Content warning: This column discusses violence.
The Metropolitan Republican Club in New York invited Gavin McInnes to give a speech at their headquarters where he praised and reenacted the murder of a Japanese socialist. The Proud Boys, an alt-right gang, assaulted protesters outside. The cops stood by and watched.
This was one of the latest in a string of fascist assaults against protesters at Republican events. Before we go further, know that fascism isn’t rule of the stupid or the use of violence against enemy paramilitary organizations. Fascism, by some definitions, is the dictatorship of the right against the left and minorities through organized violence and nationalist mobilization. The Nazis and Blackshirts started as militant nationalists, got money and backing from traditional plutocrats and then broke the back of labor in their homelands. Before there was genocide, there was gay-bashing and anti-communist terrorism. It is not fascism to fight Nazi terrorists when the police will not, and it is not fascism to yell at senators. It is fascist to suggest we throw labor organizers out of helicopters, as some people on this campus have.
I’ve seen fascists wearing “Pinochet did nothing wrong” shirts and MAGA hats beating up protesters with the police at their backs. They’re as silly and stupid as they are cruel and dangerous. The groups from Charlottesville, Va. might be underground, but Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys are building institutional ties to the Republican Party, including college Republicans. Alt-right members were found with a weapons cache on a parking garage's rooftop ahead of a protest in Portland, Ore., and others fly around America starting riots like the one in Providence two weeks ago. The Proud Boys have committed dozens of assaults and have overlapping ties with neo-Nazi groups, like Boston Free Speech and skinhead gangs in New York. Neo-Nazi gangs have beaten protesters at Turning Point USA college events; obnoxious college Republican red-baiting is becoming red-beating.
They set aside the traditional outright racism of skinheads in favor of reactionary sexism, hyper-individualism, anti-communism and patriotism, but the racial supremacy remains key to the project. Destruction of progressive forces means the entrenchment of a racial caste system.This strategy has bound the fascist gangs to the Republicans and the Republicans to them in a way that was not visible even a few months ago. Reps. Diaz-Balart and Nunes have campaigned with Proud Boys. Tucker Carlson gives them favorable press. Proud Boys shout slurs and beat up socialists at Republican events. The Republicans cannot be shamed out of this alliance, as it gives them a paramilitary wing they can use against social dissent without formal state repression.
The alliance between fascists and conservatives is over a hundred years old, but the last few months of riots, attempted murders of leftists and fascist penetration into mainstream politics and Republican organizing has opened a new organizational chapter in American fascism. Only mass direct action can close it. The Republicans are becoming an outright fascist party. Only we can stop them.
Red Star: They are just fascists now
