A journalist recently solicited AOC’s opinion of the Cornel West candidacy. While praising his “incredibly important” voice, she cautioned that, in supporting Dr. West, “the cost could be fascism” and “that’s no joke.” AOC is not the first and no doubt won’t be the last Democratic Party official to invoke the specter of Trumpian fascism in order to discourage a third-party challenge. To be sure, it’s not as if the Democratic Party was receptive to a third-party challenger on the Left—be it a Jill Stein or a Ralph Nader—even before it discovered a looming fascist takeover. The problem, however, is not just inconsistency; it’s ignorance. Fascism in political discourse has been reduced to an expectorating epithet. In my day, whomever you disagreed with was a “fascist pig.” Now, it’s wielded as a political cudgel, a juvenile scare tactic, to browbeat wavering Democrats into supporting President Biden. Once upon a time, however, fascism was not a term of abuse—although the terrifying danger it represented was clearly apprehended—but, on the contrary, a subtle analytical concept that denoted a specific political conjuncture and, concomitantly, prescribed a concrete political strategy for fighting it.
Leon Trotsky was among the first figures on the Left to sound the alarm about the rise of fascism in Germany: “Denying this threat, belittling it, failing to take it seriously, is the greatest crime that can be committed today” (1930). He correctly forecast that, once in power, the Nazis would launch an all-out assault on the working class and democratic institutions, as well as on the cultural
— source normanfinkelstein.com | Norman Finkelstein | Jul 26, 2023