American Fascism: Jim Crow 2.0

Gif courtesy of Akili Buchanan.

Conscious Black Americans are quite familiar with what living under fascism will feel like.  In practical terms (considering various historical factors) fascism is dictatorship, totalitarianism by another name. Black folk already know what living under totalitarian rule feels like, for we are the American descendants of enslaved Africans. After emancipation, Reconstruction gave us a roughly 10-year glimmer of what participatory democracy could be in this former slave nation. But Reconstruction was betrayed by white men determined to turn back the clock, who ushered in a century-long era of Jim Crow, where lynching, chain gangs, enforced labor, false convictions, imprisonment, de facto and de jure segregation, and other denials of fundamental human and civil rights were once again commonplace throughout America. White dictatorial, totalitarian rule over Black human beings, in law and societal practice, reigned once again. 

 White Americans, as a distinct racial group or class, have never faced chattel slavery, false imprisonment, lynching, or other systemic denials of their human and civil rights — because America began as a racial-apartheid slave nation, and white skin was a pass-card.

Under capitalism, multiracial working-class unity has been difficult to build in America because the ruling class was able to divide white workers from Black workers — “You’re better than them! You were born with white skin!, they exclaimed” (Bob Dylan). So, for decades the white working class betrayed their own class interests. They failed to unite with their natural class allies and instead, chose the psychological delusion of whiteness. They chose to side with their class enemies — the white Bosses.  They chose the false promises of race allegiance over the future’s possibilities of multiracial working-class unity.

 Another historical factor for the failure of multiracial working-class unity is the success at which the ruling class has associated the struggle for working-class unity and economic justice with that great ideological Boogeyman—Communism. Too many white, Black and brown folk drank the anti-communist kool-aid, buying into the absurd, factually incorrect assertion by the ruling class that capitalism is economic democracy in practice. “If you oppose capitalism,” say the rulers, “you oppose democracy. If you oppose capitalism and democracy, you are anti-American. Therefore, you are a traitor to your country.”

 American public education has done a very poor job at teaching the essential or nuanced differences between various political-economic systems, conflating democracy with capitalism, and capitalism with individual freedom. Sadly, I do not see a change in the current miseducation of students on the elementary or secondary levels. Moreover, by the time American students go on to college, their anti-socialist fears and misconceptions are so ingrained, it will take years of living in the real world for them to realize that capitalism is not about individual freedom, but merely the freedom to exploit groups of individuals. Besides, anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda continues to serve America’s ruling economic-political classes very well, thank you. The miseducation of our youth will continue….

 While I do acknowledge black/brown/white unity has been achieved in many social, cultural, economic, and political contexts throughout America, particularly among younger Americans, the psychological power and social capital of white supremacist ideology remains real, pervasive, and too persuasive to dismantle because it remains so deeply ingrained in America’s DNA. It is in the vein of this nation’s white population, coursing through the white body politic each time a white ruler chooses to inject it. White Supremacist ideology is an addictive drug, the heroin of the white American psyche.

 So, what will American Fascism look like?  When all the legal, social, cultural and political manifestations are set firmly in place, American Fascism will look very much like Jim Crow Redux, Jim Crow 2.0.  Black and brown folk will know what it looks like because we live under racial totalitarian rule today, our recent political and social advances notwithstanding. We know this because we have been and remain America’s go-to scapegoat. We also know this because the belief system of whiteness is a hell of a drug, too easy to dispense out to white Americans searching for but not finding the quick fix for their social and economic suffering. It is too easy to inject into our body politic. And, like all drugs, whiteness is too pleasurable a habit for the addict to kick in tough times. “You’re better than them! You were born with white skin!”  America always fought back against true participatory democracy, taking two steps forward yet one step back with its racial reality, simply because those in power stay in power by keeping the rest of us divided.

 When Fascism soon ushers in full bloom in America, it will feel very familiar to America’s traditional scapegoats. Blacks. Browns. Immigrants of Color. And the LGBTQ+ Community.  But the average working-class white man and woman must decide to remain addicted to the systemic drug of White Supremacy, or kick the habit, clear their minds, get clean, and join their natural class allies in the struggle against this oncoming Fascist America. Otherwise, sooner or later, by the very nature of totalitarian rule, they too will be thrusted into the ranks of The Despised. It is only a matter of time.