American fascism: it ain’t over yet
Many people think we’ve hit peak fascism, but Wednesday was only a bump in the road. Trump, his neofascist followers, and over half the congressional Republican caucus were just pushing the limits to see what they could get away with.
And in the US Capitol, and state capitols around the country that were similarly attacked, Trump’s fascist followers learned that the personal price they’d pay for sedition and treason is less than the penalty for drunk driving.
The neofascist base has been built, person by person, by talk radio, Facebook and national media chasing eyeballs with Trump’s fascist spectacle. The coin of the realm among members of that base are brutality and violence.
Fascism is not something new to America. This country has run a racially-based pseudo-fascist regime for 400 years, particularly in the South; it just hasn’t been widely recognized by the white-owned, white-dominated media and educational systems in this country.
Raw, unrestrained capitalism without any semblance of a social safety net is what characterized the economic brutality endured by poor and working class people throughout much of American history. You could call it “fascism light,” as the enforcement and impact of it was not as systematic as a full-blown fascist system and largely left middle class white people unscathed.
