It’s fairly obvious that American fascists are using an effective diversity of tactics to bring down the dominant (liberal) society in the US, including terrorist acts by shock troops, hamstringing the US legislature, and undoing democracy via the Supreme Court. Yesterday, we discovered that the 5th Circuit Court is also occupied by fascists. I’ll let liberal darling and extremely well-informed person (not sarcasm) Heather Cox Richardson explain:
There was big news [Wednesday] from a quarter that made it easily overlooked. In a decision about the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to judge those accused of engaging in securities fraud, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that “Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the SEC by failing to provide an intelligible principle by which the SEC would exercise the delegated power, in violation of Article I’s vesting of ‘all’ legislative power in Congress….”
Basically, the SEC was created to protect the majority of Americans from bad behavior by wealthy capitalists. Ironically, it actually protects the institution of capitalism by preventing some of that bad behavior. The idea of an “intelligible principle” being necessary to allow Congress to delegate is part of a right-wing strategy called “nondelegation doctrine”. More from HCR:
What is at stake with this decision is something called the “nondelegation doctrine,” which says that Congress, which constitutes the legislative branch of the government, cannot delegate legislative authority to the executive branch. Most of the regulatory bodies in our government since the New Deal have been housed in the executive branch. So the nondelegation doctrine would hamstring the modern regulatory state.
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As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out, the nondelegation doctrine would mean that “most of Government is unconstitutional.”
The nondelegation doctrine was specifically invented by big business after the New Deal* to fight back against it. The idea is that the regulation required to counter the bad behavior of big business is so complex, that it must be delegated to the executive branch for that regulation to be possible. It would simply take too long for Congress to vote on every little thing. By trying to prevent delegation, the far right intends to end regulation itself. The regulation would still exist, but powerful people would be able to ignore it. The left agrees that delegation sometimes goes too far (see, for example, the ATF), but it is clear that a great deal of delegation to the executive branch is necessary for this form of society (capitalism/liberalism) to function.
I’ve written at length about how fascists don’t really care about capitalism. So, while the nondelegation doctrine was the brainchild of big business in the 1930’s, today’s fascists pushing this idea want to use it to allow them to build fascism — not capitalism — though if a capitalist monopoly happens to benefit a straight, white, nominally Christian, cis man, they’ll take it happily. Certainly people like Elon Musk who want to simultaneously hobble the government’s ability to make him behave and also use the government as his personal servant are happy to go along with this, but it is the full-on fascists — who will dispose of Musk as soon as it is advantageous to do so — who are really behind this now.
The 5th Circuit Court has taken the hint from the Supreme Court that it no longer needs to be concerned with liberal precedent, and that allows it to let its fascist flag fly. Decisions at the 5th Circuit might simply stand as they are, but it is more likely that they will be sent up to the fascist-controlled Supreme Court which will then solidify them into a new far-right precedent for the entire country.
It’s hard not to be dramatic about the results of all this, so let me start out slowly. In contrast to this fascist approach to change — where they simply burn everything down and laugh maniacally — an anarchist approach would be to construct democratic institutions that are parallel and redundant and then burn down the more authoritarian structures that no longer serve a purpose. The fascist approach is a purposeful introduction of complete chaos into American society in order to leverage that chaos to grab power and destroy their perceived enemies.
I think it bears repeating that capitalism requires a certain amount of order to function. We’ve seen what the introduction of just a little virus can do, and we’ve seen what a war on the other side of the planet can do (many times). The end of all federal government regulation is a much bigger disruption. You may have noticed that Republicans never have a plan for what will replace the liberal order — their only plan is to destroy it. They do not have a plan except for the glorious freedom to destroy people that they hate.
What we are looking at, then, is a period of time where society works less and less to provide the things people need to survive while different groups of people take turns being actively destroyed, one way or another. Often times, that destruction will be an ironic revenge for the material misery that fascists caused themselves; fascists always blame their enemies for their own problems, regardless of how absurd it is to do so. The worse things get, the more human beings fascists will destroy.
There used to be this problem called “worm milk”; milk is hard to process and distribute safely because it is really good at growing nasty stuff, and capitalists were not willing to put forth the effort required to do it safely. The baby formula shortage is a return to that because the big factory that was creating 40% of America’s baby formula (the Abbott factory in Michigan) had been allowed to continue getting more and more gross until it produced formula that was deadly to infants due to a bacteria called Cronobacter sakazakii growing in it. So, worm milk. The “worms” aren’t literal — worm in this case just means something nasty growing in the milk.
The baby formula situation is more complicated than this one thing, and obviously, the FDA has been more and more weakened — and controlled by big business — over time (though, without the FDA, the factory would still be killing babies). My point is that regulation is required in a situation where capitalists — who are operating as if selfishness is a virtue — are in charge. Fascists go beyond the ambivalent evil of “selfishness as virtue” and crank it up to “harming others as virtue”.
We’re talking about a world where there is worm milk, but also gangs of fascists (not just individuals) going to places where their enemies congregate and murdering them for fun — and the police do nothing because the social pressure to get them to enforce some kind of justice is gone and replaced with social pressure to let fascists do what they want. Half the time, the gang of fascists contains the police; sometimes, those police are in uniform and on the clock.
And not just worm milk. Randomly, there is worm meat, worm cheese, worm bread; you have to decide whether you can afford to throw it out. But that’s not all: Tap water that makes you sick. Bottled water that also makes you sick. Surprise! The filters** you just bought actually introduce lead and arsenic into the water! You’ll never know why your family is sick, though, because you can’t get in to see a real doctor. You end up seeing a fake doctor instead who prescribes chiropractic medicine and crystals for your mysterious malady. Without a functioning Department of Labor to stop them, your employer reduces your hourly rate; occasionally, they just decide not to pay you. If you try to organize your coworkers to demand fair pay, it turns out that it is cheaper for your employer to hire some cops to beat you. If you’re the leader, you might not make it home at all. These are all real problems that were dramatically diminished by regulations and the administrative state.
Rome wasn’t built in a day; it also didn’t collapse in a day — it took hundreds of years. The US collapse is quite fast in comparison and has been going on for a while. But hey! Look at all the freedom that is going to happen! Fascists are definitely going to have a lot more freedom. I hope we’re all starting to appreciate what “freedom” means when it comes out of the mouth of a fascist.
*The New Deal was created by democratic socialists, who represent the center of politics from a liberal/capitalist perspective. They balance the needs of the working class with the desires of the wealthy, and thereby both protect working class people and the institution of capitalism itself by preventing its abject failure. Because democratic socialism protects capitalism, some leftists (Red Guard, for example) hate it immensely.
**While filters having lead and arsenic in them is not specific problem we’ve seen, we’ve certainly seen lead, arsenic, and other dangerous substances appear in various products in such a way that people are poisoned. Thanks to regulation and the administrative state, those problems are discovered, publicized and corrected.