The Pillars of American Neofascism
A month into the new Republican Administration’s term at the White House, we are finally getting a clear articulation of the new American neofascist movement responsible for the rise of Donald J. Trump in 2016. Based on the philosophy of President’s Senior Advisor Steve Bannon, as well as the policy decisions executed by the White House in the first 30 days, we now know the three pillars of American neofascism as well as their planned strategy for consolidating power.
The First Pillar: Fight the Race War
The first is the national security pillar. It frames the American neofascist approach to foreign policy, military strategy, immigration and homeland security. At its core is the conviction that the white Christians of the world are already engaged in a religious war against the Islam. Furthermore, the key in the construction of this pillar is a paranoid delusion that white Christians are in mortal danger no matter where they find themselves: in their homes, in grocery stores, in school playgrounds, or abroad. They are in mortal danger from the treat of Islamic terrorism that can strike at any time and any place, and they are also in danger from illegal immigrant criminals, portrayed as dealing drugs, robbing white neighborhoods and raping women and children. The collective paranoid delusion is taken one step further to posit that blacks, white Liberals, Jews and LGBTQ+ people in particular are also the enemy of white Christians, either directly threatening their survival (for example, when transgender kids use bathrooms of their choice or gay couples want to buy a wedding cake) or by defending Islamic terrorists (for example, ACLU and US Senate Democrats who defeated the Executive Order on the Muslim travel ban).
The Second Pillar: Nationalize the Economy
The core economic policy of the American neofascism to reverse the success of Liberal policies of free trade and liberalization by pulling out of free trade agreements and weakening or destroying regional and international institutions such as the European Union or NAFTA, while imposing trade tariffs. In nationalizing the economy, the American neofascism aims not to change ownership from private to state (which is what nationalizing the economy has meant historically) but to make the economy work for white Christians. One part of that is engaging in elaborate and kitschy infrastructure construction that glorifies the power of white Christians. Another part is appropriating the leaders of the industry as assets of the movement, both as political supporters and ideological messengers. The core of this economic pillar is to undermine free markets, which when functioning properly, give little credence to religious and ethnic differences, forming far-reaching connections of interdependence and evolving into a powerful engine of economic growth that threatens the supremacy of white Christians by promising to lift billions of non-white non-Christians out of poverty worldwide.
The Third Pillar: Dismantle the Liberal State
The third pillar of American neofascism is to dismantle the liberal regulatory and bureaucratic state. The neofascist movement believes that the introduction of civil rights laws, regulations protecting consumers, environmental protection regulations, and financial regulations have all instituted an oppressive state apparatus that has disempowered white Christians in the United States. Most importantly, the US Constitution has established the freedom of speech, the right to equal protection under the law and to the due process, and the prohibition of establishing an official state religion. The American neofascist movement’s third pillar’s ultimate goal is to roll back all those constitutional rights and ensure that white Christians enjoy supremacy over other groups when it comes to the rights of speech, protection under the law, due process and religious rights.
Strategy for Consolidating Power
To survive, a fascist regime needs control over three great instruments of power: information, deadly force and money. The problem that American neofascism faces is that the United States has a particularly strong independent media, a professionalized military and police, and a privatized market that is fiercely independent of state control. Therefore the three key strategies the American neofascist movement plans to pursue to consolidate power include:
(1) Establish control over the media by delegitimizing, intimidating and silencing the independent press, and replacing it by a state-controlled propaganda machine;
(2) Gain political control over the military by coopting key generals and purging the FBI, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA and the entire Justice Department of political opponents and/or independent civil servants; establish ICE as a paramilitary force in charge of mass deportations, terror and intimidation of non-white Christians within the United States; and gain support of local police enforcement by demonizing non-whites, and expanding the powers of police to use para-military-like methods to protect white Christians from the paranoid-delusional perception of threat to survival;
(3) Ensure political support of wealthy allies in key economic positions across economy sectors, in order to ensure private sources of funding for its propaganda machine, as well as police, military and para-military forces in the long run.
Hence, the overall success of American neofascism and its survival in power will depend on the relative success of these strategies. Will the American neofascist movement succeed in silencing or delegitimizing the independent press? Will it gain control over the military and intelligence apparatus by ensuring the loyalty of the top generals and intelligence officers? Will it be successful in deploying ICE as the deportation force and militarizing local police in American cities? And will it win the support of America’s billionaires from the Sillicon Valley and the Wall Street to the oil fields of Texas and factories of Detroit? If the American neofascist strategies succeed, we can expect a new war at home and abroad against anyone who stands in the way of white Christian supremacy, the establishment of a protectionist economy that benefits white Christians, and the dissolution of the Liberal state and rolling back of Constitutional rights that today benefit non-whites. The rise of the three pillars will secure the American neofascist order in service of white Christian supremacy, and, given the movement’s motto of perpetual race war, the casualties will be many.
