Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It

Foreword

Donald Trump’s unexpected march to the presidency, coupled with the sudden rise to prominence of Alt Right white nationalists and misogynists, has put the topic of fascism in the U.S. front and center once again. A week after the November 2016 election, Merriam-Webster reported that people were looking up the definition of fascism over four times more often than they did in 2015, and the word had zoomed to number four on the list of all-time look-ups. A similar trend was reported for Google searches.

Trump and the Alt Right didn’t come out of nowhere. Trump’s authoritarian demagoguery and racist, Islamophobic scapegoating are worse than any other U.S. president in generations, but his election would have been impossible without the dramatic rightward shift that’s been going on since the 1970s—not just in the Republican Party, but in both major parties. The Alt Right’s clever internet memes and online harassment campaigns have brought the dream of a white ethno-state into the twenty-first century, but its rise builds on previous upsurges by other far-right currents in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

The Alt Right is just one part of a broader array of fascist and quasi-fascist political forces that have both contributed to and been buoyed by Donald Trump’s victories. This synergy between the activist far-right and a successful presidential candidate is something dangerously new, and it will have lasting consequences whatever happens to the Alt Right, and whatever happens to Trump. But for all their points of agreement, fascist activists differ radically with Trump in their ideologies, goals, and strategies.

All of this means that the fascist danger today is both more deeply rooted and more complex than many people realize. Yet there’s no agreement on what fascism even means or how it applies to our poli­tical situation. All through the 2016 presidential race and thereafter, leftists, liberals, and even conservatives debated this question, with no resolution in sight.

Let’s not get hung up on trying to find the true definition of fascism. As the historian Roger Griffin argued years ago, the way we define or conceptualize fascism isn’t objectively true, it’s just more or less useful to help us understand political movements and regimes—and, I would add, more or less useful to help us develop antifascist and liberatory strategies. In that spirit, I offer a few suggestions on how to think about fascism today:

Fascist politics has a contradictory relationship with the established order. Contrary to claims that we face a struggle between fascism and democracy, fascism grows out of and reinforces authoritarian tendencies and systems of oppression that are deeply rooted in our society. Contrary to claims that fascism is a tool of the ruling class, it’s about overthrowing existing political elites and destroying the liberal-pluralist political system that has helped keep U.S. capitalism stable for over two centuries. Fascists may collaborate with current-day rulers to a degree, but they are an autonomous force with their own agenda, and their hatred of the status quo is one of the key ways they attract people to join them. For radical antifascists, this means that the fight against fascism and the fight against an oppressive social order are interconnected but distinct—both are needed. It also means that urging the state to crack down on fascists is dangerous, because such repression can easily be redirected against the left.

Fascism takes different forms and adapts to meet changing circumstances. In the 1930s, fascists glorified the large-scale totalitarian state and colonial conquest. Today many fascists repudiate empire-building and advocate decentralist approaches such as leaderless resistance and tribal enclaves. And current-day fascists disagree about issues ranging from the role of women in the movement to whether they should ally with Putin’s Russia. These changes and disagreements are important, and understanding them can help us combat the far-right more effectively.

Fascism interacts with forces across the political spectrum in complex ways. Fascists often rely on conservative fellow-travelers to help spread their message and enhance their public legitimacy, but they also vilify conservatives as sellouts, opportunists, and cowards. Fascists attack leftists as an evil influence to be destroyed, but they also appropriate elements of leftist politics in distorted form, from environmentalism to anti-capitalism. Even more insidiously, they also work to poison the left with their own ideas—such as antisemitic conspiracy theories—and sometimes seek alliances with leftists against the state.

Fascists endanger us in multiple ways. The most extreme threat is fascists gaining state power and implementing their supremacist—or genocidal—vision. More immediately, fascists foment and carry out physical violence and harassment against oppressed communities and the left. They also create space for mainstream political actors to intensify their own oppressive and repressive policies while looking moderate by comparison. And, as Don Hamerquist warned fifteen years ago in his section of Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement, by channeling popular anger at the ruling class into supremacist scapegoating, fascists can cause massive damage to the potential for a liberatory anti-capitalist insurgency.

We need a range of approaches for combating fascism. The fight against fascism has to be broad and allow space for people to act in different ways and with different politics. As Anti-Racist Action put it in their points of unity almost thirty years ago, we need to practice non-sectarian defense of antifascists—set aside our differences to support those who are serious about opposing our common enemy. Some approaches will involve direct physical confrontations with right-wing forces. Some will involve nonviolent protest, writing and speaking, legal or electoral initiatives, community organizing, or even engaging with people who are attracted to fascism to try to win them away from it. Although people often think of militant and non-militant approaches as mutually exclusive and in conflict, they work best when they complement and reinforce each other.

Shane Burley’s book speaks to all of these points. The book includes a wealth of information about today’s far-right groups, ideologies, strategies, and subcultures. It offers a nuanced discussion of how fascists interact with other political actors, such as the Alt Right’s love-hate relationship with the so-called Alt Light. It is written from a place of opposition to institutionalized systems of power, although that is not its focus. The book also says a lot about the need for a multi-pronged approach to antifascism, and it illustrates this argument with numerous and diverse examples of antifascist activism, past and present. It is the kind of book we need to help us understand—and end—fascism today.

—Matthew N. Lyons

August 2017

Preface: It’s Happening Again, It’s Happening Still

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

—Antonio Gramsci

Fascism is itself less ‘ideological’, in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.

—Theodor Adorno

In 1965 two scholars, Angelo Del Boca and Mario Giovana, wrote Fascism Today, a study of the roots of fascism and a survey from country to country. This volume helped define what fascism meant after the Second World War, arguing that the burgeoning ­identity-based authoritarian movements were not new inventions, but a continuation of those from decades past. While these new movements, from the skinhead scene to the growing Fourth Era KKK, were dramatically different in form and strategy than those that took power in European statehouses in recent past, there was an essential core to their line of thinking that showed a continuity.

It is in that spirit that this book is written, borrowing its title and a part of its mission.

Around 2011, in advance of some counter-organizing around the appearance of notorious Holocaust revisionist David Irving, I was researching the movement that would endorse his talk. The trend toward suit and tie Nazism had been developing for decades, but a new profile was forming. Websites republishing French fascist philosophers, resurrecting Aryan mystics, and linking up the Men’s Rights movement with a more advanced form of scien­tific racism were coming together, creating a language and culture of their own. Around this time I stumbled upon a podcast interviewing Merlin Miller, the presidential candidate for, what was at the time the American Third Position Party. The young guy conducting the interview quickly revealed Miller’s incompetence, going way over his head when discussing a white nationalism steeped in the heady world of German Idealism, Traditionalism, French New Right thought, and the varied history of Third Positionist meta-politics. The man on the other line was Richard Spencer, who had months earlier started the infamous yet now defunct website AlternativeRight.com. As he would famously say in 2015 as their movement emerged from the shadows, something was happening. Spencer’s views differed from those of the radical right nationalist movements of the past. This new movement was confident in its fascism, it was discovering an intellectual and ethical underpinning, and it was open about its sanctification of essentialism and inequality. In the years that followed they would expand outward, consolidating their big tent into a rabid movement that would take on capitalism in decay through their own revolutionary prophecy. They wanted to take the vestiges of the left, crush them, and see through a national rebirth (palingenetics) to build a new world in the minds and hearts of white people, the first stage to making the thought flesh.

Their rise, and the right populism sweeping the world, has led to a shocking jump in racist violence and activism. For years fascism was considered a hyperbolic fear, animated by the occasional fringe terrorist act, but now it could happen here. It is happening again. Fascism reveals what has always been: systemic inequality, white supremacy, patriarchy, and systems of power that remain invisible while infecting all aspects of our lives. A fascist movement makes the implicit explicit and forces us to choose sides. Spencer had certainly chosen his.

The purpose of this book is to survey the world of fascism—and its opponents—in a twenty-first century U.S. context and to frame it categorically so that the book becomes a tool for opposition. Underline passages, scribble in the margins, and return to it as needed. The first half of the book is designed to outline what fascism is, starting with the world today, elucidating the theory, then outlining fascism’s different manifestations including the Alt Right, Race Realism, anti-Semitism, the syncretic Third Positionism, its religious angles, and so on. Going into the second half I shift gears by highlighting movements that take on fascism as it creeps into society. By looking at historical, current, and theoretical strategies, grounded in actual victories and failures, antifascism is elucidated as a multifaceted movement that pulls from a myriad of traditions and intellectual forebears. Together the sections are intended to show how fascism operates today and how antifascism can cut it down before it is fully realized.

The narratives inside are sewn from a patchwork: from journalists and organizers to survivors of hate campaigns and fascist ideologues themselves. Through this confluence a new vantage point should emerge, one that sees how the new threat of today defines itself in relation to the failures of modern society, yet maintains the component parts that made interwar fascism the iron brigade that decimated the globe. A monster of this magnitude requires a collective consciousness of refusal, the willingness for the people to strike it in every conceivable way. It requires partisans. That is what is evolving today, and it is a battle I hope to capture if only in some small way. Although it was my hope, not every single movement or project is represented herein. I have to acknowledge that this book is a snapshot due to the evolving situation. Likewise, not all movements I discuss reflect my personal politics, nor do they represent equally effective models. Instead, the point has been to create an accurate picture of what a mass movement to combat fascism looks like, with messy vision, different types of participation, and varied conceptions of what the struggle is. That communities unite in struggle is more important than the specific model of organizing. Together we make history.

Now is the time for monsters, and the fight is all of ours.

Glossary of Key Terms

III% (Three Percenters):

A decentralized Patriot militia movement that builds on many of the same far-right themes that other groups do, including implicit racism, conspiracy theories, and violent interpretations of ultra-conservative orthodoxy. Their name comes from the unproven believe that only 3% of American colonists took up arms against the British. They have been tied to increasing acts of violence, both against government officials and against people of color and leftist activists.

4Chan:

An internet message board where much of the extreme and ­anti-PC rhetoric of the Alt Right and Manosphere was formed. It revels in anonymity, boundary pushing, and explicit white supremacist language, though it is also a place for other types of internet dissidents as well.

9/11 Truth:

A conspiracy theory about the role of the government(s) and secret agencies involved in executing and/or covering up the truth about the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. This theory has been a crossover point for fascists who use it to employ an anti-Semitic theory about Israeli involvement in the attack and Jewish manipulation of world affairs.

Alt Light:

The layer of commentators and activists that associate with and are similar in behavior to the Alt Right yet do not have the ideological consistency and extreme positions of the Alt Right. This would include right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, Ann Coulter, Breitbart News, and others.

Alt Right:

Short for Alternative Right. A big tent term that links together white nationalists with misogynist movements, racial pagans, race realists, Traditionalists, and other currents into a contemporary, internet-­focused, nationalist movement. This is typified by ideas like ethnic nationalism/conflict, traditional societies and social roles, human inequality, essential identities, and an aggressive troll culture of internet dialogue.

Anarchism:

An ideology that opposes to all forms of social hierarchy, and argues for a form of communism that is free of the state and systems of coercive authority. It can be labeled as egalitarian, antiracist, anti-­heteronormative, feminist, and against all forms of oppression.

Anarcho-Capitalism:

An extreme form of libertarianism where the state, as a mediator of human rights and social redistribution, is negated in favor of market determination of power and authority.

Antifa:

A direct-action iteration of Anti-Fascist Action developed by autonomist and anarchist blocs in Germany, France, and the U.K. and adopted as a primary antifascist organizing method worldwide. It differentiates itself by direct engagement with fascists in the streets, fighting over contested spaces, and using a no platform strategy.

Anti-Racist Action (ARA):

ARA precedes Antifa in the U.S. and was formed in the early 1980s to confront the growing white supremacist movements in urban and subcultural spaces.

Christian Identity:

A white supremacist version of Christianity that sees white Europeans as the biblical Israelites, while Jews are a demonic race spawned either from an unholy union of Eve and the Serpent or of a mongrel enemy tribe. Non-whites are seen as the beasts of the field that lack souls. Christian Identity people have an explicitly revolutionary and eschatological view. They are extensively tied to white supremacist terrorism as well as having inroads with the militia movement.

Civic Nationalism/Nativism:

A form of nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment that, though focused on the existing nation-state, does not have a complete ethnic/racial perspective. This often results in a form of Ultra Patriotism that seeks America First economic and foreign policies, is critical of immigration, forces assimilation into the dominant culture, and is socially rigid.

Creativity Movement:

A white supremacist religious movement that hails the white race as the Creators by virtue of their genetic endowments, and constructs a traditional supremacist narrative about the role of other races in relation to whites. It is anti-religion in the traditional sense, openly genocidal, and linked to white supremacist terrorism around the U.S.

Cuckservative:

A meme created by Alt Right figures (and popularized by the Right Stuff Radio) that attempts to call out traditional Beltway conservatives for working against their own ethnic interests in relation to mass immigration. It is a racist dog whistle for white men whose wives seek out stronger men (often black men) for sex.

Cultural Marxism:

An anti-Semitic idea built on a conspiracy theory. Owing to the idea that the Frankfurt School of Marxism was a Judaic ploy to undermine the ethnic determinism and Faustian spirit of the West, cultural marxism is believed to be all the ideas of Marxism applied to social life and now reflected in contemporary liberalism.

Elitism:

The anti-egalitarian belief that superior elites should rule over the masses, from social control to the functions of the state. This plays into the idea of personal hierarchies, where some people are more fit to rule than others and a benevolent elite needs to control the populace. This elitism is based in the veneration of ideal types, using essentialist metrics for value, such as IQ, body type, and moral character, as well as possibly elite castes and the divine right of kings.

European New Right:

A fascist philosophical tradition started in the late 1960s to build on the cultural shifts around the New Left and attempting to rebrand the ideas of racial supremacy and exclusivity. Using the language of anti-colonialism, it argues for the right to difference of groups to remain separate in traditionalist enclaves.

Ethnostate:

A governing state whose criteria for citizenship is determined by the ethnicity/race of the dominant body. An example of this would be a pan-­European, white nationalist ethnostate, where the criteria for citizenship would be being a member of the white race.

Feminism:

Ideology that is against the oppression of women and non-masculine/para-masculine people.

Folkish Heathenry:

Nordic paganism that builds on the original archetypal explanation of Carl Jung, which says that the Nordic gods are archetypal metaphors for the minds and spirits of people of Northern European ancestry. This is specifi­cally an ethnic religion, one that says that heathenry is only for people of that specific sub-ethnic group. There are folkish interpretations of other regional paganisms, such as Celtic, Welsh, Hellenic, or Rodnovery, but folkish Heathenry is the most practiced by Western white nationalists.

Globalism:

A right-wing interpretation of the effects of globalization, usually indicating the negative effects of multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism. For the anti-globalist, this could mean the destruction of ethnic identity, traditional familial or gender roles, the dominance of traditional authority or the church, the destruction of interpersonal relationships, and so on. This is fundamentally different than left-wing anti-globalization since it centers itself on the maintenance of nationalism, essential identity, and traditional hierarchies and authorities rather than looking at the effects of globalization from left-wing value sets, such as the destruction of organized labor and the targeting of marginalized indigenous groups.

Holocaust Denial:

The belief that what is understood to be fact about the Holocaust, like the number of Jews exterminated or the role Hitler played in it, is untrue and instead a lie constructed by those who have something to gain by the falsehood (almost always Jews). This can also include minimizing the importance of the Holocaust in history, and the attempt to diminish recognition of it.

Identitarianism:

A new form of white nationalist branding developed in conjunction with the European New Right and youth-oriented far-right social movements in France. Identitarianism focuses on the importance of identity, and their campaigns and rhetoric are structured around the reclamation and restoration of essential identity.

Jewish Question:

Shortened by the Alt Right to the JQ, this is the question of Jewish power, or the conspiratorial view that Jews wield disproportionate power on host nations through various mechanisms, such as investment finance, foreign policy, or Hollywood. The JQ is used variously to question the role of Jews, or to suggest that anything identified as progressive, modern, or multicultural is a part of Jewish subversion.

Kek:

An Alt Right meme that attempts to appropriate the Egyptian God of the same name and assign Pepe (the Frog) to him as his current avatar. This sees the ancient Egyptian religion as Aryan, with Kek’s role as a God of Chaos representing the Alt Right troll storm that will clear away multiculturalism and allow for a great Aryan ascendancy.

Kinism:

White Kinists see non-white people and Jews as fully human, it believes there must be tribal exclusivity in worship and community. They also see Jews as uniquely deceptive and problematic, and they have made large inroads with the Neo-Confederate and Southern Nationalist movements.

Left-Hand Path (LHP):

A term used to label multiple religious, esoteric, and occult paths that divert from what is labeled as Right-Hand Path religious traditions, which are those based in commonly accepted moral tenets and that hold onto universalized systems of moral responsibility. LHP adherents may propose libertine sexual ideas, believe in retribution rather than blanket forgiveness, support ethical relativism, and seek the empowerment and indulgence of the self as a high moral ideal. These traditions may include LaVeyan and theistic strains of Satanism, Thelema, the Temple of Set, Vamachara Vedic practice, some forms of Tantra, and various forms of post-modern magical practice. Most LHP adherents wholly reject fascist and racialist politics, but there are some that maintain those political connections.

Manosphere:

A loose-knit collection of blogs, podcasts, and message boards united by a male-centric perspective on social issues, one that is deeply mistrustful of women, transgendered people, and liberal society. Made up of different sectors such as Men’s Rights Activists (MRA), who argue men are oppressed by feminist society, or pick-up artists (PUAs), men who share skills in picking up women. Many argue that this is the gendered equivalent of white nationalism, and that the movement is largely founded on misogyny.

Meta-Politics:

The ideas, culture, and inclinations that motivate politics down the line. Meta-politics, in the neo-fascist sense, are the cultural projects that attempt to influence ideological positions without engaging strictly in political practice. This includes art, music, and philosophy that suggest fascist ideas in the social sphere without making their political implications explicit. Some of the best known of these are the romanticism, nationalism, and the focus on identity present in neofolk.

Misogyny:

The hatred of women, both individually and institutionally.

Modernity:

An amorphous concept used on the far-right to indicate those aspects of the post-industrial world in which traditional authority, gender roles, racial exclusivity, and mystification have been undermined by liberalism, democracy, and often global capitalism.

National Anarchism:

A non-state form of fascism whereby identity exclusive (usually racial) enclaves are formed as tribal communities. This is usually mixed with anti-Semitic, anti-modern, and traditionalist ideas about social organization.

Nationalism:

The focus on a nation or ethnic group as an exclusive system of value, with morality, politics, and identity being held fixed with that group. This can mean strong allegiance to the interests of an ethnic group, race, or sovereign country, yet often denotes a far-right-wing view of this group identity as defining, organic, and superseding other identities.

Neofolk:

A romantic genre of music that venerates the sound and cultural indicators of premodern Europe, including indigenous paganism, imperial governments, chivalry, nature worship, ancestral veneration, and other elements. While the genre is not fascist per se, it was developed by many fascist ideologues as a meta-political project to build cultural affinity with European identity.

Neo-Nazi:

A neo-fascist who attempts to bring the principles and key ideas of Hitlerian National Socialism into modern situations. While all neo-­Nazis are fascists, most fascist ideologies are not a perfect fit for the term neo-Nazi.

Neoreaction:

Philosophy developed by Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land focusing on criticisms of egalitarianism, democracy, and modernity. Focuses heavily on restoring traditional hierarchical systems of power, esoteric ideas on tradition, and restoring a contemporary society based on pre-Enlightenment, pre-Reformation social orders, possibly including theocracy, the monarchy, and elitist rule.

Oath Keepers:

A Patriot militia group made up of former and current first responders, veterans, and law enforcement officers, engaged in upholding the Constitution. This amounts to a far-right reading of U.S. laws and history, including extreme libertarian economics, anti-Federal-government rhetoric, opposition to liberalism, and conspiracy theories.

Paleoconservative:

A form of conservatism developed in response to the rise of Neoconservatism in the GOP in the 1980s. It stresses America First policies, economic nationalism, extreme social conservatism, reactionary racial policies, and isolationism. Pat Buchanan is the best known figure, and the Rockford Institute, Chronicles, and the American Conservative are the best known institutions.

Palingenetic Ultranationalism:

A definition of fascism developed by academic Roger Griffin meant to describe a form of nationalism born out of a mythological vision of the past and the desire to return to a lost golden age.

Populism:

A mass movement linking politics directly into the people as a group and often utilizing emotional qualities to motivate political choices.

Race Realism and Human Biological Diversity:

These are different names for the same pseudoscientific concept that essential personality characteristics and mental faculties are determined by ethnicity. The most dominant of these is that different races have different innate intelligence, but it can also refer to characteristics like criminality, patience, time preference, sexual restraint, and sociability. These theories have been widely discredited by all mainstream scientific institutions.

Rock Against Communism:

A White Power version of skinhead punk music, built as a reaction to the Rock Against Racism phenomenon. The term has gone on to represent the specific genre of aggressive and violent neo-Nazi Oi! music that has typified many of the more extreme white supremacist subcultures in the West.

Skinhead:

A subcultural fraternal organization of working-class people often centered on music and friendship. In common understanding, skinhead denotes the explicitly neo-Nazi variety that rose in the late 1970s in England and predominated in American cities. There are also explicitly antiracist skinhead groups, such as the Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), as well as non-racist, non-political skinhead groupings known as Trojan Skinheads.

Third Position:

Fascism that borrows elements from the left, or uses left political ideas for far-right values and motivating meta-politics, so as to develop a synthesis that can appeal beyond their base. This includes fascist appropriation of environmentalism, anti-imperialism, post-colonialism, animal rights, and anti-capitalism.

Traditionalism:

Used to signify the spiritual ideas of Julius Evola and others, or to refer to a supposed traditional way of life. In the Evolian concept, it refers to the underlying Tradition that synchronizes up all world religions in different manifestations of a divine hierarchy and natural law.

Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF):

This is a form of second-wave radical feminism that takes issue with transgender people, specifically transwomen. TERFs suggest that transwomen appropriate women’s spaces, mainstream effects of pornography, and they reify gender roles by recognizing their legitimacy. TERF politics have extended beyond their leftist origin to have collaborationist elements with the far-right.

Tribalism:

A sense of group identity that is absolved of universal morality toward non-group members. Lines are drawn along identifying factors like essential identity, which may include race but may also include other markers like sexual orientation, gender, and some cultural or religious boundaries. Nationalism is a form of tribalism but is specific to an ethnic nation (however that is defined).

True Right:

How we describe fascism today, the True Right includes those ideas that sanctify inequality and make up the true ideological inverse of the left.

White Genocide:

A propaganda meme used by contemporary white nationalists to argue that there is a global conspiracy (either consciously conducted by Jews or unconsciously by the forces of democracy and globalism) to wipe out Caucasian genetic stock. This often references the killing of Boer farmers in South Africa, which has been falsely labeled a genocide. It also references the recessive Caucasian traits, bringing about the one drop rule that sanctifies whiteness with a sense of purity that is erased when it comes in contact with non-white phenotypes.

White Nationalism:

A rebranding for white supremacist ideas around the concept of ethnic statehood, the creation of a country or society that is racially or ethnically exclusive.

White Separatism:

A term that rose in popularity after it became passé to openly identify with white supremacy as an ideology. It indicates that the races should be kept separate, and that the primary motivator to racialist politics is white sovereignty as opposed to racial hatred or feelings of supremacy. It is largely considered to be a coded term for traditional white supremacy yet has been replaced by the term white nationalist.

Part I: What Is Fascism?

Introduction: Drain the Swamp

Not even the most far-flung psychic prophesying the nature of American politics would have guessed this. No one watching the GOP primary speeches at the time would have anticipated the turn it would take, not least the white nationalists screeching on Twitter. From his first press conference, Donald Trump set up the theatrics that he would use to drive a wedge of fear in the voting public:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.… They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.¹

This wasn’t a dog whistle, it was the Southern Strategy made explicit: this was a campaign for white people.² Trump picked up on talking points that many white nationalists have used for decades. In 2011, white nationalist organization the National Policy Institute (NPI)—which has since developed into the central institution of the Alt Right movement—put out a paper and held a press conference in which they argued that the Republican Party should employ the The Majority Strategy. If, as voting records show, the GOP was essentially the white people’s party, then they should act like it and refuse to target minority voters, the NPI said. If they drop people of color, queers, and those with no historic record of voting for the right, then they can more effectively call their white base.³ It’s a strategy reminiscent of that found in business literature, which declares 80 percent of profits comes from 10 percent of customers, so capitalists must tactfully figure out how to ignore the other 90 percent.

Trump took Lee Atwater’s advice in racial scapegoating—to use code words to link economic liberalization with the blaming of minorities—but came closer to calls for racial violence than any major candidate in recent memory, and the growing fascist movement heard this loud and clear. The message sent was not necessarily that one of their own was running, but that a loud politician, backed by unimaginable wealth and iconoclastic prestige, was leaving the door open behind him.

Escape the Ghosts of the Past

Many of those organizing against a far-right groundswell encounter people who believe that fascism is dead and gone. Francis Fukuyama’s idea that we are living in the end of history has made waves not only in the world of capitalist apologists, but on the left as well.⁴ Fascism, as a revolutionary reactionary movement, one that targets both finance and the left, was often viewed as too disruptive to international capital and so could not break the spell of increased consumerism, automation, and sweeping development. The cracks evident now could not be seen in a machine built on perpetual economic growth and planted in volatile markets.

Fascism has often been dismissed as too European, as an anti­quated system designed in a culture of European ethnic conflict and Catholic aesthetics. And the racialist organizations that dot the landscape of modern American history—from the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to Volksfront—are too buffoonish and anti-ideological to actually lead a meta-political movement that could change both the values of Americans and the state that oversees them. Instead, it is the systemic violence baked into police departments and current economic conditions that are responsible for the ongoing racial terrorism in Western countries, rather than the reactionary machinations of some white people frightened by their eroding privilege.

This monolithic description of white supremacy was smashed as pollsters, shocked that Trump’s comments didn’t immediately end his campaign, saw skyrocketing approval ratings. Trump refused to apologize for any of his missteps, rolling the dice that his base would be just as