Are the Conditions In The United States Right for a Military Coup?
Karl Marx remarked somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. He forgot to add: If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of anti-fascism.
I can’t take the credit for making that up. Huey Long did, but I thought about it on Sunday as I was reading Ian Kershaw’s editorial in this Sunday’s New York Times about the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.
There’s really only one reason why any sane person looks at the New York Times these days, to read between the lines and try to figure out what the ruling elites are thinking. If Kershaw’s editorial is any indication, they might just be getting ready for a coup.
First of all Kershaw is worried. Could another Hitler rise to power, he asks. He then makes the observation that “with the world now facing such great tensions and instability, the question seems more obvious than ever.” But he’s not worried about the United States, at least on the surface. There’s no mention of legalized torture, the end of habeas corpus, the Patriot Act, the occupation of Iraq or the concept of the “unitary executive.” Kershaw’s list of countries that could produce the next Hitler looks a bit like the standard neoconservative hit list. There’s Vladimir Putin in Russia, Hugo Chavez, of course, the Iranians, Pakistan, and, just to show us he’s not only worried about people in the third world, he throws in some token concern about the anti-immigrant right in Europe.
But if you read between the lines Kershaw is worried about the United States. “Short of some unforeseeable eventualities like major war,” he says, “or, perhaps less unlikely, another meltdown of the economic system, neo-fascist movements will remain on the fringes of politics.” Both Barack Obama and the occupation of Iraq are alluded to in an oblique but unmistakable way. “The Nazis’ spectacular surge in popular support (2.6 percent of the vote in the 1928 legislative elections,” he continues”, 18.3 percent in 1930, 37.4 percent in July 1932) reflected the anger, frustration and resentment — but also hope — that Hitler was able to tap among millions of Germans.”
But above all, Kershaw is worried democracy or, to be more specific, about how too much democracy can lead to the kind of instability that gives rise to a monster like Hitler. “Hitler came to power in a democracy with a highly liberal Constitution,” he says, “and in part by using democratic freedoms to undermine and then destroy democracy itself.” He continues. “Troubled by irreconcilable political, social and cultural divisions from the beginning, the new democracy survived serious threats to its existence in the early postwar years and found a semblance of stability from 1924 to 1928, only to be submerged by the collapse of the economy after the Wall Street crash of 1929.” What Kershaw leaves out of course is that one of the “serious threats” that “troubled” the early Weimer Republic was an attempted Communist revolution led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht that was crushed when the “democratic” government called in the precursors of the Nazis, bands of unemployed German soldiers known as the “Freikorps”, who murdered both Luxemburg and Liebknecht in cold blood on behalf of the Republic. For Kershaw, Communism isn’t part of the real history of Germany in the 1920s so much as something that exists in far off Russia and in the overheated imagination of the Nazis. “Internally, Jews were associated with the political left “, he says, “Socialist and Communist — which was made responsible by Hitler and his followers for Germany’s plight.”
We Americans, as the quintessentially ahistorical people, tend to look at fascism through the lens of culture, not politics. From the elaborate theories of Theodor Adorno in his book “The Authoritarian Personality” to lowbrow comedy, we see Nazism as a reflection of some deeply violent and authoritarian tendency peculiar to the German people, not as a particular response of European capitalism to a specific political crisis in the 1920s and 1930s. But as Karl Marx demonstrated in his classic analysis of Louis Napoleon's coup in 1851, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”, where the mediocre nephew of the original Napoleon was able to walk into absolute power France because of the fact that every other political faction that had any chance to bring stability to France was unable to form a government that could stand the test of the next week, the first thing that fascism needs is stalemate. Stalemate produces instability. Instability with the right historical conditions produces violence. In the worst case scenario this becomes a downward spiral of violence and instability that can only end with the majority of people coming down in favor of a radically authoritarian restoration of order, some kind of order, any kind of order. By the time a nation is ready for a fascist coup, as Ian Kershaw points out, all other forms of authority have been rendered illegitimate and the forms of democracy have become mere hollow rituals without meaning or power.
Increasingly, Hitler seemed to a good third of the German electorate the only hope to putting the country back on its feet, restoring pride and bringing about national salvation. By 1930 it was effectively impossible to rule Germany without Nazi backing. But while Nazi electoral gains could block democracy, they were insufficient to bring Hitler to power.
From 1930 onwards, therefore, the German state was locked in stalemate. Democratic forms remained. But democracy itself was in effect dead, or at least dying. The anti-democratic elites tried to broker solutions, but failed on account of Hitler’s intransigence. Ultimately, because he could find no other authoritarian solution, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as head of government, or chancellor, on Jan. 30, 1933. What followed led to disaster for Germany, for Europe and for the world.
What this Super Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries have demonstrated is that the current political situation in the United States now has the first pre-condition that you need for an eventual fascist takeover, stalemate.
The Republican Party, that mighty coalition of religious and social conservatives, militarists and big money that dominated American politics from Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980s through George W. Bush’s humiliation of John Kerry in 2004 is currently in the process of tearing itself apart. The unlikely victories in Iowa and throughout the south of the under funded Christian fundamentalist Mike Huckabee have demonstrated that social conservatives, or “values voters” are no longer willing to play second fiddle to the financial industry or to neoconservatives like John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. Christian fundamentalists feel an immense sense of betrayal over the fact that Roe vs. Wade has not been repealed under the Bush administration and that gay civil unions are making their way throughout the whole northeast. Neoconservatives and militarists, on the other hand, who have their champion in John McCain, simply don’t have the popular appeal or fundraising ability to keep the social conservatives in line anymore. The dirty little secret about Christian fundamentalists is that they like money and are willing to quote scripture to justify taking it so the smart thing to do would be to pay off them off, promise new funds for “abstinence education”, a new push for school vouchers, tax breaks. But the McCain campaign simply doesn’t have the money that Bush did in 2000 and 2004.
This means that the ruling elites, the financial and banking industry, the arms industry, the big media and the various lobbies that dominate Washington which were solidly united behind George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, are undecided as to which political party they wish to back. The massive influx of Wall Street money into both the Clinton and Obama campaigns would seem to indicate that they are looking towards the Democrats, that they may want to try to “re brand” the empire with a face more appealing to the rest of the world and to rank and file voters at home. What better way to do this than with a white woman who was married to the popular Bill Clinton in the 1990s, popular not only in the USA but throughout the world, or with a young, charismatic black intellectual who has an appeal that looks back to the mythical John F. Kennedy?
But there’s a problem. The ruling elites can’t adopt the entire liberal program of the Democratic Party’s grassroots and keep the empire going. They need repression. They need militarism. They need cuts in social spending and workers wages. They can’t give us real national health care. They need to start privatizing social security. In short, they need the Republican Party, and, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have given every indication that they’d play along and do everything in their power to rule in the authoritarian and reactionary vein of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, there’s no guarantee that they could hold the Democratic Party’s rank and file inline.
But even worse would be the reaction of the working class right, the Christian conservatives, gun nuts, libertarians, and angry white male Clinton haters who brought us everything from Oklahoma City to Eric Rudolf. While they will certainly feel the effects of a class war conducted by the elites against working class whites in the service of empire, they won’t formulate it this way in their minds. They won’t talk about class struggle or imperialism. Instead, they’ll look towards the White House, and see a superficially liberal white woman or black man and see “political correctness”, the “war on Christmas” and the fetus, special privileges for gays and lesbians, a betrayal of “western culture”, the “failure to secure our borders. ” Unlike the relatively passive rank and file in the Democratic Party, they will rebel and rebel violently. “Forget about the punks on the campuses,” Lyndon Johnson once said. “The real great beast is the right”. Jane Harmon’s “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007” (HR 1955) and the almost hysterical reaction to the fundraising prowess of far right wing anti-war dissident Ron Paul on liberal weblogs like the Daily Kos indicate that the Democratic Party is indeed preparing for a rebellion by the angry grassroots right should they get Clinton or Obama into the White House next January.
Of course it must be noted that bare bones conditions for the kind of spiral of violence and instability that leads to fascism do not guarantee anything. As Ian Kershaw makes clear, this will take an economic crisis or a war. But neither of these things is impossible in the current political climate and, as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 proved, you can go from a beautiful clear September day to absolute horror in one morning. If presented with a crisis or with a political necessity that requires a stability and control that the current two party system can’t give, don’t be surprised if the ruling elites look towards the military to govern. After all, the military is currently the only American public institution that has any legitimacy in the minds of the majority of the American people. Unlike the judiciary, Congress or the presidency, the military is almost universally respected. In the right conditions, don’t be surprised to see it called into action. Just look to the future warily and keep two words in mind.
David Petraeus.
