Fascism: The F Word For Capitalism

Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler in Munich, 1940. The future looked promising for their facile doctrines. Marion Doss. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Even if corporatism didn’t mean quite the same thing back when Benito popularized the now over-used label of fascism it still, then and now, referred to capitalism. Currently being used by neo-liberals the way neo-conservatives use socialism, to ignorantly describe what they don’t like or understand, the stupidity and animosity being provoked is exactly what we don’t need in a time that calls for Americans to come together and actually create a democratic nation, but just as much for the dominated world to do the same before not only America but the world itself suffers damage beyond what is survivable.  

While American ears ring with what can justifiably be labeled the over-used term “hate speech” that finds evangelical Christians, alleged white supremacists, members of the working class and people whose only experience of college is cleaning its toilets or delivering it consumer goods all roundly decried as fascist. This by neo-liberal college graduates whose prime mental acuity is having hopefully been toilet trained. As if this isn’t enough, neo-conservatives with brains shrunk smaller than their nipples by the same media scream socialism and communism at any attempt to see that people are able to find food, clothing and shelter without having to murder foreigners or cripple neighbors. An election looms in which lesser evilism has never been more blatant as supposed democracy with people reduced to panic over Putin/Trump babble on the one hand and charges of Marxism on the other, these being programmed by alleged civic leaders frequently less informed than their followers but possessed of the tools of mass induced ignorance: major and minor anti-social media and supposed democratic government involving the richest hired upper-class government servants ever before purchased by ruling wealth.    

8% of Americans are millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires, yet large portions of the 92% relatively helpless majority are programmed to proclaim “our” democracy in the way that the house Negros of slavery days might have claimed “our” plantation. * They certainly lived much more comfortable lives than the field Negros but were no more than domestic slaves taught to keep their lower-ranked field slaves quiet in times of stress. That’s the economic position of average Americans compared to those who buy, rent and own the state which does their bidding, only making some room for the house negro citizens of any and all skin tones, sexual preferences and religions when it fits their plans and avoids uprisings or revolutions. Thus, social democracy, like what followed the Second World War to protect some set-upon members of the population but has been in a state of collapse since the 1970s. 

As for our democracy, the first president of this nation was elected by a handful of property-owning slavers, Indian killers and other ruling-class members, while more recent elections involve far more voters but with far fewer powers than our original ancestors, possessing neither property nor any real rights until they conducted a small rebellion when the constitution reflected the religion of markets and property owners with no place for the majority who enjoyed neither labeling. In fact, Shays rebellion may have been not only an early cry for equality in America but also the most successful at reform, making it necessary to add amendments to the ruling power’s constitution that at least paid lip service to equality with what was called the Bill of Rights, though the full document continues to legalize wrongs up to the present moment.

That moment finds the sinking USA global ruling class blindly flailing at the world in a death rattle that could drown out all life and limb unless Americans come to their senses or the rest of the world, led by China and Russia, exert non-nuclear force to bring the beast under control before it destroys everything.

At present, Russia is conducting what our stenography class of alleged news reporters label a “brutal” war on Ukraine. This is unlike the loving, gentle, considerate ways in which we make war, splitting skulls, reducing bodies to bloody pulp and burning people to death in assaults all over the Middle East and Europe over the period after the Second World War. That historic bloodbath has been reduced in popular conception to the slaughter of only one group of Europeans, Jews, but all euros were allegedly rescued by D-day. That’s when the allied powers, Britain assisting the USA, finally acceded to Russia’s desperate request to open up a second front in the east as Russians were being murdered in the tens of millions. In fact, the Russian counterattack was so successful many believe the use of nuclear weapons was to destroy Japan before Russia got into the war against Japan, which it soon did after destroying Germany. 

While alleged news reporting on the Russia-Ukraine conflict makes the average comic book or TV sitcom seem like doctoral-study realism, USA and its western lapdogs of NATO threaten nuclear war while screeching Putin is about to take over the planet and force-feed everyone piroshkies. * This as America approaches the mass marketing election mall which puts the two parties owned by capital against one another pitting identity group people against therapy group people with a potential outcome to further savage all the American people. 

Meanwhile, neo-liberals desperately attempt to put Trump in prison so that he might become the first American president elected from the slam or at least trigger the supposed civil war brewing between vidiots, online junkies and their stark-raving mad leadership. If charges of alleged rape don’t get him, watch for his public shaming at leaving the seat up in the toilet as a privileged class cause even greater chasms between the overwhelming majority of distressed Americans and the small and shrinking group who can afford luxury animal health care and personal therapy while clipping their coupon bonds and planning their next vacation. 

The lesser evil global capitalist trend has obviously been from the east, which is acting like the post depression "new deal" by comparison to the frenzied return to market forces fanaticism of the west. With all its inherent wretchedness of dependence on private profit before the public good and with all the flourishing criticism born of the obvious to most breakdowns of the social and natural world, that eastern pressure must increase and grow to ultimately help lead to ending the destructive forces of capital once and for all. Some 70 years before the Russian revolution and nearly 100 before the Chinese, Marx, Engels and others back in the 19th century clearly forecast the long-range danger for humanity ruled by the private and anti-public values of capitalism and we need to see what should be far, far, far more obvious in present day reality.  

Seeing a forest as lumber and seashore as real estate is part of the process of treating people and all other aspects of nature as profit making market commodities. No matter how benign and humane the proprietor of a business may be or seem, if all depends on private profit humanity will show the loss and that loss now threatens to be almost infinitely beyond what Marx and Engels foresaw. International humanity needs to hurry and transform political economics to lead in the right direction for the human race and not just American, Chinese, Russian, or other capital. All of us or none of us? We’d better believe it, and more importantly, act on it.  

About the author

Hailing from the San Francisco Bay area, Frank Scott is not hesitant to sound off exactly what he thinks and believes, and he doesn’t beat around the bush. Mark Twain could be like that. So could Albert Einstein, both calmly speaking truth to power and making the corrupt elites squirm and look down at their shoes, avoiding the searing white light of unvarnished reality.  Frank's columns can be found at legalienate (http://legalienate.blogspot.com/ ). 

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