Trump or Biden, Either Way America Is The Face of Fascism
© AP Photo / Jim Bourg
Subscribe
In November, American voters will go to the polls, ostensibly to determine the future direction of their country. But on the critical issues of foreign policy and civil liberties, they lack a meaningful voice.
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” William Shakespeare, Tempest.
Since at least 2016, former President Donald Trump has been depicted as a unique danger to American democracy. A jingoistic buffoon with a cult of personality, Donald Trump, they say, will usher in a regime of oppression and imperialism. He will jail his political opponents, censor voices of dissent, beat protesters, and act with reckless abandon on the world stage.
The problem for the #Resistance group is that they have already won. In 2020, they somehow managed to drag their geriatric candidate across the finish line and expelled Trump from the White House. It's surprising they have seemingly forgotten about it, since there was a whole riot on Capitol Hill over it, and they’ve been trying to put Trump in jail for it ever since. But forget they did, it seems, because they continue to paint the former president as a unique evil, even as their leader continues the same fascist policies as his predecessor, going even further in many cases.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Palestine, where US-provided bombs have been dropped on civilian areas, killing tens of thousands of children. A poll released on Wednesday showed that 56% of Democrat voters, Biden’s party, believe Israel’s actions in Palestine equate to genocide, yet Biden nevertheless continues to provide weapons to the Israeli regime, despite recent threats of a shipment pause.
“It doesn't matter whether it's Biden or Trump. Look at this ongoing genocide in Gaza. Is this not [the] face of fascism?” Researcher and geopolitical analyst Christopher Helali rhetorically asked during an interview with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “The open condemnation of peaceful campus protesters and people of all religions coming together around the United States while [it is] supplying arms and weapons to an actual fascist military. I mean, that’s the true face of fascism.”
During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump was rightly criticized for his crackdown on those protests, including the use of federal officers. Trump branded the protesters as “terrorists,” a comment that led Oregon Congress members to describe his actions as “chillingly reminiscent of autocratic governments that ‘disappear’ critics and opponents.”
In 2024, in Biden’s America, the Democratic stronghold of New York has introduced a new bill in response to the anti-genocide protests that would amend the state’s domestic terrorism definition to include blocking traffic, a time-tested protest method going back to the civil rights movement.
Similar bills have been introduced in several Republican states, but it is New York that proves fascist reactions to protests are not limited to one party.
Fascism in America is not a new phenomenon. It is ingrained in its history, going back to the Native American genocide and slavery. But it never really went away in America and has been the backbone of its foreign policy since the US has become strong enough to have a meaningful foreign policy.
Despite America’s marketing materials about spreading democracy and being a beacon of freedom on the hill, as legendary NFL coach Bill Parcells would say “You are what your record says you are.”
The US, either officially or unofficially, supported fascist regimes in El Salvador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala, Cuba, Greece, Honduras, Haiti, Costa Rica, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Africa, the Congo, Laos the list goes on.
Quite the record indeed. Today, the US government supports a fascist regime in Kiev, one put in place during an illegal coup and backed by Nationalists who idolize the notorious Nazi Stepan Bandera.
And when countries throw the yolk of fascism from their backs, the US still fights against them.
“Even when the people rise up and they're able to create their own political projects, they're able to vote in their own leaders by popular demand, to have sovereignty, to have their independence, what ends up happening? Maximal sanctions. You end up having hybrid warfare, covert warfare, CIA involved, all of these nefarious actors are involved, and then people end up leaving,” Helali explained, adding that the media helps build the narrative. “Then, of course, people say… ‘oh that socialist project failed’ without giving the context that the socialist project is strangled by sanctions.”
Another facet of fascism is an extreme restriction of civil liberties. The United States, under both Republicans and Democrats, has been working to erode the rights of Americans for decades.
In 2001, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act, giving the government sweeping surveillance powers. In 2008, Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar, ran on a platform that included the rolling back of the excesses of the George W Bush administration, but when in office he not only declined to do so but facilitated the expansion of those powers after Congress passed a law retroactively making the intelligence communities’ overreaches legal.
Earlier this year, when part of that law, which enabled the warrantless spying of millions of Americans, came up for renewal, it passed with bipartisan support and Biden quickly signed it into law.
“It’s not two parties,” Helali explained. “It’s a uniparty. It’s a party that serves big capital, the ruling class and the military-industrial complex.”
Democrats have also been pressuring social media companies to censor their political opponents, as revealed in the Twitter files, and last month, both parties came together to essentially ban TikTok, an app voluntarily used by 150 million Americans.
While the media and Democratic elite are clutching their pearls over fears that Trump may jail them if he comes into office, they are too busy trying to jail Trump to notice that Biden has been locking up his political opponents for years.
In 2022, the Justice Department arrested leaders of the Uhuru African People’s Socialist Party for alleged connections to the Russian government, arguing that they violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Uhuru’s leaders had been critical of the US policy in Ukraine, along with other actions of American colonialism.
“The Uhuru group, January 6th (Capital riots) people. So, on the left, on the right, anyone that Joe Biden considers a political opponent, he's basically weaponized the intelligence community against them,” Tara Reade, a former Senate Staffer that accused Biden of rape and who says she was forced to move to Russia due to FBI harassment told Sputnik’s Fault Lines.
“That's really what a lot of Black activists have been saying for many decades about the true face of fascism and looking at various aspects of the US government as being inherently fascistic,” Helali explained.
Which isn’t to say Trump would be better. He has called for more support for Israel and even more draconian crackdowns on protesters. Despite his earlier proclamations of bringing peace to Ukraine within “24 hours” his vocal support was critical to getting the latest aid package passed, which included another $61 billion intended to extend a lost war past the election.
Earlier this week, US media reported that “some in Biden’s orbit” are “aggressively pushing” to make the Democratic National Convention a hybrid online event. It says those in his administration fear that protests will interrupt the event and turn it into a repeat of the 1968 riots.
The Democrats would rather shut out their base, even arrest them, than change their policies. Now they are considering upending decades of party tradition, just to avoid hearing the chants of the people they claim to represent. This, they say, is saving democracy.
Come August, as leftist protesters fighting against genocide are corralled miles away from a convention and the so-called leftist party coronates the man they dubbed “Genocide Joe” without letting them be heard through the ballot box, online, or on the streets, they may find themselves asking if this is a democracy worth saving.
