Back door fascism
There’s a nagging feeling that people would prefer fascistic corporatism to actually dealing with the problems they face. Fascism, the far right wedded to a corporate agenda, has become a catch all for the creeping march of right wing agendas, especially when the only word we have to describe the far right is fascism. The US in 2024 is on the precipice of falling into Christian fascism, where corporate voices have come out of the shadows to enmesh with Christian theocrats pushing a puritanical agenda. The US post-1865 has had a corporatist undertow, with unions and the dispossessed at the mercy of corporations using their influence to crush dissent. The 1920s saw the crushing of strikes, the 1950s saw anti-Communist rhetoric weaponised against the left, and under Reagan corporations’ lobbying to remove Federal oversight kicked into high gear. After the Citizen’s United decision corporations have used their money to fuel increasing polarisation, with the end result that the US electorate has been hosed with far-right ideologies since 2012.
Fascism does not start with the Shoa or throwing “enemies” of the regime from helicopter. It starts with grievance peddling, creating divisions between them and us, tearing apart the electorate with promises of a utopian future where “us” is at the centre of power. Every fascist dictator rhetorically picked an enemy of the State, being it Jews, communists, Muslims or another…
