By: The Partisan Editorial Board
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In all capitalist societies there exists a contradiction within the ruling class itself, between the forces of liberal bourgeois democracy and the forces of “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”i This second type of capitalist government is what the Communist International defined as fascism.
Fascism was a product of two historical events: firstly the development of capitalism into imperialism or ‘monopoly capitalism,’ which is it highest and most destructive stage of development, and secondly the victorious workers’ revolution in Russia—the October Revolution—and the establishment of the first socialist state in history. These two events produced a wave of fascist governments in Europe beginning in the 1920s.
Fascism first arose in Italy, and then famously reached its most reactionary and murderous iteration in Germany under the National Socialist party and Adolf Hitler. This first iteration of fascism was only defeated through the immense efforts and sacrifices of the multinational working class, in particular that of the Soviet Union, at the end of World War 2. However the defeat of the Nazi party did not mark the end of fascism. In fact the methods and structures of fascism have spread across the globe and are increasingly a central part of capitalist governance, due to a process revolutionaries variably refer to as either “fascistization,” “reactionization,” or “corporatization” of capitalist democracies worldwide. This process continues the trend of implementing a fascist dictatorship not as a swift coup d’état but rather as a protracted process chipping away at the old liberal democracy. To understand this process, we must first turn our attention to understanding fascism itself.
What is Fascism?
As Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov described in The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism:
The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie — bourgeois democracy – by another form – open terrorist dictatorship. It would be a serious mistake to ignore this distinction, a mistake liable to prevent the revolutionary proletariat from mobilizing the widest strata of the working people of town and country for the struggle against the menace of the seizure of power by the fascists, and from taking advantage of the contradictions which exist in the camp of the bourgeoisie itself. But it is a mistake, no less serious and dangerous, to underrate the importance, for the establishment of fascist dictatorship, of the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie at present increasingly developing in bourgeois-democratic countries — measures which suppress the democratic liberties of the working people, falsify and curtail the rights of parliament and intensify the repression of the revolutionary movement.
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The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country. In certain countries, principally those in which fascism has no broad mass basis and in which the struggle of the various groups within the camp of the fascist bourgeoisie itself is rather acute, fascism does not immediately venture to abolish parliament, but allows the other bourgeois parties, as well as the Social-Democratic Parties, to retain a modicum of legality. In other countries, where the ruling bourgeoisie fears an early outbreak of revolution, fascism establishes its unrestricted political monopoly, either immediately or by intensifying its reign of terror against and persecution of all rival parties and groups. This does not prevent fascism, when its position becomes particularly acute, from trying to extend its basis and, without altering its class nature, trying to combine open terrorist dictatorship with a crude sham of parliamentarism.
In this way, we understand fascism as the opposite side of the same coin as the democratic republic, the traditional form of bourgeois rule. In Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State Engels outlined the basic manner of class dictatorship bourgeois democracy represents:
The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out – the democratic republic no longer officially recognizes differences of property. Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange, which is effected all the more easily the higher the state debt mounts and the more the joint-stock companies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also production itself, and themselves have their own center in the stock exchange.
On the other hand, Chairman Gonzalo, more than forty years after Dimitrov described how the capitalist class was increasingly laying the groundwork for fascist dictatorships in the capitalist “democracies,” synthesized fascism as:
What do we understand by fascist and corporativist? For us fascism is the negation of liberal-democratic principles, the negation of the bourgeois-democratic principles which were born and developed in the eighteenth century in France. These principles are being abandoned by reactionaries, by the bourgeoisie world-wide. So it was that the First World War that made us see the crisis of the bourgeois democratic order, that’s why later fascism emerged. So, in APRA what is going on is this negation of the principles of the bourgeois-democratic order and we see daily proof of the negation of all the constitutionally established rights and liberties. We see fascism also on the ideological plane as an eclectic system without a defined philosophy. It is a philosophical position made up of fragments chosen from here and there according to what’s most useful. This is clearly expressed in García Pérez. When he goes to Harare in Africa he’s an African and he salutes the Africans, salutes Kenneth Kaunda. When he goes to India he salutes Gandhi, he’s a Gandhian. When he goes to Mexico he hails Zapata, he’s a Zapatista. When he goes to the Soviet Union, if he ever does, he’ll be the champion of Perestroika. He’s like that because this is the ideological and philosophical training of fascism, it does not have a defined stand, it is eclectic and it takes what is at hand.
With regard to its corporativism. We understand corporativism as the setting up of the state based on corporations, which implies the negation of parliamentarism. This is an essential point that Mariátegui gave emphasis to in “Historia de la crisis mundial”. He said that the crisis of bourgeois democracy expresses itself clearly in the crisis of parliamentarism. Looking at the parliament here, while it is true that in the last decades it has been the executive branch that has produced the most important laws in this country, it is during this APRA government that the executive has monopolized the creation of all the fundamental laws for its own purposes. No important laws have come from the parliament. This is a fact, and everything has been aimed at giving powers to the executive so that it can do and undo as it pleases. Everything is a negation of parliamentarism.
The analysis from Chairman Gonzalo, Dimitrov, and the Communist International provide us with a basic framework for characterizing fascism versus bourgeois democracy:
- Fascism rises to power and gains strength during periods of profound crisis in the capitalist system.
- Fascism is just another form of class rule by the bourgeoisie, and can be established and dismantled by the capitalists according to their needs.
- Economically, fascism is characterized by institutionalized class collaboration via the reorganization and creation of firms, systems, and institutions based on the corporatist “tripartite” model where the State, State-endorsed workers’ associations, and capitalists collaborate to govern and control the economic, political and social life of the country.
- Politically, fascism implies a move towards centralized rule by a powerful executive, and away from a capitalist country’s established legislative and judicial democratic systems and norms (national reorganization).
- While bourgeois democracy also engages in terror, repression, and reactionary oppression, fascism often carries out this terror more “openly” and dramatically, both as a reflection and to enforce the open merger between monopoly capital and the State. Fascism replaces the traditional indirect relationship between capital and State with direct and open rule of capital.
- In the field of ideology, fascism uses philosophical eclecticism to justify corporatization of the economy and society, pushing for contradictory positions and using “whatever is at hand” to hide the reality of class struggle and the bourgeoisie’s “open” dictatorship.
- The particular form of fascism in a given country, and its path toward power, are determined by the “historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.”
Fascism is not limited to these seven characteristics, however all fascist dictatorships have met these minimum conditions. When considering these conditions, it becomes clear that the United States is currently in a period of rising fascism. The second Trump administration is laying the groundwork for the development of a fascist dictatorship in the United States, even if fascism itself cannot be said to have yet seized power and done away with the old “Constitutional” order in the United States.
The second Trump administration walks in the foot steps of its predecessor administrations, who also participated in the active fascistization of the US Imperialist State and the US society and economy. Nevertheless, it is also apparent to even the most casual observer that the fascistization of the United States has intensified and become more open under the current administration. All of which begs the question: why is fascism rising in the United States, and how is the ground being laid for the Imperialist State and the US society and economy to be transitioned from a bourgeois-democratic mode of government to a plainly fascist one?
Basis for US Fascism
United States imperialism finds itself in profound crisis, beset on all sides by decay, stagnation and, increasingly, outright collapse in its existing institutions and systems. This particular crisis of US imperialism occurs within the broader context of a generalized crisis for the international imperialist system, whose internal contradictions intensify and worsen daily. The conditions produced by universal crisis of the world imperialist system and the particular crisis of US imperialism, are the basis for the intensifying rise of US fascism.
Marx and Engels, founders of the scientific ideology of the working class, pointed out that capitalism will inevitably fall and socialism will inevitably triumph. The logic of this stems from historical materialism and the “First Law” of scientific socialism: productive forces primarily determine relations of production, and the economic base primarily determines the superstructure. In the contradictory movement between the forces of production and the relations of production, there arises a protract class struggle between labor and capital which necessitates the establishment of the working class’ own political organization. Through struggle, this Party of the modern working class will transform the “specter” of communism into reality. Capitalism’s ever-accumulating contradictions and crises make the working class its own gravedigger.
In the era of imperialism, a massive contradiction emerges between the ever growing socialization and monopolization of production with the chaotic and anarchistic system of free markets and private property that defined early industrial capitalism. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian revolution, pointed out that even if imperialism continues to exist, it has become rotten, moribund and outdated as it cannot reconcile this central contradiction. Thus, imperialism will continue to rot and sink in its own decomposition, until its eventual demise. With each cyclical crisis of imperialism, its situation will continue to worsen, as the crises grow more severe with each manifestation. It is under this theoretical premise that we begin our analysis on the process of fascistization in the United States.
Economically, US Imperialism find itself increasingly unprofitable, unproductive, and uneven. This can be seen in even the most cursory look at the state of the economy. Take public and corporate debt for instance. As of September 2025, US government debt reached $37.4 trillion dollars,ii which is over 119% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That means that each year the government spends around $880 billion just to service the interest on that debt, much less pay it off.iii In addition to federal debt, combined state and local government debt in turn has come to an all-time peak of $3.6 trillion this year.iv Corporate and private debt has also ballooned, with corporate bankruptcies reaching a 15-year high in July, 2025,v and non-financial corporate business liabilities reaching an all time high in 2025, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Office.vi
This evolving debt crisis affecting US imperialism is just one of the more obvious symptoms of a much deeper and profound economic crisis raging under the surface. Because of the tendency for the rate of profit to decline under capitalism, as established by Marx, each year the big US imperialist corporations find it more and more difficult to maintain or increase their profit margins. The United States’ declining technological advantage, crumpling infrastructure, out-dated production methods, pool of available labor that is increasingly older,vii less qualified,viii less educated,ix and less healthy,x and chaotically managed State and economy means that not only is the United States unable to compete with rising powers like social-imperialist China, but its unable to even out produce weaker imperialist power like the Russian Federation when it comes to essential military goods.xi While one could go on and on about the other major economic ills facing the world’s current premier imperialist super-power, such as the rising cost of living, wage stagnation, declining living standards, etc., taken as a whole we can see how the current economic crisis provides the bourgeoisie with major incentives to centrally reorganize and corporatize the economy under the auspices of a new fascist dictatorship which will replace the old decaying liberal-democratic order.
Just as it is on the economic plane, socially the United States is similarly beset by crises on almost every level. People living in the United States are increasingly dying earlier, are over-worked, alienated, addicted, homeless, unemployed or under-employed, and frustrated with the conditions and direction of the country. US workers are unable to afford basic needs, such as housing, transportation, or healthcare, much less luxuries. Car loan delinquency rates have reached levels not seen since 2009, immediately following the 2008 economic collapse.xii Around 1 in 3 adults aged 18-34 are now living with their parents rather than renting or owning homes.xiii At least 770,000 people are currently homeless, a multi-generation high.xiv The imperialist military is unable to recruit because public distrust towards the military has grown so high, and the remaining pool of recruits is often too unhealthy for military service.xv
The contradiction between the anti-people policies and needs of capitalist-imperialism—the desire to keep workers as exploited and oppressed as possible—and the need for US imperialism to sustain and reproduce itself through a competent and capable pool of labor has reached a breaking point. The so-called “competency crisis,” or other vogue phrases like the “health” crisis, are just non-Marxist ways to describe how capitalism has left masses with the United States generally dysfunctional and devastated after more than a century of decay, corruption, exploitation, and oppression. The United States is a failing, aging superpower, and our society reflects that reality, which is why revanchist calls typical of fascism to “revitalize” the country, “Build Back Better,” or “Make America Great Again,” have become so popular among both the Democratic and Republican parties.
In reality, the growing economic and social crisis has its roots in the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, between the socialized manner of production and the private system of ownership. This contradiction manifests in the contradiction between the massive growth of the capacity of production and the diminishing of purchasing power of the working people, as well as the contradiction between the anarchist state of economy and society on one hand and the organized state of production at points of production on the other hand. As overproduction continues, it will inevitably result in an economic crisis, no matter how long imperialism is able to delay the outward manifestations of such a crisis with speculation and stock manipulations.
The decadent nature of imperialism also manifests itself first in the way monopolies severely hinder the development of productive forces, artificially limiting technological progress and leading to a tendency toward stagnation in production and technology except in certain fields which relate to the growth of financial capital and militarization/reactionization, such as artificial intelligence. Since the late 20th century, and especially since the beginning of the 21st, the financial sector has expanded relative to the real economy, with profits increasingly coming primarily from speculation and the stock market. Financial capital has come to dominate both micro and macro levels. Fixed capital continues to be renewed, as the capitalists increasingly use the State machinery to exploit the workers’ surplus value and to transform them into capital, which resulted in more general impoverishment of the people and spend more on the militarization and reactionization of the State.
The growth of productive forces and capital accumulation leads to the increase of the organic composition of capital and the faster growth of capital in general. At the same time, this absolute increase of the volume of profit has led to a tendency for the rate of the profit to fall. Marx said: “For an absolutely increased variable capital to be employed in a capital of higher composition, or one in which the constant capital has increased relatively more, the total capital must not only grow proportionately to its higher composition, but still more rapidly. It follows, then, that as the capitalist mode of production develops, an ever larger quantity of capital is required to employ the same, let alone an increased, amount of labor-power. Thus, on a capitalist foundation, the increasing productiveness of labor necessarily and permanently creates a seeming over-population of laboring people.” In turn, this led to more economic crises and more measures towards fascistization in order to resolve this crisis.
Despite their coincidence on many fundamental issues however, the intensification of disagreement on major questions of policy among factions of US capitalism has manifested a political crisis. This political crisis is a function of the already raging social and economic crises, as at the core of the political infighting is the question of how US imperialism should be readjusted and reorganized, and what particular path of fascistization should be taken. In this sense, just because the Democratic Party is in opposition during this period, and there is worsening infighting and factional warfare among the capitalist class, does not mean the Democratic Party is “anti-fascist” or “progressive” in any sense. The question before both parties is how to strengthen US imperialism and develop the basis for fascism in the United States, not whether that should happen.
Roughly speaking, to the so-called “MAGA” wing of the Republican party, the reorganization of the US society and economy on should occur roughly on reactionary “Christian nationalist” lines, whereas to the Democratic Party reorganization should occur on traditional technocratic “welfare state” lines reminiscent of FDR’s New Deal, which was itself inspired by the policies and methods of the original Fascist wave of the 1920s and 30s. This divergence on the path towards fascistization is at the crux of the political crises, and is also why both parties are parties of the monopoly big bourgeoisie and have similar social bases (the labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie) despite their differences on certain technical or social issues. In fact, convergence on questions of economic policy between the two main parties has been a striking feature of the last decade, despite the increasingly confrontational rhetoric and political warfare between the two parties.
The significance of the rise of social-imperialist China cannot be ignored when discussing the presently accelerating rise of fascism in the United States. Chairman Mao, leader of the Chinese Revolution, in accordance to the Marxist understanding of fascism, held that the both the government of the Soviet Union following the reversal of socialism and Khrushchev’s capitalist restoration, and a future counter-revolutionary government in China following any capitalist restoration there, would be specifically fascist dictatorships due to specifically the change in the systems of ownership and for the repression of the revolutionary working class. Thus, it is easy to see how the rise of fascist social-imperialist China as the United States’ main competitor, and even potential replacement as leader of the world imperialist system, would increase the prestige, consideration, and influence of fascism among the US capitalists and their supporters. China’s continuing State control over the commanding heights of the economy, its massive repressive surveillance apparatus, its class-collaborationist structures and ever-present corporatism, all meant to achieve “social harmony” and class peace; all of these are widely envied by US capitalists, and how they can be reproduced or mimicked domestically is constantly discussed in imperialist conferences and policy forums.
Discussions like these help illustrate why historically the main basis of support for fascism can be found among the large monopolistic corporations and the institutions of international finance capital, as is the case in the United States as well. As Lenin laid out all the way back in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the monopoly capitalists desire increased concentration and coordination of capital and production, which a fascist dictatorship greatly facilitates. To the monopoly capitalists the policies of social peace, a supposed end to class struggle, which fascism seeks to enact are a major draw, as State control over and manipulation of the labor movement allows for the capitalists to in turn have greater control over production and the class itself.
Fascism also typically relies on reactionary nationalism, something which is all too abundant among both sides of the US two-party system. The Democratic and Republican parties converge on their subjugation of Puerto Rico and the Pacific Island colonies, on their domination of the mainland Indigenous, New Afrikan, and Chicano nations and national minorities, and on their marginalization of immigrant groups from the Third World. For example, both Democrats and Republicans agree that undocumented immigrants, primarily from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, should be kept in ultra-exploitative working conditions with little to no pay, the question for them is instead simply how much of such labor should be officially sanctioned within US domestic enterprises. In this sense, the Republican Party attempts to use reactionary nationalism to rally/distract their base with crude exclusionary policies, while the Democratic Party seeks to use reactionary nationalism to instead deepen the integration of these same groups into the projects and plans of US imperialism.
In this way, in any case the main social base for fascism is the American oppressor nation’s labor aristocracy and reactionary segments of the petty-bourgeoisie, because to these class forces fascistization promises a better cut of the profits and spoils that are concentrated under the new dictatorship. It promises a formalization of the patronage they currently receive under the international imperialist system, and more permanent support for their higher class positions in relation to the majority of workers and masses in the country. To the reactionary segments of the so-called “middle classes,” fascism represents increased stability and resolution to the crises affecting them, at the expense of terror and oppression for the lower workers and doubly-oppressed segments of the masses like women or the oppressed nations and national minorities.
Symptoms of Rising Fascism
In describing the death throes of imperialism, Chairman Gonzalo said: “reaction is militarizing itself more and more, militarizing the old States, their economies, developing wars of aggression, trafficking with the struggles of the peoples and aiming toward a world war.” Both the Democratic and Republican parties have launched themselves down the path of greater and greater fascistization, although the particular symptoms and manifestations of those paths differ. One of the clearest manifestations of fascistization has been the increasing negation of parliamentarianism in the United States, which in the American constitutional system implies the negation of the legislative and judicial branches favor of the rule of the executive branch (i.e., the President). Rather than pass legislation through Congress, the US State has relied more and more on Presidential executive orders, memoranda, and other policy tools vested in the executive branch rather than the legislative branch. Furthermore, not only has American bourgeois government trended towards a system dominated by the executive branch, it has progressively centralized executive authority in the office of the President itself. This emerging bourgeois legal theory holds that all executive power is vested in the person of the President,xvi and thus the president has direct control and oversight over all parts of government involved in administration and executive function.
There are many major instances of this centralization under the executive, particularly by Trump. His assertion of his right to personally hire and fire members of previous “independent” capitalist regulatory bodies or offices like the National Labor Relations Bureau (NLRB), the Merit System Protection Board, and departmental inspector generals. His dismissal of a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, or making himself the chairman of the Kennedy Center for Performing Art. His shuttering of USAID, his defunding of the State media agencies like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the parent corporation of PBS) or the U.S. Agency for Global Media (the parent company for overseas propaganda outlet Voice of America). His persistent employment of previously little-used mechanisms to “claw-back” funding that Congress had already previously appropriated or approved, in order to assert control over the Imperialist State’s budget appropriations and spending. His military strikes on Venezuelan vessels in international waters without notice or authorization from Congress.
All of these examples are just snapshots of the broader fascistic move toward negating parliamentarianism in order to strengthen a single powerful executive that has direct dictatorial control over the State apparatus. When Trump defunds Voice of America, or undermines the so-called “independence” of a body like the NLRB, it is not because he is a confused “populist” trying to undermine US imperialism’s control over propaganda output or the workers movement. Rather, it is because Trump wants to wrest control over the state unions or state media from Congress or civil service bureaucrats, and monopolize executive jurisdiction over these tasks of the modern Imperialist State. In the process of fascistization, the power structures, coalitions, and institutions of the Old State are adjusted, reformed, or reconfigured in order to facilitate the transition from bourgeois democracy to open fascist dictatorship.
This is why the Biden and Trump administrations have also attempted to assert greater control over the commanding heights of the US economy, particularly in terms of industry, manufacturing, exports, and imports. Fascistization allows for a reconfiguration of the economic sphere by the capitalists in order to temporarily resolve or delay crises and preserve their rule. Biden’s CHIPS Act, the Build Back Better initiative, the bipartisan tariff push, Trump’s 10% share in Intel or his 15% cut for Nvidia chips sold to China, his attempt to strengthen the Presidents influence over monetary policy via asserting control over the Federal Reserve: all of these are a snapshot of how the fascistization of the US economy is manifesting. Employing the boogeyman of “national security” and great power competition, the Imperialist State is centralizing control over key strategic sectors and firms, and thus preparing the groundwork for future measures aimed at the corporatization of society and the economy. The recent wave of sweeping tariffs are another example of the executive asserting control over the Congress’ ability to tax. The tariffs are an outstanding example of the rising reactionary philosophical eclecticism: xenophobia, economic nationalism, and the idea of reinvigorating the nation. At the same time, the tariffs represented a heavier attack on the oppressed countries which are import-dependent and export-oriented for the purpose of subtracting superprofit for US imperialism.
These attempts to secure greater State control over key strategic industries are in turn part of a broader push to militarize the US economy and society. The federal deployment of National Guard, or Marines in the case of LA, contingents in cities across the country in order to combat “crime,” “chaos,” and “disorder.” The targeting of activists and plans to broadly designate whatever organization reactionaries view as linked to “antifa” as “terrorists.” The restriction and undermining of basic democratic rights, such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press; the mass deportations and employment of ICE as a force for State terror against national minorities and working-class immigrant communities; the restrictions on abortion and transgender rights; the creation of a vast web of cameras and digital/AI surveillance aimed at facilitating repression and anti-people measures. Clearly the militarization of US society and the attacks on the democratic rights of the workers and nationally oppressed masses serve its role in propelling the reactionary fascistization of US imperialism and its State.
Reactionary nationalism, that is, American “patriotism,” is increasingly employed to ensure a base for fascism among the masses. The bourgeoisie encourages the most reactionary, most ultra-nationalist sectors of US society and through its machineries funds and arms them: a fascist force has been developed as the shock troop of capital ready to faithfully carry out tasks assigned to it. The growing ideological offensive against immigrants, women, LGBT people and the oppressed nations, with violent rhetoric being employed by members of the Trump administration and mainstream Republican leaders, is serving to muddle the water of the deepening economic crisis and justify the incorporation of more fascist elements within the liberal-democratic framework. This is especially alarming considering the blood debt US imperialism has inflicted on the oppressed nations and people since the date of its foundation. Left unchecked, US fascists and the State which backs them will only proliferate, and their attacks on the masses will only become more common. All of this highlights the necessity of bringing our principles to class struggle, in particular waging the mass line to isolate the backwards reactionary elements and ensure that the masses are won over to class-conscious politics.
To combat fascism in this sense means to fight the counter-revolutionary mass work of the State with revolutionary mass work. This was the formula applied by Chairman Gonzalo and the Communist Party of Peru in their struggle against Peruvian fascism, first under General Velasco, and then under Presidents Alan Garcia and Alberto Fujimori. It was this approach which lead to the Initiation of Armed Struggle and the heroic People’s War in Peru. With fascistization, the Old State and the imperialists hope to co-opt and suppress the rebellious energy of the masses so as to sustain US imperialism and maintain their class rule. We must contend with the class enemy’s interventions among the masses in the labor movement, among the poor and nationally oppressed masses in the neighborhoods, among the auxiliary and allied masses, such as the student movement. To avoid, delay or shirk such work is to cede ground to fascistization and the maneuvers of US Imperialism.
Conclusion
The intensifying march away from bourgeois democracy and towards the formal fascistization and corporatization of the United States means that the question of developing a true revolutionary anti-fascism can no longer be put off. For too long in the US, the anti-fascist movement has been theoretically and practically dominated by revisionism, opportunism, and reformism. In particular, US anti-fascism over the last decade has been controlled almost entirely by elements of the “left-liberal” wing of the Democratic Party coalition, by amorphous anarchist collectives, and by revisionist groups tailing both or either of these trends. This directly plays into the hands of the reactionaries who are leading the drive towards fascism.
By tailing liberal anti-fascism, revolutionaries ignore the Democratic Party and “Never Trump Republicans” own culpability and participation in US Imperialism and its fascistization. This amounts to picking sides in a factional struggle among reactionaries. In this way, tailing the false liberal anti-fascism of the “left” Democrats, Bernie Sanders, and the DSA is an entirely self-defeating affair, something which revolutionaries should be all too familiar with given how the so-called “resistance” played out during Trump’s first term.
By tailing anarchist “anti-fascism” revolutionaries condemn themselves to perpetual habitation in the swamp of disorganization and chaos. Strong security policy, centralized team-based structures, constant discipline, a willingness to sacrifice for the cause of the people, a proletarian political line; all of these things must be standardized and enforced for an anti-fascist movement to be effective. The unity necessary for such a front cannot be based on the disunity and disorganization that anarchism implies. While united front work can and should be done on the basis of common principles when possible with anarchist or anarchist adjacent groups, fundamentally the class line running through this new revolutionary anti-fascist movement cannot be based on anarchism nor any other ideology of the ruling class or middle classes. Only a working-class anti-fascist movement can answer the call of the current moment.
This revolutionary anti-fascism must be based in the masses, and thus should be focused on class struggle. It must avoid the performative anti-fascism of the present, which has already proven itself time and time again as a dead end, and instead be an anti-fascism that defends the masses against the Imperialist State, the emboldened reactionary street militias, and finds its support among the proletarian and nationally oppressed neighborhoods and communities. This revolutionary anti-fascism takes aim at so-called “Americanism” as a whole, and upholds the struggle of the oppressed nations and national minorities within the United States for self-determination.
The new revolutionary anti-fascism is embedded in the ongoing work against ICE, against the police, against anti-women measures or anti-LGBT measures, against the slumlords, the reactionary politicians, and is a competent part of the proletarian united front, which is lead by the workers’ movement and is supported by the class-conscious student and youth movements. The work of neighborhood-based class struggle groups like the People’s Defense Committee is vital to the development of the New Anti-fascism, which is still very much embryonic and nascent in the broader work of the revolutionary mass organizations and their supporters. Similarly the work of revolutionary labor, embodied in organizations like the New Labor Organizing Committee, attacks at fascistization moves to hem in and repress the US multinational working class, and thus also defeat its attempt at consolidating control over the economy, society, and production. In total, the New Anti-fascism strikes at militarization and corporatization by fighting for socialist revolution, for the overthrow of the entire US Imperialist system, not by fighting for bourgeois democracy which is decrepit and dying.
While the US fascist dictatorship is not yet established, the task of constructing a new anti-fascist movement is pressing and cannot be ignored. The process of fascistization must be exposed before the masses and explained to them in common language in the pages and slogans of our propaganda at the shop, street, and campus level. The agents and members of local, regional, and national fascist organizations, especially reactionary fascist militias, must be identified, exposed, monitored, and prevented from entering the popular neighborhoods. The work being done to combat and defend against the agents of the Imperialist State, in particular its police and ICE agents, must be redoubled, and the participation of the masses in this work expanded. The failed trends of liberal and anarchistic “anti-fascism” must also be exposed and struggled against, and the masses educated in the errors of those trends and in the correct path of class struggle anti-fascism.
The process of fascistization is unpredictable and unstable, with many uncertain factors that must be illuminated and scientifically analyzed. Nevertheless, we can be certain that in any case, over the coming years the revolutionaries and masses will spill much blood, sweat, and tears in the struggle against our common class enemy. Marx and Engels said: “Capitalist production seeks continually to overcome these immanent barriers, but overcomes them only by means which again place these barriers in its way and on a more formidable scale.” These sacrifices will be written in the pages of the glorious history of our class, because for the revolutionary there is no better enemy than US Imperialism, and no more worthy target than the forces and agents of that Imperialism. The increasing fascistization of US imperialism is a material inevitability, but the work we carry out today as the subjective factor—the conscious element—of the revolutionary movement is up to us.
Down with US Imperialism!
Fight for Socialist Revolution!
Defeat Fascistization By Building a Class Conscious Mass Movement!
i Georgi Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism (Sofia: Sofia Press, 1972).
ii “Understanding the National Debt,” U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data, United States Department of the Treasury, https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/#tracking-the-debt.
iii “US National Debt: $37 Trillion and Growing,” GovFacts, September 7, 2025, https://govfacts.org/explainer/us-national-debt-37-trillion-and-growing/.
iv “State and Local Governments; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level (SLGSDODNS),” Federal Reserve Economic Data, September 12, 2025, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLGSDODNS.
v Sean Longoria and Umer Khan, “ 63 US corporate bankruptcies in June set up 2025 for highest pace since 2010,” Market Intelligence, S&P Global, July 8, 2025, https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2025/7/63-us-corporate-bankruptcies-in-june-set-up-2025-for-highest-pace-since-2010-91441423.
vi “Nonfinancial Corporate Business; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level (BCNSDODNS),” Federal Reserve Economic Data, September 12, 2025, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BCNSDODNS.
vii “Fact Sheet: Aging in the United States,” PRB, January 9, 2024, https://www.prb.org/resources/fact-sheet-aging-in-the-united-states/.
viii Peter Oluwadare Kalejaiye, “Addressing shortage of skilled technical workers in the USA: A glimpse for training service providers,” Future Business Journal 9, no. 50 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-023-00228-x.
ix Yi-Jin Yu. “US students’ reading and math scores at historic lows: ‘Devastating trend’,” Good Morning America, ABC News, September 9, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-scores-historic-lows-devastating/story?id=125392421.
x Mahshid Abir, “Combating America’s Chronic Disease Epidemic,” RAND Commentary, RAND, March 5, 2025 https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/03/combating-americas-chronic-disease-epidemic.html.
xi Josh Luckenbaugh, “Army Falls Short of 155mm Production Goal,” Army News, National Defense Magazine, August 14, 2025, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2025/8/14/army-falls-short-of-155mm-production-goal.
xii Jim Osman, “They’re Skipping Car Payments; That’s The Final Warning Sign,” Forbes, July 15, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2025/07/15/theyre-skipping-car-payments-thats-the-final-warning-sign/.
xiii Charlotte Morabito, “Young adults are holding off on moving out of their parents’ house — here’s what’s behind the trend,” Personal Finance, CNBC, November 17, 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/17/why-many-young-adults-in-the-us-are-still-living-with-their-parents.html.
xiv Daniel Soucy, Andrew Hall, Joy Moses, “State of Homelessness: 2025 Edition,” National Alliance to End Homelessness, September 4, 2025, https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/.
xv Dexter Filkins, “The U.S. Military’s Recruiting Crisis,” A Reporter at Large, The New Yorker, February 3, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/02/10/the-us-militarys-recruiting-crisis.
xvi Kit Yona, “What Is the Unitary Executive Theory?,” FindLaw, March 5, 2025, https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/what-is-the-unitary-executive-theory/.
