When the time comes: Let's discuss fascist rhetoric
Gosh, I am not that kind of person but it was just too... yeah, you know.
I think it is time we discussed a very serious issue troubling many of our friends across the isle – who is a god damned fascist, and how can liberals avoid being branded as such? I'm going to base this thread on the work Fascism and Dictatorship of our own (Greek) Nikos Poulantzas, who I think nails some points on understanding the fascist movement. So, buckle up, backaroo. It's going to be a bumpy ride!
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
To begin with, we must discuss who are the prime force behind fascism and why. There are a lot of articles written on how white working class voted for Trump, and how the native working class in countries way past the regressive point Trump signifies supported fascistic governments [1, 2, 3]. Sadly, this analysis is barking up the wrong tree and worse, it insults the people who are yet on the fence swaying from benign conservativism to progressiveness. Poulatzas, on the other hand, rests the condemnation squarely on the petite bourgeoisie.
Who are the petite bourgeois?
Petite bourgeoisie, also petty bourgeoisie, is a French term (sometimes derogatory) referring to a social class comprising semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance in times of socioeconomic stability is determined by reflecting that of a haute ("high") bourgeoisie, with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate.
In simple terms, the petite bourgeois are shop owners, small farmers, state employees, and some professionals and their progeny who are not yet established in the social ladder, either because they are self-made (ie, made it in their lifetimes), or they are just a generation away from their working class background. These people are characterized by the absence of any social culture since they are still in the process of shedding their previous working class culture and adopting the desirable bourgeois culture; in short, they are struggling with issues of identity.
According to Poulantzas, the petite bourgeois are possessive of three characteristics: a) they are pro-establishment but anti-capitalist, b) are overestimating their own ability for social mobility and c) they are fetishizing power.
During a political and economic crisis, the petty-bourgeoisie tends to account for the crisis with vaguely defined notions of ‘corruption’, ‘corporate greed’, and ‘the rich’. Poulantzas points out that the petty-bourgeoisie has an interest in defending its autonomy and property, and therefore is anti-capitalist without challenging the status-quo. Their class position makes them believe that corrupted, greedy politicians are preventing them from moving up the social ladder. Hence, their solution to a political crisis is not a socialist revolution, but the removal of corrupt politicians and the creation of a strong state with a powerful leader.
Continuous economic and political crisis will eventually lead to the first stage of Poulantzas’ analysis, namely fascism as a mass movement
In Brazil, this was the period between 2013, in which the right-wing seized control of leftist anti-government protests in Sao Paulo and other parts of the country, until they put Lula in prison in 2018. This mass movement posed a danger because they constituted the popular forces behind Jair Bolsonaro, and could no longer simply be ignored or dismissed as an isolated phenomenon.
Similar trends of right-wing seizing control of popular movements can be seen around the world. The next stage, unfortunately, is what the above mentioned articles erroneously think was what happened, namely the fascist flirt to the native working class.
One characteristic of this stage is a paralysis of working class organisations, which tend to only make economic demands, but fail to provide political leadership. Poulantzas shows how the German Communist Party (KPD) in the early 1930’s called many demonstrations for higher-wages as a result of the economic devastation of the post-war situation.
So long as the economic downturn is not resolved and there’s a vacuum of leadership due to the political crisis, two things are observed; firstly, the left attempts to woo over the working class with promises of monetary gains which, as is to be expected, is flat out insulting to the people of the working class. The extreme right, on the other hand, plays the game a little differently; as witnessed by the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece, the extreme right’s tactics include monetary gains based on national identity, and the transference of the blame from ‘the rich’ to the more accessible and easily attacked ‘others’. Trumping up arguments like the story that power elites play the working classes against invading foreigners, the extreme right assumes a leadership position on defending the rights of nativity, and the interests of the working man against all those who want to destroy him. National symbols like the flag are soon employed in a unification narrative against a common foe.
In the third and fourth stages, Poulantzas argues that fascism changes as a result of transforming from a mass movement to a fascist state. He points out how in the period of monopoly capitalism, the state plays a more interventionist role by directly intervening into capitalist production…When there is a significant threat to its continued domination, fractions of finance capital will be more willing to embrace fascism, which Poulantzas points out is a more extreme form of interventionism. This is exactly what happens during the third stage, in which the capitalist class provides assistance to the fascist mass movement and helps them get elected to power. The third stage represents the first period in which a fascist takes power and begins building a fascist state. Poulantzas says that during the third stage, the bourgeoisie staffs the fascist state with members of the petty-bourgeoisie who helped fascism come to power.
During this stage the state apparatus will make concessions towards its very concerned citizens including the imprisonment of politicians perceived to be corrupt (ie Brazil), the encouragement of violence against immigrants and national minorities (ie Greece) and the working class will see legislation that protects the working class eliminated (ie Greece). During that same time, the socially dormant petty bourgeois will find their way to government and high civil service offices (examples of people like these include Velopoulos, Voridis and Georgiadis in Greece) either in the democratic government’s attempt to calm down the petite bourgeois by staffing positions from members of their social class, or directly by the fascist government if they have been elected.
In the final stage of fascism, the fascist state has consolidated power and freed itself of its petty-bourgeois class origins. Poulantzas says that this is the most brutal stage, for it involves violent purges at the state level to remove the petty-bourgeoisie, and terroristic repression over the masses. The fourth stage results when the opposition to fascism does not succeed in removing the fascist government.
By this time, I am confident you can see a lot of similarities between fascist rhetoric above and the latest alt-right, and even some of the more traditional conservative rhetoric employed during the years of the last economic crisis (2008 - today, keep walking Greece!) which makes the proper identification of promoters of fascism very difficult, a sore point for very conservatives and many liberals who get misrepresented.
With a new economic crisis already underway according to most analysts [here, here, here], I think we should tackle head on issues of policy most often discussed by our friends on the right, express our reservations on historical similarities of argumentation and maybe discuss how and why some of our fellows are being misrepresented from time to time. My hope is that we can have a candid discussion, apologize whenever we’re wrong, and try to figure out how we got from one state of affairs to the other state of affairs [read with private Baldrick’s accent please].
So, without further ado, the OP question: do you believe that we should be looking towards the small middle class instead of the working class to discuss about signs of right-wing radicalization?
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Originally Posted by Himster
) are the same impulses that drive the decision of much of America and Western Europe. So, what I'm getting at, and I realize this is quite loose and probably difficult to parse, is that the bourgoisie of America and Europe are indeed business owners, but are largely indifferent to the Right. A look at advertising is all that is necessary to see a prominence of pacifistic ideals to sell the widest range of people some products.
