Can fascism ari in the U.S.?

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Fascism was the means by which crisis-wracked capitalism in Italy and Germany was saved from socialist revolution. The fascists saved capitalism by crushing the unions and the political parties of the working class. With workers' resistance smashed, there was nothing to stop the complete abolition of democratic rights and the most barbaric mass butchering in modern history.

Today, the movement associated with Lyndon LaRouche is emerging as the latest candidate for the role of American fascism. While it is far from settled who will ultimately get decisive capitalist backing for this role, it is important to understand the nature of this scourge, under what conditions it can grow into a major threat, and how to fight it.

Many who should know better have used the term as an epithet. Others have rationalized giving political support to one section of the capitalists by placing the fascist label upon another. In their concern to note differences between varieties of pro-capitalist currents, they have managed to blur the most important distinctions.

This is extremely harmful. It is imperative to know the difference between the fascists and other procapitalists so as to know how to effectively fight both. Repeated warnings of imminent fascist takeovers obstruct a timely response when the danger becomes real.

What is fascism? Is it merely the label to apply to an arch-reactionary, pro-capitalist movement? Is its distin -guishing characteristic anti-Semitism, or racism in general? Is it an anti-democratic movement that has, as its ultimate aim, the use of physical force to stamp out all forms of opposition to capitalist injustice?

These are certainly features common to fascism. But they are shared by other capitalist political formations. One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of fascism, however, is its seeming opposition to capitalism.

Anti-capitalist and socialist demagogy Normally the capitalist class prefers to rule on the basis of a system of political democracy. This is more efficient and productive from their point of view. But when it can no longer rule with the consent of the majority, the ruling class must resort to methods of political repression on a massive and nationwide scale.

The two main forms of rule by force alone are military-police and/or fascist dictatorships. (Every fascist dictatorship is also government by military-police rule. But not every military-police dictatorship is also fascist.)

When discontent caused by a major economic crisis reaches mass proportions, capitalism can be maintained in power only by the increasing use of naked force.

In extreme cases, such as in post-World War I-Italy and later in Germany, the normal agencies of state repression, the military and police forces with their parliamentary screens, are no longer able to do the job. Beleaguered capitalism needs to find a way to turn many of its desperate victims against the working class. Fascism requires a mass base to accomplish this aim.

Through the fascist agency, capitalism tricks the newly ruined middle class and sets it in motion against the workers. Also prone to this deception are the declassed and demoralized sections of the working class. With demagogic slogans calling for "revolution," the fascists enlist some of capitalism's victims in their war to smash the workers' organizations.

Fascism in Italy

The name itself originated in Italy. The fascist movement there was a spontaneous mass social movement based on millions of people suddenly ground into poverty by the severe crisis of Italian capitalism. The breakdown of the economic system convinced millions that capitalism was the source of their misery.

The Italian ruling class, threatened by a massive working-class offensive, heavily subsidized Mussolini's fascist bands. But the fascists could mount an effective counterrevolutionary offensive only when the workers' leaders failed to take resolute action to solve the crisis of capitalism. By placing false hopes in "anti-fascist" sections of the ruling class, the workers' misleaders alienated millions of potential allies who were looking for a revolutionary solution.

The reformist socialists at the head of the workers' organizations halted and dissipated the revolutionary momentum of the workers. The middle class, which had initially looked to the workers to resolve the crisis with revolutionary methods, lost hope. It turned in desperation to the fascists, who also seemed to offer a "revolutionary" solution.

Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the October 1917 workers' revolution in Russia, made the most thorough scientific Marxist analysis of fascism during its drive to power. In 1932, warning against an imminent Nazi victory, Trotsky explained how, 10 years earlier, Mussolini was able to defeat the workers. He wrote:

"Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the uprising of the Italian proletariat. From the time the [first world] war ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement 8 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1986 4d, Pouche in Italy, and in September 1920 it resulted of factories and industries by the workers.

"The dictatorship of the proletariat [the establishment of a new state based on the democratic organizațions of the workers and their allies] was an actual fact; all that was lacking was to organize it and to draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back.

"After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most important factor in the growth of fascism.

"In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill; and November already witnessed the first major demonstration of the fascists [the seizure of Bolognal." ("Fascism, What It Is and How to Fight It.")

In Italy, the anti-capitalist demagogy of Mussolini was directed at the banks associated with imperialism, primarily the British banks. Exempted from the fascist "anti-capitalist" rhetoric were the Italian "national" capitalists.

Fascism in Germany

In Germany, Hitler's anti-capitalist "revolution" was similarly focussed on imperialist banking interests, zeroing in on German capitalists who happened to be Jewish. At the same time, "national, patriotic" capitalists were portrayed as good guys.

The fascists erected a fantastic conspiracy theory in which international capitalism and communism were the cause of the people's misery since both had ganged up to further exploit and oppress the suffering masses.

Hitler, adding an anti-Semitic component to fascism in Germany, was able to divert the ire of the ruined middle class away from capitalism, the real cause of its misery, and vent it upon the local Jewish storekeeper, Jews in general, and the labor unions.

It is important to reemphasize, however, that the capitalist class does not play its fascist card until its back is up against the wall. It opens the door to the fascists only after an economic crisis has ignited a mass revolutionary workers' upsurge, and continued capitalist rule is at stake.

The boss class knows that a mass fascist movement cannot be built in periods of relative stability, when a majority of the people support the status quo, even with heavy infusions of money and other forms of support.

But capitalists tend to give discreet support to incipient fascist movements after signs appear that the economic system may be on the verge of a major breakdown. They also withdraw such support when capitalism restabilizes and the crisis doesn't materialize.

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER Farmers in the United States today are being ruined by the collapse of agricultural prices. Prices in the supermarkets stay high but farmers are unable to earn enough to pay their bills and are being foreclosed in increasing numbers.

A polarization is taking place among these natural allies of the working class, with the great majority looking to the workers for aid and assistance and a minority receptive to demagogues like Lyndon LaRouche.

Forms of American fascism In the United States, a variety of candidates for American fascism have come and gone. The Ku Klux Klan was one of the earliest candidates for this role. It was a leftover from the post-Civil War period.

The Klan was created after capitalism decided to halt and roll back the democratic gains won by Blacks in the Civil War and during the period of Reconstruction. It was used to break up the alliance between poor white and Black farmers forged in this post-war period.

The Klan experienced a big expansion after the World War I economic boom attracted masses of Southern Black farmers to war jobs in the Northern industrial cities.

But, although the Klan again received a boost in the 1930s, when capitalism here entered its most serious econor ric crisis, it was not well-suited for the fascist role in the :Oth-century world and was largely bypassed.

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American Nazis in San Francisco in 1975. Imitation of German fascism will not be the by the arn I in Iral rity da ion for lux › It halt the • It and orld ern rial the ous role arise A number of other candidates emerged in this period William Dudley Pelly's "Silver Shirts" inaugurated a more up-to-date style that adjusted the Italian and German models to American conditions.

Father Coughlin's "Social Justice" movement, another fascist candidate, gained a significant following in U.S. metropolitan centers with large Catholic populations.

More rigid copies of the European model-fascist bands with black- and brown-shirted uniforms sporting emblems made famous in Italy and Germany—made less headway and received less support.

All these movements withered and died after World War II revived the economy and ended the economic crisis born of the great Depression.

More recently, several small groups have emerged parroting fascist phraseology and sporting Nazi uniforms, swastikas and all. But these groups, lacking an understanding of the "anti-capitalist" appeal of fascism, are unlikely candidates.

But the persistent surfacing of such vile and discredited elements only testifies to capitalism's need to divert discontent toward Jews as a scapegoat to safely absorb anti-capitalist sentiment. The illusion that "Jews control the country" is reinforced by U.S. capitalism's heavy political, military, and economic support to Israel. Israel, U.S. imperialism's puppet, is made to appear to be the puppeteer.

When required, capitalism will open the sewers of antiSemitism, whose tell-tale odors leak through the official lid now in place. It will again provide fascists with an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist facade.

The LaRouche movement The LaRouche movement seems to be a more creative application of European fascist methods to current American conditions and appears to be on its way to greater success.

Lyndon LaRouche started his political career, like Mussolini, as a socialist. Beginning in the late 1960s, his group, originally associated with the Students for a Democratic Society, went under the names of U.S. Labor Party and National Caucus of Labor Committees. It soon moved in the fascist direction.

LaRouche began this turn by launching a campaign of physical violence against organizations within the working class, such as the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party.

Shortly afterward, the LaRouche newspaper, New Solidarity, noting a qualitative distinction between "productive and non-productive capitalism," came out in support of such "productive capitalists" as the Bank of America.

At the same time, LaRouche began to weave a case against an alleged conspiracy that included a bizarre collection of political forces and personalities. Nelson Rockefeller was foremost in a panoply of devils that included Henry Kissinger, the Trilateral Commission, Zionism, imperialism, and the "drug-pushing" Queen of England.

LaRouche briefly portrayed the Soviet Communist Party bureaucracy as good guys. But their demonology soon included the Soviet government in the LaRouche amalgam of "anti-American" conspirators.

The LaRouche group attracted attention through its policy of regularly appearing at airports with slogans and petitions calling for the expansion of nuclear power and displaying posters calling for "nuking" the Soviet Insinuated throughout this extreme right-wing line is the theme of a pro-communist conspiracy that includes major, authoritative, capitalist institutions, as well as i pres that stock-in-trade scapegoat Jews.

The LaRouche movement has begun to recruit a different social type than during its leftist days. The typical LaRouche member is no longer a student-activist type, but is more apt to be a neatly dressed white-collar "yuppie." This reflects the more traditional middle-class layer which is most likely to provide the bulk of a fascist constituency.

The LaRouche movement is also known to have ties with C.I.A.-backed mercenaries who hire themselves out to assist bloody dictatorships in counter-insurgency train -ing. According to recent disclosures, one such self-styled professional butcher runs a LaRouche military training ground. This camp could easily become a school for fascist strikebreakers and union busters when called upon to defend capitalist rule.

The LaRouche movement recently received dramatic national attention when two of its candidates won in the 1986 Illinois Democratic Party primary.

The LaRouche AIDS initiative More recently, the LaRouche group gathered nearly 700,000 signatures and won a place on the California state ballot for an initiative which would wreak havoc on efforts to contain the AIDS epidemic.

The initiative, if passed, would do nothing to contain the spread of AIDS. It provides for Draconian penalties against the victims and potential victims of this dread infection. It is based on the discredited notion that AIDS is spread like the common cold.

The growth of the LaRouche movement is ominous evidence that layers of the middle class have already begun to look in the direction of a radical right-wing solution to today's problems.

What is the purpose of LaRouche's campaign against AIDS victims?

Obviously, it is an organizing tool for this incipient fascist movement. It has already succeeded in calling attention to itself as a pole of attraction for a future mass "radical" movement by playing up to one of the many backward capitalist prejudices, homophobia.

LaRouche is aided in this by the public's real fear of the spread of this epidemic-which in the U.S. happened to strike gays first. To capitalize on this, LaRouche must spread disinformation intended to create a hysterical witch-hunting atmosphere.

In addition to impeding sensible public-health measures which require a strictly factual education vehicle for an American fascist movement.

The following are excerpts from the "28 Theses on the American Socialist Revolution and the Building of the Revolutionary Party," a resolution adopted by Socialist Action at its founding convention in October 1983.

The bipartisan character of the ruling class assault against American workers is becoming increasingly clear. But this does not mean that the ruling rich have reached a consensus on how to confront the American and world working class.

Heated debates and divisions have already surfaced over national and international policies. They are likely to increase. It is precisely the inability of the U.S.

capitalist class so far to defeat the working class at home and abroad which is at the root of these divisions.

This is not the 1930s, where the severe economic depression was accompanied by the crushing defeats of the world working class in Italy, Germany, France, and Spain-resulting from the betrayals of the reformist campaign, the initiative would attack fundamental democratic and human rights. The real target of this attack goes beyond the victims of AIDS.

Like the current campaign for compulsory testing of workers' blood for evidence of drugs in the railroad and other industries, it is ultimately a weapon directed at the working class. Democratic rights today serve the class interests of workers. The current invasions of privacy provide an excuse for the curtailment of rights rather than a solution to social problems.

But the longer-term aim of the AIDS initiative is to put LaRouche in apparent opposition to the mainstream of the ruling class.

The dominant capitalists and their political representatives are supporting the campaign to defeat the initiative. They know that it would irresponsibly endanger the public health-capitalists are not immune to the AIDS virus—and otherwise cause more problems for them than any political advantage they would gain at this time.

If the AIDS initiative wins, LaRouche makes the greatest political gain. But even if it fails, he gains notoriety for his stance in seeming opposition to the political status quo.

The fight against AIDS, the fight against the witchhunting of AIDS victims, and the fight against incipient fascism requires a clear understanding of these related problems.

It is certainly necessary to roll up the largest vote possible against the AIDS initiative. But there must also be a clear educational effort to explain why capitalists or their political representatives cannot be relied upon to fight against fascism or for democratic and human rights.

It should not be forgotten that while Hitler was defeated in repeated elections, he won in the streets. Fascism will be cultivated and nourished by the employing class when capitalism is shaken by a rising workers' movement resisting a coming economic crisis.

Fascist thugs will then seek to terrorize workers with physical attacks in the streets and on picket lines. They will be encouraged by the capitalists, who prefer fascist incursions on their rule to a mass workers' movement capable of reorganizing society in the interest of all humanity.

Fascism and its capitalist sponsors will be decisively defeated only in such confrontations. And for that, the lesson of history is painfully evident, the political independence of the working class and a workers' united front will be the only road to victory.

Socialist Action/Joe Ryan leaderships within the labor movement.

The U.S. ruling class under Reagan has moved forward on an increasingly reactionary course. But it is doing so in the context of an increasingly deteriorating situation for U.S. imperialism.

To achieve any long-term solution to its crisis, it must destroy the unions, effectively abolish democratic rights, and change the forms and institutions of class rule toward totalitarianism and fascism. It must also change the relationship of class forces on a world scale in favor of imperialism.

But this is not on the order of the day. On the contrary, the advance of the world revolution and the resulting crisis of reformism mean that the balance of forces is shifting to the disadvantage of imperialism. This will inevitably lead to major confrontations between the two contending social classes-both at home and abroad-and to explosive situations in the period ahead.

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A number of other candidates emerged in this period. William Dudley Pelly's "Silver Shirts" inaugurated a more up-to-date style that adjusted the Italian and German models to American conditions.

Father Coughlin's "Social Justice" movement, another fascist candidate, gained a significant following in U.S. metropolitan centers with large Catholic populations.