“If you want to see our future, look at Brazil,” noted Dr. Bones, an egoist commentator based in the US, in a recent episode of The Guillotine Podcast. He noted that streets of São Paulo and other cities across Brazil have become ungovernable, allowing for the rise of both criminal gangs and leftist movements. However, they have also been a public theatre for the return of a worrying fascist tendency growing increasingly powerful across the Americas and the world, particularly in the Philippines and the United States. This political tendency, defined by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman as "subfascism" may act as the chief opponent to radical change across the world in the coming decades.
With the mass slaughter of proletarians under Rodrigo Duterte, the horrific concentration camps for refugee children under Trump, and the rise of ultra-rightist and violent militarist and misogynist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil amid the assassination of left-wing social movement leaders, it's time to stop avoiding the issue and declare all of these regimes to be not just "far right," or "populist," but fascist - subfascist, a term invented to describe the military regimes of Latin America in the Operation Condor era.
Chomsky and Herman saw subfascism as distinct from the “classical” ideology of the 1930s because while under traditional fascism, there existed a popular base united by a real, albeit distorted and dangerous, form of human community and egalitarianism, under the Condor regimes, the regimes had no stable popular base and were instead “well adapted to justifying and institutionalizing extreme inequality and domination by a small elite.”
Unlike Hitler, who designated specific enemies – Jews, Roma, Communists, and others – while maintaining a base of support among ordinary Germans, the subfascist regimes were based on the “spoliation of the majority” in favour of multinational corporations.
Duterte took power at the head of a political party originally devoted, at least in rhetoric, to democratic socialism and left-wing populism, and has seen no need to redefine those ideas, but instead ignores them. Bolsonaro and Trump rely on memories of former conservative and far-right leaders – in the former’s case, the junta, in the latter’s case, Ronald Reagan – rather than their ideas, or indeed, a new set of ideas.
In the absence of ideology, subfascist leaders rely on so-called “quality of life” issues to gain voter appeal. Street crime, especially crime involving the use of drugs, is a major fixation of subfascist leaders. Duterte, of course, has used paramilitary death squads to kill so-called drug dealers, while Trump has fantasied about doing the same thing while also barking constantly about “law and order” and murder rates in urban areas. This rhetoric is the bread and butter of Bolsonaro, who has risen sharply in the polls largely thanks to his fixation on “stopping crime.”
The subfascist hatred of the left comes from a feeling that leftists are “wimps” who pay too much due to human rights and are “weak on crime” and defence. The speeches of Bolsonaro and Trump in particular are peppered heavily with such rhetoric.
Finally, unlike Hitler, who built up a paramilitary force in distinction from the old Prussian officer corps, who deeply distrusted him and vice-versa, Temer, Trump, and historical subfascists have always paid great homage to official military apparatuses and in turn have received substantial support from generals and warlords.
The continued rise of Bolsonaro in the presidential polls has spooked many defenders of civil liberties and civilian rule in Brazil, particularly following a mass strike by truckers that has enraged many investors and forced the current illegitimate president, Michel Temer, to declare that “no coup” by the military is necessary to restore order. Prominent columnists such as Glenn Greenwald have warned of the very likely possibility of the return to dictatorship in that country.
Donald Trump, facing the prospect of losing midterm elections to the neoliberal Democratic Party, which will pose no threat to his presidency but likely quell some of his more outrageous tendencies, already looks like yesterday's man in his own country, even as he continues to ramp up wars overseas and ally with the far-right governments of Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia overseas. Nonetheless, barring a unified and truly left-wing opposition to the American empire, the seeds he planted in the American political dialogue will eventually bear further subfascist fruit.