chapotraphouse

Racists that spend all their time playing Fortnite and [new fad] aren't the Hitler Youth, they are just atomized reactionary liberals.

Fascists arose in opposition to socialists. They were supported by the bourgeoisie, particularly the petty bourgeoisie, to fight a left that was ascendant and asserting people's power, taking over cities and taking over factories. With the liberal institutions failing to guarantee bourgeois control, the armed right wing gangs bringing violence against the left were the only other game in town and were funded accordingly. This is how organized crime basically functions as well - it is just filling a space where the state monopoly on violence has been undermined. And later fascistic groups filled a similar role, like with Pinochet, who restored the (largely international) bourgeoisie's capital control in Chilé through a coup and terror.

Nothing like this is happening in the United States. The United States does not have a left, there are too few of us. All of this is happening without a left and without a bourgeoisie that has been dispossessed. Accordingly, there are no brownshirts, not in any real numbers. They have nothing they would defend in retribution anyways.

But there are other factors that rhyme a bit so that you see what we have in front of us. There is a material decline, particularly for the least marginalized groups, and it requires a false consciousness under liberalism. The classic scapegoating of minorities is not a fascist invention, liberals were doing this long before and after European fascism. And with no left, the only people who could be mass opponents to violence against the marginalized are liberals, and they do so in an ineffectual liberal way. Providing no solutions, not addressing the underlying dynamics at play, destroying the education system, funding and owning social media that blasts right wing conteny while doing their best to censor left content, emphasizing electoralism for their ghouls, these are the liberal "solutions". They create the conditions for reactionaries to exist, feed into their scapegoating (Dems have always been racist and xenophobic, e.g.), use their power to punch left instead of right.

So what you see today is more the typical liberal order in empire where no left exists. It is a resetting of the terms to the more typical arrangement. "Progress" is not inevirable, it can be crushed and reset, all it tajes is for those in power to have no real fear of the people. And the American people are almost the least fearsome they have ever been, though there are undercurrents of riots that could break out during a recession. If left organizations were just large enough and just ready enough, they would be able to provide direction and longevity for the next mass expression of pain and frustration.