This year 2025 has been a very intriguing year, both nationally and globally. Not that this year is unique, but there have been events that has set it apart from others in recent memory. In respect of the United States, ever since January 20, 2025, the White House has degenerated into total intellectual buffoonery, organizational dysfunction, and chaos. Regardless of ideology, there was a time when an Administration’s Cabinet was comprised of people who had both academic qualifications and Public Office experience. What we have seen especially in the current Administration is that there are people whose primary qualification is their allegiance to the “agenda” of the President. What is worse, is that since taking office, this President has continually attempted to circumvent the Constitution, sign Executive Orders that trample on the Rights of citizens and have “bullied” his way in pursuing his “agenda” without the participation of Congress. The country is currently governed by a neo-fascist Administration.

The Rise of Fascism in The United States

 Many political pundits, media commentators, politicians, and even some sections of the Left, are hesitant to see what is taking place and call it by its correct name, fascism. The confusion and misunderstanding comes from the fact that many are looking for fascism to behave like it did in Europe of the 1940’s, or even in some Latin American countries in the 70’s. Classical fascism was characterized by the military and police storming people's homes, looking for “radicals” or communists, burning books, mass detention and imprisonment, extra judicial killings of dissidents and political opponents, downright abandonment of the country’s Constitution, and other oppressive Policies. The ruling class has always adopted to the objective conditions of their respective country; the means and methods of their rule reflect how best they are able to operate successfully within any given period. The basic and fundamental character of fascism remains unchanged, despite its modification in application.

ICE agent - Photo: Public Domain

Fascism is the vengeance of the big capitalists against the masses of the working people, orchestrated through its “operatives” in government. Fascism represents the outright dictatorship of the most ideologically backward, politically reactionary, and the extreme national chauvinistic section of the ruling class. In Foreign Policy, it not only encourages and perpetuates hatred of other countries but engages in political gangsterism and provocation against sovereign countries, to bully and cohere them into supporting their ideology of hegemony and imperial domination. The “agents” of fascism support the ignoring and trampling on the national sovereignty and the Right of nations to self-determination, regardless of whatever path the respective country chooses. In this respect the role of the corporate media is of critical importance. The media serves as the mouthpiece and disseminator of misinformation, demonizing, and propagandist speech from the ideologues of fascism.

The ideology of fascism is further cemented by the corporate media’s capitulation to fascism, partly through fear but mainly because they support an ideology of national exclusiveness, anti-immigrant racial bias, Constitutional infringement regarding the Right to free speech, and the Right to dissent. The Corporate Media engages in the misleading and self-serving narrative of “threat to national security.” The intent is to shape public opinion in supporting attacks on dissent, and the US’s interventionist obsession with interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries. They knowingly disregard the economic basis for this interventionist Policy: taking control of the natural resources of these countries in order to secure mega profits for the multinationals, relegating the source country to deepened poverty, exploitation, and perpetual dependence.

Fascism, despite its forms, have always attempted to push the burden of its economic failures and crises on the backs of the masses; that is fundamental to why they rely on, and resort to fascism in the first place. To hide this fact, they have constantly relied on demagogy to lull the masses into inaction by appealing hypocritically to their economic needs and uncertainty, racial, and national prejudices, presenting themselves as a “champion” of working people. One of the most blaring examples of this demagoguery is the Trump Administration’s “big, beautiful bill.” This obscene legislation is nothing more than a tax break and recovery device for the rich, while it sends the majority of the country deeper into poverty, desolation, and in some cases the potential for actual death.

The Corporate Media has successfully shaped the opinion of the masses, in that their narrow self-interests have pushed them further into a life of socioeconomic uncertainty and have crushed their hopes for betterment under a fascist Administration. A look at the budget cuts carried out by the Trump Administration is an outright attack on the livelihood of the majority of the American people. Separate and apart from the socioeconomic attacks on working people are the racially motivated and bestial attacks on migrants and legal immigrants carried out by the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents. The immigration problem is a Foreign Policy-based problem, period. The United States currently has more military bases around the world, than there are countries in the world.

The USS Port Royal on deployment to the Caribbean - Photo: US Navy photo, Mate 2nd Class Johnnie R. Robbins - Public Domain

These military bases are used as staging points for various interventionist actions by the US to interfere directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of other countries. For instance, destabilizations, the propping up of oppressive regimes, setting up of and funding for fake opposition organizations, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), training and funding paramilitary groups to disrupt and carry out acts of violence within a respective country to hasten regime change, unilateral, illegal, and immoral sanctions, are just some of the machinations used by the US to get its own way in other countries. These actions are a direct cause of the immigration problem, faced with unemployment, high inflation, lack of or restricted access to social services, forces some residents to leave their country in search of better living conditions.

The Trump Administration has consistently infringed on the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, by unilaterally cutting off aid to certain institutions it doesn’t like, funds that was already approved by Congress; it has fired judges whose rulings they don’t like, and who follow the Law on whatever issue they rule on; they have ignored court rulings, in order to carry out their “agenda” of fascism and retaliation. The rise of fascism is an indication of the state of social movements in the country or anywhere else for that matter.

The Organizational Paralysis and ideological Confusion of the Left

Gary Null once referred to the current status of today’s Left as “limping.” Today’s Left in the United States, as a collective, has voluntarily confined itself to pontificating on social injustice and producing banal and self-serving terminologies as a kind of catharsis for their inaction and abandonment of good old-fashioned organizing and activism. Many prominent leftists of the past have taken comfort making long speeches or doing interviews where the presentation is laced with terms that refer to concepts that already exist but given new name and serve no purpose except to bolster one’s intellectual ego. What is disappointing is that those who quasi “represent” the left are confused about the current state of capitalism in the United States.

The characterization of the actions of the Trump Administration as “authoritarian” is a result of either paralysis of analysis, ideological confusion, and is a veiled attempt to sanitize and voluntarily legitimize an oppressive Administration. Organized labor, the Trade Union movement, has had its leadership coopted by the interests of capital. Trade Unionism as a movement has been relegated to negotiations more often than not ending in favor of capital, with a few meager gains to pacify the workers and blunt the edge of the class struggle. The Trade Unions of old took progressive and far-reaching positions on both domestic and international issues. Today they have opted for relative silence and lukewarm actions that does extraordinarily little to shake the foundations of capital. The Trade Unions of old, had Leftist members who were instrumental in influencing and developing the Movement into a formidable force against the oppression of capital.

The fundamental affront to check the advancement of fascism and its ultimate defeat, is a vibrant, active Movement formed from the masses in an organized manner. This in practical terms calls for a United Front of democratic and ideologically progressive forces, led by the working class whose daily lives are affected by the oppressive Policies and actions of a fascist Administration. The Left has abandoned grass roots organizing and mobilizing, except when it comes to election campaigns. Fascism anywhere, is as a result of a weakened working class, collaborative organized labor leadership, the absence of ideologically clear and committed mass leadership, and the absence of a mass working class organization, having the capacity to encourage and engage mass participation in the struggle against fascism. What is needed is not only “old-fashioned Trade Unionism,” but also old-fashioned political activism.