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It's not that this doesn't matter to ordinary people. Institutions like elections, due process, public education, Medicare and Social Security, and so on, matter even though they have been weakened over the years. They are worth fighting for. But without a strong people's movement, they will become so impotent they will lose what remains of their democratic character.
So why do I use the word fascism if there are still liberal democratic institutions? I could use authoritarian, but I don't think it's specific or strong enough. Fascistization is a process, it has its extreme forms like a Hitler or Mussolini, but these movements do not drop out of the sky. They are the products of capitalism in crisis. The forces Trump represents are not as extreme as those that emerged in Europe, but as the economic crisis deepens, they will become more dangerous.
How long these "democratic" institutions last given the current Supreme Court is a real question. Will Biden add members to the court and put some brakes on the process? Maybe, but not without immense pressure from a people's movement. If Trump wins, it's a moot point.
I hear the voice of Chuck Schumer in my head yelling, who do you think holds back the barbarian hordes? It's people like me! That's the irony. The Democratic Party and the sections of finance that support it are the main force that has the capacity of holding back the far right, even as their economic policies facilitate its growth. Both games in the end serve finance.
Could we see an outright police state in the U.S.A.? It can't be ruled out. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson has said we are only one serious terrorist attack, real or staged, away from martial law and the end of what's left of constitutional rights.
Just imagine what happens when the southern hemisphere becomes mostly unlivable as a result of the climate crisis, and millions of people are forced to head north.
I don't think it's inevitable we will end up with a full-fledged fascist state in the U.S. I do think without a powerful people's movement, we will. We need a sense of urgency about building a broad front for effective action on climate and against fascism.
Most of the elites do not want to live under an outright dictatorship. But they are in denial of an obvious fact; the economic policies they support are leading them there.
Fascistization and Financialization Can't be Separated
In the same 1938 speech, Roosevelt says:
"The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living".
FDR is telling capitalists that if you don't allow workers to have a sustainable standard of living, they could choose to "sacrifice liberty so they can get something to eat." They will choose authoritarianism, and that's just what many did in 2016 when, under the Obama administration, Wall St. ran the economic policy, and most of the income gains after the 2007 recession went to the top 1% of the population.
Finance is even more parasitical now than before the '29 crash. Big Banks make massive profits from speculation, deliberately complicated derivative products, stock buybacks, and debt, then raid the public treasury when things don't work out. It needs the control of government to prevent regulations that might curtail its dangerous investments. The process of fascistization and financialization can't be separated. Big Banks impose their relentless drive for short term, financialized profits on the whole economy. Finance requires a powerful coercive state to impose its will.
Trump's reckless denial about the pandemic was enabled by most leaders of major corporations who so loved Trump's tax cuts they stayed quiet about his insane COVID policy. Of course, again the Fed jumped in to save t heir ass(ets).
The more finance degenerates into what often amounts to criminal activity, forging signatures on phony mortgage documents or hiding wealth offshore to avoid taxes, the more it needs its political representatives to descend to the same levels of corruption. The "swamp" is an inherent part of a system of ownership where, as FDR said, there is a "concentration of private power without equal in history."
After Me Comes the Floods
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