By Charles Onunaiju
IT was not like the storming of the Bastille, attack of the state prison- symbol of repressive monarchy, east side of the French capital, Paris on July 14, 1789 which set the ball for the end of Bourbon monarchy and ushered in, the French revolution.
It was rather, the equivalent of the Reichstag fire outbreak on February 27, 1933 that burnt down Germany’s parliament and paved the way for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party and subsequent establishment of fascist dictatorship, followed by the devastating 2nd world war.
The storming of the U.S capitol, the parliament building that houses both the House of Representatives and the Senate on January 6, has largely been interpreted as the desperate political vehemence of the defeated candidate in the last November Presidential election in that country. To now properly situate the violence at the U.S capitol, the House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump ahead of the end of his constitutional tenure in office.
The impeachment would be the second, by the House of Representatives. However, the impeachment would only result in the removal of the president if the senate follows suit. However, the procedure at the senate, where the president would stand trial is more cumbersome and has little success at least, before President Trump leaves office.
However, much as the world appeared shocked at the violence in the U.S Capitol, the underlying current, much like the path leading to the rise of Hitler and the establishment of fascist dictatorship, shares some familiar characteristics.
The establishment of Weimar Republic following the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the Versailles treaty which imposed heavy war reparations along with stripping her, of its oversea possession were mocked and ridiculed by the Nazis, and actually referred to Germany’s signatories to the treaty as “November criminals”. The economic recession that hit in late 1920s, along with “loss of national pride” as most Germans then, considered the Versailles treaty” catapulted Hitler’s Nazis from fringe party to mainstream with large seats in parliament, as Hitler was invited to lead government and the Reichstag fire incident gave him all the emergency powers he needed to institute full-blown fascist dictatorship. Germany’s fascism has something to do with the manic of Hitler and his fellow Nazis but was more to do with the dire economic stress of the middle class and the weakening of its imperialism from its defeat and the consequent loss of national pride.
The storming of the U.S capitol may have been partly triggered by the maniacal nature of Donald Trump but did not explain everything about the social discontent, the actual foundation for the rise of U.S fascist movement for which Trump is only a titular head.
The affluence of the United States of America and the stability of its political institutions which actually defined the “success” of its democracy provided the foundation of its social balance. The thriving of U.S capitalism and the affluence it has engendered was the result of the success of U.S imperialism to amass or accumulate surplus on a global scale since after World War II. The emergence of the U.S as a super power and later as a “hyper power” has not only ensured the diffusion of its values or soft power on a global scale but its enforcement through political pressure and sometimes military intervention.
From Congo, where Patrice Lumumba was accused of Soviet or Communist puppetry to Guatemala where former President Jacob Arbenz was kicked out by a U.S multinational to the deadly CIA mastered coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 that took out, the charismatic leader Allende Salvador to the tiny Grenada where Bishop Maurice was overthrown, U.S imperialism exercised unquestioned global hegemony and ensured the extraction and repatriation of surplus from which America’s capitalism thrived and its people prospered, even as its political institutions appear both impregnable and unassailable. The bubble did not certainly look to anything like bursting for U.S capitalism and its democracy.
However, in recent years, U.S imperialism is weakening and the emerging multilateral international system are giving greater room for nations to exert their values and raise their voices. The ability of U.S imperialism to accumulate or extract surplus on a global scale has become considerably circumscribed and constrained. The flow of oversea resource-surplus that fuels America’s affluence that previously mitigated the crisis of access to resources by various social categories are constrained. Unable to extract surplus on a global scale, as nations across the world, stand up for the best deals for their respective peoples, U.S imperialism would have to come home to roost. The U.S famed affluence is no longer sustainable in the face of shrinking overseas accumulation. The long period of social harmony of class cohabitation would naturally burst into social discontents and class antagonism. The white working middle class, the greatest beneficiary of social democracy and distributive capitalism fueled by U.S global scale of surplus accumulation were evidently, the first to be hit by the decline and weakening of U.S imperialism like the Germans in the 1930s, are the most receptive of nihilistic nationalism, which vilifies outsiders for the weakening of their country.
Trump’s political narcissism corresponds to the U.S economic crises and expresses itself in the vengeance of the social category whose political grievance galvanizes in the fascist movement with the ultimate aim to the establishment of the fascist state as in Hitler’s Germany.
Trump expresses U.S economic crises as consisting in U.S’ stressful engagement with rest of world and what he claimed was an open border which magnates people from across the world. For him, U.S excess global baggage and open borders were culprits in America’s decline and this simplistic analysis resonated with the white working middle class to whom their loss of privilege was the direct consequence of the combination of internal parasitic people of colour at home and aspirant immigrants knocking at their border for which Trump promised to erect a wall. For the U.S extremist social faction seeking to take back their country from the imaginary foreign enemy, Trump is, its alter ego and the attempt to remake liberal institution like the congress and senate, seating in the Capitol was not a mere flash in the pan but the enigmatic trajectories of fascist muscle-flexing for which the event of January 6 is only a prelude.
To see the insurrection at the U.S Capitol on January 6 as merely Trump’s antics to overturn an election he lost is fairly simplistic, which also supposed that the political eclipse of Trump or even his trial and even sentence to prison would end the specific nature of U.S political crises. Trump’s imprisonment if it happens, might be the historical equivalent of Hitler’s prison sentence after the Beer Hall putsch in 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right-wing members of the army in collusion with the Nazi Party was, however, foiled by the government with Hitler charged for high treason. Convicted, he spent less than a year in prison and emerged with his political position stronger than before.
America’s political establishment, especially the Democratic Party and their congressional leadership, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the pivot, seeking desperately to extract revenge on Trump might actually be setting the stage for his political canonization.
The Joe Biden Presidency, elected on a wide coalition of traditional Democratic Party members and the broad working people of all colours can mitigate the social tension of contemporary U.S capitalism through decisive expansion of corporate tax, reducing the social hegemony of the one percent of Americans that sit over more than 80% of U.S resources and national endowment.
Any attempt by the Biden administration to revive U.S imperialism and restart its war machine, an old and failing strategy at global accumulation of surplus would summarily fail and have the consequence of reviving Trump’s flagging political career and lead straight to the establishment of U.S fascist state, with dire consequences not only for the Americans but for the rest of the world.
The key to America’s revival and restoration is broad ranging national social reform that could tap on the ingenuity of the American people, which would be a major antidote to nipping the creeping fascism in the bud and saving humanity the prospects of another world war.
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Onunaiju is research director of an Abuja based Think Tank.
