Untitled

Not quite, sadly. Sorry for the unfunny shitpost, but I've been following fascism as a hobby for the past ten years or so, so I like to nerd out about it sometimes.

 

The US government has a long history of working with and even [recruiting](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html) OG [nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) and [neonazis.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/california-police-white-supremacists-counter-protest) You know that movie blackkklansman that came out? Total bullshit. They actually did infiltrate the Klan, but [it wasn't to take it down.](https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf)

 

>While we recognize that there was (and probably is) a genuine counterintelligence

dimension to the Bureau's dealings with the klan, its purpose seems all along to have been not

so much to destroy the klan and related groups as to gain control of them in order to use them

as surrogate forces against the left. As Glick (op. cit.) observes at pages 12-3, "This unique

'program' functioned largely as a component of the FBI's operations against the progressive

activists who were COINTELPRO's main targets. Under the cover of being even-handed and

going after violent right-wing groups, the FBI actually gave covert aid to the Ku Klux Klan,

Minutemen, Nazis, and other racist vigilantes. These groups received substantial funds,

information and protection - and suffered only token FBI harassment - so long as they

directed their violence against COINTELPRO targets. They were not subjected to serious

disruption unless they breached this tacit understanding and attacked established business and

political leaders."

 

you can pick through the FBI's declassified stuff on [their own site](https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro) if this all sound s too crazy to be legit. this isn't some bigfoot 9/11 nutjob shit, it's accepted historical fact, and while COINTELPRO is long since dead in name, [it continues even today in practice.](https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance/)

 

Cops organizing with fascists isn't abnormal, by the way. it's common. the cops almost always work with fascists. it's so common that if you're into socialist organizing, it's just part of life. your protests are surrounded by cops, and you have to tread carefully. fascists can hold rallies with everyone carrying ARs and no cops are in sight. when the two clash, the cops will invariably explicitly organize with the fascist groups. Even the media, which so often takes the side of fascists, will at times illustrate this point:

 

 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/06/berkeley-activists-arrested-police-identified-twitter

 

 - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/portland-patriot-prayer-proud-boys-police-antifascists_us_5b668b7de4b0de86f4a22faf

 

 - https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/police-protecting-170720070852027.html

 

And I don't think I have to remind you that, while the US has always had issues with fascists running for political office, and that antifa has effectively beaten back insurrectionist fascism, there's been a massive uptick in neonazi electoralism as of late. Hopefully liberals will be quicker to listen to socialists this time about how to proceed, and less inclined to fall for fascist propaganda claiming shit like "antifa are the real nazis."

 

There's no overarching evil plot here though. It's just how the US is. The country was founded as a white supremacist police state, and it has been one ever since. Conservatism in the US has always, always been white supremacist, no matter what party has espoused it. Our modern institutions are just structurally inclined to work with fascists, because fascist interests are inarguably [capitalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany) interests. Fascist interests keep minorities in line. Fascist interests are American interests.

 

But like, even though the US government has worked with fascists for as long as fascists have been a thing, and that even [Hitler drew a lot of inspiration](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler) for how to conduct the Holocaust from the US, and I'm not a fan of the military by any stretch, and even though WW2 was basically just Germany doing to Europe what Europe did to the rest of the world for centuries--you still gotta love World War 2 vets, and anyone who refused to put up with nazi shit. I've got family who served at D-Day. WW2 was the probably the only war in US history that was ever actually justified.

 

The US isn't a fascist state, but it has had a love-affair with fascism for decades. Stopping fascism means mass grassroots action. It means organizing with [your local union.](https://www.iww.org/branches) The government won't stand in its way--it will only use it for its own ends. It's up to modern anti-fascist organizing to do something about it, unless we want to see the country slip even further into white supremacy and violence.