Imperialism, White Supremacy and Fascism in America

Breaking down the concentrated class struggle

Right now US society needs a clear understanding of the difference between socialism and fascism because a war is being waged against working class people. Americans do not really understand the class basis of their government. They also have a difficulty in making comparative analyses between the US brand of bourgeois democracy and other types. Imperialism and fascism are not such very different systems. We are not even that far away from a neo-fascist “dictatorship”.

First of all, socialism is a revolutionary social system. It is born out of revolt, uprisings and insurrection. It is a bottom up society and a system created to wither away; that is, socialism is not a society which has a long-term future. It will be transformed into a society where revolutions, uprisings and insurrections are unnecessary.

Socialism, like the society which must succeed it, will transform the means of distribution so that all the resources of society will be available to its members. The State will behave as the primary instrument for the socialized redistribution of resources — to contrast with capitalist privatization of collectively produced wealth — but not the sole force for this activity.

Socialist democracy means working class democracy. This is the logic of democratic struggle. Once the laboring masses eradicate the degenerate notion of racist supremacy, the democratic political process must take on a more principled character. America thrives on the practice of racist supremacy, pure and simple. All concepts of racial differences are based on racism. Whiteness, race and racial are terms carrying a dishonestly neutral connotation when they remain politically charged themes of capitalist society. The notions of political or cultural whiteness derives from a strictly racist context. Anti-racism is not about white guilt. It is about smashing colonialism and Imperialism as racist, class-based systems.

Racism shapes the culture of the colonizer society, and deforms the culture of the oppressed. It is, in reality, an expression of class warfare. As such, racism designates one nationality as a master race and the others as servants or slave races, a so-called underclass. These ideas, inculcated thru out colonialism, set the standards for interactions between workers of different nationalities. Workers from the white society think of themselves as superior to blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Asians. Even government census forms convey a false sense of race purity.

The government bail out of the bloodsucking banks, tho, will consolidate the trend towards relegating white workers to the same miserable status as the colonized masses while continuing to play them against us “niggers”. This struggle reflects the historical lag between bourgeois ideology and working class self-realization. Until that gap gets closed, the colonized masses must remain in a defensive posture against their white working class comrades on the other side of the skirmish line.

White supremacy working both sides of the street…

And it is not always the far right which hides behind racism. Liberals and society in general do likewise. White workers often maintain a racist view of the colonized Latino and black workers with whom they share a place on the assembly line, and the same wage rates.

It is not until these white workers shed their own unprincipled nationalist views and become anti-racist as well as revolutionary proletarians within the international class struggle that we can depend upon them as solidarity forces, and genuine comrades. Only then, as well, will the labor movement be able to shed its corporate identity and become radicalized.

Then, many anti-colonial opinions in the African community range from revolutionary to pro capitalist, and pro Imperialist. Some fail to recognize how their “anti-whiteness” plays into the hands of Imperialism. Others understand that you do not fight racism with racism, but with Solidarity, as BPP Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton stated. That is an African Internationalist position.

However, to fight racism with Solidarity surely does not mean that your Solidarity comrades are openly rabid, bloodsucking racist excrements. That reverts backwards to fighting racism with racism. That explains how Jonas Savimbi united with apartheid South Africa to attempt the take over of revolutionary Angola. It explains how US black nationalists opportunistically made the mistake of ideologically supporting Savimbi.

The apartheid regimes of southern Africa had for the entire period of their existence been pro fascist. They militarily supported Portuguese colonial control in Angola and Mozambique. Apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa welcomed war criminals from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. While the official name of the Nazi Party was something like the National Socialists, socialism was completely foreign to their program of action. No part of the Nazi Party was socialist, except the name. Nazism was fascism. Italy’s Mussolini, Spain’s Franco and Portugal’s Salazar were also fascists. Spain and Portugal became members of NATO, to stop the Soviet threat. If Nazi Germany had been socialist, then apartheid South Africa would have no part in giving fleeing German officers safe haven.

In the US, Preston Bush — Bush 43’s grandfather — and Henry Ford each profiteered from trade with the Nazis, as both were staunch anti-communists. Bush’s family has a long record destabilizing nations and communities, including America. Their WWII sympathies reflect their own cynicism towards working people, and towards the use of power. Ford and Bush never rendered material support for a socialist state; they opposed unions and disseminated other reactionary views.

Neither words nor practice separates apartheid and Jim Crow ideology from Hitler’s notion of Aryan supremacy. Tho the term Aryan for white people is the ultimate Imperialist identity, coming out of Nazi ideology itself, white people do not typically refer to themselves as Aryans not even during the most racist colonial period.

To give a brief background on how the Nazis concocted their ideas, Frederick Neitsche’s concept of the White Beast, the European superman, was based on Europe’s colonial domination of the world. The European had collected all the kno how and wealth from the empire, thereby transforming Europeans from ordinary mud people into Voila! Supermen. From there, the Nazis traced the Aryan’s lineage back to the invasion of the dark-skinned Harappans, and Mohenjo-Daro. Aryan tribes from the Caucasus (they had the horse) overran the Indus Valley, but the original Aryans (the Hindu) are no longer white at all.

At the same time, the concept of the Master Race — a fable derived from fusing Nietsche’s Superman theory of post-modernism with the archaic Aryan invasion of the Indus Valley — became intertwined to form the centerpiece of Nazi ideology and what certain racist activists called the Identity Movement in the post civil rights era. This elaborate synthesis of ancient and modern ideas, however unscientific and idiot-logical, combined with twelve years of economic growth during the Thirties to give the Germans a false sense of superiority. Historians broadly ignore the fact that workers literally lived under the gun, which demystifies once and for all Germany’s rise as a powerhouse in that brief space of time.

Fighting neo-fascism in US political culture

Which brings us to the point about fascism. Pan Africanists define it as a system within the Imperialist center which treats workers there as it does to the colonized masses. European socialist Nicos Poulantzas says that under fascism armed managers enforce production quotas on workers. These managers may be police, secret police like Gestapo, security guards or army officers. This explains how Adolph Hitler built labor camps to take Germany from a bankrupt state to economic solvency within twelve years. Almost to a man, historians neglect to explain Germany’s growth spurt in those years preceding World War II.

Historians also fail to point out how the economic collapse of 1929 unleashed the forces of reaction across Europe. This is important to analyze, particularly because the US currently faces another economic meltdown today. In a racially charged election, America has just barely inched away from the neo-fascist ideal craved by the neoconservative Republican administration currently in power. And with the president-elect’s naming of his own neocon policy hacks to his cabinet, not much distance has been placed between the Democrats and the Republicans. So in opposing neo-fascism, what should we be aware of?

Emergency political regimes surfaced thru out Europe during the 1930s. Mussolini’s blackshirts and Hitler’s Nazi Party marched in the streets, driving off other organizers, murdering their rivals and implementing a reign of terror. They recruited the most reactionary elements to lead the unions thru thuggery and by colluding with the corporations. America’s far right apparently hovers on the fringes of such a movement. However, they have failed to make the necessary steps and turns not because of timidity. The political climate is not yet right for right-wingers to totally coopt working people’s democratic rights. Yet they are very close, especially with the racist outrage which is surging like a wave after Obama’s victory at the polls.

By way of example, following twelve years of Republican Party “voodoo economics”, Bill Clinton jump started the biggest economic boom in history on the back of the prison industry. Today, one million black men locked down across America have provided a cheap supply of labor which has created boom towns and investment portfolios. As in Europe during that period, today the far-right conspires within liberalism, to maintain working class defeatism and anarchy. These seminal origins of US neo-fascism fore shadows what may loom over the horizon during the economic recovery of the next period.

Right-wingers continue to enjoy camaraderie with liberal reactionaries . They depend upon the so-called Left to hold the door open for their repressive initiatives. For instance, Sen. Joe Lieberman joined the GOP after losing to a Democratic Party contender in the primaries, then campaigned for the Republicans. Then the majority Dems welcomed him back by rewarding him with his old seat as chairman of Homeland Security. This shows the two parties as united in substance.

Naked racists, the right has no problem foisting the most servile segment of the colonized masses upon society as a foil to our national democratic (”civil”) rights. Such compradors (”sell outs”) as Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly have gained their positions strictly via the civil rights movement, yet undermine the very principles and laws for which black people fought. The far right believes from the Bible and other religious texts that Africans are God’s condemned burnt ham servants for the white, Imperialist empire.

As the world knows, the fascists were defeated in Germany and Italy by armed force. Fascism withered away in Spain while it was overthrown in Portugal. The fascism of apartheid was defeated militarily in Rhodesia. Economic apartheid continues in South Africa, where that must also be smashed following the end of its authoritarian political system.

Imperialism has arrived at a place in history when it cannot thrive within its great centers in North America and Europe, built upon the backs of five billion workers. It has come to a juncture where the crisis in social relationships has reached its apex, and the class struggle can only sharpen. As this happens, fascism threatens to emerge in America. Various forces continue to set the tone for fascist dictatorship. The working class and all its allies must remain vigilant and prepared to oppose all forms of fascism and reactionary struggle.