America Your “Shining City on a Hill” is Full of Fascists at Civil War

Part 1: A “Storm” of “Retribution” That Will “Cut No Fucking Mercy”

Note to readers: Yes, I have started charging for full access to some of my Substack pieces. No, I don’t particularly like doing that.  Money is not my thing. If it was, I’d tilt to the white-bro fascist right ala grifters Greenwald and Taibbi or refashion myself as some kind of a liberal or progressive Democrat like Michael Moore. That’s not me.

Why require some payment? Because the 2022 tax deadline made me do an honest accounting of how much my writing brings in and…well, it was not a pretty story. I may be a communist, but I live in a capitalist society that charges me (and everyone else of course) a shitload of money for things like food, clothing, shelter, transportation, home heating and cooling, insurance, travel (pretty rare for me), taxes, and health care…you know, stuff like that. 

I really hate how the bourgeoisie (capitalism):

·       “left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’”

·       “drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation”

·       “resolved personal worth into exchange value”

·        “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe.

·        “has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.”

That sucked.  Enough already with all this cash nexus shit!  Still, in this interim period preceding the next wave of the dictatorship of the proletariat (the first wave of communist revolution died with Mao in 1976), it’s hard to justify spending 25-30 hours a week researching and writing for, basically, minimum wage. This and the de facto anti-communist blacklist in supposedly “radical Left” (yeah right) higher education, mainstream media, and prestige book publishing leaves me with no choice but to ask more of my readers to upgrade from free to paid subscription.

I’m sorry, did I say ask? My bad. I meant beg.  It’s the only way I can continue. And instead of doing a “P”BS-like sales pitch on how great and “independent” (“P”BS is no such thing) I am, I’ll  just leave it right there: I need more $ to carry on with this.

Ain’t trying to get rich, just trying to stay slightly more than minimally viable in a competition- mad, dollar-drenched rate race where “ all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”

I’ll add this: you/we need (or could at least very much use) a principled revolutionary Marxist and communist and anti-fascist voice up on this platform. I don’t see any others like that here, frankly.

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Today I am putting up the first installment in a projected four-part series titled “America: Your Shining City on a Hill is Full of Fascists at Civil War.” Part 2, next Monday, is tentatively titled “Ron DeFascist and Other Nazis.”  Part 3, “Guns and Fetuses,” is scheduled for next Thursday. Part 4, tentatively titled “Fascist Disruption v. Capitalist Stability,” examines how US Republi-fascists are (while savagely capitalist) perfectly willing to clash with significant wings of elite capital to advance their disruptive and lethal program.  It will likely appear two Mondays out, though there is a chance I will merge parts 3 and 4 as a concluding piece next Thursday (making this a three- rather than four-part series)  As always, current events can and likely will intervene to potentially alter my plans. Many of you are no doubt aware that the Supreme Court is due for a major abortion ruling tomorrow. Another possibility: I may want to trade dates for  2 and  3. As Herr Donald likes to say, we’ll see what happens.

Now, for today’s essay.

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“The unavoidable truth,” the US revolutionary communist Bob Avakian wrote two years ago, “is that this country, the much-proclaimed ‘Shining City on a Hill,’ is full of fascists!—in the government at all levels and in large parts of the society as a whole.”

Since at least 2005, Avakian has been writing about a “coming civil war” within the bourgeoisie and the broader populace pitting Christian white nationalist neofascists against those clinging to long normative bourgeois democracy and rule of law.

Even if you are one of the standard US “left” intellectuals who reflexively (and absurdly in my view) rolls your eyes at the mere mention of Avakian’s name, you should acknowledge that he’s been on to something on both counts.  Fascists are everywhere now in the US, especially in the nation’s most reactionary and white regions and states, terrorizing Black and brown people, children, teachers, librarians, election officials, public health workers, immigrants, trans people and of course women and girls. They are working for those in the ruling class who want to rule society with an iron heel and a boot on our necks, in explicitly racist and sexist ways.

Supreme Shock

It’s a long slow civil war with occasional “shocking” outbreaks like Charlottesville and January 6^th  and openly fascistic mass shootings in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Highland Park and elsewhere. Shocking outbreaks like the Christian Fascist US Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision last summer, which brazenly defied majority US public opinion by reversing US women’s half-century Constitutional right to an abortion. Like a Texas federal judge’s ruling on mifepristone eight days ago, which threatens to end women’s access to the leading medication used in half of all abortions nationwide. Like the Fifth Circuit of Appeals’ decision essentially upholding that ruling last Wednesday. We’ll soon (tomorrow) see if the Supreme Court is going to go along with the far-right war on medication abortion’s nationwide viability.   

The Trump- and Mitch McConnell-made Handmaid Supremes are likely to deliver new fascist shocks this year.  Look for them to ban affirmative action and sign off on some version of the wild-eyed right-wing independent state legislature theory, which could let red (try brown) state legislatures cancel popular presential votes they don’t like.

Fascism – Key Parts of the Pathology