
There is no way to “vote” your way out of this. There is no legal way to hold the regime accountable for its crimes. And the current party in power has absolutely no political will to stop the regime – for they will be rewarded for their loyalty as the new oligarchic class. This is precisely how the Russian oligarchy came to be – in dismantling the soviet union, certain loyal people in favor of the post-Soviet government were handed all the material and productive means of the former Soviet empire to do with as they saw fit. They all became wealthy, and so long as they remained loyal, they were allowed to keep their wealth and their businesses, and they avoided the old “falling out the window” routine.
The Denial
The first thought that will arise in the reader’s mind is that all hope is not lost, and surely something can be done—some legal suit or SCOTUS ruling can intervene and at least prevent some of this, right? Indeed, the Democratic party will resist, blue state governors will sue, and people in certain government agencies will refuse orders, right? If this is where your head is, it is time to abandon these ideas. There is no guarantee that any of this will happen, nor that even if it does, it will be able to reign in and hold an authoritarian regime accountable. It is more likely that dissidents will start disappearing, literally or figuratively, long before any murmurs of impropriety emerge among the ruling party or within the corporate establishment. Every citizen in history who has woken up one day to find themselves under dictatorial rule has thought to themselves, “Surely someone will stop this.” It is this grand illusion that must be punctured first.
The Gamble
It is a gamble to assume someone else will “do something” to stop an authoritarian takeover. But is that the bet you want to take on your future? On your children’s future? On the fate of the nation and all its people – the slim hope that somehow, somewhere, someone, will indeed “do something”?
This vague gamble that someone will do something to stop this is precisely why I want to make this first post on the matter of headspace – on how to accept the reality that has been thrust upon the entire nation virtually overnight. So long as there is an inkling of denial or the slightest complacency, fascism will continue to spread and corrode everything in American life at an increasingly rapid pace.
So What’s Next?
Historically, there have been only three routes of action that one can take under fascism –
1. One can become complicit, either through inaction, denial, or outright cooperation with the fascists. Fascism subsumes political apathy and turns it against the people. In this way, the great lesson from Nazi Germany was that to do nothing was to be complicit -equal to, if not worse than actively cooperating with the regime.
2. One can resist, of which there is an enormous variety of ways. There are whole manuals and books on how to overthrow a dictator. There are whole histories of people rising against the tyranny of their government. All political options become possibilities when the enemy is a fascist state, whether that means creating an underground, sabotaging planes flying people to detention and deportation camps, or whether that is occupying space and putting your body between the state and its victims. Everywhere there were Nazis, there was an underground resistance movement. The same is true in every country where there are currently authoritarian regimes. Remember – there is and always will be a resistance movement no matter where you are in the country, particularly as things get worse and people start to learn how to survive under this regime.
3. One can leave. In the early days of the Nazi regime, many people saw the writing on the wall, and they fled. They left legally, illegally, by boat, by car, by plane, train, and by any means necessary, and they continued to do so for the entire time the Nazis were in power. Certain groups of people, particularly right now, should, in all cases, be contemplating how they will get out of the country. Groups that already face erasure, like the trans community, need to continue building up the means for self-defense, the means to transport vulnerable or targeted people to safer locations, and their allies need to be working double time to facilitate the material and logistical ways in which to protect the community. Getting various people to safety by calling in favors, lying, forging paperwork, or crossing borders illegally will likely be required shortly. An ethical network of transporting people underground will be needed. It is much harder to flee now, but that does not change the absolute necessity for some people to leave.
That is all I really have for now. I may or may not expand on the topic in future posts, but this should at least serve as a primer and as a historically-based reality check about the current crisis facing Americans. Good luck.
Social Science & Our Critical Times 