“Fascism Today – What It Is and How to End It,” by Shane Burley, 2017
This book, like several others, covers the intellectual currents swirling in the U.S. fascist, alt-right and ‘alt-light’ movements. It is written by a left-liberal who approaches fascism as a mostly intellectual issue, much like other similar writers. He does not research the material, class or capitalist roots of fascism as do Marxists, and even gives a bit of cover to the claims made by some fascists. This weakness is profound.
At any rate, I will outline the various cogent points Burley makes:
1. Fascist ‘lone wolf’ violence reflects their inability to construct a mass movement, but this violence is fostered by the ‘above-ground’ organizations.
2. There are religious divisions between organizations over Dominionist Christianity or Odinist paganism. The latter seems truer to forms of fascism.
3. There are divisions between open Nazi and Klanners and more ‘cerebral’ alt-rightists trying to ‘mainstream’ their ideas into government power, which Burley thinks reflects class methods.
4. Burley has a long list of violent ultra-rightists that have engaged in murder, attempted murder, bombings, robberies and fraud since the 1980s. No wonder even the FBI and DHS see ultra-right violence as the main domestic terror threat.
5. Trump, the existing conservative movement and the Republican Party allow the alt-right and fascists to infiltrate their ideas and possibly gain local or national power. In a sense, the former are transmission belts, similar to how fascists gained power in Germany and Italy. He says nothing about the role of liberals in this.
6. Ultimately brutal violence through ‘ethnic cleansing,’ the death of ‘race traitors’ and even extermination are the predictable end result of these ideas, which will also bring in a vastly increased level of capitalist inequality. Right now we have only seen small bloody versions of this.
7. Burley details the many ‘3rd Position’ attempts to co-opt left ideas like animal rights, deep ecology, environmentalism, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. A good example here are some of the rightist ideas of groups like “Earth First,” which were eventually exposed by newer members. Or ‘anti-imperialist’ leftists that provide political cover for reactionary governments or groups that oppose imperialism from the Republican isolationist, theocratic or fascist right.
8. Burley points out that the alt-right and fascists are ‘intersectional’ too – attempting to unite the various identitarian strands of right-wing thought into one force.
9. Burley’s description of 3rd Position ‘entryism’ mostly entails their attempts at mixing with various anarchist groups and positions.
10. All Rightists unite on the issue of non-European immigration. Burley thinks all Leftists should unite on opposition to fascism using many tactics, while ignoring the ‘free speech’ red herring. He does endorse blocking of the alt-right by private media platforms, even though he realizes it cuts both ways. Burley also endorses a ‘popular’ front program against fascism, which has historically included a segment of the bourgeoisie.
11. Burley notes the absence of any left program for decimated rural areas, which have been losing schools, hospitals, farms, businesses and population for years.
Burley covers now familiar alt-right ideologues in Europe and the U.S. who propagandize misogyny, Nordic and Hindu mysticism, Aryan anti-Semitism, racialism, white nationalism, 'natural' hierarchy and 'cleansing' violence.
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| 10/28/2000 - Aryan Nations March in Couer d'Alene, Idaho |
Burley’s Non-Materialism:
Various violent alt-right leaders are actual middle-class or above, whereas Burley claims they are 'white working class.' Amon Bundy is a millionaire rancher, as are many of his allies. David Duke is the son of a Shell Oil engineer and graduated from LSU. Tom Metzger ran a ‘thriving television business’ before becoming a full-time fascist. Timothy McVeigh earned a living selling guns and military surplus at gun shows. The head of The Order, Robert Jay Mathews, had a father who was a businessman and mayor of a small town. Publisher of the website StormFront, Don Black, graduated from the University of Alabama. Tucker Carlson is the son of wealthy parents and attended privates schools, then Trinity College in Hartford. Richard Spencer’s father was an ophthalmologist and his mother a cotton heiress from Louisiana. He pursued a PHD at Duke after attending the Universities of Virginia and Chicago, then led the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The Proud Boys were started by the wealthy owner of VICE News, and while they style themselves ‘alt-light’ they have participated in various instances of violence.
These violent leaders don’t have blue-collar backgrounds and proletarian jobs. In the past these middle-class backgrounds were also true of KKK leaders who were the most prominent people in various Southern towns. William Dudley Pelley, founder of the 1930s northern fascist Silver Shirts, was a writer whose father was a minister and businessman. Instead they reflect the petit-bourgeois strata in society opposed to big capital but also to labor. Even rightist skin-heads make a living selling racist neo-folk, ‘white noise’ and death metal music over the internet like any small business huckster. These petit-bourgeois leaders recruit lumpens involved in crime and thuggery to help them, much as Nazi storm-troops did. Burley’s liberal identitarian point that violent groups are ‘white working class’ ignores their leadership, some of their membership and even ignores their lumpen criminal edge. In a way, it is an insult.
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| Alt-Right Queen of Hearts Bannon Calls for "beheading" Dr. Fauci |
Steve Bannon is a Goldman Sachs alumnus and movie producer. He is part of the ‘suit and tie’ alt-right’ – yet he just called for beheading Dr. Fauci and putting his head on a spike at the corner of the White House. Stephen Miller, a Duke graduate and political press secretary whose father was a real estate investor, is similar, as they want the government to commit the violence. But when that’s not sufficient…
Burley continually labels these groups as ‘revolutionary’ not counter-revolutionary, misunderstanding the term revolutionary. To be exact they seek a political counter-revolution replacing bourgeois democracy. Even his use of the term ‘insurrectionary’ for these groups gives them too much credibility. Burley also gives credence to their verbal ‘anti-capitalism’ - even though no successful fascist in history has ever gone against the capitalist system in reality. They are actually a violent prop to the profit system. Burley ignores the role of large capitalists in the success of any fascist project, as well as the role fascism plays in buttressing class and caste society with their traditional hierarchies of European ‘whiteness’ and maleness. Capital is almost invisible in his analysis, which is typical of some of the other books we have examined here. At the end he mentions that anti-fascism is an essential part of the working-class movement – a statement that stands out for its loneliness.
Anti-Fascism
The second part of the book is about mass opposition to fascism, which has existed for a long time. Burley cites the successful confrontations in the 1930s with ‘Sir’ Oswald Mosley’s fascists by Jewish, Labour and Communist organizations in Britain. (Pictured in the series Peaky Blinders, reviewed below.) Burley wants an ‘intersectional’ opposition to fascism here in the U.S., uniting every strand of ‘left’ identity to build a mass movement. However in his rundown of identities, he leaves out class and mentions labor for 1 page. Nor is he going to mention the primacy of class. He does include fat people’s rights though.
In his run down of anti-fascist organizations, he leaves various socialist and communist groups in the distant past or missing in the present, even though many have done anti-fascist actions. He does finally mention the Maoist Black Panther Party as part of recent history. Burley recounts the successful efforts of Redneck Revolt, Rose City Antifa, Anti-Racist Action, John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the IWW’S General Defense Committee, Oregon’s Rural Organizing Project, Montana’s Love Lives Here and New York City Antifa, along with many liberal groupings. Burley’s political outlook keens very closely to the so-far successful methods against the 3%, Proud Boys and Patriot groups used in Portland, Oregon, along with his familiarity with groups in the northwest U.S. Burley, in a paen to liberal religiosity in the fight against bigotry ignores the flip-side of the coin – Southern Baptists, evangelicals, conservative Catholics and even fundamentalist African-American and Latino churches that promote the exact opposite values.
This book is a factual study that includes a history of fascist ‘intellectual’ development, along with the back and forth between fascists and antifascists in the last 50 years. It has a very useful glossary. But mind the gaps and left-liberalism.
P.S. - The AP has just declared Pennsylvania for Biden/Harris. So are the guns displayed by far-right thugs just intimidating props in some cosplay show or for actual use? Now we will see.
Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate; Against the Fascist Creep; Fighting Fascism (Zetkin); The Real Red Pill; No Fascist USA; The Ultra-Right; It Can’t Happen Here (Lewis); Anti-Fascism, Sports, Sobriety; The Coming Storm; A Fascist Edge; Clandestine Occupations; Charlottesville, Virginia; What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?; Angry White Men.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
November 7, 2020 (Happy Russian Revolution Day!)
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