Part 2: Populism or fascism?
Between 1922 and 1945, fascist movements came to power in various European countries, either through “home-grown” takeovers, as in Italy, or through military force, as when Nazi Germany occupied France. Like populists in earlier decades, fascists also denounced elites and railed against big business, but these resemblances are superficial.
By the time fascism arose, capitalism had fully morphed into its monopoly-imperialist phase. An independent, oppositional, petty bourgeois politics (of small farm owners and shopkeepers allied with the working class) was no longer possible. Fascism did rely on creating a mass base of the petty bourgeoisie and some sections of workers, notably along racist lines. But this was precisely to defend monopoly capitalism, not to fight it.
Fascism is not simply authoritarianism. It is a particular response of the capitalist class and the state when faced with a deep crisis of the capitalist system, as happened with the First World War and then the Great Depression beginning in 1929.
Agreeing with the whole tradition of bourgeois economics on this point, Lenin concluded in “State and Revolution” that “a democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell … it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
This “democratic republic” is one in which the capitalists are dominant and everyone else is subjugated, but the smooth functioning of parliaments, of the rule of law, and with some buy-in from the masses is, on the whole, conducive to capital accumulation. The democratic republic can ensure stability for the capitalists. Lenin was perfectly aware of the limitations of this bourgeois or capitalist democracy, which rested upon slavery, colonial genocide, and sacrificing millions of wage workers to the sweatshops and coal mines. But this bourgeois democracy is democratic precisely in relation to the anti-democratic fascist alternative.
When the system is imperiled, the capitalists are fully prepared to throw off this democratic shell in order to save the system, as is apparent with the far-right lurch of J.D. Vance’s beloved Silicon Valley, which was once heralded as the promised land of enlightened, liberal capitalism.
Like the big banks and industrialists who bankrolled Hitler, Elon Musk has officially endorsed Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk plans to donate $45 million per month to a pro-Trump super PAC, which would total $180 million over the course of the election cycle.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel gave the Trump campaign $1.25 million in 2016. Vance has called Thiel a mentor. Forbes described Thiel as “a massive difference-maker for Vance’s 2022 Senate run.” He gave Vance $15 million for his senatorial campaign.
Fascism is anti-communism
Fascism did not emerge simply as a way of managing the capitalist state in times of economic turmoil. It emerged as a way for the capitalists to fight back against the working-class movement and even socialist revolution.
The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia established the first workers’ state after the brief but significant Paris Commune of March 18 to May 28, 1871. The Bolshevik Revolution ushered in a new age, putting socialist revolution on the agenda all over the world and setting the stage for the anti-colonial movements that would sweep Asia, Africa, and Latin America after World War II.
Germany and Italy – the countries that later became the epicenters of fascism – experienced revolutionary situations. Socialists almost came to power in both countries. The same was true of Hungary, where revolutionaries came to power in 1919. The Hungarian Soviet Republic lasted for 133 days. During World War II, the country was taken over by a Nazi-backed puppet government. Fascism represented the revenge of the capitalists and aristocrats against the workers and peasant farmers.
Fascism not only plagued Europe. With its powerful military and industrialization policies, Japan joined the Western imperialists in the early 20th Century, bolstered by a fascist movement centered around the emperor, nationalism, and a belief in racial superiority. Japan violently colonized parts of China, Korea, and the Philippines and occupied almost all of Southeast Asia’s land area and population centers during World War II.
This classical period of fascism was not the end of the story. When the U.S. became the dominant capitalist power after the war, Washington repeatedly used the fascist toolkit to crush people’s movements throughout the Global South. Barely had the war ended, and Washington was overthrowing popular, and even socialist-leaning, governments: Iran in 1953; Guatemala in 1954. They carried out a bloodbath in Indonesia, where 2 million people had been members of the Communist Party during the 1955 elections. Between 1965 and 1966, U.S.-backed forces killed at least 500,000 in Indonesia, with some estimates being as high as 2 million.
All of these atrocities were committed to protect monopoly profits, like those of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in the case of Iran. Anglo-Persian was the forerunner of BP, which devastated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Vance and the return of fascism
After the preceding, my conclusion should come as no surprise. J.D. Vance’s politics are classically fascist, not populist. Like Trump, he is part of the return of fascism in contemporary capitalism, an outgrowth of today’s profound crises.
Whereas the populists fought to unite workers and all the “little people” across racial divides, fascism has always been emphatically racist.
Vance echoes Trump on immigration. In his first campaign advertisement in 2022, when running for Senate in Ohio, he said, “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans. With more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” Never mind that Biden is no friend of immigrants; he served under “deporter in chief,” Barack Obama, and signed an executive order in June massively tightening the border with Mexico.
The point is to sow division. Vance advocates finishing the border wall. His racist scapegoating of immigrants is fascist, not populist.
Melinda Butterfield, an organizer of the National March to Protect Trans Youth, which is happening in Columbus, Ohio on Oct. 19, said:
“Vance notably was the primary sponsor of a Senate bill to bar all trans care for trans youth nationwide. His bill would also bar secondary educational institutions, including medical schools, from teaching gender-affirming care for any age. Trump himself has called for investigations of hormone therapy manufacturers, bans on LGBTQ+ inclusive policies in schools, and targeting transgender people ‘at any age.’”
Such attacks on trans people are part of the stock-in-trade of the right wing. They demonize oppressed, vulnerable groups to divide up the working class, preventing us from recognizing our real enemy: the capitalists.
Like historical fascists, Vance wants to limit women’s freedom. He pressured regulators to let police access the records of people who cross state lines for abortions. All his politics around “the family” are geared towards pushing women out of the public sphere and back into the home. The Nazis did the same.
While Vance has criticized Biden for voting for the invasion of Iraq (which was a bipartisan effort), Vance emphatically stands behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He talks about winding down funding for Ukraine, but that is only because he wants to shift the focus to military aggression against China.
He is not anti-war. He is a far cry from the populists who organized the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, opposing U.S. annexation of the Philippines. Mark Twain was a member.
Like the musician Oliver Anthony, Vance blames the poor for their poverty. This is the main thrust of his “Hillbilly Elegy.” Populists of the 1890s would have run him out of their convention halls for saying such things, clearly seeing through his Appalachian gimmick. He is on the side of the bosses, which is why he denies climate change and champions the mega oil and gas companies (talk about underdogs!).
If we want inspiration from current-day Appalachia, we need look no further than the 2019 coal miners’ protest in Harlan County, Kentucky. When Blackjewel Coal company declared bankruptcy and refused to give the miners their paychecks, many of them camped out, blocking the train tracks so the coal could not be moved. This protest went on from July 29 to Sept. 26, with activists from around the region and beyond joining them in solidarity. (Harlan County was also the site of the 1931 “Harlan County War,” a hard struggle between coal miners and bosses, which inspired the song “Which Side are You On?” by Florence Reece, a union organizer from Tennessee.)
In the 2019 struggle, transgender activists played a key role in running the camp. Thus cisgender, white, working-class men stood firmly with these trans activists and activists of color, showing that the white working class of Appalachia is not a monolith as Vance’s stereotyping would suggest, nor is Appalachia all white. And more importantly, this shows how people change and grow over the course of their struggle. It may be that some miners were unaccustomed to trans people, but that changed over those two months. That is the power of solidarity.
Because of that struggle, the miners were awarded $5.47 million. In January 2020, another group of miners blocked coal trains in Pike County, Kentucky. They eventually got paid, too.
Vance does not represent people like that. He represents the millionaires and billionaires in Silicon Valley, where he made his fortune. The Yale law school graduate is said to be worth $10 million. He and his wife were able to buy a home in Cincinnati for $1.4 million and then another in Alexandria, Virginia, for $1.6 million while millions in this country are homeless. No wonder he plans to let the AI tycoons and cryptocurrency scammers run rampant through the economy. Some venture capitalists stand to get rich from all this, but it will not be trickling down. Workers in Appalachia and the Rust Belt need Vance like they need a hole in the head. We know which side he is on.
Down with Vance, down with Trump! Up with Appalachia, up with the working class!
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