Upstream - [UNLOCKED] How Fascism Works (a Michael Parenti Reading)

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

This is an unlocked version of the Patreon episode "How Fascism Works." RIP Michael Parenti, (September 30, 1933 – January 24, 2026) In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads and provides real-time analysis of the opening chapter of the classic book Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti. The text covers the topics of plutocracy and autocracy, whom the fascists last century supported, a bit of history on Hitler and Mussolini, the rational and irrational aspects of fascism, patriarchy and pseudo-revolution, collaboration, and much more.  The analysis provided in the reading brings this text into our current conditions and looks at where Parenti's analysis holds up and where it might need to be stretched and adapted to help us understand the rise of neofascism in the United States under Trump and his modern day fascist footsoldiers. We explain why it's more important than ever to resist collaboration and to stand in full solidarity with all of the racialized and criminalized "others" in order to combat the fearmongering and scapegoating that fascism relies on in order to grow in strength.  Further resources: Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, by Michael Parenti Related episodes: From the Frontlines: State Repression and Anti-Imperialist Organizing w/ Calla Walsh Capitalism, The State, and How We Got Here with Christian Parenti Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hey everyone and welcome to another episode in our Patreon reading series. Today I'm going to be reading from a well-known book, Michael Parenti's, Black Shirts and Reds, Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. And I first read this book probably about two years ago and it was just one of those books where I like underlined every single paragraph practically, you know, one of those books that just feels like it's a really essential reading. And it's not a particularly long book and it's quite accessible. I'm sure many of you have probably read it. And so I'm going to make sure to pop in here and there and just sort of bring the book into our present situation and analyze it as we go through it in real time, looking at places where it's

relevant and spot on and maybe seeing where it's not so applicable. And looking at places where you know, fascism might have evolved in ways that don't necessarily fit into Parenthese analysis anymore as much. I'm just going to read the first chapter, which is about 17 pages long, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun, very, very dark, dark fun going through that chapter and just, you know, talking about this really exciting new political development that we are all so lucky to be living through right now, which is fascism. or neo-fascism or however you want to characterize it. So this is going to be a little bit of a break from the China series, of course,

which will resume next time, if all goes as planned, with an episode with the guest Ting's Chalk, who is with the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research, that is Vijay's Vijay Prashad's Institute, and sort of looking at the issue of environmental protection and its intersection with human development in China, actually from the perspective of a very specific lake cleanup project. So I think that's going to be a very interesting and fascinating conversation.

Very much looking forward to that. So that'll be next time. But for now, let's take a bit of a break and take a deep dive into this topic of fascism, this topic which, you know, if you're anything like me, it's got you biting your nails and struggling a bit to find. find ways to sort of see a path forward with everything that is happening around us at happening at such breakneck speed too. So without further ado, here is chapter one of Michael Parenti's Black Shirts and Reds, published in 1997 by City Lights Books. Rational Fascism

While walking through New York's Little Italy, I passed a novelty shop that displayed posters and t-shirts of Benito Mussolini giving the fascist salute, or otherwise known as the Roman salute. When I entered the shop and asked the clerk why such items were being offered, he replied, quote, well, some people like them, and, you know, maybe we need someone like Mussolini in this country, end quote. His comment was a reminder that fascism survives as something more than a historical curiosity. And just a quick aside from the text here already, if you've read Blood in My Eye by George Jackson,

you will be hard pressed not to be convinced that fascism has always been here and that it has never gone away. And yes, there are certain characteristics of fascism, which in terms of like definitionally, it requires a mass movement and it requires a charismatic, authoritarian leader and it requires sort of a certain type of class politics, et cetera, et cetera, et et cetera. And you can go through these definitions and sort of spend hours and hours splitting hairs with people about what fascism is and what it isn't. And so I really appreciate George Jackson because he talks about how we will never have a complete definition of fascism because it is in constant motion, he says, showing a new face.

to fit any particular set of problems that arise to threaten the predominance of the traditionalist, capitalist ruling class. And so his definition of fascism, which I really like to, is, quote, at its core, and this is George Jackson. I know I'm going into like, I'm already doing that thing where I like go into multiple different texts and multiple different analyses within the primary analysis that we're doing. But just stick with me here. At its core, Fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism's response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socioeconomic development of capitalism in the state of crisis. And so this is sort of where we get

the definition of fascism as capitalism in crisis. And that's a very important component of fascism because fascism does arise. It does need a crisis, whether that crisis was the Great Depression, whether that crisis was the early stages of the COVID pandemic. It requires some kind of crisis because when capitalism is steadily chugging along and it's doing okay relatively for most people, fascism lurks beneath the surface at that point, right? Fascistic tendencies, right, like repression, hyper repression, and scapegoating and creating an other and the rise of sort of an authoritarian figure that serves as like the patriarchal daddy figure, which is Trump right now, that stuff sort of remains latent, right? At that point, it's not front and center,

but it only takes a little bit, just a little bit of a crisis in order for those elements and those characteristics to begin to emerge and become dominant. And so I think, that is what we're seeing right now. And so I'm not going to get any more into like trying to define all of the different components of fascism here. But just suffice it to say at this point, I think thinking of it as capitalism in crisis is going to be really helpful moving forward and heeding the words of George Jackson, who explains that fascism is already here. Okay, let's get back to the text. Worse than posters or t-shirts are the works by various writers bent on, quote, explaining Hitler, or re-evaluating Franco, or in other ways,

sanitizing fascist history. In Italy, during the 1970s, there emerged a veritable cottage industry of books and articles, claiming that Mussolini not only made the trains run on time, but also made Italy work well. All these publications, along with many conventional academic studies, have one thing in common. They say little, if anything, about the class policies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. How did these regimes deal with social services, taxes, businesses, and the conditions of labor? For whose benefit and at whose expense? Most of the literature on fascism and Nazism does not tell us. Subsection, Plutocrats choose autocrats.

Let us begin with a look at fascism's founder. Born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, Benito Mussolini's early manhood was marked by street brawls, arrests, jailings, and violent radical political activities. Before World War I, Mussolini was a socialist. A brilliant organizer, agitator, and gifted journalist, he became editor of the socialist party's official newspaper. Yet many of his comrades suspected him of being less interested in advancing socialism than in advancing himself. Indeed, when the Italian upper class tempted him with recognition, financial support, and the promise of power, he did not hesitate to switch sides. By the end of World War I, Mussolini, the socialist, who had organized strikes for workers and peasants, had become Mussolini the fascist, had become Mussolini the fascist, who broke strikes on. behalf of financiers and landowners. Using the huge sums he received from wealthy interests,

he projected himself onto the national scene as the acknowledged leader of I. Fasci di Combatimento, a movement composed of black-shirted ex-army officers and sundry tufts, who were guided by no clear political doctrine other than a militaristic patriotism and conservative dislike for anything associated with socialism and organized labor. The fascist black shirts spent their time attacking trade unionists, socialists, communists, and farm cooperatives. And I think just as a quick aside here, fascism right now does not feel like an immediate response

to communism or socialism in the same way as maybe it was when it first reared its ugly head into the world. there is no communist or socialist movement in the United States worth the time or energy of fascists to combat. Fascism is a response to something else at this point. Maybe it's the perceived socialism and communism that like you hear about when you see Republicans talk about how MPR is like a communist echo chamber or when they characterize everything as socialist and communist. They are still utilizing that language. It's very interesting that they have to conjure up a specter of communism that does not exist in the United States in order for fascism to really have something to bite into.

But it seems like fascism now is a response to just simple liberalism, right? It's just a response to the basic safety nets and the basic countermeasures of the liberal system that attempt to manage the worst of capitalism. Unsuccessfully, of course, but it definitely does not feel like a response to communism, although it's important to note that communist movements, socialist, Marxist movements are the only antidote to fascism. Liberalism, as we're seeing plainly before our eyes, and this is not just a one-off, this is how it's worked over and over in history. liberalism, and in our case, the Democratic Party is not up to the task. They are not prepared or interested in fighting fascism as it emerges now in the United States.

You can talk about why you can get into the specific individual Democratic Party members who are extremely comfortable, have way more in common in terms of their interests with the Republicans and the neo-fascists around them, much, much, much more in common than they have with any socialist or communist. Even people like AOC are coming out right now and making damn sure that people know that they are not radical, quote, and this is quote, quote, radical socialists, right? So that's fairly obvious just looking at the analysis of individual Democratic Party members. And liberalism as an ideology cannot combat fascism because liberalism,

as an ideology accepts many of the basic foundational preconditions of fascism, right? Liberalism is capitalistic. Liberalism does believe in inequality, right? Liberalism does require inequality in order for its economic system to function. So liberalism is not an antidote to fascism in any way, shape, or form. The only antidote is a social. movement that wants to abolish class and that is willing to take militant action against fascism, which is the only language that fascism understands.

Okay, let's get back to the text. After World War I, Italy had settled into a pattern of parliamentary democracy. The low-paced scales were improving and the trains were already running on time. But the capitalist economy was in a post-war recession. investments stagnated, heavy industry-operated far below capacity, and corporate profits and agribusiness exports were declining. To maintain profit levels, the large landowners and industrialists would have to slash wages and raise prices.

The state, in turn, would have to provide them with massive subsidies and tax exemptions. To finance this corporate welfareism, the populace would have to be taxed more health. heavily, and social services and welfare expenditures would have to be drastically cut. Measures that might sound familiar to us today. But the government was not completely free to pursue this course. In 1921, many Italian workers and peasants were unionized and had their own political organizations. With demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, factory takeovers, and the forcible occupation of farmlands, they had won the right to organize, along with concessions and wages and work conditions.

To impose a full measure of austerity upon workers and peasants, the ruling economic interests would have to abolish the democratic rights that helped the masses defend their modest living standards. The solution was to smash their unions, political organizations, and civil liberties. Industrialists and big landowners wanted someone at the helm who could break the power of organized workers and farm laborers and impose a stern order on the masses. For this task, Benito Mussolini, armed with his gangs of black shirts,

seemed the likely candidate. And just a quick aside here, we're seeing very much the dismantling of even the modest and milk-toast labor union sphere here in the United States, first with the sabotaging of the NLR. by the Trump administration. And it's interesting because the Republican Party, I think, is trying to sort of bridge these two opposing realities, right? One of them is what Parenti is talking about here, right? Like the right needs workers to be unorganized so that they can be easily crushed. And yet at the same time, the vast majority of people are workers. So how do you sell them policies that

intend to crush them? Well, you have to do so through subterfuge, right? And And so we have certain elements of the Republican Party paying lip service to certain working class elements. You have, you know, UAW president, Sean Fane, talking about supporting Trump's tariffs, for example, this sort of America First mentality, which is used to sort of raise the patriotic sentiments among workers and get them on board with this agenda that is essentially meant to crush them. while at the same time you have stories of, you know, Trump drafting executive orders that aim to restrict collective bargaining for national security reasons, which he loves to use that for everything, right? That's the reason we're planning on taking over Greenland and that's also the reason that you can't unionize. So these executive orders that exempt federal jobs from union protections, right? Like they're doing everything they can to crush unions while at the same time in the

most superficial ways they're trying to, you know, paint a picture of themselves that is not as starkly anti-worker as it is so that the majority of the population who are workers are not alienated by what's happening because they're being deceived and duped. Okay, so back to the book. In 1922, the Federazione Industriale composed of the leaders of industry, along with representatives from the banking and agribusiness associations met with Mussolini to plan the, quote, March on Rome, contributing 20 million lirae to the undertaking. With additional backing of Italy's top military officers and police chiefs,

the fascist, quote, revolution, really a coup d'etat, took place. Within two years after seizing state power, Mussolini had shut down all opposition newspapers and crushed the socialist, liberal, Catholic, Democratic, and Republican parties, which together had commanded some 80% of the vote. Labor leaders, peasant leaders, parliamentary delegates, and others critical of the new regime, were beaten, exiled, or murdered by fascist terrorist squadrishti. The Italian Communist Party endured the severest repression of all, yet managed to maintain a courageous, underground resistance that eventually evolved

into the armed struggle against the black shirts and the German occupation force. And so just a quick aside from the book here, I was listening to an excellent recent episode of Red Menace, where they explored one of Trotsky's texts on fascism with a guest. And the guest that they had on, I believe his name was Brendan, was talking about how, in fact, it was not the march on Rome that was the ushering in of fascism. in Italy. Mussolini took power in a legal way, right? And that's very important, I think, to draw that distinction because Trump and the Trump administration have taken power through legal means. They haven't necessarily broken any laws in order to get into power, as far as we know. So it's that much more

insidious because we have to see fascism as arising as a legitimate part of the system before it then begins to dismantle the parts of the system which don't benefit it. Right. So just a really important aside on that. And when you're done listening to this, definitely go check out that red menace episode on fascism. It's one of the best things I've ever listened to. Back to the book. In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascism. and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.

That sounds familiar, and I think actually one of the driving forces of what is happening right now in the Trump administration is not some ideological need. to, I don't know, repress trans people or whatever the fuck. This is all driven by capitalists wanting less restrictions on their wealth. They want tax cuts. They want to be able to operate in a completely free-for-all environment where they can get away with whatever they need to get away with to maximize capital accumulation. Massive tax cuts are always the backbone of any republic. administration and any rise in fascism. And this is what is so important about this text, black shirts and reds, is that Parenti is really trying to drive home the fact that fascism

is not in opposition to capitalism. It is a phase of capitalism. It is a stage in capitalism. it is capitalistic at its core, and it works in concert with capitalists, which is a narrative that you don't hear as much in the West, particularly in the liberal media and the mainstream sort of liberal world. Fascism is put on the same plane as communism, and it's just seen as like an extremist ideology, right? And in that way, it is misunderstood, and in that way, it cannot be fought against correctly. No, fascism is a part of capitalism. It is a part of capitalism and it is always

ushered in by capitalists. Okay, let's get back to the book. During the 1920s, the Nazi stir map tailing, and I don't know how the fuck to pronounce that, but let's just call it the S.A. The brown-shirted stormtroopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an anti-labour, paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds

for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to 50 cities in the last two weeks alone. In that same campaign, the Nazis received 37.3% of the vote, the highest they ever won in a Democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpen proletariots served as strong-arm party thugs organized into the SA stormtroopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the communists or social Democrats to the very end.

In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president, the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenberg, the Nazi candidate, Adolf Hitler, and the Communist Party candidate Ernst Thalman. In his campaign, Thelman argued that a vote for Hindenberg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into, war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as, quote, Moscow inspired. Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million

votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million. True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist Party's proposal to form an 11th hour coalition against Nazism, as in many other countries, past and present. So in Germany, the social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary right than make a common cause with Reds. And just an aside, this is exactly what I was talking about earlier, and this still plays out. Liberals have more in common with fascists than they do with socialists or communists. It's not an accident that the Democrats refused to even do modest reforms like raise the minimum wage. They have more in common.

with the right and when it comes down to it they will always always side with fascism over communism because fascism doesn't threaten the basic way that liberalism functions especially if you are a wealthy liberal or an affluent comfortable liberal for the most part it is not going to impact you in the same way as dismantling the entire system and creating a system based on egalitarianism and collective ownership and expropriating the wealth of the landlords, etc, etc., etc., that system is going to disrupt your life more so, right? And of course, this is sort of short-sighted because a rise in fascism will end up upending the lives of the vast majority of people in negative ways.

but in the short term, it doesn't look like it's going to do that because generally those elements of the population are going to be the last ones impacted, right? Fascism comes for the weakest first. It comes for those that it's scapegoats. It comes for the socialists. It comes for trans people, gay people, women, et cetera, et cetera, right? And so the affluent liberals who are closet racists who are closet transphobes in many ways who are rich who are completely detached from the lives of the vast majority of people they think they're going to be fine and there's nothing in the fascist playbook which is telling them hey we're going to fuck your shit up too that comes later that comes when a whole bunch of other elements of the society have already been subjugated

And yeah, you know, there are liberals who are terrified of Trump. But a lot of the time, when you talk to some of these people, they seem like they are just as much against socialism or communism than they are against fascism, right? So again, they may dislike fascism and they may sort of grind their teeth and dig in their heels and do the little that they're willing to do in order to try to stop it. Maybe they'll go to a single march or maybe a couple of marches, that kind of thing. But they would do the same thing if an actual socialist administration began to take power in the United States. So, yeah, just remembering that I think is really important and understanding that it always has been the case that social Democrats and liberals would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary right than make common cause with communists. Let's get back to the book. Meanwhile, a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis, and in January of 1933,

just weeks after the election, Hindenberg invited Hitler to become Chancellor. Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda, not unlike Mussolini's. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany, as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups. Here were two peoples, the Italians and the Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages,

and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Romania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy. And there is another element of fascism from the past that we see currently right now, how anti-democratic it is. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier.

The psychology and the ideology behind fascism is rooted in a patriarchical dictatorship. It is based around this sort of reactionary idea of the traditional family household with the husband, right, the man at the top. And he is in charge of the children. And he is in charge because he knows best. And even if he seems like he's ruthless at times, he's always ruthless because it is the best thing for the family. And this is, of course, the dynamic that we're seeing right now with Trump, right? Trump is seen as the daddy by all of the MAGA freaks. And they see him as enacting harsh measures that the country needs in order to fly straight, fly right, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so there is no democracy in the conservative. household, right? There is no listening to your kids. There is no talking with your kids and sort of democratically deciding, you know, what the best way forward is. There's no voice coming from below that influences the authoritative voice coming from above. And it is very anti-democratic. And we're seeing the institutions of democracy being dismantled. The withering democracy that we do have here in the United States is being dismantled. They're attempting to disenfranchise millions and millions of people by requiring like proof of citizenship. They are making sure that ballots that are sent in by mail will not be counted if they arrive after election day. And of course, they're doing all

of this because they have this wonderful scapegoat that they've set up, which is election fraud, right? and the illegal immigrants are voting or whatever the fuck it is. And it works really well because people believe it and they believe that that is the reason why they're doing this. Not everybody, but just enough of the right people believe it so that they consent to it and they support it. And then before you know it, they move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing until the whole

system of democracy that we have is dismantled. And yes, it is a flawed system. It sucks. And we all know this. It's a two-party dictatorship of capital. And yet, it could get worse, and it is getting worse. So the next subsection is titled,

Whom did the Fascists support? There is a vast literature on who supported the Nazis, but relatively little on whom the Nazis supported after they came to power. This is in keeping with the tendency of conventional scholarship to avoid the entire subject of capitalism, when something unfavorable might be said about it. Whose interests did Mussolini and Hitler support? In both Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s,

old industrial evils thought to have passed permanently into history, reemerged as conditions of labor deteriorated precipitously. In the name of saving society from the red menace, unions and strikes were outlawed. Union property and farm cooperatives were confiscated and handed over to rich private owners. Minimum wage laws, overtime pay, and factory safety regulations were abolished. Speedups became commonplace. Dismissals or imprisonment awaited those workers who complained about unsafe or inhumane work conditions.

Workers toiled longer hours for less pay. The already modest wages were severely cut. In Germany by 25 to 40%, in Italy by 50%. In Italy, child labor was reintroduced. And as a quick aside, in the United States, child labor has been reintroduced. And also, what we're seeing is this sort of plundering of the state machinery, right? They want to turn the United States Postal Office into a private entity, for example. they are continuing a process of enclosure and privatization that began at the dawn of capitalism.

And now they're going through, they're combing through the public infrastructure and seeing how they can loot that as well. And more in line with what Parenti is talking about here, the Trump administration is attacking and reassessing OSHA regulations, right? So it's the same thing. They're going through the same playbook in many ways, and the very first thing that they want to do is weaken the power of labor and dismantle all of the costly regulations, costly to capital, regulations that provide some semblance of protection to workers in this country, as meager as it is. They're trying to get rid of those, too, because capitalism is at such a crisis point that even these modest regulations are. putting a squeeze on profit rates. So yeah, it's the same thing. Let's get back to the book. To be sure, a few crumbs were thrown to the populace. There were free concerts and sporting events, some meager social programs, a dole for the unemployed, financed mostly by contributions

from working people, and showy public works projects designed to evoke civic pride. Both Mussolini and Hitler showed their gratitude to their big business patrons by privatizing many perfectly solvent state-owned steel mills, power plants, banks, and steamship companies. Both regimes dipped heavily into the public treasury to refloat or subsidize heavy industry. Agribusiness farming was expanded and heavily subsidized. Both states guaranteed a return on the capital invested by giant corporations while assuming most of the risks and losses on investments. As is often the case with reactionary regimes, public capital was rated by private capital. And again, I talked about this a second ago, but we're seeing this rating all across the board.

They want to privatize air traffic control. They want to privatize the USPS. And of course, we who have been living through this. age of hyper-privatization know that it always results in worse services at a higher cost to consumers every single time. Privatization benefits nobody except the few at the top that are able to squeeze more profits out of something that is not intended to create profits in the first place. It's intended as a service. So what ends up happening is you just end up paying more because now you have to pay for the profits that accumulate to the capitalists who are only doing the service because they want the profits and they're cutting corners and they're making everything cheaper because they just want

profit. They don't don't give a shit about the quality of the service. Anyways, you all know that. So let's get back to the book. At the same time, taxes were increased for the general populace, but lowered or eliminated for the rich and big business. inheritance taxes on the wealthy were gradually reduced or abolished altogether. The result of all this? In Italy, during the 1930s, the economy was gripped by recession, a staggering public debt, and widespread corruption. The industrial profits rose in the armaments factories busily rolled out weapons in preparation

for the war to come. In Germany, unemployment was cut in half with the considerable expansion in armaments' jobs, but overall poverty increased because of the drastic wage cuts. And from 1935 to 1943, industrial profits increased substantially, while the net income of corporate leaders climbed 46%. During the radical 1930s in the United States, Great Britain, and Scandinavia, upper income groups experienced a modest decline in their share of the national income. But in Germany, the top five.

percent enjoyed a 15 percent gain. Despite this record, most writers have ignored fascism's close collaboration with big business. Some even argue that business was not a beneficiary but a victim of fascism. Angelina Codavilla, a Hoover Institute conservative, gross, barf, disgusting. Back to the book. A Hoover Institute conservative scribe blithely announced. quote, if fascism means anything, it means government ownership and control of business, end quote.

Thus, fascism is misrepresented as a mutant form of socialism. In fact, if fascism means anything, it means all-out government support for business and severe repression of anti-business pro-labor forces. Is fascism merely a dictatorial force in the service of capitalism? This may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism's raison d'etre. The function Hitler himself kept referring to when he talked about saving the industrialists and bankers from Bolshevism. It is a subject that deserves far more attention than it has received. While fascists might have believed that they were saving the plutocrats from the Reds,

In fact, the revolutionary left was never strong enough to take state power in either Italy or Germany. Popular forces, however, were strong enough to cut into the profit rates and interfere with the capital accumulation process. This frustrated capitalism's attempts to resolve its internal contradictions by shifting more and more of its costs onto the backs of the working populace. Revolution or no revolution, this democratic, working-class resistance was troublesome to the moneyed interests. Along with serving capitalists, fascist leaders served themselves, getting in on the money at every opportunity. Their personal greed and their class loyalties were two sides of the same coin.

Mussolini and his cohorts lived lavishly, cavorting within their higher circles of wealth and aristocracy. Nazi officials and SS commanders amassed personal fortunes by plundering conquered territories and stealing from concentration camp inmates and other political victims. Huge amounts were made from secretly owned, well-connected businesses and from contracting out camp slave labor to industrial firms like IG Farben and Krupp. And of course, this is another element that we see currently happening, the privatization of prisons, right, and the geo group, which is like the biggest private prison corporation.

right? And they make tons and tons of money by incarcerating people. And we saw their stock rise like precipitously when Trump was elected because everyone, all of the ghouls knew that this was good for business. This was good for the private prison business. So yeah, same shit, different time. Back to the book. Hitler is usually portrayed as an ideological fanatic, uninterested in crass material things. In fact, he accumulated an immense fortune, much of it in questionable ways. He expropriated artworks from the public domain. He stole enormous sums from Nazi party coffers. He invented a new concept, the quote, personality right, that enabled him to charge a small fee for every postage stamp with his picture on it, a venture that made him hundreds of millions of marks. The greatest

source of Hitler's wealth was a secret slush fund to which leading German industrialists regularly donated. Hitler, quote, knew that as long as German industry was making money, his private money sources would be inexhaustible. Thus, he'd see to it that German industry was never better off than under his rule. By launching, for one thing, gigantic armament projects, or what today we would call fat defense contracts, or also, as an aside, what we would call today contributing to Trump's presidential library or to his inauguration campaign. I think that the library, the Trump family library, has taken in something like $80 million since Trump came back into office. Trump's inaugural committee raised $170 million in January, much of it coming from big tech.

So that's a lot of fun, I'm sure. Okay, back to the book. Far from being the ascetic, Hitler lived self-indulgently. During his entire tenure in office, he got special rulings from the German tax office that allowed him to avoid paying income or property taxes. He had a motor pool of limousines, private apartments, country homes, a vast staff of servants, and a majestic estate in the Alps. His happiest times were spent entertaining European royalty, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor,

who numbered among his enthusiastic admirers. Okay, subsection, kudos for Adolf and Benito. Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate-owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the last. likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after

the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism. They spun rhapsodic fantasies of a resurrected Italy where poverty and exploitation had suddenly disappeared, where rads had been vanquished, harmony reigned, and black shirts protected a, quote, new democracy. The Italian-language press in the United States eagerly joined the chorus. The two most influential newspapers, Littalia of San Francisco,

financed largely by AP Giananni's Bank of America, and Il Progresso of New York, owned by multi-millionaire Generoso Pope, looked favorably on the fascist regime and suggested that the United States could benefit from a similar social order. Some dissenters refused to join the quote, We Adore Bonito chorus. The nation reminded its readers that Mussolini was not saving democracy but destroying it. Progressives of all stripes and various labor leaders denounced fascism, but their critical sentiments received little exposure in the U.S. corporate media.

As with Mussolini, so with Hitler. the press did not look too unkindly upon Der Fuhrer's Nazi dictatorship. There was a strong, quote, give Adolf a chance, contingent. Some of it greased by Nazi money. In exchange for more positive coverage in the Hearst newspapers, for instance, the Nazis paid almost 10 times the standard subscription rate for Hurst's INS wire service. In return, William Randolph Hearst instructed his correspondence in Germany to file friendly reports about Hitler's regime. Those who refused were transferred or fired. Hearst newspapers even

opened their pages to occasional guest columns by prominent Nazi leaders like Alfred Rosenberg and Herman Goring. By the mid to late 1930s, Italy and Germany, allied with Japan, another industrial latecomer, were aggressively seeking a share of the world's markets and colonial booty. an expansionism that brought them increasingly into conflict with the more established Western capitalist nations like Great Britain, France, and the United States. As the clouds of war gathered, U.S. press opinion about the Axis Powers took on a decisively critical tone. Subsection, the rational use of irrational ideology.

Some writers stress the, quote, irrational features of fascism. By doing so, they overlook the rational politico-economic functions that fascism performed. Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. Certainly, this is true of fascist ideology, whose emotive appeals have served a class-control function. Finally, there was the cult of the leader, in Italy, Ilduché, in Germany, Der Fuhrer-Prin. Zip. With leader worship, there came the idolatry of the state. As Mussolini wrote, quote, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the state and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the state. Fascism preaches the authoritarian rule of an all-encompassing

state and a supreme leader. It extols the harsher human impulses of conquest and domination, while rejecting egalitarianism, democracy, collectivism, and pacifism as doctrines of weakness and decadence. A dedication to peace, Mussolini wrote, quote, is hostile to fascism. Perpetual peace, he claimed in 1934, is a depressing doctrine. Only in cruel struggle and conquest do man or nations achieve their highest realization. Though words are beautiful things, he asserted, rifles, machine guns, planes, and cannons are still more beautiful. And on another occasion, he wrote, quote, War alone puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.

Ironically, most Italian army conscripts had no stomach from Mussolini's wars, tending to remove themselves from battle once they discovered that the other side was using live ammium. fascist doctrine stresses monistic values. Ein wolk, ein Reich, ein fehrer, or one people, one rule, one leader. The people are no longer to be concerned with class divisions, but must see themselves as part of a harmonious whole, rich and poor as one, a view that supports the economic status quo by cloaking the ongoing system of class exploitation. This is in contrast to a left agenda

that advocates the articulation of popular demands and a sharpened awareness of social injustice and class struggle. This monism is buttressed by adivistic appeals to the mythical roots of the people. As an aside, think, Western civilization, think, make America great again, think traditional family values. etc, etc.

Back to the book. For Mussolini, it was the grandeur that was Rome. For Hitler, the ancient Volk. A play written by a proto-Nazi, Hans Jorst, entitled Schlageter, and performed widely throughout Germany, soon after the Nazis seized power, Hitler attended the opening night in Berlin, pit Volk mysticism against class politics.

The enthusiastic August is talking to his father, Schneider. And so here we have some passages from the play. So August. You won't believe it, Papa, but the young people don't pay much attention to these old slogans anymore. The class struggle is dying out. Schneider. So, and what do you have then? August. The Volk community. Schneider. And that's a slogan? August. No, it's an experience. Schneider. My God, our class struggle, are strikes, they weren't an experience, eh? Socialism, the international. Were they fantasies, maybe? August. They were necessary, but they are historical experiences. Schneider. So, and the future, therefore, will have your Volk community. Tell me, how do you actually envision it? Poor, rich, healthy, upper, lower. All this ceases with you, hey? August. Look, Papa. Upper, Lower, poor, rich, that always exists. It is only the importance one places on that question that's decisive.

To us, life is not chopped up into working hours and furnished with price charts. Rather, we believe in human existence as a whole. None of us regards making money as the most important thing. We want to serve. The individual is a corpuscle in the bloodstream of his people. The son's comments are revealing, quote, the class struggle is dying out, end quote. Papa's concern about the abuses of class power and class injustice is facially dismissed as just a frame of mind with no objective reality. It is even falsely equated with a crass concern for money.

Quote, none of us regard making money is important, end quote. Presumably, matters of wealth are to be left to those who have it. We have something better, August is saying. A totalistic, monistic experience as a people, all of us, rich and poor, working together for some greater glory. Conveniently overlooked is how the, quote, glorious sacrifices are born by the poor for the benefit of the rich. The position enunciated in that play and in other Nazi propaganda does not reveal an indifference to class. Quite the contrary, it represents a keen awareness of class interests, a well-engineered effort to mask and mute the strong class consciousness

that existed among workers in Germany. In the crafty denial, we often find the hidden admission. Subsection Patriarchy and Pseudo-Revolution Fascism's national chauvinism, racism, sexism, and patriarchal values also served a conservative class interest. Fascist doctrine, especially the Nazi variety, makes an explicit commitment to racial supremacy. Human attributes, including class status, are said to be inherited through blood. One's position in the social structure is taken as a measure of one's innate nature. Genetics and biology are marshaled to justify the existing class structure,

not unlike what academic racists today are doing with their, quote, bell-curb theories and warmed-over eugenics claptrap. Along with the race and class inequality, fascism supports homophobia and sexual inequality. Among Nazism's earliest victims were a group of Nazi homosexuals, leaders of the SA Stormtroopers. When complaints about the openly homosexual behavior of essay leader Ernst Rome and some of his brown-shirted stormtroopers continued to reach Hitler after he seized power,

he issued an official statement contending that the issue belonged, quote, purely to the public domain, and that an essay officer's, quote, private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it conflicts with basic principles of nationalist socialist ideology. The paramilitary SA had been used to win the Battle of the Streets against Trade Unionists and Reds. The stormtroopers acted as a pseudo-revolutionary force that appealed to mass grievances with a rhetorical condemnation of finance capital. When SA membership skyrocketed to $3 million in 1933, this was too discomforting to the industrial barons and military patricians.

essay street brawlers who denounced bourgeois decadence and called for sharing the wealth and completing the, quote, Nazi revolution, would have to be dealt with. Having used the essay to take power, Hitler then used the state to neutralize the essay. Now, suddenly, Rome's homosexuality did conflict with national socialist ideology. In truth, the essay had to be decapitated, not because its leaders were homosexuality, though that was the reason given, but because it threatened to turn into a serious problem. Rome and about 300 other essay members were executed, not all of whom were gay. Among the victims was veteran Nazi propagandist Gregor Strasser, who was suspected of leftist leanings. Of course, many Nazis were virulently homophobic.

One of the most powerful of all, SS leader Heinrich Himmler, saw that. homosexuals as a threat to German manhood and the moral fiber of Teutonic peoples, for a, quote, homosexual sissy, end quote, would not procreate or make a good soldier. Himmler's homophobia and sexism came together when he announced, If a man just looks at a girl in America, he can be forced to marry her or pay damages. Therefore, men protect themselves in the USA by turning to homosexuals. women in the USA are like battle axes. They hack away at males.

Just a quick aside, what the fuck is he talking about? Fucking moron. Back to the book. Thus spoke one of the great minds of Nazism. In time, Himmler succeeded in extending the oppression of gays beyond the essay leadership. Thousands of gay civilians perished in SS concentration camps. In societies throughout the ages, if able to find the opportunity, women have attempted to limit the number of children they bear.

This poses a potential problem for a fascist patriarchy that needs vast numbers of soldiers and armaments workers. Women are less able to assert their procreative rights if kept subservient and dependent. So fascist ideology extolled patriarchal authority. Every man must be a husband, a father, and a father. a soldier, Ilduchay said. Women's greatest calling was to cultivate her domestic virtues, devotedly tending to the needs of her family while bearing as many offsprings for the state as she could. Patriarchical ideology was linked to a conservative class ideology that saw all forms of social equality as a threat to hierarchical control and privilege. The patriarchy buttressed

the plutocracy. If women get out of line, what? will happen to the family, and if the family goes, the entire social structure is threatened. What then will happen to the state and to the dominant class's authority, privileges, and wealth? The fascists were big on what today is called, quote, family values, though most of the top Nazi leaders could hardly be described as devoted family men. In Nazi Germany, racism and anti-Semitism served to misdirect legitimate grievances towards convenient scapegoats. Antisemitic propaganda was cleverly tailored to appeal to different audiences. Superpatriots were told that the Jew was an alien internationalist. Unemployed workers were told that

their nemesis was the Jewish capitalist and Jewish banker. For debtor farmers, it was the Jewish usurer. For the middle class, it was the Jewish union leader and the Jewish communist. Here again, we have a consciously rational use of irrational images. The Nazis might have been crazy, but they were not stupid. What distinguishes fascism from ordinary right-wing patriarchical autocracies is the way it attempts to cultivate a revolutionary aura. Fascism offers a beguiling mix of revolutionary-sounding mass appeals and reactionary class politics. The Nazi party's full name was the national, Socialist German Workers' Party, a left-sounding name. As already noted, the SA stormtroopers had a militant share-the-wealth strain in their ranks

that was suppressed by Hitler after he took state power. Both the Italian fascists and the Nazis made a conscious effort to steal the left's thunder. There were mass mobilizations, youth organizations, work brigades, rallies, parades, banners, symbols and slogans. There was much talk about the, quote, Nazi revolution that would revitalize society, sweeping away the old order and bringing the new. And just as a quick aside,

that is very much happening with the MAGA movement. It's always been portrayed as this like draining of the swamp and this like totally restructuring of society when really it's just going to be more of the same, an extreme version of the same. Back to the book. For this reason, mainstream writers feel free to treat fascism and communism as totalitarian wins. It is a case of reducing essence to form.

The similarity in form is taken as reason enough to blur the vast difference in actual class content. Writers like A. James Greger and William Epstein, countless Western political leaders, and others who supposedly are on the Democratic left, regularly lump fascism with communism. Thus, Noam Chomsky claims, quote, the rise of corporations was in fact a manifestation of the same phenomena that led to fascism and Bolshevism,

which sprang out of the same totalitarian soil. But in the Italy and Germany of that day, most workers and peasants made a firm distinction between fascism and communism, as did industrialists and bourgeoisers and, bankers who supported fascism out of fear and hatred of communism, a judgment based largely on class realities. Years ago, I used to say that fascism never succeeded in solving the irrational contradictions of capitalism. Today, I am of the opinion that it did accomplish that goal,

but only for the capitalists, not for the populace. Fascism never intended to offer a social solution that would serve the general populace, only a reactionary one, forcing all the burdens and losses onto the working public. Divested of its ideological and organizational paraphernalia, fascism is nothing more than a final solution to the class struggle, the totalistic submergence and exploitation of democratic forces for the benefit and profit of higher financial circles. Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class component.

It propagates a, quote, new order while saving the same old-moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion, but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled. And as a quick aside, I think no passage so far has resonated as deeply as that one. The rhetoric that surrounds Trump, right, that he is taking a wrecking ball to the system. And with Elon Musk and his move fast break things attempt to just dismantle all of these different institutions and departments, etc., etc., it has the appearance of a radical break, a revolutionary aura to it. but it is a very much a faux revolutionary aura. We see the rhetoric being around smashing the entire system,

but really all that is smashed are the parts of the system that don't serve capital. And the parts of the system that remain are the ones that do serve capital. Every single time Trump's been elected, people have talked about how he's going to end the wars abroad and all this bullshit, and we always see him only escalate. He is a warmonger. he's talking about invading fucking Greenland for Christ's sake, but the aura that he presents to his voters is one very different from his actual reality, but they believe it. They eat it up. And it's because they work so hard to, as Michael Parenti says, mislead the public. Why do you think that they're dismantling the public education system? They don't want people to be able to think critically. They want a bunch of zombies that just, listen to what they're told and believe what they're told, and whose reality is the reality

that is dictated to them. So this idea of a false revolution, I think, is really resonant in what we're experiencing right now. Subsection, friendly to fascism. One of the things conveniently overlooked by mainstream writers is the way Western capitalist states have cooperated with fascism. In his collaborationist efforts, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was positively cozy with the Nazis. He and many of his class saw Hitler as a bulwark against communism in Germany and Nazi Germany as a bulwark against communism in Europe.

After World War II, the Western capitalist allies did little to eradicate fascism from Italy or Germany, except for putting some of the very top leaders on trial at Nurember. By 1947, German conservatives began to depict the Nuremberg prosecutors as dupes of the Jews and communists. In Italy, the strong partisan movement that had waged armed struggle against fascism was soon treated as suspect and unpatriotic. Within a year after the war, almost all Italian fascists were released from prison, while hundreds of communists and other left partisans who had been fighting the Nazi occupation were jailed. History was turned on its head, transforming the black shirts into victims and the reds into criminals. Allied authorities assisted in these measures.

Under the protection of U.S. occupation authorities, the police, courts, military, security agencies, and bureaucracy remained largely staffed by those who had served the former fashion. regimes or by their ideological recruits, as is true to this day. The perpetrators of the Holocaust murdered 6 million Jews, half a million Roma, several million Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and others, and got away with it. In good part, because the very people who were supposed to investigate these crimes were themselves complicit. In comparison, when the communists took over in East Germany,

they removed some 80% of the judges, teachers, and officials for their Nazi collaboration. They imprisoned thousands, and they executed 600 Nazi party leaders for their war crimes. They would have shot more of the war criminals had not so many fled to the protective embrace of the West. What happened to the U.S. businesses that collaborated with fascism? The Rockefeller family's Chase National Bank used its Paris office in Vichy, France, to help launder German money to facilitate Nazi international trade during the war, and did so with complete impunity. Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces.

After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus, Cologne was almost leveled by Allied bombing, but its Ford planned, providing military equipment for the Nazi army was untouched. Indeed, German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter. For decades, U.S. leaders have done their part in keeping Italian fascism alive. From 1945 to 1975, U.S. government agencies gave an estimated $75 million to right-wing organizations

in Italy, including some with close ties to the neo-fascist Movimento Social Italiano, MSI. In 1975, then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with MSI Giorgio Almirante in Washington to discuss what, quote, alternatives might be considered should the Italian communists win the elections and take control of the government. Hundreds of Nazi war criminals found a haven in the United States,

either living in comfortable anonymity or actively employed, by U.S. intelligence agencies during the Cold War and otherwise enjoying the protection of high-placed individuals. Some of them found their way onto Republican presidential campaign committees of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush. In Italy, from 1969 to 1974, high-ranking elements in Italian military intelligence and civilian intelligence agencies, members of P2, a secret lodge of underclass reactionaries, pro-fascist Vatican officials, and top military brass, and Cladio, a NATO-inspired anti-communist mercenary force, embarked upon a concerted campaign of terror and sabotage known as the, quote, strategy of tension.

Other participants included a secret neo-fascist group called the Ordin Nuevo, NATO officials, members of the carabinieri, mafia bosses, 30 generals, eight admirals, and influential freemasons like Lichio Jelly, a fascist war criminal recruited by U.S. intelligence in 1944. The terrorism was aided and abetted by the international security apparatus, including the CIA. In 1995, the CIA refused to cooperate with an Italian parliamentary commission investigating the strategy of tension. The terrorist conspirators carried out a series of kidnappings, assassinations, and bombing massacres, including the explosion that killed 85 people and injured some 200, mainly seriously, in the Bologna train station in August of 1980. As subsequent judicial investigations

concluded, the strategy of tension was not a simple product of neo-fascism, but the consequence of a larger campaign conducted by state security forces against the growing popularity of the Democratic parliamentary left. The objective was to, quote, combat by any means necessary the electoral gains of the Italian Communist Party, end quote, and create enough fear and terror in the population so as to undermine the multi-party social democracy and replace it with an authoritarian, quote, presidential Republic, or in any case, a stronger and more stable executive. In the 1980s, scores of people were murdered in Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere in Western Europe by extreme rightists in the service of state security agencies.

These acts of terrorism went mostly unreported in the U.S. corporate-owned media. As with the earlier strategy of tension in Italy, the attacks were designed to create enough popular fear and uncertainty so as to undermine the existing social democracies. Authorities in these Western European countries and the United States have done little to expose neo-Nazi networks. As the whiffs of fascism develop into an undeniable stench, we are reminded that Hitler's progeny are still with us and that they have dangerous links with each other and within the security agencies of various Western capitalist nations. In Italy, in 1994, the national elections were won by the National Alliance,

a broadened version of the neo-fascist MSI in coalition with a League of Northern Separatists, and Forza Italia, the quasi-fascist movement headed by industrialist and media tycoon Silvio Brulisconi. The National Alliance played on resentments regarding unemployment, taxes, and immigration. It called for a single tax rate for rich and poor alike, school vouchers, a stripping away of the social benefits, and the privatization of most services. The Italian neo-fascists were learning from the U.S. reactionaries how to achieve fascism's class goals within the confines of quasi-democratic forms. Use an upbeat, Reagan-esque optimism, replace the jack-booted militarists with media-hyped crowd-pleasers, convince people that government is the enemy, especially its social service sector, while strengthening the repressive capacities of the state.

Instigate racist hostility and antagonisms between the resident population and immigrants, preach the mythical virtues of the free market, and pursue tax and spending measures that redistribute income upward. As a quick aside, that is exactly like word for word almost what we're experiencing right now. The executive is being strengthened. The state and the government are being dismantled, and there's a PR rhetoric around efficiency and cutting unneeded services, etc., etc., etc., that's being led by the billionaire Elon Musk, while at the same time the repressive apparatus,

agencies like ICE, the military, police forces are all getting more funding, are all being strengthened and not just in terms of resources, but also in terms of the rhetoric, glorifying these different elements of the state. Of course, we're seeing just the same playbook of anti-immigrant sentiment, which you would think would have played itself out at this point, but no, it still works and it's still being used. We're seeing those who dissent against the genocide, the U.S. genocide that is being waged through Israel against the Palestinian people and in Gaza. We're seeing the people that protest against that being targeted by these neo-fascist agencies like ICE that are just literally disappearing people. We see newspapers,

like the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, say that their opinion pages will only be devoted now to defending free markets and personal liberties. We're seeing massive, massive tax cuts for the rich. We're seeing the dismantling of agencies like the Social Security agency, anything that redistributes wealth to the bottom from the top. So this is all pretty much the same thing. And it's also being run by oligarchs, by the rich.

It's being driven by a certain class. And it is a class war that is being waged from the top to the bottom with the buy-in of quite a substantial amount of the bottom. Because of the misleading PR and all of the work that is being done to dupe people into buying into this bullshit. Okay, last paragraph of the chapter. Conservatives in Western nations utilize diluted forms of the fascist mass appeal. In the USA, they propagate populist-sounding appeals to the, quote, ordinary middle American, while quietly pressing for measures that serve the interests of the wealthiest individuals and corporations. In 1996, right-wing, Speaker of the House of Parliament,

representatives Newt Gingrich, while proffering a new rollback agenda that supposedly would revitalize all of society, announced, quote, I am genuinely revolutionary, end quote. Whether in Italy, Germany, the United States, or any other countries, when the right offers a, quote, new revolution or a, quote, new order, it is in service of the same old moneyed interests, leading down that well-trodden road of reaction and repression that so many third world countries have been forced to take the road that those at the top want us all to travel. All right. Well, so that's the first chapter of black shirts and reds by Michael Parenti. And I'm sure like me, you probably just experienced a great deal of unlearning. At least I did the first time I read through and every time I go back to

visit sections of that text. I'm also just struck by how relevant it is. And yeah, a lot of really important facts that back up this idea that fascism and capitalism support and uphold each other. And in future chapters, Prenti goes on to really talk about how communism is a bulwark against fascism and a major world historical force that has historically combated it. And so definitely, if you haven't picked up that book yet, if you haven't read it, it's really an essential text. It's one of those foundational texts that I think a lot of thinkers and writers have built upon over more recent years, but a really great text and just more broadly, Michael Parenti's work is really important.

Inventing Reality, another excellent book of his, which I highly recommend, sort of looking at how the media is controlled by capital, under capitalism. Yeah. And so last week we talked a little bit about the imperial boomerang in a sense with Kala Walsh. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, it's a great compliment to this one. That one is a public episode. It's a really, really fascinating episode. Kala Walsh, of course, arrested on the roof of an Elbit facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire facing charges amounting to 37 years in prison and beating those charges and really looking back on that experience and telling us the whole fascinating and gripping story and the ordeal that she went through and bringing

it into a wider relief in the broader context of what we're seeing now in terms of state repression against activists, particularly who are working towards Palestinian liberation and fighting against the imperialism here, which is the cause of the genocide. taking place as we speak in Gaza. And if all goes as planned, we're going to have a scholar, actually, who wrote a book about the Imperial Boomerang effect on, as a Patreon guest, maybe next month, I think. I just started the book, and it's really fascinating. And I think I'll be able to get through it by the end of the month and we'll interview him

in May. And we'll have that for you guys then. Really looking forward to that one. And sort of the last thing that I want to say before I head out today is that it's important to realize that fascism relies on a few things in order to be successful. And bringing this text into our current moment, the first thing that fascism relies on is collaboration, right? It relies on collaborators. The fascists themselves are a tiny, tiny minority of the population and are completely unable to enact their policies. if you want to call them policies, on their own, right?

They need collaborators. And we're seeing this outright right now. It's interestingly, but maybe not shockingly, starting with universities. Universities like Columbia, Pomona College, for example, which have shown that they are more than willing to work with the fascists are modern day brown shirts, ice, to help disappear and repress students. John Hopkins recently told its staff not to intervene if ICE agents, come to campus looking to arrest community members.

So the people that are making these decisions, high-level administrators, they're the same ones who would have turned in people fleeing slavery in the South. They're the same people who would have snitched on fucking Anne Frank. These are the same people. These are the same collaborators and they are the ones that make fascism go. They are complicit. The University of Maryland in Baltimore recently hosted Project 2025 co-author Kevin Roberts to give a speech to law students.

You know, this is while ICE is manually revoking the immigration status of international students without informing their universities or the students themselves oftentimes. And of course, there is the attack on immigrants, right? And this is also kind of tying this into the book that I was just referencing that I'm reading on the Imperial Boomerang. It's the racialization of the criminalized other. right? One of the first steps is a racialization that occurs to an other group, which sort of begins the whole process of being able to then scapegoat this group as a criminalized element. And then

that opens the path for militarized police and fascist police tactics to be utilized. Whether or not these scapegoated groups have anything at all to do with what the fascists ultimately want to do is besides the point. What the fascists want to do is, of course, to consolidate their power, to strip all protections from workers, and to create a system where capital accumulation can continue unabated without a single check or balance against it. Attacking immigrants has nothing to do with that directly. All it does is it stokes fear and it creates a guiding spirit for fascism, right? Of course, and then it also goes without saying that the Democrats are complicit in all of this. They are not just collaborators. They're voting literally to confirm so many of Trump's appointments

and voting for the Republican spending bill. And of course, it was under Democrats watch when the repression against the student encampments really began. The target of, it was drawn by the Democrats. And of course, countless other institutions have caved into, like, the DEI restrictions. Countless universities have changed their hiring practices, changed their admissions policies, universities like UC Berkeley, who changed their admission policy actually as far back as four years ago to no longer account for affirmative action. They paved the path for all of this, right?

All of these institutions that are racing to comply with. the master's laws and throw out any semblance of values, much less resistance when they're faced with the loss of federal funding. They comply in advance. They comply immediately and they enable this and they and they are the ones that give the fascists the confidence to move forward because of course these are just test balloons that the fascists are sending out to see what will happen. And when they see that everything is going their way and that these institutions will comply and that the judges and the judiciary will also comply and also collaborate, then they know for sure they can get away with escalating the stuff.

And of course, it goes without saying, too, that the media is not just complicit, but in many obvious cases deeply part of the rise of fascism. And they are caving in as well, right? ABC settlement with Trump for $16 million over libel accusations. that's a chilling example of how quickly these major corporations are going to jump on the fascism train, just like Parenti outlined, if it means keeping that bottom line intact. And again, if you want to get further into that specific angle, definitely check out inventing reality by Michael Parenti. It's really excellent. And so as we can see, just as was the case with Nazi Germany, the neo-fascist United States relies upon collaborators in order to implement this fascist agenda.

And honestly, it's my opinion that collaborators are just as bad as the fascists themselves, you know, somehow even more cowardly than the fascists because they're doing fascism, but they don't even have the balls to admit that they're doing fascism, right? And so I mentioned that fascism relies on a couple of things. One of them is collaborators, and this is connected to that, but another thing that it relies on is fear. And I alluded to this earlier when I talked about racialization, right? That stokes people's fears. it manufactures a fear of the other.

And that's why they're starting with students that are immigrants, right? They're disappearing students. That's why the White House is posting these like disgusting and absurd animated pictures of immigrants, crying in ice custody and all sorts of other disgusting shit. This is why they salivate like rabid fucking animals as they talk about the repulsive, nasty shit that they're planning. And this is why they deport people to Guantanamo. This is why they're disappearing people to El Salvador mega prisons and torture sites. Yes, they want to make us all afraid, but also importantly, they want to consolidate a fear of the other and sort of build community through exclusion. By racializing and then criminalizing these others, they turn them into sort of non-human monsters where laws,

where laws can be much more easily broken down. The most recent example of this is Trump now is floating the idea of sending what he refers to as the worst of the worst criminals also to El Salvador, to deport these people, which is blatantly unconstitutional. But the point of this is to create a situation where you start with the lowest hanging fruit, right, the people for whom there will be the least amount of resistance. People who are characterized and many cases may be violent criminals who have committed heinous acts. And those people do exist. And they're weaponizing those people. They're using them so that they can begin to break the dam on the

dismantling of the quote rule of law. And once they've successfully established that they can send U.S. citizens to El Salvador to these mega prisons where they will be sort of disappeared for all intensive purposes, then that's one step in the direction of criminalizing other elements of society that they will begin to turn into the inhuman other. And it's not going to be long until you are in one of those categories. So there is this sort of dual thing where they're creating fear among all of us because none of us want to end up in that situation. And then they're also consolidating their base and creating community through exclusion, through othering by doing this. And so, of course, one response to this is collaboration.

That's a response to the fear is to collaborate, both on institutional levels, but also on the individual level. And maybe for some it might seem like a rational way to protect themselves, but not only is it reprehensible, that any time you throw another person under the bus to save your own skin, you're just hastening the rise of a system that is going to eventually come for you as well. And this definitely also relates to what we talked about last week with Kala about how militants are vilified and ostracized among the liberal progressive quote unquote left, right? And that's one of the tactics that they use is to divide people and create an atmosphere of fear. And that's sort of the driving spirit of fascism, fear and hatred, irrational fear and irrational hatred. And acting out of a place of fear, of course, is never going to lead to the correct decisions. It's never going to lead to rational and productive responses, but will only end up

digging us deeper into the hole that we're already in. So if you are a part of an institution, if you're part of an organization, whatever it is, and you see some collaboration, some scab shit, as Cecilia Guerrero so eloquently put it when we spoke to her a few weeks ago, then, you know, speak up and don't stand for that, especially if you're in a position of relative privilege. I really appreciate that like Columbia alumni were tearing up their diplomas, you know, it's a symbolic gesture, but it's a powerful one. These institutions should be isolated and they should always be reminded that the cost of collaboration is greater than the benefit of collaboration.

And always, just remember that these fascists, these wannabe Nazis and losers, they're exactly just that. They're losers. Just like the fascists of a century ago, you know, Hitler was a fucking drugged out maniac. He was a fucking loser. Think about Bolsonaro, right? The Brazilian fascist. Look at what a fucking loser and what a fucking moron he is.

You know, he's probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison since his right-wing coup attempt failed. And it's beautiful what the Brazilian left is doing to fascists, you know. They're doing what the Democrats didn't do and chose not to do. They're crushing the fascists over there. The one good thing that the Democrats had going for them during the lead-up to the election was when Tim Walts, right, remember him, Kamala's VP candidate, he started calling the right, what they asked. actually are fucking weirdos. And from their reaction, from the rights reaction, it was plain to see how much that fucked with them.

Because that's where this largely comes from. You know, fucking weird freaks who are so weak and hateful that they're the perfect conduit for the force of capitalism to move through, right? No will, no humanity, just a weak mind that serves as the perfect host for the process of capital accumulation and its facilitation. And of course, the Democrats probably told Waltz to stop using that line because he did pretty quickly because we all know that the Democrats love to fucking lose and would take fascism literally any day of the week over having to take their gloves off and violate their self-proclaimed

rules of ruling class respectability and decorum and ruling class solidarity. But my point is that just remember, they're trying to do scary shit, but ultimately they cannot handle any form of resistance. They've been operating within an ecosystem where they have absolutely no resistance against them. The only resistance that has ever really been effective at stopping fascism in its early stages has been far left movements, communist, socialist, anarchist movements who are not afraid to take their gloves off and fight against these fucking. and fascists. That doesn't exist in the same shape and form that it used to in the United States, although there are pockets. And so keep organizing, keep building power in your community, keep talking shit. You know, these people are thin-skinned and they cannot win.

The second that there is actual resistance, they will crumble into tiny little pieces. So on that note, I'm going to wrap up here. And so next week, we're going to continue with our series on China. It will be episode five in that series with Ting's Chak, who will be telling us all about environmentalism in China and how it intersects with human development. It's a really, really interesting topic and a very great conversation. So very much looking forward to sharing that with you guys. All right, that's it for today.

Keep it real, and I'll catch you next time. Stay strong. Bye.