I think the relative absence of paramilitary goon squads in the streets the author mentions probably has more to do with, on the one hand, a vastly increased official toleration of their existence over the past decade or so (the state’s response to Waco and Ruby Ridge are probably inconceivable now and, except for the post-Jan. 6 convictions, they are left alone. After all, to fight, you have to fight *against* somebody), and on the other hand the simple fact that their services are not required to dismantle what’s left of the democratic state, which official conservatism promises to do with existing institutional support and without the need for non-state rabble rousers.
Agree. They got what they wanted... why rage against the machine, when the machine is going the direction
you want? Plus, for all the Trump rallies, etc, there's been no attempt to make normies join the cult. No Trumpers badgering me to put on the hat or make the salute, so no need for mass coercion. Your comments on Waco and Ruby Ridge made me think of how differently the Bundy standoff was handled from those events. It could have been a tragedy but turned out a farce.
Yeah, the Bundy standoff seemed to be a kind of changing of the rules. With armed militia guys aiming weapons at federal officers, mainstream politicians like Tancredo and Chaffetz and others openly side with the militias (not to mention the entire right-wing mediasphere and the evolving sheriff’s movement, hugely boosted by Obama’s election). Realignments were happening.
I have to question the idea that the rise of MAGA hasn't been accompanied by steet violence. Sure, we haven't seen organized gangs like in Weimar Germany, but that's because modern society is so atomized. Instead we have mass shooters like Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger.
And sure, not every mass shooter is MAGA affiliated, but a large enough number are that I would consider them a modern mutation of classic street violence.
Thanks for sharing this interesting analysis. I don't necessarily agree with the main axiom here, which is that street violence itself is necessary for a fascist movement.
Think about the statement: "In classical form this is Mussolini’s “aristocracy of the trenches” and the “aristocracy in action” reproduced in the streets, which endows fascism with its morbid passion and aesthetic archetypes, often appropriated but less often embodied: skulls grinning or with daggers in their teeth; our dead comrades march alongside us; I don’t give a fuck if I should die, long live death!"
I've long thought that we need to broaden our analytic category of fascist violence. How else should we understand the mass right-wing refusal to wear masks and get vaccinated during a pandemic than a demonstration that "we would rather die than participate in a multiracial society?" The same goes for the drastic increase in deadly driving and other forms of antisocial behavior that generate demonstrable body counts.
(It is for the reason above that I'm not convinced that "anti-vaxx" ideology has resulted in people refusing to wear masks and get the jab; rather, I believe that people refuse them to demonstrate their willingness to die for fascism and then later retroactively justify with whatever wacky ideology is ready to hand.)
As even the greatest American cities have had their cores diffused by the automobile and massive, fast roads built through their hearts, where would fascist street fighting even take place? Perhaps as America's political geography becomes even more diffuse in a final surrender to automobile-oriented development, so America's fascist violence has become more diffuse, appearing less often as violence in urban streets (which may not even exist as such any more) and more often as a demonstrated willingness to risk death by disease, automobile violence, and more.
This is a thoughtful comment and I'd like to push back on it: the more abstract our understanding of the fascistic death drive, the less of a viable "movement" it seems to be. For example, the refusal to wear masks could be a kind of death drive, but I think it could just as easily be a reactive libertarian "don't tell me what to do" gesture. To my mind, it was accompanied by much less "hell yeah I'm going to die" and much more "COVID isn't really real, the elites are lying" -- which doesn't suggest hardened battle-ready conviction.
I'm not saying that you are wrong so much as that you and the author can both be right: whatever is fascistic about that kind of death drive, if that's what it is, won't amount to a disciplined force that can pressure elites. It can only be used by elites, without dominating politics. I don't have much at stake re: the analytics meaning of "fascism," but that seems predictively significant vis-a-vis if there will be, say, an organized paramilitary force accompanying ICE on mass deportation raids and how much influence such a force would have, which in turn might inform what resistors can expect. That said, your point about infrastructure is interesting, but that might also be a point in favor of the author's thesis as I understood it: they still haven't gotten organized enough to be more than wannabes. Very dangerous, of course, but at arm's length from the ones really in charge.
Thanks for this considered reply. I definitely agree with your comment, that whether or not this type of diffuse antisocial activity is fascist or not, the author's point stands that this is likely incapable of seizing or influencing governmental power, whether directly or indirectly.
Re: urban geography, and the limits of protest in isotropic suburban space, the left has certainly run into the exact same issues. Where is there a space available where a protest could effectively put pressure on the levers of power? Occupy and BLM attempted to solve this problem in different ways, but looking back on both movements I think it's safe to say that they failed to effectively influence political elites to take action on their aims, for perhaps the same exact reasons.
This is getting too far afield from the original post, for which I apologize. Thanks again for your clarifying comment.
I don't think refusals to wear masks are strongly correlated to fascism in particular at all. This cuts across different political ideologies, and as soon as Biden declared the pandemic over, liberals took the masks off too (even Resistance Liberals). If you fly on a plane today, you will see only a handful of people masked, even though more and more evidence comes out every month about the long-term damage of Covid. This is an American individualism problem, by and large, not something that correlates reliably to fascism in particular. I mean you are right that there's something weird going on here; but it's not a death drive or cult dynamic, it's a death denial one, which you see across the ideological spectrum.
Interesting analysis. Suicide by anti systemic violence doesn’t sound like a very appealing rallying point for mass politics though. Most people don’t want to kill themselves like this, which is why I believe that social media has, contrary to most analysis, played a role more akin to a social soother, like a babies dummy, than as a Petrie dish for mass violence.
I bogged down in this, because it seems basically naïve. The machinery of intimidation has expanded vastly since the 1930s. Online trolling and humiliation and threats, slapp suits, local McCarthyism, directed at teachers, librarians, trans, people, immigrants, and other vulnerable minorities, and now with the added machinery of the federal judicial, tax, etc. means of intimidation and coercion, make the bully boy stuff seem small. Fascism edits simplest seems to be about rule by coercion and intimidation, with some circuses thrown in. And that seems precisely where we are.
You’ll have to do better than that, Ari. “Rule by coercion and intimidation” is how every government works. Some are more explicit about it than others. The broader set of examples you listed would lead to radical conclusions — the Soviet Union is fascist, every tinpot the world over is fascist — that makes the term useless as a tool of analysis. We could just go back to tyranny or dictatorship in that case.
"Every government"? Really? Is there no difference for you between say an income tax or a building regulation and jailing dissidents? Or regulation based on science and law, and subject to review, vs. rule by fiat for the benefit of the rulers? For me, there are vast and meaningful differences. The flaws in the former do not vitiate their value and my preference.
You get fined heavily or imprisoned for failing to pay income tax. This is "coercion." You are reminded through the news, and warnings on your tax forms, and so on and so forth, that this is the penalty for failing to pay, this is "intimidation." I'm glad that this coercion and intimidation happens and have no ethical objection to it.
There are indeed ethical differences between jailing dissidents and collecting an income tax. I'd just say that they're differences of degree and justification rather than completely discreet categories of morality (after all, it's the state and its enforcement arms that are doing both).
You wouldn't feel like "the bully boy stuff" seems small if you're the one attacked in the street.
Everything you talk about here is real, but online trolling is simply not comparable to getting assaulted; the world hasn't changed the human biological experience THAT much.
Yes they are different, and given only that choice I'd rather be bullied on line. But they have the same intentions -- intimidation, coercion, even exile. Many in Congress have expressed fear for their families and changed votes based on on-line threats to their families. Bezos was not phyically threatened. These contemporary forms of bullying are being refined to have equal or more force than mobs.
It’s a really worthwhile topic for thought and l discussion but I can’t quite wrap my head around how circumspect we are to the question, is MAGA fascist. I think the simple question and the academic questions are separate. Not mutually exclusive but separate enough that we should be able to call it fascist without having to defend it on academic grounds, based on my understanding of how language works, especially when spoken. I try to draw that line when it comes up. I’m open to an academic argument that it’s not technically fascist for whatever reason (such as those raised in this piece) but the fact that it’s even an academic question means that, politically and socially, it’s just fucking fascist.
I posted this before finishing the article, and now after finishing it feel that my comment was pointless and kind of dumb.
“For rhetorical purposes I hardly expect this distinction to matter, but for understanding the dynamics of the 2nd Trump administration and political violence in the U.S., the distinction matters to better understand how such violence might be incited, sustained, or hopefully prevented.”
The only part I’d stand by is that the left has to do too much justifying and explaining, which is totally beside the point of the article. I didn’t mean it to be critical of the article but since the writer seems to admit the same, it was like gilding the lily. In my defense, hadn’t finished reading it and didn’t expect it to be addressed.
I think the Azov guy is more or less right-- US far right-wingers are overwhelmingly ineffectual betas, too paranoid to ever organize (notice how quick they are to accuse each other of being a "fed" or "glowie" over even innocuous comments), who despite whatever passing cause they're currently whining about (drag queens at libraries, immigrants, etc) have been been primarily radicalized by a lack of access to tig ol' bitties. not exactly stormtrooper material ...
I guess I could buy that in a relative sense we could be expecting more right-wing violence, but I think that is a presumption about what levels of right-wing violence would need to be present for it be fascism.
There was a FBI report from 2009 about the prevalence of reactionary violence. Perhaps in a relative sense we should be expecting more violence, but on an absolute scale rightwingers are already significantly more violent than the left. Do we need wait for empirical proof of gas chambers before we are conceptually secure in calling something fascist?
Otherwise, even if Donald doesn't hit this one conceptual criteria, aren't there other actions of his that would make him fascist for other reasons?
Very good and thoughtful article. While I think the academic debate re fascism in the US is interesting I wonder if it doesn’t suffer a bit from too much concentration on historical antecedents and too little on C21 developments in State coercion and the exercise of private power. I also still think that the availability of large numbers of young trained soldiers demobbed after WW1 was a kind of ‘jet fuel’ unavailable in the US. Ex military in the US tend to be older, married and keen to take advantage of the many material benefits that accrue after an honourable discharge at the end of their required term of service. Street fighting ‘man’ they aren’t by and large.
There’s also the matter of the greatly expanded militarization of everyday life, which has blurred lines and erased distinctions that used to foreground armed threats, and which has to some degree eliminated even the need to join a militia for self-expression. In countless towns, the guys talking about the ball game at the next booth might be casually armed with weapons that can fire several hundred rounds per minute. They’re telling you what they think and believe, who they hate, and who they would possibly shoot, without saying a word, chanting a slogan or doing anything that would attract the notice of the police. Compared to even a couple decades ago, they’ve been unsheathed from the need to sequester themselves in clandestine groups and can simply express who they are and the threat they represent by simply going about their daily lives.
I could use a refresher, John, on why it's important to nail down the academic fascism debate at this point. Beyond scholars anyway. I appreciate the fine point analyses, and assimilate them in the back of my dome, but use-value in the world at large seems further and further away. That said, this was well argued and hard to counter...IF we're assuming it has to quack like previous ducks.
Thanks for sharing this, John. I'm in agreement with a lot of Dan's arguments here. Especially about not confusing violence and repression with fascism. Also his analysis is close to making the link between fascism and counterpower that allows us to distinguish between far right populism and the revolutionary far right (i.e. fascism, proper). I broadly agree that the FR elements within the MAGA movement have no power over Trump, so their opportunity really lies in the succession crisis to come. And no, I don't think Trump has the means to cancel democracy, bin the constitution and become dictator for life. At least not yet. But neither he, nor any of the ass-kissing trolls he surrounds himself with have shown the required political intelligence to change that, imo.
Like another poster here, I wonder how much the doings of the past are analogous to today's doings, given the current presence of the internet and social media as mobilizer, inciter, and network-maker over broad areas, very quickly. But taking another angle, since few things happen in a vacuum, I wonder what effect on Far Right violence and its power is wielded by counter violent groups--such as Antifa or assorted anarchists (the latter of the sort that engaged in violence during the BLM demonstrations which dismayed many BLMers who felt these usually white anarchists were taking over their movement with unwanted violence). I know there was a Communist uprising in Weimar Germany which, according to some interpretations, encouraged the emerging Nazis and gained them support--but I am not schooled enough in the doings of that era to know how true that was--or, again, if it constitutes a good analogy to today's doings in the US. But I know that today, many people on the Right in the US are furious about what they perceive as a double standard in the treatment of Antifa/anarchists by the authorities, as compared to the treatment of the J6 rioters. How much is that sentiment likely to feed the MAGA-cum-Fascist movement and make it more robust? And although Antifa/anarchists are often viewed as the far end of the Left--are they really Leftists? Anarchism does not fit comfortably into the traditional political spectrum. Anarchists are anti-statists which is hardly true of the Left which wants state intervention in various affairs in various ways. So isn't viewing Antifa/anarchists as Left-wing violence mongerers a misplaced view by those on the Right?
Thanks for sharing. How nice to read a serious engagement with the topic that is persuasive as to the current moment without underplaying the dangers still out there that we should be aware of.
I think the relative absence of paramilitary goon squads in the streets the author mentions probably has more to do with, on the one hand, a vastly increased official toleration of their existence over the past decade or so (the state’s response to Waco and Ruby Ridge are probably inconceivable now and, except for the post-Jan. 6 convictions, they are left alone. After all, to fight, you have to fight *against* somebody), and on the other hand the simple fact that their services are not required to dismantle what’s left of the democratic state, which official conservatism promises to do with existing institutional support and without the need for non-state rabble rousers.
Agree. They got what they wanted... why rage against the machine, when the machine is going the direction
you want? Plus, for all the Trump rallies, etc, there's been no attempt to make normies join the cult. No Trumpers badgering me to put on the hat or make the salute, so no need for mass coercion. Your comments on Waco and Ruby Ridge made me think of how differently the Bundy standoff was handled from those events. It could have been a tragedy but turned out a farce.
Yeah, the Bundy standoff seemed to be a kind of changing of the rules. With armed militia guys aiming weapons at federal officers, mainstream politicians like Tancredo and Chaffetz and others openly side with the militias (not to mention the entire right-wing mediasphere and the evolving sheriff’s movement, hugely boosted by Obama’s election). Realignments were happening.
I have to question the idea that the rise of MAGA hasn't been accompanied by steet violence. Sure, we haven't seen organized gangs like in Weimar Germany, but that's because modern society is so atomized. Instead we have mass shooters like Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger.
And sure, not every mass shooter is MAGA affiliated, but a large enough number are that I would consider them a modern mutation of classic street violence.
Thanks for sharing this interesting analysis. I don't necessarily agree with the main axiom here, which is that street violence itself is necessary for a fascist movement.
Think about the statement: "In classical form this is Mussolini’s “aristocracy of the trenches” and the “aristocracy in action” reproduced in the streets, which endows fascism with its morbid passion and aesthetic archetypes, often appropriated but less often embodied: skulls grinning or with daggers in their teeth; our dead comrades march alongside us; I don’t give a fuck if I should die, long live death!"
I've long thought that we need to broaden our analytic category of fascist violence. How else should we understand the mass right-wing refusal to wear masks and get vaccinated during a pandemic than a demonstration that "we would rather die than participate in a multiracial society?" The same goes for the drastic increase in deadly driving and other forms of antisocial behavior that generate demonstrable body counts.
(It is for the reason above that I'm not convinced that "anti-vaxx" ideology has resulted in people refusing to wear masks and get the jab; rather, I believe that people refuse them to demonstrate their willingness to die for fascism and then later retroactively justify with whatever wacky ideology is ready to hand.)
As even the greatest American cities have had their cores diffused by the automobile and massive, fast roads built through their hearts, where would fascist street fighting even take place? Perhaps as America's political geography becomes even more diffuse in a final surrender to automobile-oriented development, so America's fascist violence has become more diffuse, appearing less often as violence in urban streets (which may not even exist as such any more) and more often as a demonstrated willingness to risk death by disease, automobile violence, and more.
Thanks as always for your interesting work.
This is a thoughtful comment and I'd like to push back on it: the more abstract our understanding of the fascistic death drive, the less of a viable "movement" it seems to be. For example, the refusal to wear masks could be a kind of death drive, but I think it could just as easily be a reactive libertarian "don't tell me what to do" gesture. To my mind, it was accompanied by much less "hell yeah I'm going to die" and much more "COVID isn't really real, the elites are lying" -- which doesn't suggest hardened battle-ready conviction.
I'm not saying that you are wrong so much as that you and the author can both be right: whatever is fascistic about that kind of death drive, if that's what it is, won't amount to a disciplined force that can pressure elites. It can only be used by elites, without dominating politics. I don't have much at stake re: the analytics meaning of "fascism," but that seems predictively significant vis-a-vis if there will be, say, an organized paramilitary force accompanying ICE on mass deportation raids and how much influence such a force would have, which in turn might inform what resistors can expect. That said, your point about infrastructure is interesting, but that might also be a point in favor of the author's thesis as I understood it: they still haven't gotten organized enough to be more than wannabes. Very dangerous, of course, but at arm's length from the ones really in charge.
Thanks for this considered reply. I definitely agree with your comment, that whether or not this type of diffuse antisocial activity is fascist or not, the author's point stands that this is likely incapable of seizing or influencing governmental power, whether directly or indirectly.
Re: urban geography, and the limits of protest in isotropic suburban space, the left has certainly run into the exact same issues. Where is there a space available where a protest could effectively put pressure on the levers of power? Occupy and BLM attempted to solve this problem in different ways, but looking back on both movements I think it's safe to say that they failed to effectively influence political elites to take action on their aims, for perhaps the same exact reasons.
This is getting too far afield from the original post, for which I apologize. Thanks again for your clarifying comment.
I don't think refusals to wear masks are strongly correlated to fascism in particular at all. This cuts across different political ideologies, and as soon as Biden declared the pandemic over, liberals took the masks off too (even Resistance Liberals). If you fly on a plane today, you will see only a handful of people masked, even though more and more evidence comes out every month about the long-term damage of Covid. This is an American individualism problem, by and large, not something that correlates reliably to fascism in particular. I mean you are right that there's something weird going on here; but it's not a death drive or cult dynamic, it's a death denial one, which you see across the ideological spectrum.
Interesting analysis. Suicide by anti systemic violence doesn’t sound like a very appealing rallying point for mass politics though. Most people don’t want to kill themselves like this, which is why I believe that social media has, contrary to most analysis, played a role more akin to a social soother, like a babies dummy, than as a Petrie dish for mass violence.
I bogged down in this, because it seems basically naïve. The machinery of intimidation has expanded vastly since the 1930s. Online trolling and humiliation and threats, slapp suits, local McCarthyism, directed at teachers, librarians, trans, people, immigrants, and other vulnerable minorities, and now with the added machinery of the federal judicial, tax, etc. means of intimidation and coercion, make the bully boy stuff seem small. Fascism edits simplest seems to be about rule by coercion and intimidation, with some circuses thrown in. And that seems precisely where we are.
You’ll have to do better than that, Ari. “Rule by coercion and intimidation” is how every government works. Some are more explicit about it than others. The broader set of examples you listed would lead to radical conclusions — the Soviet Union is fascist, every tinpot the world over is fascist — that makes the term useless as a tool of analysis. We could just go back to tyranny or dictatorship in that case.
"Every government"? Really? Is there no difference for you between say an income tax or a building regulation and jailing dissidents? Or regulation based on science and law, and subject to review, vs. rule by fiat for the benefit of the rulers? For me, there are vast and meaningful differences. The flaws in the former do not vitiate their value and my preference.
You get fined heavily or imprisoned for failing to pay income tax. This is "coercion." You are reminded through the news, and warnings on your tax forms, and so on and so forth, that this is the penalty for failing to pay, this is "intimidation." I'm glad that this coercion and intimidation happens and have no ethical objection to it.
There are indeed ethical differences between jailing dissidents and collecting an income tax. I'd just say that they're differences of degree and justification rather than completely discreet categories of morality (after all, it's the state and its enforcement arms that are doing both).
You wouldn't feel like "the bully boy stuff" seems small if you're the one attacked in the street.
Everything you talk about here is real, but online trolling is simply not comparable to getting assaulted; the world hasn't changed the human biological experience THAT much.
Yes they are different, and given only that choice I'd rather be bullied on line. But they have the same intentions -- intimidation, coercion, even exile. Many in Congress have expressed fear for their families and changed votes based on on-line threats to their families. Bezos was not phyically threatened. These contemporary forms of bullying are being refined to have equal or more force than mobs.
It’s a really worthwhile topic for thought and l discussion but I can’t quite wrap my head around how circumspect we are to the question, is MAGA fascist. I think the simple question and the academic questions are separate. Not mutually exclusive but separate enough that we should be able to call it fascist without having to defend it on academic grounds, based on my understanding of how language works, especially when spoken. I try to draw that line when it comes up. I’m open to an academic argument that it’s not technically fascist for whatever reason (such as those raised in this piece) but the fact that it’s even an academic question means that, politically and socially, it’s just fucking fascist.
I posted this before finishing the article, and now after finishing it feel that my comment was pointless and kind of dumb.
“For rhetorical purposes I hardly expect this distinction to matter, but for understanding the dynamics of the 2nd Trump administration and political violence in the U.S., the distinction matters to better understand how such violence might be incited, sustained, or hopefully prevented.”
The only part I’d stand by is that the left has to do too much justifying and explaining, which is totally beside the point of the article. I didn’t mean it to be critical of the article but since the writer seems to admit the same, it was like gilding the lily. In my defense, hadn’t finished reading it and didn’t expect it to be addressed.
lesson there perhaps!
It’s definitely not going to be the last useless comment I post. I wasn’t trying to shit on the article! I enjoyed it from start to finish.
I think the Azov guy is more or less right-- US far right-wingers are overwhelmingly ineffectual betas, too paranoid to ever organize (notice how quick they are to accuse each other of being a "fed" or "glowie" over even innocuous comments), who despite whatever passing cause they're currently whining about (drag queens at libraries, immigrants, etc) have been been primarily radicalized by a lack of access to tig ol' bitties. not exactly stormtrooper material ...
I guess I could buy that in a relative sense we could be expecting more right-wing violence, but I think that is a presumption about what levels of right-wing violence would need to be present for it be fascism.
There was a FBI report from 2009 about the prevalence of reactionary violence. Perhaps in a relative sense we should be expecting more violence, but on an absolute scale rightwingers are already significantly more violent than the left. Do we need wait for empirical proof of gas chambers before we are conceptually secure in calling something fascist?
Otherwise, even if Donald doesn't hit this one conceptual criteria, aren't there other actions of his that would make him fascist for other reasons?
Very good and thoughtful article. While I think the academic debate re fascism in the US is interesting I wonder if it doesn’t suffer a bit from too much concentration on historical antecedents and too little on C21 developments in State coercion and the exercise of private power. I also still think that the availability of large numbers of young trained soldiers demobbed after WW1 was a kind of ‘jet fuel’ unavailable in the US. Ex military in the US tend to be older, married and keen to take advantage of the many material benefits that accrue after an honourable discharge at the end of their required term of service. Street fighting ‘man’ they aren’t by and large.
There’s also the matter of the greatly expanded militarization of everyday life, which has blurred lines and erased distinctions that used to foreground armed threats, and which has to some degree eliminated even the need to join a militia for self-expression. In countless towns, the guys talking about the ball game at the next booth might be casually armed with weapons that can fire several hundred rounds per minute. They’re telling you what they think and believe, who they hate, and who they would possibly shoot, without saying a word, chanting a slogan or doing anything that would attract the notice of the police. Compared to even a couple decades ago, they’ve been unsheathed from the need to sequester themselves in clandestine groups and can simply express who they are and the threat they represent by simply going about their daily lives.
I could use a refresher, John, on why it's important to nail down the academic fascism debate at this point. Beyond scholars anyway. I appreciate the fine point analyses, and assimilate them in the back of my dome, but use-value in the world at large seems further and further away. That said, this was well argued and hard to counter...IF we're assuming it has to quack like previous ducks.
Thanks for sharing this, John. I'm in agreement with a lot of Dan's arguments here. Especially about not confusing violence and repression with fascism. Also his analysis is close to making the link between fascism and counterpower that allows us to distinguish between far right populism and the revolutionary far right (i.e. fascism, proper). I broadly agree that the FR elements within the MAGA movement have no power over Trump, so their opportunity really lies in the succession crisis to come. And no, I don't think Trump has the means to cancel democracy, bin the constitution and become dictator for life. At least not yet. But neither he, nor any of the ass-kissing trolls he surrounds himself with have shown the required political intelligence to change that, imo.
Like another poster here, I wonder how much the doings of the past are analogous to today's doings, given the current presence of the internet and social media as mobilizer, inciter, and network-maker over broad areas, very quickly. But taking another angle, since few things happen in a vacuum, I wonder what effect on Far Right violence and its power is wielded by counter violent groups--such as Antifa or assorted anarchists (the latter of the sort that engaged in violence during the BLM demonstrations which dismayed many BLMers who felt these usually white anarchists were taking over their movement with unwanted violence). I know there was a Communist uprising in Weimar Germany which, according to some interpretations, encouraged the emerging Nazis and gained them support--but I am not schooled enough in the doings of that era to know how true that was--or, again, if it constitutes a good analogy to today's doings in the US. But I know that today, many people on the Right in the US are furious about what they perceive as a double standard in the treatment of Antifa/anarchists by the authorities, as compared to the treatment of the J6 rioters. How much is that sentiment likely to feed the MAGA-cum-Fascist movement and make it more robust? And although Antifa/anarchists are often viewed as the far end of the Left--are they really Leftists? Anarchism does not fit comfortably into the traditional political spectrum. Anarchists are anti-statists which is hardly true of the Left which wants state intervention in various affairs in various ways. So isn't viewing Antifa/anarchists as Left-wing violence mongerers a misplaced view by those on the Right?
Thanks for sharing. How nice to read a serious engagement with the topic that is persuasive as to the current moment without underplaying the dangers still out there that we should be aware of.
Perfect date for this analysis, 11/22/63