Fernando Alcoforado *
From the book Capitalism, Hegemony and Violence in the Age of Drones of the American historian Norman Pollack who died in 1917 and was emeritus professor of history at Michigan State University, published by Springer Nature in 2018, I would like to emphasize Pollack’s claim that “fascism in the United States, at any gestational stage, advances against the people”. In Pollack’s view, Fascism is more than a historically temporary political arrangement, as in Germany, Italy, Japan, and and other countries between the two great world wars. Fascism is a general social state. Pollack asserts that fascism does not require concentration camps, persecution or torture, although its threat and potential remain always present. Instead, Fascism can be seized through various indices such as extreme concentration of wealth; the partnership between business and government, as a structural interpenetration of powerful institutions that promote monopoly capital, restrict trade union organization and labor militancy, and create a strong state based on military power and commercial supremacy; also encouraging a complacent mass base, submissive to power and wealth, tied to ideological nodes through false consciousness and intimidation, intellectually broken through media, propaganda, and signals from above.
Pollack states that the United States has concentration camps. There are so-called detention centers that imprison a secret number of people, run by private companies. The United States has more than three million people incarcerated in prisons, nearly half of whom are peoples black and poor. Official propaganda demonizes a religious minority labeled as Muslim. Google, Boeing, Raytheon, big banks and insurance companies enjoy the same status as State apparatus such as military intelligence like the octopus of military intelligence that examines all people and performs secret operations to overthrow governments around the world. These state-private entities include torture as part of their daily panoply with campaigns all of them at the service of the business-state apparatus that shapes public awareness as if it were an alienated mass.
Pollack states that while some speak of an American empire, it is more accurate to say that the United States is the chief executive organization of the world empire of capital. In other words, it can be said that it is in the United States that the fascist state is located in defense of globalized capitalism. Pollack points out that the US government carries out drone killings, occupies foreign countries, creates and supports terrorist guerrillas, such as the Islamic State, all over the world. The United States government oppresses and investigates its own domestic population. It does all this in service, not for nationalistic aggrandizement, but at the service of global capital. I think it is a different fascism of the old fascism that represented a reaction of the conservative forces of several European countries against the rise of the workers to the power after the victory of the socialism in the Soviet Union in 1917 and was based on conceptions strongly nationalist and in the totalitarian exercise of power, therefore against the democratic and liberal system, and repressive to the social-democratic, socialist and communist ideas. The old fascism implanted during the 1920s and 1930s of the twentieth century was based on a strong, totalitarian state that claimed to embody the spirit of the people in the exercise of power by a single party whose authority was imposed through violence, repression and political propaganda.
The current fascism in the United States has a double connotation, being nationalist when developing actions that aim to maintain the North American world hegemony and globalist in taking action in defense of globalized capitalism. I agree with Pollack when he says that the shadow of fascism has not only fallen upon the United States, but also encompass all nations that incorporate the centers of world capitalism. No matter where, because the interests of capital and the global ruling class must be served by every state apparatus in the world. I agree with Pollack when he states that the world today resembles the period between the two world wars when fascism arose throughout Europe. The underlying cause is the same: a crisis in capitalism. Moreover, the crisis result from the same condition: a fall in the rate of profit in the process of capital accumulation, especially in the form of fictitious or financial capital, and an organic composition of capital where production increasingly depends on machines or robots that replace human labor. The result is that the value of output decreases and with that decline profits decrease.
I agree with Pollack when he states that in order to maintain its hegemonic position and try to control China and Russia, the United States relies heavily on military force directly and indirectly. Sustaining its preeminent position means the United States government to maintain at least one thousand military bases around the world. To sustain its vigorous global hegemony, the United States government impoverishes most of its population, excluding the few thousand people who own most of the wealth and control all capital. I agree with Pollack that, in addition to military force, the United States and its Western allies use two strategies: 1) they support authoritarian regimes; and (2) destabilize countries that are or may potentially pursue independent policies. The first of these strategies was adopted in Latin America with the support of the military dictatorships implanted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, among other countries. The second of these strategies was carried on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The most extreme example of destabilization occurred in Syria, where Western powers created several competing anti-government guerrillas and even invaded and occupied a part of Syria.
I agree with Pollack when he states that both of the above strategies promote increasing world chaos and encourage the advancement of fascism. American fascism has joined European fascism, and in Japan there is a clear return to fascism, especially militarism, to support the Western bloc’s efforts to control China. In short, Pollack’s assignment of advancing fascism in the United States is part of a global trend. Pollack says that this same situation at the beginning of the twentieth century required two world wars and the Great Depression to solve the crisis of capitalism. What followed was the so-called golden age that lasted about 25 years, from 1945 to 1970, after World War II. The wars and the Great Depression destroyed the then existing capital. To achieve a similar destruction of capital, this time on a more global scale, might well require not only the destruction of capital, but much of human civilization. Just remember the worldwide devastation brought about by World War II.
As the oppression of neoliberal and fascist globalized capitalism extends across all walks of life around the world, the possibility of revolt takes on the aspect of civil war on a global scale. The destruction of the totalitarian mercantile society becomes an imperative necessity in a world that is already condemned. Riots are reborn everywhere on the planet and they announce the coming revolution. In order to combat the modern servitude that all humanity is subjected to, it is necessary to unleash on a planetary scale the struggle against the globalized neoliberal capitalism and modern fascism which prove to be the greatest enemies of all the peoples of the world. One fact is indisputable: without the overthrow of globalized neoliberal capitalism and modern fascism on a national and global scale, the problems affecting humanity will not be overcome.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os Condicionantes de Desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (PhD Thesis, University of Barcelona, http: //www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento da Bahia do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016) e A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017).
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