Essay:The American Crisis of Capital: The Nazification of the United States

Notice: This essay is a work-in-progress.

January 6 rioter with the flag of the Confederate States of America inside the United States capital as a police officer stands idly by and does nothing.

Flying their pro-slavery flags, armed men marched unopposed into the United States capital on January 6, 2021. This was only four years after a large crowd of Americans marched through the streets of North Carolina with their torches, chanting the Nazi slogans 'Sieg Heil!' and 'Blood and soil!' as they demand the eradication of the Jewish people. Just a day after this scene, an even larger crowd in North Carolina took control of a large field, flying Swastika flags and saying that Hitler did nothing wrong. Then President Donald Trump described these men with Nazi flags and pro-slavery iconography as 'very fine people' and 'great people', the Republican Party cheering for him along the way. How did it come to this? How did the same nation that fought against Nazi Germany in the Second World War turn into a hotbed of that exact same Nazi sentiment? The answer is simple. The United States of America has had its own crisis of capital and is now falling into a state of decayed capitalism - fascism.

Chapter I: The history of American fascism

While the United States has always been built on settler colonial imperialism, the origins of the American fascist movement go back to 1854 - just seven years before the American Civil War. In 1854, a proto-fascist organization seeking to preserve and expand the institution of slavery called the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was formed. The KGC has its roots in Manifesto Destiny, the idea that the United States had a god-given right to rule all of North America, and the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that all of America was the USA's personal playground. The KGC was semi-militaristic and wanted to establish "military colonies".

The KGC was part of a bigger issue - the question of slavery in the United States. This issue eventually led to a socioeconomic divide between the Northern and Southern parts of the United States. A socioeconomic issue that eventually led to the American Civil War between the anti-slavery "Union" led by Abraham Lincoln, a close contemporary of Karl Marx, and the Confederate States of America (CSA), a proto-fascist experiment at creating a feudal slave state. In effect, this made the American Civil War the bourgeois revolution of the Southern United States. The KGC was dissolved in 1864, during the 1861-1866 tenure of the CSA.

Following the fall of the CSA, a white supremacist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) came into existence. Given the fact that later sources document it as becoming a fascist organization after fascism had become a semented ideology, it can be argued that the KKK was, in fact, a proto-fascist movement in its early 1865-1872 state. The KKK committed multiple acts of terrorism against black people in the Southern United States. While it was dissolved in 1872 during the Reconstruction era, the KKK was revived in 1915 during the First World War following the release of the movie The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the KKK as heroes of the American people. Following the Second World War, the Nazi ideology became semented in the KKK. Unlike the KGC, the KKK still exists and has begun targeting Hispanic people in more recent years. The KKK is widely considered to be a neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate organization.

In 1929, the Great Depression began as the American stock market crashed and the bourgeoisie was left scrambling. It spread fear into the bourgeoisie and further impoverished the American proletariat. In response, the new ideology called fascism began gaining steam in 1930s America. The previously mentioned KKK began gaining steam with many new rallies as the father of Donald Trump was arrested for his white supremacist activities. Some sources report that over a hundred fascist organizations existed in the 1930s United States. This came around the same time that Nazi Germany was formed in 1933 and Adolf Hitler began turning Germany into a fascist state. It even went as far as many Americans sympathizing with Adolf Hitler himself. In 1939, it escalated to a group of American Nazis taking control of large parts of New York City. Hitler himself is even described as had having "American friends".

The 1920s and 1930s bring us to a fairly controversial figure. Huey P. Long, the former Governor of Louisiana and later United States Senator from Louisiana. Sometimes compared to Abraham Lincoln, Huey Long was an elected official who effectively became a dictator, using his autocratic power to do things that largely benefitted the proletariat of Louisiana. While he was not a Marxist or communist of any type, he was largely popular with the people of Louisiana and had the support of the state's local proletariat. His work helping the proletariat has led to many in the bourgeoisie and in anti-socialist circles to fall Long a fascist. While he was most certainly not a fascist, his discussion in the discourse of American fascism is important as he is credited with the following quote: "When the United States gets fascism, it will call it anti-fascism." This quote is important to understanding American fascism. Most American fascists will say that they aren't fascists, but they're still fascist in reality.