Why fascism? It is the inevitable result of late stage capitalism. Capitalism works well in developing nations: jobs are created, living standards rise, the people are optimistic.
The jobs, however, are often drained from developed capitalist nations where wage rates are significantly higher. Well paid employment dissipates, and many workers end up in low paid service jobs which often cater to the wealthy capitalist class. The resulting discontent develops into revolutionary movements which the capitalist class must put down in order to maintain the stability requisite to their operations.
This can only be achieved through force as the democratic movements have already demonstrated their rejection of the status quo, as evidenced by their revolutionary rhetoric and actions. To suppress the movements with force, the ruling elite recruit working class elements, also victims of the downsizing of the workforce, but who still believe in the ideological underpinnings of the recent past era. The capitalist class convinces them the problem lies in society’s progressive population, or the immigrants, but not the system. There is no mention of the shipping of jobs overseas–a competitive necessity for the capitalist firm.
This doesn’t make the capitalist, who administers this process, a bad guy; the individual is caught in a system which requires, and even glorifies, this behavior. Corporate leadership have been trained in business schools and in university economics’ departments which espouse a theory that profit maximization lifts all ships. It does not.
It’s a competitive system where the losing corporate body dies. The requisite relative cost reductions force the capitalist firm into an unending quest for lower labor and other resource costs. Investors demand it; your pension plan demands it. The developed nation’s workforce bears the cost; the management class reaps the benefits. The capitalist manager is the tool which carries out the inevitable chain of events dictated by the competitive capitalist system.
Recruitment among reactionary workers, in the current U.S., takes the form of ICE, and various right-wing paramilitary groups. It is to be emphasized, these groups do not believe they are in the employ of evil. They believe their cause to be righteous. Their consciousness has been shaped by a news and ideological narrative which is completely different from the narrative which shapes the consciousness of the progressive. Both groups feel equally righteous in their cause.
This, however, is Fascism: democracy overridden by force, while capitalism remains in place. It starts when late stage capitalism inevitably destroys its domestic working class base which is no longer, from a wage perspective, competitive in the international realm. The working class group splits in two: One side believes in change, the other clings to tradition. The latter, representative of the state, employs force to subdue the former, i.e., fascism.
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