Is America heading towards dictatorship?

[Serene]

The USA has always been a fascist country.

 

[emanymton]

The USA has always been a fascist country.

Saying things like this just renders the word fascist meaningless.

 

[PTK]

The USA has always been a fascist country.

If everything is fascist, then nothing is.

 

[Pickman's model]

The USA has always been a fascist country.

Yeh right the USA was fascist before mussolini was born

 

[PTK]

Yeh right the USA was fascist before mussolini was born

Uruk was a fascist state.

 

[Serene]

Yeh right the USA was fascist before mussolini was born

Fascism may not have always existed under that name, but it has always existed in the USA.

 

[Humberto]

Like when actors, screenwriters, and directors were not employed, and ordinary working class people lost their jobs, and foreign-born people were deported because of their political views?

I assume you're referring to McCarthyism. Isn't something I know a great deal about apart from convos with elders. Although anticommunism has bled through American politics to the present day and has a lot to answer for.

 

[Elpenor]

Like when actors, screenwriters, and directors were not employed, and ordinary working class people lost their jobs, and foreign-born people were deported because of their political views?

Premature anti-fascism was a crime according to HUAC

 

[PTK]

Fascism may not have always existed under that name, but it has always existed in the USA.

But not anywhere else? What do you mean by fascism?

 

[brogdale]

But not anywhere else? What do you mean by fascism?

It's clearly possible to look at the existence of some key influences on fascist ideology in the US. The corporatism and social Darwinism of the 'Gilded Age' is one obvious example.

 

[Rimbaud]

Have you heard of a man called Mason?

I haven't followed his political trajectory closely but to be fair to him I feel like he is at least attempting to grapple with how the world is changing, even if in a confused and often self serving way. I haven't really heard any counter-argument against the idea that a) Europe now faces serious security threats in a Chinese/Russian quasi-alliance and b) the US is not a reliable guarantor of security against this and now under Trump looks like a potential threat.

I'll also add to that, Europe is increasingly economically dependent on the US, and has missed out on the big data/AI revolution. I'm sure you've read Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism and know all about how the flood of low cost manufactures from industrialised states hindered the economic development of peripheral and semi-peripheral states and led to the formation of a comparador class. What people don't seem to realise is that the core of the capitalist world system is now increasingly the US and China (the only states who are AI superpowers), with Europe increasingly consigned to a semi-peripheral role, increasingly dominated by American and, to a lesser but growing extent, Chinese capital. I think the immateriality of companies like Amazon and Meta (and ByteDance) make this harder to conceptualise, but it's a significant development that should reframe how we conceive of the world and our place in it.

 

[redsquirrel]

Mason's gone from a class based perspective through breathless Corbynism to backing the Labour right and taking money from arms firms. A similar trajectory to Aaronovitch, Cohen and others before (though at least Aaronovitch has the grace to no longer pretend he's any type of socialist). In all cases in the manner outlined by Meiksins Wood - the replacement of class as the focus of struggle with some poorly defined alternative, often 'democracy'.

When you say "should reframe how we conceive of the world and our place in it" who is the "our" here?
You talk about Europe, the US, China, Russian but don't mention class. You post implicitly embeds a liberal national perspective. You state that "the US is not a reliable guarantor of security", the whole US? Like any state the US is riven with a whole series of struggles - most importantly class but also racial, ethnic, rural/urban, between different sections of capital, or labour. And what does Europe mean here? As well as all the intra-state conflicts you have the differing inter-state interests.

Thinking about whose security was actually guaranteed by the US shows the fundamental flaw in your position. There might have been some sort of guarantee of security for capital in the past but idea that the security of the working classes was guaranteed by the US state is nonsense. Was the security of Chilean workers enhanced by the supporting of a coup?

You're right that we "should reframe how we conceive of the world and our place in it" but for any socialist that analysis places class at the core.

 

[NoXion]

This is an interesting one I never heard for until this evening: House Republicans to Prioritize Controversial SAVE Act in New Session

This act demands proof of citizenship, apparently from birth certificates that matches your current name... so that rules out, y'know, any married woman who has taken her husband's surname and anyone who can't find their birth certificate. It is, fortunately, unlikely to pass, but the GOP are clearly trying their darndest to use non-existent illegal-forriner voting to disenfranchise as many people as possible.

TBH if it was going to disenfranchise women who have taken their husband's name it'd be an own goal as it would take out more of the female GOP vote than the Dems.

It might also be aimed at trans people, who often take a name different to the one they were given at birth. There's a wide variety of people that Republicans love to hurt, the fucking scum.

 

[Rimbaud]

Mason's gone from a class based perspective through breathless Corbynism to backing the Labour right and taking money from arms firms. A similar trajectory to Aaronovitch, Cohen and others before (though at least Aaronovitch has the grace to no longer pretend he's any type of socialist). In all cases in the manner outlined by Meiksins Wood - the replacement of class as the focus of struggle with some poorly defined alternative, often 'democracy'.

When you say "should reframe how we conceive of the world and our place in it" who is the "our" here?
You talk about Europe, the US, China, Russian but don't mention class. You post implicitly embeds a liberal national perspective. You state that "the US is not a reliable guarantor of security", the whole US? Like any state the US is riven with a whole series of struggles - most importantly class but also racial, ethnic, rural/urban, between different sections of capital, or labour. And what does Europe mean here? As well as all the intra-state conflicts you have the differing inter-state interests.

Thinking about whose security was actually guaranteed by the US shows the fundamental flaw in your position. There might have been some sort of guarantee of security for capital in the past but idea that the security of the working classes was guaranteed by the US state is nonsense. Was the security of Chilean workers enhanced by the supporting of a coup?

You're right that we "should reframe how we conceive of the world and our place in it" but for any socialist that analysis places class at the core.

I think this deserves a separate thread maybe so I didn't elaborate further, but I think there is something about globalisation and the big data revolution favouring economies of scale leading to an unprecedented concentration of capital which is related to the rise of a more authoritarian capitalism and a blurring distinction between private interests and the state. This is where USA and Russia are converging; previously the US state mediated differences between competing private interests, and the post-Soviet Russian state represents more concentrated patronage networks of particular families centred on Putin and his allies, similar to how the US state is likely to now brazenly act in the commercial interests of Trump family and members of his patronage networks.

I don't have answers but I think the left is becoming irrelevant because it isn't even asking the right questions. National and international questions are important and class struggle isn't independent of them. And ignoring the return of aggressive military expansionism, the rise of authoritarian capitalism, and economic colonialism under big tech dominance (these 3 things are closely related imo) because it isn't directly related to class relations seems blinkered to me.

 

[redsquirrel]

I don't have answers but I think the left is becoming irrelevant because it isn't even asking the right questions. National and international questions are important and class struggle isn't independent of them. And ignoring the return of aggressive military expansionism, the rise of authoritarian capitalism, and economic colonialism under big tech dominance (these 3 things are closely related imo) because it isn't directly related to class relations seems blinkered to me.

As you want to continue on a separate thread I won't respond to the rest but I will point out that I was not arguing for ignoring nationalism, colonialism etc - in fact I was arguing that they should be part of a analysis, but an analysis that is built on class struggle - otherwise one ends up accepting the logic of liberalism

 

[Rimbaud]

As you want to continue on a separate thread I won't respond to the rest but I will point out that I was not arguing for ignoring nationalism, colonialism etc - in fact I was arguing that they should be part of a analysis, but an analysis that is built on class struggle - otherwise one ends up accepting the logic of liberalism

I'll start a separate thread when I have time and we can continue this discussion without derailing this thread.