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Building Rank & File Power to Fight Fascism
17/08/24
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". . . Bill Fletcher's strategic and tactical take on fascism in the US today is certainly applicable to Canada."
Solidarity, Gene McGuckin
Aug. 16, 2024
Blocking MAGA will take grassroots organizing at the local level
The following is an edited transcript of a speech delivered by Bill Fletcher, Jr. to the Southern Workers Assembly on August 8, 2024. You can watch a video recording of the speech via this link. Bill will share more about the threat of fascism and what must be done to defeat it on Liberation Road’s upcoming webinar “3 Socialist Tasks for 2024: Block, Broaden Build.” (Sunday, August 25, 5:00-6:00 p.m. EST.) Click here to register for the webinar.
I am going to divide my talk into two parts. One part is about the danger [of fascism]. And the second is about recommendations and responding to that danger. But I want to start maybe in a strange place. For the last number of election cycles for president, it has been frequently said that this particular election is “the most important election of our lifetime.” I remember first hearing that a few cycles back. And what happened in effect is that a number of people began to think, “Well I'm tired of hearing that. We're hearing it all the time. It's sort of meaningless.”
So I was thinking about this. And it actually turns out that it's not meaningless. It's actually true that each of these election cycles up through where we are now has been the most important. Why? Because we're actually in a cold Civil War. We're in a cold Civil War period where the stakes in each election are becoming more and more clear and very definitive. And in that context—where the far right is interested in absolutely annihilating us—the elections take on a greater and greater importance.
Now let me explain a little bit about how we got there. In the history of the United States there have been periods when the consensus within the ruling circles breaks down. The most dramatic was in the Civil War, but it's happened at other periods. One was after the Civil War with the defeat of Reconstruction.
Another time was after Franklin Roosevelt was elected and introduced the New Deal. And a segment of capital was so revolted by this that they began plotting a coup. And that was a coup that has gotten attention on and off. They tried to recruit a Marine Corps general named Smedley Butler to lead a March on Washington of veterans to overthrow Roosevelt or to force Roosevelt to appoint Butler as a dictator.
Butler did not agree to do this and in fact went on to testify before Congress about the plot. But he was treated in the mainstream media as if he was sort of a lunatic—that this wasn't really serious. But a few years later—as in effect a continuation of the same thing—there were further efforts that were actually aligned with the German Nazis. Rachel Maddow discussed a lot of this in her podcast from earlier this year, that was really quite dramatic about the efforts that were undertaken, that included exploration of insurgencies in states all around the United States.
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After World War II, though, there was a relative period of semi-stability among the ruling circles, even when they disagreed. They had disagreements around desegregation—disagreements around a number of things—but they were held together to a great extent by the Cold War. And when the Cold War ends the differences within the ruling circles become very acute and very very apparent.
But the differences had been arising for a while. In the aftermath of Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and his defeat, there were key people in his campaign—like Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie and others—who began to explore methods for the creation of a new right. And by a new right they were looking, not to be a conservative force, but to essentially overthrow the 20th century. So if you want to understand the far right in the United States, think of it as a movement to overthrow the 20th century—to overthrow everything that was won by a variety of social movements and return us to a pre-1912 period.
They began efforts that included building and supporting institutions like the Heritage Foundation and National Conservative Political Action Committee. They began training and running candidates for local office. They went into litigation against busing, abortion, and affirmative action. And they began building mass movements—right-wing-led mass movements that were easy for people to join. Movements against busing, against abortion, against the Panama Canal Treaty—you can go on and on. And they became very good at utilizing these mass movements to recruit people who would effectively be cadre of this developing new right—this right-wing populist movement that over time evolves towards MAGA.
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These forces like Vigurie and Weyrich were interesting in many ways because they were prepared to align themselves with people they despised. Like Richard Nixon. They viewed Richard Nixon as a liberal, but they saw an alliance with Nixon as an opportunity to make some inroads that they needed—including court appointments, taking over certain agencies, as well as giving them space in order to operate.
This movement strengthens during the 1970s, ultimately producing Ronald Reagan, and the beginning of this shift in US politics. But the bigger shift I would argue comes in 1994 with Newt Gingrich and the so-called “Contract with America.” Where the Republicans take over—and again, this is after the end of the Cold War—and you start to see a very different tone taken in US politics, particularly at the federal level. At the local level there's always been weirdness going on. But at the federal level there was something very different that started to happen.
And this idea of essentially a war of annihilation carried out by the forces like Gingrich gets further accelerated after Timothy McVey carries out the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City, when we start to see the very apparent rise of a military arm of the right-wing populace. Although elements of that had been seen in the 1980s, particularly in the Midwest with groups like The Posse Comitatus and Aryan Nation and others. From the 1990s on the growth of this movement becomes something that we can take note of, but many liberals and even progressives and leftists were in major denial of the seriousness of the growth of this far right. Many people on the left said, “no no, you're overstating this and you're distracting us from fighting centrist Democrats and others.” But this movement on the far right was becoming more well-organized and well-armed.
The next major push is in 2008, when Barack Obama is elected, right? How dare a Black person be elected president of what they saw as a white Republic. And the Obama Administration, true to form, made a strategic miscalculation in assuming that they were conducting politics in an earlier era—that they were dealing with adults, and that it was it was sufficient for them to be adults in the room. Whereas the Republicans, who were consolidating as a hard-right party, had a very different view. And their view was one of destroying the Obama Administration and the Democrats. And in fact people like Mitch McConnell made it very clear as soon as Obama was elected that their objective was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president.
Obama's failure to act quickly in 2009 opened the floodgates for what we came to see as the Tea Party Movement. And the Tea Party Movement was really the predecessor of MAGA. Many people discounted the Tea Party Movement, describing it as an AstroTurf movement, but it was much more than that. It was a right-wing populist, almost a proto-fascist movement that was developing and that helped to lay the foundation for Donald Trump's presidency.
When we're looking at the far right today, and the MAGA forces, it's important for us to recognize that the Republican party has consolidated as a right-wing party for dictatorship. They have driven out most of the so-called moderates and liberals. There is no moderate wing of the Republican party. There are so-called moderates floating around there like the remnants from a storm, but they do not constitute a significant force. So they're very, very consolidated. And their objective—as they've been making very clear—is to carry out this overthrow of the 20th century.
“The Republican party has consolidated as a right-wing party for dictatorship. And their objective is to carry out the overthrow of the 20th century.”
Their objective must be seen in the context of an aim to utilize elected office in order to destroy the foundations of any pretense of constitutional democracy, making the United States more akin to Hungary, or Putin's Russia. And they have outlined this in their Project 2025, which until fairly recently many people—liberals, progressives, and leftists—were ignoring. People were ignorant of it to a great extent, and didn't understand that 2025 is the Mein Kampf of the MAGA movement. It is their outline for what they intend to do and it's something that we need to be talking about with our union members, our allies, our family members.
It's all outlined there. Their plans to destroy environmental regulations, to eliminate the possibility of abortion rights, to essentially lay the foundation for the extermination of LGBTQ populations, to eliminate so-called “DEI” and affirmative action, and to affirm this bizarre notion that white people are the victims of racism. It's all there. It's all there! And so when people say, “yeah yeah, this is not just about democracy, let's stop and talk about the bread and butter issues”—the bread and butter issues are there. Project 2025 wants to eliminate unions, they want to eliminate the National Labor Relations Act. When I'm talking about overthrowing the 20th century, that's no exaggeration —that is their objective.
In that context the question is, then what? Well first is, for those that say “it won't matter who gets elected,” I just say, “look at Project 2025 and you answer that question.” Will there be environmental rights, will there be environmental legislation, will there be steps to deal with the fact the planet is burning? The answer is clearly no. What's going to happen to a woman's right to choose? Well we should have been seeing what's been happening anyway, but it's very clear that it will be eliminated.
But on top of all that there's something that really isn't discussed very much, which is that there are forces gathering—and this overlaps with the MAGA forces—led by the American Legislative Exchange Council that seek to bring about a Constitutional Convention, in order to change the US Constitution. And this is amazing because there's only been one Constitutional Convention in US history. That was in 1787. Changes to the Constitution have been more typically made through amendments. The far right has decided it is unlikely that they can make the changes that they want through amendments. Therefore their objective is to call a Constitutional Convention and if they have—I believe it's three quarters of the states that pass resolutions in the state legislatures calling for a Constitutional Convention—then they can call one. And at that point all bets are off; there is no precedent for what happens next, but we could conceivably come out of the Constitutional Convention with the United Theocratic States of America.
All right, so what does that mean? What should we do? Should we be paralyzed? No, absolutely not! But we also shouldn't expect that the pendulum of history will automatically swing back in our direction. Things will happen to the extent to which we bring about changes. Not because we sit back and wait. Not just trusting that people like Trump will demonstrate himself to be a fool and the people will turn against him—that was one of the mistakes made in Germany, where Communists and Social Democrats believed that Hitler coming to power would ultimately destroy Nazism because Hitler would prove himself to be an imbecile. As we know, things didn't quite work out that way.
So what do we do? Well there's a few things. I have been involved in the formation of an organization called Standing for Democracy, recently formed, which is a worker-focused organization aimed at fighting the rising tide of fascism. We're interested in engaging organizations and individuals in that fight. This is not just an electoral fight; it's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground. I'll get to that.
“This is not just an electoral fight. It's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground.”
Part of what needs to happen and what we're going to be trying to do—but I encourage all of you to do this too—is to carry out real grassroots education with your members. Most people don't really understand the nature of the far right, and sometimes think that these lunatics on the far right are so out there that they must be marginal, not recognizing that they actually have a base and that part of what happens is that the far right exists within a bubble—a bubble where their views are constantly reinforced through institutions like so-called Fox “News” and others that enforce and reinforce their particular view of the world. And you know many of our members rely on Fox News, unfortunately. So we need to conduct real education.
We need to build organizations through unions and through other worker organizations at the grassroots level. That means not just relying on the internet. You know, what the far right understands is that the internet is important as long as it's done in conjunction with direct mass organizing. It does not replace individual interaction, but reinforces it. Many progressives unfortunately have come to the conclusion that struggle is done behind a keyboard and that it's okay to text and tweet and that that's the way we build mass movements. And that's completely wrong—there is no historical foundation for that.
In our local areas and in our organizations we need to be very consciously thinking about opposing the far right. And that means beginning with an assessment of the right in your area. Who is the far right in your geographic area? What do they look like? What are their organizations? Who are their leaders and spokespersons? What are their strategies? What are they attempting to do?
And that leads to being prepared to disrupt the right. So think about these many examples when these far right forces—these fascists—have shown up at school committee meetings, at abortion clinics. The optics are terrible for our side because they get there, they intimidate people, and there is almost never any of us there responding. Why aren't we there standing right behind these fascists with our arms crossed, just waiting? What are we doing? I know what we're doing—we're tweeting, we're texting, we're shaking our hands, we're saying “oh, God.” But that doesn't make change. We need to be there. We need to be there when election officials are being intimidated by these fascists—threatened on a regular basis. Where are we? Where are we to say “no, we are here with election officials. We want to make sure that there's a fair election. We're going to be there with you and we're going to be there protecting the vote.” So we need to be doing that.
We need to be defending women and women's institutions, including but not limited to abortion clinics, when these fascists show up and are surrounding these clinics and are intimidating women. Where are we when they are trying to intimidate people? When they are trying to control their bodies. Again, where are we? We need to be there in force. And we need to be defending the LGBTQ+ population. When I said before that the far right seeks to exterminate the LGBTQ population, that was no euphemism. All of the indicators are there, everything that they are doing, or want to do, but in stages—making it more difficult if not impossible to adopt; make it more difficult if not impossible to marry; making it more difficult if not impossible to come out of your house. It goes down a certain path, and history has demonstrated this many times.
We have to also be prepared to engage in self-defense and prepare ourselves at multiple levels, including guarding against provocations. One of the things that I recently was looking at was how, in a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, there have been right-wing provocateurs who have gone in, in order to incite the protesters to engage in various kinds of activities, including anti-semitic rhetoric and various kinds of actions. We need to train our members and our leaders on how to identify potential provocateurs and what to do when these people show up.
And finally we need to learn from the New Popular Front in France, which I thought was a marvelous example, in which they not only came together to stand against the rise of these new fascists but they also articulated a vision—a progressive vision for what they want to see France become. And I would say to us we have nothing to gain from the status quo. That doesn't mean we don't protect our institutions! But the status quo is not enough. We need to be the ones that are advocating for the expansion of democracy, rather than contraction. We need to be the ones that are expanding on workers rights, on environmental rights, on changing the way that the economy functions. We need to be speaking that now.
That may or may not end up being the voice of the Democratic Party. But this goes to a point about that, which is, as my friend Carl Davidson has pointed out, the Democratic Party is not really a political party. It's an alliance. There are several parties within that alliance. Progressives need to become conscious that we are part of that, and that as part of that—as part of a “party” within that—we need to be articulating our own vision for what needs to happen. We need to be pushing tactical allies that we are engaged with in the fight against the fascist threat. The tactical allies don't have to be our friends, and in many cases are going to be people that we're going to be in struggle with—and are in struggle with, and have been in struggle with—but what we can agree on is that we must defeat MAGA and we must defeat them now. And crush them politically. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.
Join Bill Fletcher, Jr. and others on Sunday, August 25, 5:00-6:00 p.m. EST for our upcoming webinar “3 Socialist Tasks for 2024: Block, Broaden Build.” Register below.
