Fascism in the USA as a method of governance

USA, Feb. 3 - What George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, couldn't accomplish 30 years ago is being carried out today by Donald Trump, the American president, through inexcusable internal persecutions, the habitual bombing of a smaller nation, Venezuela, and the attempt to subdue the ever-rebellious Cuba through hunger.

All of this aligns with the fascist-leaning tradition of the United States, from the Ku Klux Klan to the American Nazi Party of the 1930s, to armed groups in a land where the arsenal of death is legal and accessible to everyone—from the most violent to those most fearful of becoming victims.

This universe, which combines racial supremacism, gun worship, and anti-government paranoia, has not only not disappeared; it has adapted and grown stronger.

Today, it also finds expression in conspiracy theories like QAnon, ultra-evangelical networks, misogynistic "influencers" with millions of followers, and media outlets that sanitize hatred. It is within this social and cultural base that the current authoritarian project led by Donald Trump is gestating, harnessed and fueled by his key affirmational entities, such as the chameleonic Trumpist chancellor, Marco Rubio—highly adored by the entire family of the president—under whose shadow the Florida congressional fauna of lamentable Cuban ancestry comfortably resides.

In this sense, Trump invents nothing, but he does capitalize on it. Back in 2000, he attempted a personalist candidacy from the marginal Reform Party, without success. It was his later convergence with these sectors—reactionary, déclassé, and deeply resentful—that allowed him to construct a narrative capable of condensing them.

He continues to play the anti-establishment card, but he is part of it: a millionaire, predator, accustomed to power, and linked to networks of impunity like those revealed by the Epstein case.

Under the slogan "Make America Great Again," the MAGA project articulates a deeply reactionary ideology: nostalgia for a lost racial and patriarchal order, hatred of cultural elites, worship of violence, and exaltation of the wounded white nation. Its connection to the fascist-leaning tradition is not merely aesthetic but structural: it promotes a hierarchical view of society, dehumanizes the adversary, and legitimizes the use of force as a means to restore order. From this stance, Trump managed to capture the Republican Party and fulfill his (personal) dream of reaching the presidency.

During his first term, this offensive seemed like a limited phenomenon. But on January 6, 2021, the Capitol takeover attempt demonstrated that this was merely the prologue to a deeper reconfiguration. In his second term—which the U.S. is experiencing today—Trump has returned with broader support. He is no longer just the leader of a radicalized movement but a consensus figure among diverse factions, including sectors of financial and technological capital that were previously reluctant.

MINNEAPOLIS, A DRESS REHEARSAL

Residents of Minneapolis continued their general strike this Friday to demand that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cease violence against protesters and leave the state of Minnesota.

In early January, Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE agent during an anti-immigration raid, causing widespread shock and rejection among the population, who labeled the actions as unnecessary violence.

Since then, several cases of excessive force by immigration agents against the population during raids have been reported. The murder of the latest ICE victim in Minneapolis, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, occurred on Saturday during an operation to locate an undocumented immigrant.

Videos published on social media show officers restraining the man on the ground before one of them draws his weapon and repeatedly shoots him. He had ten gunshot wounds in his body, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Minnesota Star Tribune describes that Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, was killed during a highway checkpoint by ICE agents. On January 24, Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse and worker at the Veterans Affairs Center, was killed by ICE agents while trying to assist a woman during another raid.

These are not collateral victims of disturbances but deaths executed by federal agencies in operations targeting specific individuals. And the location is not irrelevant. Minneapolis was the epicenter of the anti-racist uprising in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by local police—a crime recorded live that triggered the largest wave of protests in the U.S. since the 1960s and focused attention on structural police violence.

Recall that when that social explosion shook the country, Donald Trump responded with a laconic and brutal "law and order." But this was not just a slogan; it was an invocation of a deep political genealogy. Half a century earlier, George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, had taken that discourse to its paroxysm.

As Dan T. Carter recalls in "From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich," Wallace's rallies were violent liturgies where the worship of a wounded homeland, hatred of others, and calls to shoot merged into an unabashed spectacle. In 1968, at Madison Square Garden, he shouted: "In Alabama, the first one who picks up a brick gets a bullet in the brain."

And what Wallace failed to institutionalize, Trump is now turning into a method of governance. Thus, it is no coincidence that, under his leadership, ICE has gained unprecedented prominence as the operational arm of a new form of governance that combines fear and spectacle.

However, the U.S. did not arrive here from nowhere. The fascist-leaning tradition is embedded in its political DNA. From the Ku Klux Klan to the American Nazi Party of the 1930s—with public events in cities like New York—to contemporary armed militias like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, the country has harbored such an ecosystem for decades.

For decades, the American oligarchy did not need an open dictatorship. It sustained itself through a series of effective mediations: structural racism, which divided the working class and legitimized unequal violence; anti-communism as a national ideology, which allowed the persecution of all dissent and alternative proposals; and the myth of social ascent, fueled by consumption, credit, and limited but real upward mobility. To this was added a crucial device: violence projected outward.

The consensus is crumbling. And when that fails, capital needs other tools. That is why Minneapolis is not just a battered city but a dress rehearsal. (Text: Arnaldo Musa/ Cubasí) (Photo: Cubasí)