Is Hillary Clinton a fascist?

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Jeff Mackler is Socialist Action’s candidate for U.S. president..

Let’s assume for the moment that a fascist is an ex­ tremely evil person. Indeed, in the muck and mire of U.S. politics today the term fascist has been used quite often, but virtually always to describe the “extremely evil” candidates of the Republican Party. Recall Rich­ ard Nixon and Barry Goldwater or the Bush family candidates, or Republican right-wingers Pat Buchan­ an and Newt Gingrich. Very evil men to be sure! All warmongers, mostly racist, anti-union, witch hunters, anti-immigrant, some (like Buchanan) even flirting with more overt neo-fascist and anti-Semitic rhetori­ cal outbursts.

With regard to all these “fascists,” or “neo-fascists,” or “wannabe fascists,” liberals and many progressives sternly warned that we had to vote Democrat to keep them from running the country. They invariably and dutifully marched in line, or better, rushed to the front of the line to support capitalism’s latest “lesser evils,” sometimes vehemently denouncing all who refused to tow the line.

The liberals’ “lesser evils” included the 1960 Ken­ nedy/Johnson ticket, with the millionaire cum billion­ aire JFK clan of Papa Joseph Kennedy Sr., the eighth richest man in the country, backing his son John F. Kennedy. Kennedy Sr.’s resume included service in the FDR administration as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, from which position he had to be recalled because of his steadfast preference for Hitler, with whom he tried to organize personal and unapproved meetings while Hitler was slaughtering Jews and bombing British cities. Said Kennedy Sr. at the time, “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here” (Boston Globe, Nov. 10, 1940).

JFK’s running mate was LBJ (Lyndon Baines John­ son), the Texas segregationist who was added to the Northern Democratic Party-led slate to balance JFK’s liberal image with one more familiar to the racist Democrats in the Southern states, almost all of whose top elected officials were KKK and White Citizens Council supporters. But again, they were also and al­ ways touted as lesser evil than the Republicans.

Next came the 1964 LBJ vs. Barry Goldwater election context, when liberals were told that they had to vote for LBJ because Goldwater was a fascist who threat­ ened to use nuclear weapons. LBJ, whose pre-election promise was that “American boys would never be sent to Vietnam,” proceeded to send over and maintain, on average, 500,000 troops per year to pursue the U.S. genocidal war that killed four million Vietnamese and 58,000 American young men.

Then we were told that the anti-fascist cause re­ quired us to vote for Southern segregationist stock like Jimmy Carter (Georgia) and Al Gore (Tennessee). Carter’s racist history was recast as that of a liberal small farmer. He was perhaps the last holdout, almost to the end, urging the disgraced President Nixon to never resign over the Watergate scandal.

In all these cases and others, when it came to run­ ning the country, election time rhetoric aside, the twin parties of capitalism followed their ruling-class onepercent patrons in implementing whatever the multibillionaires and near-trillionaires desired.

Such is the case under the reign of the Great De­ porter, warmonger, world’s leading shale gas fracker, and National Security State top dog, President Obama, who oversees the all-pervasive government surveil­ lance monstrosity.

Clinton’s reactionary record With this in mind, let us return to my admittedly pro­ vocative opening statement or question implying that Hillary Clinton is a fascist. Her record as a warmon­ ger is undisputed, having been among the top leaders of the central government agencies and institutions that approve, if not administer, all the wars waged by imperialist America in recent years and decades, in­ cluding overt and covert wars, privatized death-squad wars, sanction and embargo wars, and all the Middle East wars as well as the secret wars waged in Latin and Central America. This was seen with Clinton’s role in the military coup that removed the elected president in Honduras, and Clinton’s support for the U.S.-backed Egyptian military coup that removed the elected president of that country.

I might add here that with perhaps a single excep­ tion, Bernie Sanders’ support for U.S. imperialist wars parallels Clinton’s, as does Sanders’ support for the election of Obama, John Kerry, and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996—not to mention Sanders’ 98 percent Democratic Party voting record.

On the critical issues of racism, prisons, and the police, Clinton’s record of support to most of the major racist laws proposed and imple­ mented by the Democratic Party ranks her as reactionary as any Republican. Clinton’s record of support to such laws ranges from those that aimed at filling the prisons with Blacks and Latinos to work at near slave labor “wages” (the average prison wage in the U.S. is 50 cents per hour) to the elimination of “wel­ fare as we know it” legislation proposed and implemented by Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton lobbied for passage of the notorious Violent Crime Control and Law En­ forcement Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1994. Addressing the “Women in Policing” awards that year, she lauded the act, arguing for more police, more prisons, and tougher prison sen­ tences: “We will be able to say, loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent, criminal of­ fenders—three strikes and you’re out. We are tired of putting you back through the revolv­ ing door.”

Hillary Clinton has never disassociated her­ self from support to AEDPA (Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), a bipartisan law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, which gut­ ted basic civil liberties and obliterated the historic presumption of innocence that previ­ ously guided, or was supposed to guide, all le­ gal proceedings. The AEDPA, for the first time in the modern era, compelled federal judges to grant a “presumption of correctness” to the factual findings of state court judges in death penalty and related cases.

The law was enacted because, prior to it, a full 40 percent of state court convictions in murder cases were reversed on appeal to federal courts, usually based on findings of police and prosecution planting of evidence, intimidation of witnesses, outright corruption, racist practic­ es, and more. Today, the new law requires that in appeal proceedings the “facts” used by racist state courts must be presumed to be correct. Today, few doubt that Hillary Clinton is the rul­ ing class/Wall Street candidate that has dutifully served a capitalist class in major crisis due to the inherent contradictions in this profit over peo­ ple inhumane capitalist system itself. Clinton’s near historic high negative approval ratings are close to Trump’s. That’s why the ruling class de­ cided to give Bernie Sanders a shot at sheepherding the unwary and questioning back into the Democratic Party fold, Sanders’ “political revolution” and “social­ ist” proclamations notwithstanding.

Inevitably, when the dust cleared, Sanders, dutifully leaped on board the Clinton bandwagon. His Demo­ cratic Party convention speech pathetically burnished Clinton’s standing by attributing his own “left-sound­ ing” rhetoric and platform promises to Clinton, as if she had adopted them. The same with “left-wing” Democrat and former Republican, Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the liberal apologists for capitalism. For both of them, their criticism of Clinton as Wall Street’s nominee evaporated instantly after their sheepherd­ ing assignment was completed.

Clinton’s “credentials”

Let’s be frank here and explain why Hillary Clinton is not really a fascist, despite the fact that her deeds— her support to every key ruling-class policy during her lifetime of “service” to capitalist America, demon­ strates that she is and has always been the compliant ruling-class and Council on Foreign Relations think tank-approved choice of imperialist U.S. capitalism.

And Clinton’s lesser-evil credentials today?—the reasons daily put forward by her kept corporate me­ dia pundits and paid advocates? Could it be because she has a better smile than the crooked looking Trump? Pardon my subjectivity! A better haircut? A nicer family?

Or that she now states, as opposed to yesterday, that she is for free state college and university tuition? Or that she is for improving the very health-care system that she previously tried to gut when she headed her husband’s corrupt and failed 1992 attempted healthcare revision? (See “Clinton’s Health Care Fraud: A corporate cure at workers’ expense,” 1993, by this author.) Or maybe that she is supported by Michelle (continued on page 7)

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Obama and a host of other African-American apologists for racist capitalism?

Indeed, Clinton’s most precious “credential” is that she is running against a man who ver­ balizes what Clinton has actually put into prac­ tice. In this regard, rarely a day passes when the front page of The New York Times, and mul­ tiple inside pages as well, coupled with related corporate liberal media propagandists across the country, bash Trump with abandon, while trumpeting Clinton’s sanity and earnestness.

Trump’s racist, sexist, misogynist, xeno­ phobic, and moronic remarks about women, Blacks, immigrants, and Muslims, his alleged draft-dodging, his spurious gambling casino bankruptcies, his rip-off real estate university scams, his advocacy of violence against pro­ testers, his claims that he can re-negotiate rul­ ing-class trade pacts by making better “deals,” his delays in repudiating support from open racists and neo-fascists like former Klan leader David Duke, his climate crisis denials, etc. are exposed for all to see. Clinton’s record is es­ sentially ignored or her poll-watching advisers caution her to apologize for past transgres­ sions and pledge fealty to a better future per­ formance.

One “important difference” between Clinton and Trump is that Clinton listens to her pollster advisers and appears to be a relatively enlightened person, in fact, making a habit of nodding agreement with Sanders’ “progressive” rhetoric, while the bombastic Trump, almost as if he has accepted the assignment to lose the election, is presented as a man who almost literally seeks out new bear traps to stick his foot in.

Indeed, Trump’s poll figures are in rapid decline, with the average of the most recent 10 election opin­ ion polls of registered voters showing him behind Clinton by seven points and declining. Perhaps to the past credit of the American people or in homage to their refrain from participating in this year’s election fraud, close to half of the eligible voters decline to reg­ ister, and another half of those who do resister don’t vote. It appears that this year’s figures might provide evidence of an even greater disgust with what is pos­ ited as “American democracy.”

Clinton’s latest campaign effort, supported by Obama, is the accusation or suggestion that a unsta­ ble or volatile president like Trump, with his finger on the nuclear button, might just start a nuclear war that could destroy the world. Most media pundits neglect to “research” the facts that demonstrate that almost all U.S. wars, including the atomic bombing of Japan, were conducted under the “sane” Democratic Party president’s auspices.

In this periodically orchestrated election-time cha­ rade, Donald Trump says what Hillary Clinton does. But the blood of millions, the misery of millions, the lives of millions, are on Clinton’s hands and all her capitalist associates. There are no pure hearts in rul­ ing-class circles.

And, to be absolutely clear, should Trump be elected, he can be expected to be the same servant for capi­ talist America, no less and no more, because like all “elected” officials, he will become the willing prisoner of the real policy makers in the U.S., the elite .01 or less who decide how best to advance their interests and not their elected mouthpieces, whether their tongues are tempered and polite like Clinton’s or bru­ tally ugly like Trump’s.

What is fascism?

Now comes the “fascist question.” Fascism is not just an ugly and despicable term—a word to throw at all kinds of bigots, murderers, racists, and even dictators.

Fascism, as with the real thing in Nazi Germany un­ Laws of political physics confirmed $33+ million and one year later, Bernie Sanders’ orchestrated “po­ litical revolution” fell back to earth with a dull but expected and pitiful thump, as he endorsed Wall Street’s corporate-funded Hillary Clinton with a resounding “The future will be shaped more on November 8 [Election Day] than by any event in the world.”

Those who believed that Sanders was never a conscious sheepherder for the ever-discredited Democrats will now march with him to the beat of the “lesser evil” Clinton drum, even as she pledges to find com­ mon ground with her Republican colleagues.

But those who are awakening to the inherent horrors of capitalism’s racist, sexist, warmongering twin corporate duopoly will not be sur­ prised. For them, the future will be shaped not by those who profit from climate catastrophe and endless wars against poor and working people abroad and at home, but by the millions who take their lives into their own hands and struggle on every front for humanity’s cause and for the socialist future. — JEFF MACKLER der Adolph Hitler, is a specific form of capitalist rule that the capitalist class brings forth when it can no longer rule with the consent of the vast majority. Fas­ cist rule is implemented by the capitalist ruling class itself when the working-class struggle and working-class consciousness are approaching their zenith, and massive revolutionary working-class parties and powerful unions are fully capable of posing a direct and immediate threat to the tiny minority ruling class.

Fascism is the deadly weapon implemented by a crisis-ridden capitalist class whose very existence is in question given the mass forces arrayed against it and its associated incapacity to continue to profit at the expense of the working class and with regard to the ceaseless competition for markets posed by its in­ ternational competitors.

Fascism, above all, has a mass and armed social base in society, almost always consisting of alienated mid­ dle-class elements whose lives have been ruined by the larger economic superiority of corporate monop­ olies that drive the “little guy” out of business, either back into the working class or into abject poverty. In short, fascism is the political form of rule instituted by the capitalist elite when only brute force and the massive physical extermination of the opposing and organized working-class leadership and its organiza­ tions becomes a necessity to keep the capitalist sys­ tem alive.

This was the situation in Germany, Italy, and Spain, when the ruling classes turned to the fascist option. In Germany, in 1933, “democratic” President Paul Von Hindenburg appointed Hitler, the leader or “Fuhrer” of the Nazis Party (National Socialist German Work­ ers Party) as the German chancellor. The fascists of yesteryear, like today’s would-be fascists, posed as populists. In Nazi Germany they went so far as to em­ ploy the very name of “socialism” to win popular sup­ port. But yesterday is not today, at least not now.

In contrast, when capitalist society is relatively stable, the ruling rich actually prefer a semblance of “democratic” or parliamentary rule rather than rule by force and violence. This is based on the simple idea that workers tend to be more efficient or comfortable at the workplace when they believe that are free to sell their labor to the bosses rather than be forced to endure each and every imposition on their lives under fascist and overt dictatorial rule. The latter in­ cludes the systematic murder of oppositionists if they pose the slightest obstacle to the boss’s extraction of profits and the absolute rule of the Fuhrer.

In the U.S. today the ruling rich face no immediate and serious obstacles to the rela­ tively smooth functioning of their system. Indeed, today’s unions and socialist and com­ munist parties are smaller and weaker than at any time in the modern era. In addi­ tion, the ruling class has gone to great lengths to establish formidable firewalls to ab­ sorb social discontent, be­ ginning with the Democratic Party and including the pres­ ent often corrupt labor bu­ reaucracy, an unprecedented number of non-governmen­ tal organizations (NGOs). All these consciously function to channel discontent into safe ruling-class politics and many other well-established institutions aimed at thwarting the development of independent and anticapitalist organization of the working class to fight for their own interest.

In politics, in capitalist elections in particular, the constant refinement and pursuit of “lesser evilism” is among the most powerful and well-honed ruling-class instruments, promoted by tens of thousands of professional media pundits, newspapers, television and radio shows, and the vast educational system itself. With regard to all of these, the objective is to drill into the heads of the vast majority that they live in a democratic society where an elected government operating under the rule of law and all its institutions treat all equally.

Today, this fundamental myth is under scrutiny as never before, with the growing majority coming to re­ alize from their direct experiences that in truth they live in a society governed by the one percent and that Wall Street, the major symbol of this one percent, (actually closer to .01 percent or less) makes most of society’s critical decisions. Increasing majorities have come to understand that this one percent essentially pays no taxes, steals some 90 percent, (according to the official statistics today) of all new wealth and oth­ erwise organizes society to advance its own interests against all others.

The same one percent organizes wars for profit and plunder around the world that today the great ma­ jority oppose. This same one percent presides over a society where institutional racism in all its manifesta­ tions, is the real “rule of law” and that the horrors ap­ proaching with regard to environmental destruction and global warming proceed unchecked because cap­ italists profit from the continued, if not increased use of fossil fuels, no matter the cost to life on earth itself.

To conclude, neither Clinton nor Trump are fascists. Neither is driven by the immediate need to crush a mass working-class and revolutionary-led resistance, which has yet to emerge. Both, however, in the name of “national security” see the need to put in place the future instruments of mass repression for when they are needed. This includes the massive government surveillance operations that reach into every house­ hold in the country and beyond. Both capitalist par­ ties foster the militarization of the police, the Nation­ al Guard, and other repressive institutions, to ready them for action should the ruling class feel threatened by an insurgent working-class opposition.

Contrary to their belief and expectation that the inevitable and massive working-class risings of the future can be defeated by brute force and massive re­ pression of the fascist type, history has demonstrated that the opposite outcome is the more likely.

When tens of millions—the vast majority—reach the point when they can no longer tolerate capitalist injustice, exploitation and oppression, the 99 percent can and will prevail and usher in a new social order.

American citizens and their non-citizen allies have two revolutions to their credit to date—the revolu­ tionary war that ended British colonial rule and the civil war that ended chattel slavery. Both of these mo­ mentous battles nevertheless left behind large sec­ tors of the population that remained under the whip of capitalist oppression.

Today, these constitute the 99 percent. Their con­ scious organization and education now, and in the course of struggle, will bring forth a power fully ca­ pable of ending minority capitalist rule and bringing into being a socialist society that will change the face of the earth and free its peoples from the horrors of the present crisis ridden predatory capitalism. n SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2016 7

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2016 On the critical issues of racism, prisons, and the police, Clinton’s record of support to racist laws is as reactionary as that of any Republican.