Building Rank & File Power to Fight Fascism
Blocking MAGA will take grassroots organizing at the local level
The following is an edited transcript of a speech delivered by Bill Fletcher, Jr. to the Southern Workers Assembly on August 8, 2024. You can watch a video recording of the speech via this link. Bill will share more about the threat of fascism and what must be done to defeat it on Liberation Road’s upcoming webinar “3 Socialist Tasks for 2024: Block, Broaden Build.” (Sunday, August 25, 5:00-6:00 p.m. EST.) Click here to register for the webinar.
I am going to divide my talk into two parts. One part is about the danger [of fascism]. And the second is about recommendations and responding to that danger. But I want to start maybe in a strange place. For the last number of election cycles for president, it has been frequently said that this particular election is “the most important election of our lifetime.” I remember first hearing that a few cycles back. And what happened in effect is that a number of people began to think, “Well I'm tired of hearing that. We're hearing it all the time. It's sort of meaningless.”
So I was thinking about this. And it actually turns out that it's not meaningless. It's actually true that each of these election cycles up through where we are now has been the most important. Why? Because we're actually in a cold Civil War. We're in a cold Civil War period where the stakes in each election are becoming more and more clear and very definitive. And in that context—where the far right is interested in absolutely annihilating us—the elections take on a greater and greater importance.
Now let me explain a little bit about how we got there. In the history of the United States there have been periods when the consensus within the ruling circles breaks down. The most dramatic was in the Civil War, but it's happened at other periods. One was after the Civil War with the defeat of Reconstruction.
Another time was after Franklin Roosevelt was elected and introduced the New Deal. And a segment of capital was so revolted by this that they began plotting a coup. And that was a coup that has gotten attention on and off. They tried to recruit a Marine Corps general named Smedley Butler to lead a March on Washington of veterans to overthrow Roosevelt or to force Roosevelt to appoint Butler as a dictator.
Butler did not agree to do this and in fact went on to testify before Congress about the plot. But he was treated in the mainstream media as if he was sort of a lunatic—that this wasn't really serious. But a few years later—as in effect a continuation of the same thing—there were further efforts that were actually aligned with the German Nazis. Rachel Maddow discussed a lot of this in her podcast from earlier this year, that was really quite dramatic about the efforts that were undertaken, that included exploration of insurgencies in states all around the United States.
After World War II, though, there was a relative period of semi-stability among the ruling circles, even when they disagreed. They had disagreements around desegregation—disagreements around a number of things—but they were held together to a great extent by the Cold War. And when the Cold War ends the differences within the ruling circles become very acute and very very apparent.
But the differences had been arising for a while. In the aftermath of Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and his defeat, there were key people in his campaign—like Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie and others—who began to explore methods for the creation of a new right. And by a new right they were looking, not to be a conservative force, but to essentially overthrow the 20th century. So if you want to understand the far right in the United States, think of it as a movement to overthrow the 20th century—to overthrow everything that was won by a variety of social movements and return us to a pre-1912 period.
They began efforts that included building and supporting institutions like the Heritage Foundation and National Conservative Political Action Committee. They began training and running candidates for local office. They went into litigation against busing, abortion, and affirmative action. And they began building mass movements—right-wing-led mass movements that were easy for people to join. Movements against busing, against abortion, against the Panama Canal Treaty—you can go on and on. And they became very good at utilizing these mass movements to recruit people who would effectively be cadre of this developing new right—this right-wing populist movement that over time evolves towards MAGA.
These forces like Vigurie and Weyrich were interesting in many ways because they were prepared to align themselves with people they despised. Like Richard Nixon. They viewed Richard Nixon as a liberal, but they saw an alliance with Nixon as an opportunity to make some inroads that they needed—including court appointments, taking over certain agencies, as well as giving them space in order to operate.
This movement strengthens during the 1970s, ultimately producing Ronald Reagan, and the beginning of this shift in US politics. But the bigger shift I would argue comes in 1994 with Newt Gingrich and the so-called “Contract with America.” Where the Republicans take over—and again, this is after the end of the Cold War—and you start to see a very different tone taken in US politics, particularly at the federal level. At the local level there's always been weirdness going on. But at the federal level there was something very different that started to happen.
And this idea of essentially a war of annihilation carried out by the forces like Gingrich gets further accelerated after Timothy McVey carries out the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City, when we start to see the very apparent rise of a military arm of the right-wing populace. Although elements of that had been seen in the 1980s, particularly in the Midwest with groups like The Posse Comitatus and Aryan Nation and others. From the 1990s on the growth of this movement becomes something that we can take note of, but many liberals and even progressives and leftists were in major denial of the seriousness of the growth of this far right. Many people on the left said, “no no, you're overstating this and you're distracting us from fighting centrist Democrats and others.” But this movement on the far right was becoming more well-organized and well-armed.
The next major push is in 2008, when Barack Obama is elected, right? How dare a Black person be elected president of what they saw as a white Republic. And the Obama Administration, true to form, made a strategic miscalculation in assuming that they were conducting politics in an earlier era—that they were dealing with adults, and that it was it was sufficient for them to be adults in the room. Whereas the Republicans, who were consolidating as a hard-right party, had a very different view. And their view was one of destroying the Obama Administration and the Democrats. And in fact people like Mitch McConnell made it very clear as soon as Obama was elected that their objective was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president.
Obama's failure to act quickly in 2009 opened the floodgates for what we came to see as the Tea Party Movement. And the Tea Party Movement was really the predecessor of MAGA. Many people discounted the Tea Party Movement, describing it as an AstroTurf movement, but it was much more than that. It was a right-wing populist, almost a proto-fascist movement that was developing and that helped to lay the foundation for Donald Trump's presidency.
When we're looking at the far right today, and the MAGA forces, it's important for us to recognize that the Republican party has consolidated as a right-wing party for dictatorship. They have driven out most of the so-called moderates and liberals. There is no moderate wing of the Republican party. There are so-called moderates floating around there like the remnants from a storm, but they do not constitute a significant force. So they're very, very consolidated. And their objective—as they've been making very clear—is to carry out this overthrow of the 20th century.
“The Republican party has consolidated as a right-wing party for dictatorship. And their objective is to carry out the overthrow of the 20th century.”
Their objective must be seen in the context of an aim to utilize elected office in order to destroy the foundations of any pretense of constitutional democracy, making the United States more akin to Hungary, or Putin's Russia. And they have outlined this in their Project 2025, which until fairly recently many people—liberals, progressives, and leftists—were ignoring. People were ignorant of it to a great extent, and didn't understand that 2025 is the Mein Kampf of the MAGA movement. It is their outline for what they intend to do and it's something that we need to be talking about with our union members, our allies, our family members.
It's all outlined there. Their plans to destroy environmental regulations, to eliminate the possibility of abortion rights, to essentially lay the foundation for the extermination of LGBTQ populations, to eliminate so-called “DEI” and affirmative action, and to affirm this bizarre notion that white people are the victims of racism. It's all there. It's all there! And so when people say, “yeah yeah, this is not just about democracy, let's stop and talk about the bread and butter issues”—the bread and butter issues are there. Project 2025 wants to eliminate unions, they want to eliminate the National Labor Relations Act. When I'm talking about overthrowing the 20th century, that's no exaggeration —that is their objective.
In that context the question is, then what? Well first is, for those that say “it won't matter who gets elected,” I just say, “look at Project 2025 and you answer that question.” Will there be environmental rights, will there be environmental legislation, will there be steps to deal with the fact the planet is burning? The answer is clearly no. What's going to happen to a woman's right to choose? Well we should have been seeing what's been happening anyway, but it's very clear that it will be eliminated.
But on top of all that there's something that really isn't discussed very much, which is that there are forces gathering—and this overlaps with the MAGA forces—led by the American Legislative Exchange Council that seek to bring about a Constitutional Convention, in order to change the US Constitution. And this is amazing because there's only been one Constitutional Convention in US history. That was in 1787. Changes to the Constitution have been more typically made through amendments. The far right has decided it is unlikely that they can make the changes that they want through amendments. Therefore their objective is to call a Constitutional Convention and if they have—I believe it's three quarters of the states that pass resolutions in the state legislatures calling for aConstitutional Convention—then they can call one. And at that point all bets are off; there is no precedent for what happens next, but we could conceivably come out of the Constitutional Convention with the United Theocratic States of America.
All right, so what does that mean? What should we do? Should we be paralyzed? No, absolutely not! But we also shouldn't expect that the pendulum of history will automatically swing back in our direction. Things will happen to the extent to which we bring about changes. Not because we sit back and wait. Not just trusting that people like Trump will demonstrate himself to be a fool and the people will turn against him—that was one of the mistakes made in Germany, where Communists and Social Democrats believed that Hitler coming to power would ultimately destroy Nazism because Hitler would prove himself to be an imbecile. As we know, things didn't quite work out that way.
So what do we do? Well there's a few things. I have been involved in the formation of an organization called Standing for Democracy, recently formed, which is a worker-focused organization aimed at fighting the rising tide of fascism. We're interested in engaging organizations and individuals in that fight. This is not just an electoral fight; it's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground. I'll get to that.
“This is not just an electoral fight. It's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground.”
Part of what needs to happen and what we're going to be trying to do—but I encourage all of you to do this too—is to carry out real grassroots education with your members. Most people don't really understand the nature of the far right, and sometimes think that these lunatics on the far right are so out there that they must be marginal, not recognizing that they actually have a base and that part of what happens is that the far right exists within a bubble—a bubble where their views are constantly reinforced through institutions like so-called Fox “News” and others that enforce and reinforce their particular view of the world. And you know many of our members rely on Fox News, unfortunately. So we need to conduct real education.
We need to build organizations through unions and through other worker organizations at the grassroots level. That means not just relying on the internet. You know, what the far right understands is that the internet is important as long as it's done in conjunction with direct mass organizing. It does not replace individual interaction, but reinforces it. Many progressives unfortunately have come to the conclusion that struggle is done behind a keyboard and that it's okay to text and tweet and that that's the way we build mass movements. And that's completely wrong—there is no historical foundation for that.
In our local areas and in our organizations we need to be very consciously thinking about opposing the far right. And that means beginning with an assessment of the right in your area. Who is the far right in your geographic area? What do they look like? What are their organizations? Who are their leaders and spokespersons? What are their strategies? What are they attempting to do?
And that leads to being prepared to disrupt the right. So think about these many examples when these far right forces—these fascists—have shown up at school committee meetings, at abortion clinics. The optics are terrible for our side because they get there, they intimidate people, and there is almost never any of us there responding. Why aren't we there standing right behind these fascists with our arms crossed, just waiting? What are we doing? I know what we're doing—we're tweeting, we're texting, we're shaking our hands, we're saying “oh, God.” But that doesn't make change. We need to be there. We need to be there when election officials are being intimidated by these fascists—threatened on a regular basis. Where are we? Where are we to say “no, we are here with election officials. We want to make sure that there's a fair election. We're going to be there with you and we're going to be there protecting the vote.” So we need to be doing that.
We need to be defending women and women's institutions, including but not limited to abortion clinics, when these fascists show up and are surrounding these clinics and are intimidating women. Where are we when they are trying to intimidate people? When they are trying to control their bodies. Again, where are we? We need to be there in force. And we need to be defending the LGBTQ+ population. When I said before that the far right seeks to exterminate the LGBTQ population, that was no euphemism. All of the indicators are there, everything that they are doing, or want to do, but in stages—making it more difficult if not impossible to adopt; make it more difficult if not impossible to marry; making it more difficult if not impossible to come out of your house. It goes down a certain path, and history has demonstrated this many times.
We have to also be prepared to engage in self-defense and prepare ourselves at multiple levels, including guarding against provocations. One of the things that I recently was looking at was how, in a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, there have been right-wing provocateurs who have gone in, in order to incite the protesters to engage in various kinds of activities, including anti-semitic rhetoric and various kinds of actions. We need to train our members and our leaders on how to identify potential provocateurs and what to do when these people show up.
And finally we need to learn from the New Popular Front in France, which I thought was a marvelous example, in which they not only came together to stand against the rise of these new fascists but they also articulated a vision—a progressive vision for what they want to see France become. And I would say to us we have nothing to gain from the status quo. That doesn't mean we don't protect our institutions! But the status quo is not enough. We need to be the ones that are advocating for the expansion of democracy, rather than contraction. We need to be the ones that are expanding on workers rights, on environmental rights, on changing the way that the economy functions. We need to be speaking that now.
That may or may not end up being the voice of the Democratic Party. But this goes to a point about that, which is, as my friend Carl Davidson has pointed out, the Democratic Party is not really a political party. It's an alliance. There are several parties within that alliance. Progressives need to become conscious that we are part of that, and that as part of that—as part of a “party” within that—we need to be articulating our own vision for what needs to happen. We need to be pushing tactical allies that we are engaged with in the fight against the fascist threat. The tactical allies don't have to be our friends, and in many cases are going to be people that we're going to be in struggle with—and are in struggle with, and have been in struggle with—but what we can agree on is that we must defeat MAGA and we must defeat them now. And crush them politically. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.
Join Bill Fletcher, Jr. and others on Sunday, August 25, 5:00-6:00 p.m. EST for our upcoming webinar “3 Socialist Tasks for 2024: Block, Broaden Build.” Register below.
Q & A
We have a question from Unite Here about a group of canvassers in Charlotte. They're wondering: do you have any advice on how they might talk to people on the doors about this election?
A few things about this. I think in many ways the most important thing to do is to begin by listening. Listening to what people are identifying as some of their issues and concerns. I think it's important, yes. I mean not I'm not saying we should be agnostic. I think it's important to be clear about the importance of this election and some of the issues. But listen. Listen to how people think about the economy and what they say. What are some of the things that people are unfamiliar with what might be attractive to them coming out of MAGA?
You know when people talk about, for instance, the challenge of immigration, I think it's really important to ask: why are people coming to the United States? What's motivating that? Let's talk about that. I mean do people think it's that everyone wants to be in America? I mean are people just thinking that folks are really ready to give up on their entire homeland just to move here for a job? I mean what? So I think part of it is asking some probing questions of people about what's going on in their head when people say, or when the right says, that “the immigrants are taking our jobs.” Well, which jobs are they taking? We have an unemployment rate at historically low levels. So what jobs are people talking about? You know, like in the building trades right now there is an absolute need for workers. There's tremendous opportunities right now.
So the critical thing I would say is: ask questions, listen to what people are saying, and then also I think it's useful to leave people with—if not something to read—then give them sources of information that they can themselves access. I'll leave it at that, thank you.
How do we take lessons from the New Popular Front in France and bring them into our situation here?
One of the lessons is to get away from “purism.” And this is something that seems to be very contagious within left and progressive groups. I noticed this really from the 1970s on. That there's a tendency on the left towards real sectarianism, towards thinking that there's a short distance between God's mouth and our ears, and that we have to agree on at least 95% of things in order to align. And I think one of the things that we saw in the New Popular Front was, in the face of the danger from the fascists, these folks on the left—and ultimately some that were center-left and and center—saw that the danger was so great that the differences needed to be put aside, at least temporarily. That did not mean permanently putting those things aside.
So we have to figure out greater ways of ongoing strategic unity among progressive forces—getting organized. And recognizing that there will be things where we will disagree, and that disagreement does not necessarily mean we have to pull guns on each other. You know, I'm a very strong proponent of the Ukrainian people's defense against Russian aggression—very strong—and I have friends that take a very different position. I'm not going to cast off those friends just because we have that difference of opinion, if we can work together and as long as they're not stabbing me. (Because there are certain people that are prepared to stab me and I'm not interested in working with them.) But where we can, say: “look, there are certain areas we are not going to agree, but let's figure out where we can agree and go up against a common opponent.” We can argue about Ukraine or any number of other things later, but for right now we’ve got to take on the main enemy.
Another question is about the courts. Is it a viable battleground to seek redress in the courts? Or should we try to seek to reduce the power of the courts?
I think that we have to do exactly what Vigurie and Weyrich did in the late 60s and early 70s. Which is you don't rely on one thing. They looked at political and legislative action, litigation, and mass movements, right? And that's exactly what we need to be doing. And let me contrast that with what happened after Roe v. Wade on the liberal and progressive side, which is that after the decision, the bulk of the women's movement and the pro-choice movement believed that Roe v. Wade was sacred. That it would not be overturned. It might be weakened, but it would not be overturned.
The right wing never made that assumption. Instead what they went about doing—which became very obvious after Roe v. Wade was overturned—was they worked at the local and state level to change laws, setting into effect trigger mechanisms, so that the moment that Roe v. Wade was overturned—bingo! They move into action. Progressives and liberals over-relying on courts was a big big mistake. A strategic mistake. So I think that we need to be thinking at all these levels.
You know, a number of years ago I was speaking in Texas. And this was before Abbott became the governor. And people were telling me about how bad the situation was in Texas, and I listened, and then they were like: “so Bill, what do we do?” And I said to them, “how do we take over Texas?” And their mouths dropped, and they looked at me like I just smoked some dope, right? And I said, no, I'm serious—how do we take over? You've told me how bad the situation is, I get it, so what do you want to do? Should we give up? If we're not going to give up, and we're not going to keep fighting the defensive battle, then how do we start thinking about the counterattack? How do we take over Texas? What are the key cities we have to win? What are the key counties to win? What are the counties we don't have to win? What are the key social movements? Who are the key opinion makers? What does the media look like in Texas?
In other words, you read Sun Tzu's The Art of War and you think about this at the level of strategy and building up the counterattack. That’s what we need to be doing. That's what the right understood. That's why Vigurie and Weyrich were so brilliant; they understood the notion of the counterattack. And building up slowly—building up their forces. But that necessitates organization. It doesn't necessitate “brand,” by which I mean there's this terrible tendency that's developed among liberals and progressives where individuals think it's not important to have organization anymore, all we need is to stand out there—to have our own personal websites, our own social media presence, and to create our own brand where we can be out there speaking truth to power.
I am so tired of hearing that notion of “speaking truth to power.” You don't speak truth to power, you combat power—you overturn power! That's what you do. Enough with the speaking truth to power—we want to win! At least that's what I want.
What is your view of whether or not there needs to be an independent third party? And how can the working class and our communities build independent political power at the local level, even if there isn't a third party? How are people doing that?
There needs to be independent political action led by the working class. There need to be organizations that I call “non-party parties,” that are operating inside and outside of the Democratic Party. Organizations that are prepared to advance progressive candidacies in Democratic primaries, that are prepared to raise hell, that are prepared to organize. Mass struggle groups like The Working Families Party, New Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority, California Calls. There are groups like that all over the country. Organizations along those lines that are prepared to fight inside and outside of the Democratic Party.
We face a problem brought on by the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system. And that system makes it very difficult for third parties—electoral parties—to operate. At the same time as a socialist I believe it's important to build socialist organization. but I'm not saying build socialist organization at this time in history to run people for office. I'm not interested in symbolic candidacies. We're not—we don't have that luxury to run symbolic candidacies, particularly when the far right aims to annihilate us. We are in a situation where we need to defeat them and change the battlefield.
So I would say, independent political organization and independent political action—absolutely. But that doesn't necessarily mean a third party. Again, going back to what Carl Davidson has written about the six parties. In the Democratic Party you have these different groupings. They are grouped around caucuses, and they sometimes function more or less like parties, though they don't function enough like that. But outside—in groups like The Working Families Party, New Virginia Majority, etc—these are organizations that are grassroots-based and we need to energize them. We need to expand their numbers. That's a direction that I would recommend at least.
[Comment from audience member:] Well first of all I think what Bill pointed out […] I think those are really important things to think about. I also think, though, that we have to realize—look, from India to Sweden and Denmark you've seen the rise of MAGA-type movements. So there's an international component to it. And I think that it's more than just the issue of the end of the Cold War. And I'd like to talk about my experience working with carpenters—who, the great majority of them were Trump supporters. This is up in Seattle when they moved to organize a wildcat strike against the employers and their own leadership. And what I found was it was through action, through actually struggling and participating in the class struggle—including against the union bureaucracy—that was what changed them. Not discussion and all of that. And so I think that that means that we have to organize within the unions, to transform the unions, to completely reject the bureaucracy's ideas of the “Team Concept.” As far as working-class candidates, I do think that we can run working-class candidates— independent, anti-democratic party working-class candidates at the local level. I think we can do that effectively as a start and connected with a struggle at the local level.
Are there any final thoughts you would like to share with us?
First I again want to thank you very much for this invitation. A few thoughts. One is that I'm very optimistic. That may sound very strange because I painted a bleak picture. but it might be the Star Trek in me, I'm not quite sure, but you know as Captain Kirk says at some point, uh the odds are against us and the situation is dire, but that's okay! That's what we expect.
I am very inspired by a lot of what I've seen in the last couple of weeks since Biden withdrew from the election. I am inspired by the way that Trump is being ridiculed. I am inspired by the kinds of actions that are happening at local levels—the struggles that people have been involved in around Palestine, for example. So I'm actually optimistic. But we need organization, and unfortunately since the Reagan era, collective action even among progressives has been put down and replaced by individual actions. And the lack of paying attention to organization and building organization and this whole tendency that I call the walkway phenomena—where if you're in an organization and there's a problem people just walk away. You know back in the day, as I was becoming radicalized, and I was around the Black Panther Party, the whole notion was opposing something that was called “no struggle”—the “no struggle” mentality. Meaning that when there were problems, you struggled them out! And we seem to have lost that and people think it's like changing the channel. Like you know, when you don't like a show? Okay, you flip the channel and go on to something else. As opposed to understanding that we've got to struggle things out to build something better.
I think part of it is we have got to build organization. We have to retain a level of optimism and hope that we can defeat our opponents, because we actually are the majority—and that's demonstrable. We are the majority. But there is something that has been called “anticipatory compliance” by an author whose name escapes me. The basic idea is that sometimes our left-leaning forces will assume that the victory of the far right is inevitable. And they will stop resisting and they will just simply say well—and I heard people saying this—people saying, “oh you know, Trump is gonna win no matter what.” No! No! Danger Will Robinson! There is no inevitability to that and that's what I really want to underline, folks, there is no inevitability to that. We absolutely can take these bad boys down. But it's going to be a protracted fight. No matter what happens on election day in November. MAGA is not disappearing in November. We have to demolish—ideologically and politically—the far right. I know that we can do that.
One final point: going to something that John said just now, I want to just say that action alone will not be enough. I remember reading this article by the late Mike Davis, about a major labor struggle that took place in California. And one of the major leaders of that struggle, a great rank and filer, goes off at the end of that and joins the Tea Party. And Mike was completely distraught. I mean, I could see that in what he was writing. That this person went through all of this, and seemed to be radicalized, only to join the Tea Party. It has to be action and theory, action and education that go together. People come to all kinds of conclusions, and we've seen this, where Klansmen in unions have been very militant—carrying on strikes—but would never break from being Klansmen, because they didn't see that as inconsistent. In fact there's a long history to a kind of proto-fascist trade unionism that has existed in the United States.
So education and action. Keeping that optimism. Being real. And everybody read Sun Tzu's Art of War.
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