Why Moderate Fascists Are Called Populists

 

 

In the late 19th century a movement arose in the agricultural areas of the United States, especially among poor farmers in the southern states, which was called populism. This movement stood for three beliefs.

The first was that contemporary America was divided sharply into two groups: the working people (especially the farmers) and the large corporations just coming into existence (especially the banks). There was much to support this first belief. Farmers worked all year round but didn’t get paid regularly throughout it. They would sow, weed, irrigate, cultivate, but as long as they had no product to sell, they didn’t make any money. As a consequence they were starved for cash during certain parts of the year and had to depend on banks to loan them money to buy new seeds, fertilizers, tools, and farm animals. Farmers were (and continue to be) very dependent on banks and banks have taken advantage of that.

This leads directly to the second belief of the populists: the rich corporations and banks took advantage of the farmers while they remained impoverished. The third belief was more remedial in nature: that the government should be a government of, for and by the people, not a government of and for large corporations and big banks.

This movement was politically powerful for about 10 or 15 years and then it died. One of its striking characteristics during its heyday was its opposition to racist divisions which in the late 19th century were as powerful as ever and more out in the open then they may be today. It was therefore not uncommon to find among the populist farmers of that era farmers of color.

This is interesting because the word “populism” has suddenly come back into constant use. Everyone talks about this or that populist movement or organization. But the word is now not used to describe a movement of working people and farmers who demand greater political power against the very rich, large corporations, big banks, or real estate billionaires. Such a movement does not exist.

Instead the people who are called populists today are moderate fascists. They draw lines between themselves and others and often those lines are racial. Unlike the populists of 130 years ago, today’s populists do not make efforts to bury racial distinctions but are racists. White supremacists of all stripes are called “populists” whether they are out to get African-Americans or Hispanic people. Color lines are important. Americans – at least good Americans – have white skin.

European populists oppose immigration, as do American populists, and those immigrants tend to have darker skins than Northern Europeans. People with brown skin should go back to Africa or Latin America. They should not be here. As far as I know these are moderate fascists. They are not drawing up plans for gas chambers. But when well-meaning people leave plastic containers of water at the border to help immigrants who come across the hot desert, these new kind of populists don’t hesitate to pour out the water and make it more likely that the immigrants die of heatstroke. They are murderous all right.

Using the word populist today to apply to these right wing movements is often justified by describing the populist movements as being in opposition to the contemporary elites. A newspaper article about the annual meeting of super rich big shots in Davos, Switzerland, describes the representatives of global corporations and banks as the elite who are the target of protest by today’s populists. Similar definitions of today’s populism can be found in other publications.

But a little thought shows that this characterization of “populism” in 2019 makes little sense. Donald Trump, one of the leaders of American “populists” today is a billionaire (even though there is considerable debate about how he comes by those billions since he seems to be an incompetent businessman). At any rate he is part of the elite which populists are supposedly opposing. But the people who are called populists in America today adore Donald Trump. They believe everything he says and with it all the bad mouthing of immigrants from Central America. They believe with him that we need a wall at our southern border. They believe with him that cutting taxes for the rich will benefit the middle-class.

Donald Trump supporters have been studied carefully. What many of them like is that he is rude, foulmouthed. They like the violence of Trump. Fascism is notoriously violent. None of this involves a critique of a so-called elite or calls for giving power back to the people to rule themselves in their own interest.

Why then call these new moderate fascists “populists”?

The new moderate fascists are not committed to democracy. They want rights but only for white people and more for white men than white women. But calling them “populists” misrepresents them as advocates for popular democracy. It misrepresents them as the enemies of the very rich and powerful. It makes it appear that contempt for persons of color, contempt for people not born and raised in America, contempt for women are all acceptable stances consistent with the traditional American belief in freedom and democracy.

The captains of industry including the big bankers have always been very hesitantly committed to democracy. The Koch brothers today corrupt the democratic process by buying Congress persons and senators. A process which is supposedly representing all Americans has in fact become largely a process representing the rich. The misnamed new populists admire the very rich and powerful. They share the mission to limit rights and democratic participation to white men.

This is obviously not a project that will win you friends in America (except on the moderate fascist fringe) and therefore needs to be concealed and misrepresented. Calling moderate fascists populists is an attempt at confusing the real mission of these groups and their sponsors in the elite.

Accordingly these new fascists in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Europe, in the West as well as the East, have acquired this rather venerable and respectable name of “populist”— people who do not want their lives to be run by big banks and big business but want to run their lives themselves—as the name for the moderate fascism they favor.

But this is a shabby propaganda move that both besmirches the name of a respectable movement in American history and does so in order to hide the close connection between large corporations and banks, and the alt-right, anti-black and Hispanic racists, anti-Semites, anti-Muslims.

What matters here, is, of course, not just a word –”populism” – but the alliance between powerful business interests who are not very happy about democracy – to put that very politely – and people of low and middle income who for reasons of their own are also enemies of democracy, who think the Constitution was meant only for them. The misuse of the word populism is an effort to conceal the concerted effort of rich (and some white poor) to undermine what remains of our democracy. The new populists, unlike the 19th century populists, are a serious threat to our most important traditions.

Men's Rights

 

The last 60 years or more have witnessed an enormous amount of activity on behalf of rights that had previously been ignored or violated with impunity. African-Americans in their almost 400 years of struggle for justice made one more push during what we now call the Civil Rights Movement. Women gathered together to talk to each other about their positions in the family, as daughters as well as wives, mothers, or employees. Their protests were raucous and effective.

Women demanding equal rights, equal respect and equal pay challenged established versions of what it meant to be a man. Several different men's movements came into being in response to Second Wave Feminism.

Some men persuaded by the complaints of different feminist groups came together to change the role men played as husbands, fathers, friends or employers. They saw that men had, in the past, taken gross advantage of the physical labor as well as the emotional generosity of their mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends and determined to mend their ways by doing their share of the housework and the childcare and surrendering their previous assumption that they were, in all respects, superior to the women whose services they demanded.

From the complaints of women about the emotional poverty of many men, their inability to be warm and just make friends, their inability to share their inner lives openly with others, another men's movement came to be that brought men together in groups to talk openly about much of what had before been hidden by each man or perhaps had even been unnoticed and certainly unexpressed. Men came together to cultivate their friendships, to learn to be expressive and share each other's inner lives with others. They learned to be more independent of the social skills and emotional availabilities of the women in their lives.

This second sort of men's movement did, at times have a misogynist edge. But that was certainly not the essence of it.

In recent years, a third men's movement has come to the fore and received a great deal of attention on various social media – a movement often referred to as the Men's Rights Movement. This movement is more often than not openly misogynist. It adapts the language of many feminist groups that complained about being oppressed by men by claiming that, instead, men are today being oppressed by women.

Those complaints are raised by different groups of men. One of those groups consists of divorced men whom the Courts compel to pay for the support of their former wives and the children who now live with their mother. Those complaints arise in different situations. If a family barely gets by to the end of the month without falling into debt, once it splits up as a consequence of divorce, there is not going to be enough money to go around. After the divorce the income that previously barely supported one family now has to pay for two households and that means rent on two different houses or apartments, at least two cars to get everyone to and from work, etc.. But getting divorced does not provide a better paying job and in many families the divorce brings with it serious economic deprivations. Many men believe that the legal compulsion to support their former wives and their children are a profound injustice. They feel oppressed, exploited and complain about violations of their rights.

A very different group of members of the Men's Rights Movement are the people who refer to themselves as "incel" or involuntarily celibate. These are men who cannot find a permanent girlfriend. Women are not interested in them. They regard them as odd and not material for serious relationships. They may be physically unattractive, incapable of listening to anyone else, excessively needy or unable to be supportive of other persons. Perhaps not surprisingly such men do not find the fault in themselves but blame women for not wannting to sleep with them.

Other men, for what ever reason, do not like women. They profess to be unable to understand women. They are afraid of them, they are afraid that women will make fun of them; they are excessively preoccupied with gender. Most likely they are not very sure of themselves and unskilled in establishing pleasant friendships to women or to men.

These different versions of men's rights makes sense for men for whom their gender is central to their identity. In relations to other men they talk about their sexual prowess and the ways they humiliate women. Much of this talk is just pretense. They are simply trying to impress other men with their powerful masculinity where being masculine means dominating women.

Instead of warm and enjoyable friendships, these men think of relationships as forms of competition in which domination is the goal. It is not surprising that women hesitate to be friends with them since being friends is a skill they lack. Nor is it surprising that women appeared to be mysterious since, more often than not, they are not interested in playing domination games. Since they think of relationships as competitions for power, they have difficulties understanding why their marriages don't last. Their ex-wives' demands for financial support is misinterpreted as part of a power struggle. At every turn they see illegitimate attempts at domination. They do not understand any other kind of relationships.

We could write these men and their claims about their rights off as pitiable failures, as rare human beings who did not learn elementary social skills while they were growing up. But these men who are fixated on their masculinity and their ability to dominate other men and especially women are not just unusual failures, exceptions to what most men are like in this is most obvious in business this society. Instead the men's rights movement is the product of important themes and tendencies in our society.

The desire to dominate, to be stronger, more violent, to make every situation into a competition, to praise men who are good competitors and who often win is a widespread attitude in this society. This is most obvious in business where winning out over the other party – putting them out of business – is the goal of competition. Cooperation is an option only where it makes money for both parties. Concern for a competitor is completely wrongheaded. The greatest admiration and praise goals to the people who get very rich at the expense of other businesses. Similarly, violent sports draw huge crowds of spectators every weekend. Boys, even quite young, are taught to play football or ice hockey – sports that require among other skills the willingness to cause pain to others. They are taught that winning is all important, that they should not be held back by physical pain, that being gentle and caring about the pains of others is not manly and should therefore be avoided at all cost. Members of the men's rights movement adhere to similar values centered on competition and winning at all costs in their relationships, especially to women.

The Men's Rights Movement holds up a mirror to American men and shows them the distorted and inhumane version of masculinity that they widely hold and respect. It shows how impoverished and pitiful that concept of masculinity really is.