Global capitalism and twenty-first century fascism: a US case study

Abstract

This seminal article analyses the current structural crisis and instability in an ever more polarised world in relation to earlier systemic crises that were resolved through fascism or through Fordist-Keynesian 'class compromise' (the 1930s) and the emergence of capitalist globalisation (the 1970s). The authors identify three basic responses to the crisis: popular insurgency from below; reformist stabilisation from above; and, a twenty-first century neo-fascism. Looking specifically at the US, they analyse political and economic developments that demonstrate fascistic characteristics. While no simple replication of the past, the emergence of a Christian Right since the mid-1980s, the growth of certain currents within the Tea Party movement, the sharp increase in violent hate groups, the spread of a vicious anti-immigrant movement, the psychopathology of white decline, sharp militarisation and pervasive policing give some indications of the rise of fascist tendencies. But what is crucial today is the sophistication of such a project, made possible by the ideological domination of media together with new surveillance and social control technologies that allow it to rely more on selective than generalised repression. In calling for a co-ordinated fightback, both in the US and beyond, the authors see the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism as a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards

Global Capitalism and its Anti-‘Human Face’: Organic Intellectuals and Interpretations of the Crisis

“…The ideas on global crisis developed here can be found in further detail in Robinson (2008Robinson ( , 2010Robinson ( , 2011Robinson ( , 2012, and Robinson and Barrera (2012). I would like to thank Globalizations special issue editor Jason Struna and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.…”

“…Elsewhere I have discussed at some length how these three mechanisms have played themselves out since the turn of the twenty-first century (see, inter alia, Robinson, 2007Robinson, , 2008Robinson, , 2010Robinson, , 2011Robinson, , 2012Robinson and Barrera, 2012). The key questions I want to pose here are: Where is this crisis headed?…”

Stopping the ‘War on the Car’: Neoliberalism, Fordism, and the Politics of Automobility in Toronto

“…It is in fact through existence of this latter dynamic that I argue a politics of automobility built around the politicization of transportation policy has arisen in the contemporary city, particularly in those global cities seen to be at the cutting edge of post-Fordist economic restructuring like Toronto. The kind of neoliberalism aligned with what Robinson and Barrera (2012) call 'twenty-first century fascism,' is particularly prone to the defense of the system of automobility at all costs.…”

“…As in many (but not all) cases of 'actually existing neoliberalism', the political culture of the Ford administration evolved into one reminiscent of 'authoritarian populism' (Hall 1985(Hall , 2011 and 'twenty-first century fascism' (Robinson and Barrera 2012). Its masculinist, dismissive paternalism is evocative of the political culture of early postwar Fordism, in which the benevolence of (Fordist) capitalism was taken as self-evident while social and cultural difference, not to mention criticism, was derided.…”

“…Indeed, Ford is the most outwardly 'neoliberal' of the candidates that ran for mayor, and his platform and political philosophy fit dominant conceptualizations of neoliberalism and 'neoliberal suburbanism' (Harvey 2005;Peck 2011). Ford's approach has hints of what Robinson and Barrera (2012) refer to as 'twenty-first century fascism. ' Filion (2011) refers to the Ford administration as 'Toronto's Tea Party.…”