The spectacle we watched on Wednesday was a showdown between factions of the ruling class—the supporters of the status quo and the insurgent fascists—and their foot soldiers on the ground. As communists, we don’t have a stake in that fight, but we do have a stake in the fight to prevent the rise of fascism, and a responsibility to present the alternative to the working class: socialism.
The “attack on the citadel of democracy” was allowed to go as far as it did because of a unique moment of polarization between the police and the white fascist militia, which many of the police support, over the safety of property and ruling class politicians, who the police are hired to protect. Due to the lack of significant left-wing resistance at this event, the police were no longer given the easy choice between attacking leftists and attacking fascists—they were forced to either attack the fascists or pull back the curtain on their supposed neutrality by enabling the insurrection. Of course, this was also assisted by Trump’s encouragement of violent activity and resistance to deploying the National Guard.
Even if the mob was not ultimately successful in stopping the vote to confirm Biden, the people who were there now know the extent of their power. They know they can break into government buildings with little to no resistance, and that while doing so the police will stop and take selfies with them. Now they have a veteran martyr, someone who they can idealize and rally behind. We would be foolish not to think of this as a herald of things to come.
Biden and his administration are not a bulwark against the rising tide of fascism. In fact, the spirit of collaboration and “reaching across the aisle” is the very thing that has historically enabled fascism—and this is why we say liberals and fascists are two sides of the same coin. Liberals are calling for restoration of “law and order,” ie. the same repression of political opposition that is used against Black and Indigenous liberation movements such as the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country this past summer and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, as well as the anti-capitalist Left and workers’ movements.
The establishment media is also claiming that what we witnessed was “not America,” that this sort of thing doesn’t happen here, not in the “shining light” of democracy—but we know that America is not a true democracy. We know that the main reason we have some semblance of comfort in this country, compared to the “failed states” that we think ourselves so much better than, is because the U.S. has forcibly installed repressive, right-wing governments around the world, who also oppress their own citizens and profit through neoliberal policies of austerity and “free trade”, or extraction that benefits our economy at their people’s expense. January 6th was the start of the chickens coming home to roost.
While many folks are relieved that Trump has been voted out and that Wednesday’s insurrection failed, the plague of fascism has not been eradicated. We live in terrifying times—everyday there is a new fear, there is something new to worry and be anxious about. It is easy to fall into the trap of flitting from issue to issue, playing a game of whack-a-mole with fascism’s ugly creep. There is only one way to defeat fascism—building liberation-driven working class power, broad anti-fascist united fronts, and structures for community self-defense.
Fascism is the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. Fascists offer simple, but racist, inequitable and oppressive answers to the persistent problem of capitalism: more people having to make do with an ever-smaller piece of pie. This is the same problem that we want to answer in a more fundamental way with socialism. Only through total destruction and rearrangement of economic and property relations, led by and supportive of a strong, organized working class, can the threat of fascism be fully erased.