Fascism and War Cannot Be Voted Out - Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad!

by Ellen Isaacs, published on Countercurrents, September 23, 2024

Editor’s Note: Another much needed perspective that has been in the queue for too long. [jb]

Many progressive friends declare they will “hold their nose” and vote for Harris, if only to prevent Trump from instituting fascism.

“Bad as she is” – intolerable on Palestine, flipflopping on the environment and health care, cruel to immigrants – “she’s not as bad as Trump. At least she supports abortion.” And we must vote! it’s our civic duty! they declare. At least choose a third party candidate or vote “uncommitted.”

The fundamental problem here is that fascism is not the whim or policy of an evil politician. Fascism is a stage of capitalism, of deteriorating capitalism, of conditions that spur workers to rebel. Fascism becomes necessary if the capitalist class cannot provide workers with adequate wages and services, cannot safeguard and expand infrastructure, cannot mitigate climate change, and cannot protect workers from the threats of war. Today these conditions exist or are worsening in the US. Inflation, housing shortages, overcrowded and substandard schools, expensive and inadequate health care, soaring heat and other climate disasters, and crumbling roads and bridges are affecting more and more workers. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza are not only expanding and costing billions, but open conflict with China and its Russian and Iranian allies looms in the future. Then there will likely be a draft or an attack on US bases or soil, and we will all be asked to make much greater sacrifices for US imperialism.

Fascism Already Has a Foothold in the US

When peoples’ needs and expectations cannot be met, there are time tested methods to weaken opposition to the state and create false narratives about the source of our problems. Racism is strategy number one. Blame immigrants for taking jobs, blame non-whites for not working or not doing well in school or for crime, blame Jews or Muslims for a multitude of sins. Increase repression to spread fear: fire workers who oppose ruling class ideas, expel student activists and fire professors, arrest protestors with serious charges, attack workers organizing on their jobs.

Many of these fascist practices are happening right now.

All over the US, universities have instituted new rules in response to the massive protests against the war in Gaza last spring.¹ Many have limited the time, methods and place for protests. Some, like NYU, have declared that to be anti-Zionist, to be against an exclusively Jewish state that aims to expel all Palestinians from all of Palestine, is to be anti-Semitic. Overall 3100 students were arrested last spring, and some still face serious charges and consequences. Although no overall figures are kept, faculty have been arrested, banned temporarily or lost positions all over the country.²Universities are increasingly calling on police to expel protestors, often violently, and police routinely arrest peaceful street demonstrators.

Public school teachers have also been attacked for criticizing Israeli policies, some losing their jobs.³

The American Public Health Association was the first to pass an emergency ceasefire resolution in October, 2023. Although it passed by over 90%, the leaders, closely tied to the Democrats, were not pleased. This year they refused to allow a permanent resolution to even come to the floor, in violation of their own rules.

When people say this is the new McCarthyism, they are absolutely correct, only we don’t even need a new McCarthy. Neither Harris nor Biden has said a word opposing any of these practices.

Long Time Injustices Persist

The police continue to murder civilians with impunity, killing 710 so far this year, disproportionately black.⁴ Just last week in New York City, police opened fire in a crowded subway station over an unpaid $2.90 fare, shooting two bystanders, one in the head. The black Democratic Mayor Adams declared that “policing is a dangerous job.” Harris talked about defunding the police after George Floyd’s murder, but once she was VP her press secretary said she no longer supports this, and the administration allotted $334 million for more police.⁵

More and more people are losing Medicaid and income as emergency Covid benefits have ended, including free tests, vaccines and masks. Harris, who only four years ago supported universal health care, now says she would keep private insurance.⁶

Trump is still promising to expand his border wall, prevent asylum claims and expel all immigrants. Harris, who once rabidly opposed the wall, is now saying she too will build it and drastically limit border crossings. She would continue the Biden policy of cracking down on asylum claims and hiring 1500 additional border agents.⁷

In several locations, mask bans have been passed even as Covid is surging. The real point is to allow police to identify protestors against genocide or other issues who often cover their faces in order to protect themselves from penalties. These edicts not only infringe on free speech but endanger those at risk from Covid or other infectious diseases.⁸

Last year was the hottest on record with increasing heat related deaths and lethal storms and floods. Harris who once opposed fracking, is now in favor of it. The Biden/Harris administration has increased oil production by over half a million barrels a day and natural gas production has risen every year to be the highest in the world.^9,10

Neither Harris nor Biden has said anything thing about the fascist practices that are already in effect. Harris’s positions are not far from many Trump espouses for the future. However many ideas Trump proposes, like mass immigrant expulsions or closing the Department of Education, will not actually be carried out because they are too costly and impractical or not in his power. He will likely modify his stance on abortion as it is unpopular, which is all he really cares about. Harris is a politician who has flipped her positions on almost everything except her support for US capitalism and imperialism. Thus although Trump is more openly racist, xenophobic, misogynist and irrational than Harris, their policies are already and will become less and less divergent as there is less give in the system.

What of International Policy?

Internationally, the candidates may actually have some dispute. Although both support Israel, Trump is in general more isolationist. He is less tied to the large corporations with wide international interests like the fossil fuel companies. Thus he says he wants to end support of Ukraine, and says if he is elected he will end the war in 24 hours, before he even takes office. Seems unlikely. Then what will he do if it continues? Openly let Russia win? His unpredictability and seeming lack of concern for US imperial interests is quite worrisome to the corporate class. If he were to be elected, it is doubtful he would be allowed to sacrifice US imperial interests if he really attempted to do so. He could be manipulated via his criminal convictions, impeached, pressured in many ways, but it is extremely unlikely he would be allowed to openly engineer a Russian victory, even though Russia is likely to win in any case.

Billions of dollars’ worth of weapons are flowing to Israel where they have flattened Gaza, likely caused the death of several hundred thousand civilians and induced widespread disease and starvation. West Bank aggression is increasing and conflict is expanding with Lebanon as we write. More billions are arming Ukraine, a war stemming from the US-sponsored pro-NATO coup in 2014 that posed a threat to Russia. Hundreds of thousands have died on both sides in that war that cannot have a winner. Both Biden and Harris wholeheartedly support these wars. “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” says Harris, over and over again, while promising to maintain the US military as the most lethal in the world.¹¹

Most of Our Votes Don’t Count

So is voting harmful, not just useless? Yes it is. Primarily it perpetuates the illusion that we have real power over our lives by choosing our leaders, when all we are actually able to do is choose between two kingpins of capitalism. But in fact we can’t even do that. Because of the electoral college, that was set up to preserve the influence of slaveholders, most of our votes don’t count at all. Only in the seven states that do not always vote the same way do the votes even matter. In all the rest save Maine, it is all electoral votes to the winner, no matter how lopsided the popular vote. And this does not even take into account the massive amount of gerrymandering and voter suppression, primarily disenfranchising people of color. Thus in many recent elections – Trump 2016, George w Bush in 2000, probably JFK in 1960 – the winner of the popular vote did not “win.” It may well be about to happen again.

The Senate is also highly unrepresentative of the population. Given that people now overwhelmingly live in cities, small states with more rural populations have highly disproportionate representation: California, with 68 times more residents than Wyoming and at least 20 times more than 13 states, has the same number of senators. Given the more conservative rural vote, the disproportion is immense.¹² But most important, when so called liberals come into power, they end up carrying out policies we abhor – violent repressive wars overseas, racist policies at home, attacks on our livelihoods and standard of living. They just do it with sweeter, more deceptive rhetoric.

What Should We Be Doing?

Why are we not infuriated? It is as if a great narcotic called elections has deadened us all to reality. But it leaves us awake enough to waste vast amounts of energy in this periodic useless charade of “democracy,” when we could be out actually fighting for what we need.

Historically, fascism has only been defeated by mass and usually violent struggles, not elections. Slavery in the US only ended via the Civil War; the antiwar movement led to US withdrawal from Vietnam and the end of the draft; segregation was at least mitigated by the Civil Rights Movement; Nazism was defeated by workers’ armies. There have also been many armed struggles for national liberation in the last century, but victories that did not lead to lasting change as they focused on winning only “democratic” change while capitalists remained in power.

The lesson is that we need to be out there organizing with our fellow workers and students about the same issues that the candidates pretend to care about, but with different methods. If war is imminent, we must win soldiers and draftees to resist fighting for imperialism. At present, there is still plenty to do. Where workers need higher wages and more jobs we need to be organizing unions and strikes, as is happening at Amazon and Boeing. The election news is so overwhelming that we don’t even hear about these ongoing significant struggles. And if we are out canvassing for some candidate, we are not organizing rank and file members to build power on our jobs.

We need to be demanding universal affordable health care, building struggles like that of New York City retirees who are refusing to be forced into managed Medicare.

We need to be re-occupying the campuses to demand an end to support of Israeli genocide and expanding the struggle to end complicity with the arms industry. We need to ensure that no students or faculty lose their place on campus.

We need to guarantee that secondary school teachers can utter the truth in their classrooms and off the job without losing those jobs.

We must keep military recruitment out of schools and universities.

We must join community fights for affordable housing and a universal right to safe shelter. We must demand that everyone has access to nutritious food.

We must demand that migrants receive shelter, the right to work and a fair and timely asylum process.

In all these struggles we must build multiracial unity and gender equality. We must lead them ourselves and not rely on politicians to do our bidding. We must infuse them with the understanding that capitalism is the source of our problems so that instead of being discouraged by defeats or reversals of reforms won, we become long range fighters in the struggle to change the whole system.

As the consequences of the prioritizing of capitalist profits and capitalist rivalries become ever more apparent, mass movements will increase. Perhaps a new military draft, perhaps harsher bans on free speech, perhaps even greater police violence will be the spark. But we must be ready to lead our fellow workers and students in wider resistance, not look to politicians for a way out. They only got to be politicians because they believe in this system. We must not let them fool us.

*Featured Image: Police attacking pro-Palestine protestors at UCLA (Reuters)

For in depth discussions of the history of fascism, see

For more discussion of liberal perfidy, see

Footnotes:

Ellen Isaacs is a retired physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org. She can be reached at .

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