[P2P-F] Fwd: My Latest: "BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE" - united front against fascism

Tue Jun 2 07:18:26 CEST 2020

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: William Robinson <w.i.robinson1 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 2:55 AM
Subject: My Latest: "BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE" - united front against fascism
To: william robinson <w.i.robinson1 at gmail.com>

(Please excuse the double posting for those who read my Facebook blog: I
normally do not send to this list serve commentaries that I post on that
blog but I make an exception in this case)

Dear friends,

Some of you are new to this listserve. I send occasional articles and
commentaries (about 10 per year) mostly my own writing, most of them in
English and some in Spanish.
*We are all inundated with emails and I will absolutely not be offended if
you ask me to take you off this list.*

Algunos de ustedes son nuevos a esta lista.  Envío unos 10 artículos y
comentarios al año, la mayoría en inglés y algunos en español.  Sé que
somos inundados por correos y en absoluto no estaré ofendido si prefiere le
quité de la lista.

* My Facebook blog page is
https://www.facebook.com/WilliamIRobinsonSociologist/
<https://www.facebook.com/WilliamIRobinsonSociologist/>.  *
-----------------

BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE:

William I. Robinson

Racist police, as foul and criminal as they are, are but an extension of
the capitalist state.  They exist to defend property from the propertyless,
to enforce the power of capital and the rich over the poor and dispossessed
majority who in the United States come disproportionately from racially
oppressed communities.  Behind the eruption of righteous rage over the
murder of George Floyd is mass unemployment, escalating inequality, the
marginality of tens of millions of people thrown into the ranks of surplus
labor, intensified levels of exploitation, spreading hunger, immiseration,
insecurity, and death, all spewed up by a global capitalism that accepts no
restraint on its predation.

I have been warning since the mid-2000s about the dangers of a 21st century
fascism and global police state in response to the crisis of capitalism and
rebellion from below.  Global capitalism is arguable now in the worst
crisis in its history.  Fascist forces that bring together predatory
transnational capital with reactionary and repressive power in the state
(including the state’s armed bodies) and a fascist mobilization in civil
society are on the rise worldwide.  Trump, himself a transnational
capitalist, a racist, and a fascist, is taking advantage of the protests
over the murder of George Floyd to bring this project to a new level,
inciting from the White House itself the fascist mobilization in civil
society and threatening a qualitative escalation of the police state.  There
are agent provocateurs.  The state may use them, now or at some future
point, to declare martial law and intensify repression, both legal and
martial.

As is now well known, the new brownshirts – a reference to the Nazi Party’s
original paramilitary wing during the years leading up to the fascist
takeover – in the white nationalist militia, the Nazi and Klan groups,
anti-immigrant organization, the “Boogaloos,” the Patriot and anti-lockdown
movements, among an expanding litany of far-right and Alt-Right groups, are
heavily armed and mobilizing for confrontation in near-perfect consort with
the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party, which long since has
captured that party and turned it into one of utter reaction.

The social order is coming apart at the seams but a fascist takeover is far
from inevitable.  We urgently need a united front against fascism that
places ant-racism and anti-capitalism at its center and that seeks to mount
a revolutionary challenge to capitalist state power.  The current uprising,
to the extent that it helps to radicalize the new generation of young
people leading the protests, may contribute to a critical accumulation of
forces from below that could push us further in the direction.

Here (attached) is my 2019 article on Trump and the threat of 21st century
fascism:

William I. Robinson
Professor of Sociology and
Global and International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, Latin American and Iberian Studies
Affiliated Faculty, Chicana and Chicano Studies
University of California-Santa Barbara
web page: www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson
photo web page: www.flickr.com/photos/wirobinson
Facebook blog page: https://www.facebook.com/williamirobinsonsociologist
Amazon author's page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001HD35GA

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