Fascism is complex and sometimes contradictory ideology. While it may be fun to call Bush Hitler and Obama Stalin, it doesn’t make it so, they are both capitalists. Democrats and Republicans have been playing good cop, bad cop for the capitalist system for well over a hundred years now. This doesn’t mean fascism can’t happen here in the good old USA. We should examine where fascism came from, what is it, and how it works. By knowing these things we can figure out what fascism might look like in America and how we can fight it.

Fascism is a system that came into being after World War I when the great empires of the earth battled for supremacy. The new rising powers of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires fought the older established powers of the British, French, and Russian Empires. As the world powers battled over land, resources and control of the markets of Europe, Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East a funny thing started to happen. Nationalist independence movements broke out in Ireland, India, Afghanistan, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Revolution had been going on in Mexico for some time but in 1917 the Russian Revolution broke out destroying the old Empire and taking the Russian people out of the war. In this same year in the French Army 68 of 112 divisions mutinied, 629 men were court martialed and 50 were executed by firing squad. A rising power, the American Empire (with it’s very real colonies of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Cuba), joined the fray but the war was already lost. With the new threat of communism in Russia, their former colonies in revolt and finally their own soldiers and sailors beginning to mutiny the great powers declared a ceasefire on the 11th of November 1918.

The great powers went back to put their houses in orders. In the US, Great Britain, and France dealt with massive strikes, anarchist direct actions, and a bold new revolutionary socialist movement. In the United States in 1918 saw the rise of the second “Red Scare.” The government tried 165 organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World who were arrested for violating the Espionage Act, but their real crime was striking during war time. General strikes broke out in Seattle, Butte, and Toledo and had to be put down by force. Even Boston police went on strike. In 1919 William Z. Foster (future leader of the Communist Party) and the steelworkers crippled the steel industry for 3 months. Eugene Debs leader of the railroad workers and head of the Socialist Party was jailed for opposing the war and obstructing the draft. On the anniversary of the Armistice the American Legion opened fire on an IWW union hall in Centralia, WA. Wesley Everest, a union leader and veteran of WWI (who was in uniform that day) fired back and was chased into the woods. They smashed his teeth out, castrated him, lynched him and riddled his corpse with bullets. In 1920 with the Palmer Raids the federal government cracked down on unions, rounded up radicals and deported Russian-born radicals like Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman to the USSR. They arrested Italian-born anarchists like Luigi Galleani which touched off a bombing campaign that ended with 1920 bombing of Wall Street. In the spring of that same year the anarchist Andrea Salsedo was pushed out of the window on the 14th floor of the FBI’s NY office while in police custody. Two anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, were arrested for a robbery they didn’t commit. The Communist Party of America formed and went underground for two years to avoid government attack. These are just a few examples of the working class revolt and the post war reaction.

In Europe things were worse. The White Army made up of Russian nationalists and monarchists tried to stop the Russian Revolution and were backed by British, French, Japanese, and American troops. Two socialist uprisings occured in Germany in 1918 – one in Berlin and the other in Munich they were crushed by the German Army and the Freikorps. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up and dozens of small nations formed in Eastern Europe. Colonies of the German Empire were divided up amongst the Allied Powers. France and Great Britain broke up the Ottoman Empire and created new colonies in the Middle East. Instability and questioning in the older capitalist nations combined with fear and anxiety of a new socialist nation led some people to start advocating a “third way”- neither capitalist nor socialist. These people would become known as the fascists. Join me next time to find out about the rise of Mussolini.