BY JACK BARNES  
As with other tribunes of incipient fascist movements in this century, [Patrick] Buchanan does not begin by taking on the working class directly. He begins by targeting other bourgeois politicians in both parties—those part of, or soft on, the “establishment elite”—both liberals and conservatives. He goes after the dominant ruling circles in the bourgeois parties, accusing them of letting down America; tolerating corruption in the hallways of power while failing to maintain law and order on Main Street; and living privileged lives while more and more “ordinary American working people” are pushed to the wall. He presents himself as the voice of those working men and women—“the folk.”

Buchanan aggressively defines who “Americans” are—and (more venomously) who they are not. This is the aim of his obscene anti-immigrant demagogy. This is the content of his calculated and thinly veiled anti-Semitic forays, aimed especially against Jews on Wall Street or in top government posts. Buchanan is a master of the politics of resentment and the coarsening of civil discourse, often with a smile.

The polarization in the “culture war” declared by Buchanan and other ultrarightists takes many forms: chauvinist anti-foreigner agitation, racist assaults on affirmative action, vulgar attacks on women’s social equality, half-hidden but virulent outbursts of Jew-hatred, fearful prejudices against homosexuals. These incipient fascist forces are vocal advocates of the cops, like those currently on trial in Los Angeles for brutally beating Rodney King; fascist movements always draw many of their cadres from the cops. There will be no limit to the pornographic overtones of their demagogy, as they claim to offer a road to bring a “decadent” society out of its crisis.

These reactionary positions have no logical evolution or rational content. They are a collection and recombination of refuse from the past, floating out from the backwaters of class history….

As the capitalist social crisis deepens, and the working class and labor movement begin to engage in battles to defend our living standards and our unions, growing numbers within the ruling class, often reluctantly, will begin to provide financial and political support to the fascists. They will unleash the energy of the ultraright in the streets, against striking workers, labor gatherings, social protests, and organizations of the oppressed. They will use whatever force and violence is necessary to deny enough democratic rights to the majority of working people, eventually, to preserve the privileges of the upper middle class and maintain capitalist rule….

The workers movement must explain that capitalism is the source of the crisis; it must organize the toilers in a revolutionary struggle to take power out of the hands of the exploiters and establish a workers and farmers government. It must present convincing answers, a working-class alternative, to the demagogy of the Buchanans and the others. Because if labor does not do so—if it offers those being crushed by the capitalist crisis no effective way to fight, and then seems to flub the chances we have to win—we will shove potential class allies into the hands of the rightists. And the working class will be divided and defeated in blood.

This polarization will accelerate the seriousness of workers and youth who come into politics. Young fighters despise the assaults on human solidarity by the ultraright, assaults that stand against everything they are reaching for. And growing numbers of workers, regardless of their own current political views, will see the need to guarantee space for fellow workers with whom they are fighting shoulder to shoulder—whether these workers are communist or whatever—to raise and discuss their ideas and for all workers to consider where the crisis is heading and what we can do about it.  
 
 
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