Jan. 6th fascism, monopoly capital, and working-class power

Communist Party USA

  The January 6th rioters at the U.S. Capitol attempted to overturn the November election and restore Donald Trump to power. This collection of everyday Republican Party activists were members of white supremacist organizations such as the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers. The mob included off-duty police and military members, small business owners, and a grab-bag of conspiracy theorists associated with Q-anon and anti-vaccination groups and religious fundamentalists. Angry that the majority of U.S. voters ended the dysfunctional rule of the Trump administration, they sought to help him frog-march the U.S. toward fascism. Trump fueled this attempted coup with a ravenous appeal for violence at the Capitol leading up to the January 6th formal recording of the Electoral College votes. Evidence also shows that his loyalist Roger Stone likely coordinated with participants in the violence at the Capitol. That day’s events were triggered by Trump’s relentless campaign against the legitimacy of the November election, a predictable tactic in coup attempts. In his book Washington Bullets, author Vijay Prashad shows how the script works: coup plotters denounce the election and rile up their supporters to promote violence, provoking a military response to install the “strong man” to restore order. Media reports show that U.S. military officials feared that Trump aimed for this outcome and fought to limit military involvement toward this end. That is how close we came to the installation of a fascist regime in this country.   Right-wing culture of conspiracy and trending fascism The terroristic events of Jan. 6th were fueled by a culture of conspiracy that dominates the Republican Party. Republican Party boss Donald Trump didn’t invent this culture of conspiracy, but he did exploit and transform it into a daily, relentless mantra. The original conspiracy theory deployed frequently by Republican Party activists, donors, and media personalities typically centered on Black control of the Democratic Party and its use of guilt and radicalism to undermine white supremacy. Conspiracy-style politics infused with racial hatred made Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and Ann Coulter rich in the 1990s. This conspiracy theory has been at the heart of GOP attacks on affirmative action, school desegregation, and voting rights since the 1970s. Donald Trump has always been a promoter of racial conspiracy and racist policy. He launched his campaign for president with manufactured racist claims about Obama’s phony birth certificate but was too afraid of actually competing with Obama in 2012. His 2016 campaign demonstrated his effective ability to trumpet racist and sexist politics to his mass base, which made him a perfect fit for the Republican Party nomination. He propelled these once-marginal claims into the daily reality of tens of millions of Americans, fashioning a new and dangerous political terrain. In his book, How Fascism Works, Yale philosopher Jason Stanley argues that the systematic linkage of victimhood rooted in racial theories and xenophobia, the methodical attacks on intellectuals and scientific thought, the aggressive appeal to law and order and to the hierarchical power of the “strong man” and his party, and the relentless denial of truth and evidence to construct a mythology of racial supremacy are among the essential ideological-cultural features of a fascist party and regime. Over the four years of his disastrous term, Trump soft-pedaled, even promoted right-wing militias, neo-Confederates, “alt-right” hipsters, and other assorted neo-fascist elements on the fringes of his party. He blended the Nixonian “Southern strategy” that appealed to suburban whites in coded language with frequent denunciations of “political correctness” as a violation of white people’s right to free hate speech. He frequently resorted to open appeals to racism (other forms of hatred) and pushed it to…

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Jan. 6th fascism, monopoly capital, and working-class power