Democracy and Fascism
Previously, the buzzword was liberalism, and now it has become democracy. It’s difficult to listen to mainstream media without hearing the branding of “This is undemocratic!” “That is undemocratic!” The focus on democracy has long been used to hide other issues which are far more pressing to people living their everyday lives, like trans rights, protecting black lives and bodies from racism, protecting women from sexual assault, and so on. Democracies are governments. Like any other government, a democracy is concerned with one thing first — preserving the current state of society.
Commentators have argued that voting is the way to lasting change. Violence, material activism, organizing your community, these are all secondary to the almighty ballot, according to liberal politicians and intellectuals. Even more troubling, the liberals pretend that the system is fine the way it is, that it was not “working properly” before, that it can work properly if only we have enough people voting. Never in American history have I been able to find a single example of the democratic process “working properly.” No matter how many different issues were on the ballot, none of the politicians of the past, or likely of the near future, have been able to solve a problem through voting. The protests that began nearly one year ago in the wake of George Floyd’s murder illustrated that American liberalism is a political system enforced at gunpoint. Police and security forces will use live ammunition to suppress dissent, as well as “less lethal alternatives;” during the George Floyd uprisings, nineteen civilians died to police violence, likely an underestimate.
Behind every capitalist democracy, I could show you a violent, ruthless dictatorship. Present any real threat to the society of a “liberal democracy” and it will bring down the wrath of god upon you, using any means at its disposal to bring the people back to heel. In state and local governments, the people understand that democracy is a joke. In Kirksville, where I have been organizing recently, community organizations already know the landlords run the city government, and the state representative and senator typically run unopposed. Democracy works well, but only if it can maintain the illusion of legitimacy in the face of people’s experiences, if it can produce the malleable, docile public that liberalism requires to sustain itself. Recently, the mask has cracked. It is much like the crisis of authority that Gramsci was talking about in Italy during the 1930’s. The old authorities are becoming more openly fascist, dropping that façade of respectability and peacefulness that they once preferred to violence. This is the time to organize. In the crisis of capitalism, there are typically two political arguments to be made: fascism or communism. How will it shape up this time? That remains to be seen.
