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founding
Dec 21, 2022Liked by John Ganz

but there *was* a recently attempted and failed (lumpen) proletarian revolution that terrified conservatives and turbocharged their reactionary neurosis--the ferguson uprisings, about which nazi like conspiracies loom large in the collective conscious of the right

to this we might add anticapitalist stirrings like occupy wall street and cultural revolutions (pardon the expression) like metoo and lgbt acceptance

even if you factor in the difference in scale and impact of these movements to classical revolutions, what reactionaries perceive to be the case often trumps reality

marxists got blindsided the first time around because they neglected to understand that fascism can ideate beyond strict material conditions

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Thanks. It continues to baffle me that presumably intelligent people keep falling int this "identity trap" regarding fascisms past and present. They seem to be arguing that if the present situation is not identical to that which obtained in Italy between the wars then it cannot be a form of fascism. According to this view Action française and les Camelots du roi were not fascist organizations and the thugs who rioted in the Place de la Concorde in February 1934 and attacked Blum two years later were in no sense fascists!

And, yes, the Bonapartist coup of 1851 is certainly the historical precedent from which any discussion of fascism must proceed.

But I do think that we need to be fairly clear about our terms. Once upon a time in the not so distant past, we used the term "fascist" fairly loosely because, in the U.S. and Western Europe, there was no immediate perceived threat of actual fascist rule. That has changed, and there are now various conditions, movements, and individuals that qualify as, at the very least, proto-fascist, from John Eastman, Donald Trump, and some House Republicans to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. But I am careful not to use the term "fascism" when talking about various run-of-the-mill conservatives, however loathsome I might find their politics.

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As I read the Jäger piece I anticipated a response here.

I too wondered why he spent so much time in the weeds of trying to dismiss the "fascism argument." To what end does this serve? It seems to me that the more necessary question is what countermeasures need to be/can be taken by the left? There a glimmers of different answers to that, and maybe I am too dense to see them clearly, but his approach toward the fascism of it all was pedantic and often oddly patronizing. I also found it a little puzzling that he closes it with, what is essentially, a hypothetical: the answer to question of what power the left has, lies in a Bernie Sanders presidential run (when he will be over 80 years old no less).

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