How to combat growing fascism without falling into the trap of supporting a "liberal left"?What's your opinion?

[u/belaskonavarro]

Fighting fascism requires confronting its root: the capitalist crisis that fuels fear and authoritarianism. The left cannot limit itself to alliances with liberals who prioritize institutional stability over anti-capitalist rupture. It is necessary to build autonomous popular power (combative unions, grassroots movements, mutual support networks) that unites anti-racist, feminist and classist struggles, showing that fascism is not a "rival ideology", but a rotten fruit of the system itself. Anti-fascist direct action is crucial, but without reducing the struggle to the mere defense of bourgeois democracy. Revolution is not made with votes for those who maintain class privileges, but with an organization that attacks the material bases of fascism: exploitation, oppression and alienation. Solidarity, not conciliation.

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[u/professr-mittens]

I'm of the camp that meeting most people where they're at is the best way to push them farther left. I think a lot of well-intentioned liberals operate only within the scope of what they were taught and need someone to help break that mental lock they have blocking non-propogandized information. However, obviously some people are too entrenched in the capitalist/imperialist narrative to get through to.

I've noticed that a lot of leftists are prematurely aggressive when it comes to confronting liberals in their views, as if us leftists were born with a naturally radicalized disposition. People need time and consistency to change, so, interacting consistently with the liberal left will ultimately be a net benefit for the true leftist movement. You interacting with and befriending the well-meaning liberal left does not mean you are abandoning socialist values, you're simply trying to inform and agitate in order to push people to the true leftist position, as we should.

[u/The_BarroomHero → u/professr-mittens]

I've done a lot of work in sales, marketing, etc. (hate it, but what can you do). You have to meet people where they are and match their speed. The fascists have been very good at this over the last 15 years (longer really, but they've cranked it up now). We need to be doing the same thing. It's why so many people in this space can cite Bernie as being part of their pipeline, even if they are now vehemently against socdems like him.

[u/Instantcoffees → u/professr-mittens]

Also, not everything you slightly disagree with is "liberal" or "liberalism" nor does it necessarily warrants you wielding that word as an insult. Just something I have noticed in online leftist circles. Sometimes you get two people just yelling that the other person is a filthy liberal and it's just both comical and exhausting.

[u/both-shoes-off → u/professr-mittens]

I actually do this with people I meet in person who identify as conservatives as well. What I've learned is that most of them don't really understand the policies of the right, and that they can't defend an argument more than 1-2 layers deep. My impression is that they don't like to be lied to by people who pretend to care about humans while they and their base preach and talk down to the poor and accuse them of being things they aren't.

I can get them to admit that they're into just about any left leaning policy with some careful wording and soft rebuttals to their Fox News and friend-circle-fed opinions while also conceding to some of their points about the liberals or the hyperbolic Democratic base. One might even argue that it's easier than trying to change the mind of the average Democrat because their brand of propaganda is much more powerful and abundant.

My father, for example was quite pleased to become eligible for Medicare while having opinions about socialism. It's a nuanced conversation, but meeting them where they're at and leading them closer to where you are works if you're a reasonable and patient person. There's no "fighting them" if you want progress. The media does this to us, and it's up to us to counter it and make everyone understand that we're all victims of propaganda and exploitation.

[u/BommieCastard]

Liberals you know are probably well-intentioned people who hate to see what's happening. You should work with these people. The democrat Party is a formation of the elite bourgeois interests, and is absolutely not your friend or ally in fighting fascism, and you should never trust them, and you should be extremely cautious about anything involving them. These are different groups of people, and should be treated differently. One can be changed. The other have already made up their minds

[u/raziphel]

Discuss the things we need, using simple and obvious statements. Universal healthcare, for one. Don't lean into academic language.

Discuss how bigotry has been used to divide the working classes so they can't unite and focus on the actual problematic people. Emphasize that it's a divide and conquer strategy, and that it worked spectacularly. Don't drift into the weeds with examples.

Discuss how solidarity means leaving no one behind.

Frame it as a fight against fascism, first and foremost. We can address the other points later.

Remind them that it's okay to hate leftists, and that this is part of being a leftist. We hate us too, but that helps us refine and polish the ideologies, morals, and faith that inform our beliefs and actions. It's a crucible, and steel is made in a forge by hammering out the impurities.

Remember, Trumpists know the system is broken and they want to fix it. Granted, they got suckered by wealthy con men and bigots, but that's a starting point that we can agree on.

Be civil, and frame your points concisely and clearly when you're talking online. You may not convince the person you're talking with, but you can and will influence those observing the conversation. Confronting bigots and humiliating them is just as important as conversion.

Keep in mind that humans make emotional decisions first and rationalize those choices. You have to address them in terms they can hear and understand first.

[u/belaskonavarro → u/raziphel]

You bring up important points about the need for clear and strategic communication in the anti-fascist struggle. I completely agree that we must focus on concrete demands such as universal healthcare and exposing how prejudice divides the working class, this is exactly the materialization of the class struggle in everyday life.

Your approach of finding points of agreement even with those who have been co-opted by fascism is valid as an initial tactic, but we need to go further. While Trumpist workers do (correctly) recognize that the system is broken, our role is to show that:

1) Fascist solutions are false, they will not solve your material problems 2) The real responsible are the capitalist class that manipulates them 3) Class solidarity is the only real path

On internal hatred on the left: While healthy ideological debate is necessary, we need to be careful not to fall into sectarianism that only weakens our movement. Forging is supposed to temper the steel, not break it.

His emphasis on emotional communication is particularly crucial. Gramsci already taught us that hegemony is achieved by speaking the language of the people, connecting with their everyday experiences. But we cannot stop there, we must use this connection to raise class consciousness.

Finally, I reinforce your excellent point about the audience: in online discussions, we are always speaking far beyond the immediate interlocutor. Each exchange is an educational opportunity for those who observe.

[u/raziphel → u/belaskonavarro]

The "we hate leftists too" is a joke to break the ice, overcome the emotional reaction to the propaganda, and bond. A little bit of self deprecating dark humor that doesn't punch down isn't going to break the steel.

It's similar to the "feel felt found" because it established emotional resonance, which allows us to overcome resistance and open the door to greater conversations.

Remember that you have to discuss these things in plain language. Talking shop will push people away. Save that shit for later.

[u/hydra_penis]

classist struggles

its funny you take this revolutionary posture against liberals but cant help but (inadvertently?) propagate liberal idealism

for anyone wanting to learn more here is instead the brief materialist position:

it can be stated from first principles that social (human) history emerges as distinct from natural history at the point where human beings come into existence. And humans can be first recognised as distinct from animals at the point in history where instead of directly consuming from nature they instead begin to use nature as a raw material to produce.

And when the development of technology allows for individuals to produce more than is necessary for their own reproduction i.e. to feed/clothe etc. themselves and their children, the material basis for the emergence of class society is created as relations of production in which one group extracts the surplus product from an exploited class become sustainable

Marx astutely identifies that of course before this level of productivity class society is impossible as any attempt to form a ruling class which extracts surplus value will result in the exploited class failing to reproduce themselves leading to a very short lived situation indeed (hence the earliest forms of social organisation being understood as necessarily a primitive communism)

production therefore is understood as the material base of society, and the relations between the different groups with different interests to the production process becomes the characteristics defining a mode of production, and the conflicting material interests between them the vehicle for one set of social relations to develop into the next

in this context then it is clearly understood that an "anti-classist" struggle is one which attempts to alleviate the inherent antagonisms between classes in a mode of production through reform, thereby postponing their culmination into a violent clash in which ruling classes can be overthrown by exploited classes i.e. materially it opposes the progression of history and can be understood as reactionary

On the contrary it is class struggle which instead recognises these antagonisms and engages in activity to escalate and intensify them, thereby hastening the progression of history

Layers at least of the ruling classes have understood this process and have themselves historically intervened via spreading ideologies which deflect from this material reality. Notice all the bots and stooges that constantly try to infest revolutionary discourse with liberalism

"Intersectionality" in which racism and sexism, in reality superstructural expressions of the relations of production, are presented instead as equivalent and fundamental axis of oppression to "classism", and argues that fundamental change can be won by struggle directed towards these many axis, is therefore a false theory.

The fact that capital itself and its superstructure has broadly accepted this discourse, propagating it both in academia and in popular discourse for the masses should be a clear indication of its counter-revolutionary nature.

it is a feature of a post modernist frame of thought which was in turn a phenomenal expression of a period of ascendant capitalism and uncontested capitalist hegemony, in which modernist frameworks of analysis that attacked the foundation of the existing mode of production seemed discredited i.e. it was an articulation of the liberal "end of history" arguing that if capitalism was a permanent state moving forward then only reform within the boundaries set by capitalism could therefore be accomplished

in this era of crisis therefore it rapidly begins to be shown as obsolete as it fails to align to observable reality, which is exactly why social antagonisms are more and more expressed in a modernist paradigm and class struggle

[u/belaskonavarro → u/hydra_penis]

You are absolutely correct in highlighting that class struggle is the engine of history and that any revolutionary analysis must start from the material basis of production. Marx made it clear that relations of production are the foundation upon which all other forms of oppression, racism, sexism, etc. are built. are articulated as tools of capital to divide the working class.

However, reducing intersectionality to mere “identity liberalism” ignores the material reality that capital uses these oppressions to intensify exploitation. The super-exploitation of black, migrant or women workers is not a "deviation" of the class struggle, but its concrete expression. To ignore this is to fall into vulgar economism, which fails to understand how class manifests itself in different ways.

True class struggle requires unity, but this unity does not arise spontaneously, it must be built by actively combating the divisions that capital imposes. As Lenin demonstrated, the fight against ethnic chauvinism and gender oppression is not "identitarianism" but a necessary condition for class solidarity.

Intersectionality, when materialist (not the postmodern liberal version), reveals how capital fragments the working class. Revolutionaries cannot afford to ignore these dynamics, at the risk of repeating the mistakes of the traditional labor movement, which often excluded women, black people and the colonized.

In short: the class struggle is not abstract. It occurs in factories, but also at borders, in homes and on the streets. Recognizing this is not "liberal idealism" it is applying historical materialism to the real complexity of capitalist domination.

[u/ArmoredSaintLuigi → u/belaskonavarro]

I like how J. Moufawad-Paul describes it. To paraphrase, if I'm describing how food tastes I would be technically correct if I only went into detail about chemistry and biology and food molecules etc, but I'd miss the point about what food tastes like.

[u/belaskonavarro → u/ArmoredSaintLuigi]

Your analogy is pertinent, but incomplete. The 'chemistry' (the material basis of the class struggle) is not a secondary detail, it is what determines the 'taste' of oppression. Ignoring that capitalism produces racism, sexism and xenophobia as tools of division would be like analyzing a poisoned meal for taste alone, without examining the toxic ingredients.

Materialist intersectionality, not the depoliticized liberal version, is precisely the method that allows us to identify how these 'poisons' are manufactured and distributed. As Claudia Jones demonstrated in the 1950s, the super-exploitation of black women in American factories was not an 'accident' but a structural mechanism of racial capitalism.

Moufawad-Paul is right about the need to describe 'taste', but without losing sight of who controls the kitchen, and to whom the dish is served. Revolution without this analysis is a luxury menu for few.

[u/ArmoredSaintLuigi → u/belaskonavarro]

Right, I think we're arguing for the same point I just paraphrased too much. It's not "ignore the chemistry" it's "how do those facts manifest." His full quote:

While I believe that it is indeed the case that the meaning of class struggle must be ultimately located in the economic logic of a given mode of production, I also maintain that this is akin to locating our phenomenal experience of eating a donut in chemical compounds, taste bud functions, and the firing of synapses. While such an explanation is in one sense cor­rect, and scientifically perhaps the most correct, it does not explain what it means to eat a donut except in the most reductionist manner. Much of reality is evaded by the reductionist explanation; the appeal to chemical compositions and biochemical processes does not explain very much and, in fact, might end up enshrining an idealist scientism. Hence, by treating class struggle according to the most abstract economistic logic (ignoring the political clothing it wears or the political struggle that gives meaning to the economic struggle), we may end up endorsing the very same identity politics that emerged in reaction to the Marxist privileging of economic class. That is, economic class can be treated as an identity in and of itself.

• Moufawad-Paul, "Politics in Command" pg 27

You can get the PDF version for free from the publisher, he has a really good (imo) section about identity politics starting on page 65 if you're wanting just a short read about it from a maoist point of view.

[u/belaskonavarro → u/ArmoredSaintLuigi]

Your quote from Moufawad-Paul is precisely the balancing point we need: the 'chemistry' of class struggle (the material basis) cannot be reduced to an abstract economism, but neither can it be diluted in phenomenology disconnected from production. The challenge is to synthesize three levels:

Structure: The logic of capital that produces racism/sexism as tools of accumulation (e.g., unpaid reproductive work by black women, analyzed by Claudia Jones).
Situation: The specific historical forms that this oppression takes (e.g.: the donut of Brazilian fascism has a 'taste' of Bolsonarism, but is made with the same 'ingredients' as Trumpism).
Political action: How to build class unity without falling into liberal identitarianism or economistic reductionism.

The excerpt you cited from 'Polities in Command' (p.65) is essential precisely because it shows that 'class as identity' is a trap, as much as denying that class is expressed through concrete oppressions. The Maoist solution that Moufawad-Paul proposes, 'investigating the concrete conditions', is the antidote: studying how capital fragments the class in each context, without losing sight of the fact that the final enemy is the mode of production.

In Brazil today: This means understanding how fascism uses evangelism, anti-PTism and reactionary anti-racism, but fighting it through class alliances (as the PCB did in the 1930s against integralism).

[u/hydra_penis → u/belaskonavarro]

ok Ill give you benefit of the doubt then for misrepresenting class struggle as anti-classist struggle even if it is quite sus given the rest of the statement

but

Intersectionality, when materialist (not the postmodern liberal version)

isnt a meaningful statement

yes if you freely redefine words then you can say that they are applicable in any context. but using actual definitions intersectionality is very specifically a post modernist liberal theory and therefore historically reactionary

redefining it to simply mean that revolutionaries should reject racism/sexism is a wrecker position. it functions materially to give credibility to bourgeois ideology. There is no need to confuse the working class with an artificial distinction between a materialist (progressive) and idealist (reactionary) "intersectionality" when:

...capital fragments the working class. Revolutionaries cannot afford to ignore these dynamics...

responding to this dynamic is simply just as aspect of class struggle

[u/belaskonavarro → u/hydra_penis]

You are right to point out that the term "intersectionality" was coined in postmodern contexts, but reducing the entire concept to "bourgeois ideology" ignores three material issues:

The reality of overexploitation
Capital does not exploit everyone equally: black women receive less than white men for the same work, immigrants are over-exploited as cheap labor. Ignoring this is class blindness.

The difference between revolutionary theory and practice The Black Panthers (who united Marxism and anti-racism) or the Brazilian CLT (which excluded domestic workers, the black majority) prove: specific oppressions are battlefields of class struggle, not "distractions".

The danger of terminological purism Rejecting useful analytical tools just because liberals misrepresent them is like throwing away Capital because the USSR failed. The issue is not the label ("intersectionality"), but whether the analysis exposes material mechanisms of domination.

Your criticism has merit when:

• Intersectionality becomes liberal identitarianism (e.g. black CEO as "progress").
  
• Replaces the class struggle with a hierarchy of oppression.

But it fails when:

• Assumes that all race/gender analysis is “postmodern.” Marx already studied how racism lowered everyone's wages (The Jewish Question).

Call it what you want ("concrete analysis", "dialectical materialism"), but never ignore that capital fragments the class through racism, sexism and xenophobia. Revolution is made by those at the bottom of the system, and these are the most oppressed.

[u/Odd_Decision_5595]

All I'm gonna say is that the Soviet Union did not defeat the Nazis alone. We have to stay principled to our ideas, but it's better to work with them and meet people where they are at, and hopefully they may become radicalized. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

[u/PerspectiveWest4701]

Serious answer. I think it's too late to prevent the rise of fascism in the imperial core. Let's accept that America is fascist now. So what do we do to survive, and to sabotage the fascist regime?

I think that as American empire decays, socialist activity will ramp up around the world in places where it was formerly suppressed by America.

I don't know how nukes will play into the game but I do wonder if we will get a repeat of Operation Barbarossa but with America as Nazi Germany and Latin America as the USSR.

I think we should think long-term, and organize internationally. How can we prepare to help our future comrades if America ceases its semi-obfuscated terrorism for all-out invasions?

Also Americans need to organize with Canadians.

[u/StalinAnon]

I issue is not "confronting its root: the capitalist crisis that fuels fear and authoritarianism" the issue is support fascism because people don't know what Fascism is. Fascism can be more accurately described as coming from a Failed Revolution not from Capitalism in Decline. This is the danger of historical revisionism. Fascism is not just Ultranationalism, or nationalism, or patriotism, or even pro military or borders, fascism is a very concrete ideology that states the group comes before the individual or as was famously stated "Everything in the State nothing outside of the State". In other Words, Fascist are hyper collectivists, the decay of Capitalism is not Fascism but rather its Feudalism. (TBH I would argue the decay of anything is feudalism but if you wanted a 1 to 1 example the failure of a Revolution is Fascism the decay of Capitalism in Feudalism).

There was this Famous example of a Communist chastising Mussolini for political violence, Mussolini responded the Communists started it and that the fascist were only doing what the communists did, and the Communist response was that they represented the will of worker and majority, so it wasn't really political violence. However, the Fascists were engaging in political violence because they did not represent the majority and thus were systematically oppressing majority. This exchange was in 1925 where the communists frequently got less than 400k votes (roughly less than 6%) in the elections they were apart of... whereas Mussolini's Party got 60% of all votes.

If you want to fight fascism you have to go into the wolf dens and actually learn what it is. Start by reading Mussolini and what he actually said, not what someone else said he said. Read about Hitler, then the Falangists (Franco was not Fascist he was Reactionary though). Then Socialist Have to break down all this intersectionality crap. It is nothing more than Societal Corporatism and Socialists should not be fighting for it.

I will be leaving on this note Lenin stated that immigration should be regulated because Capitalists use immigration to replace workers in their home country whenever the workers start demanding too many rights, and he also stated when that wasn't feasible Capitalist export jobs to nations that exploit workers was easier. What do you think the Fascists said? Capitalist import immigrants to take away the right of the workers or export their jobs to places that care little about workers if importing the labor can't be done. Fascists are not Socialist but most socialist believe propaganda about Fascists because if they were to learn actual fascist material, the leaders of Socialist groups and theory in a lot of cases would be rightfully denounced for fascist tendencies if not being actual fascists.

[u/belaskonavarro → u/StalinAnon]

Your point about the need to study fascism directly at its sources is valid, there is no revolution without concrete material analysis. However, reducing fascism to 'hyper-collectivism' or a mere product of 'failed revolutions' ignores its historical function: the violent reaction of capital in crisis, which co-opted 'socializing' rhetorics to deflate class struggles. Mussolini used corporatist unions; Hitler persecuted Marxists before Jews. Fascism is not abstract 'feudalism': it is naked capitalism, armed to the teeth against the left.

As for intersectionality: far from being 'social corporatism', it reveals how race, gender and class are articulated in exploitation, something that Lenin, when defending the self-determination of peoples, already understood. And yes, fascists imitate socialist critiques of globalization (such as their distortion of the migration issue), but to divide the working class, not to emancipate them. The lesson? Fighting fascism requires denying it any ground, whether in the economy or in culture, without retreating to liberalism, but also without revisionism that erases its class nature.

[u/bigblindmax]

Anti-fascist direct action is crucial

Having done a good bit of this during Trump I, I’m not totally convinced that’s true. We got whipped up by the powers that be into obsessing over and fighting a white supremacist movement that was never as scary or close to power as we thought it was. Because we reacted instead of thinking, the huge boost in membership leftist orgs experienced after Trump won was squandered.

We can’t act out of fear this time. We can’t declare a general strike every two weeks that turns into nothing. We can’t allow liberal “fascism experts” to lead us around by the nose, we can’t “figure out the details later”. We have to actually think about what it is that we should be trying to accomplish in the short, mid and long term and how (hell, if) the current praxis is advancing it.