The Nazis Are Back
Months ago when Donald Trump took office Elon Musk blew up the internet by taking to the stage at a triumphant rally and delivering what can only be accurately described as a Nazi salute.
Many people jumped to Elon Musk's defense. Even completely ripped of the context of Trump's 2024 campaign and the broader ideological currents of the Republican Party, it was clearly a Nazi salute. The debate raged, people called it a "Roman salute" people justified it by saying Elon Musk is simply an autistic tech magnate who didn't know any better, or perhaps he was just too excited.
Ultimately Elon Musk's Nazi salute is inconsequential to the rise of far right politics in the United States. The money he spent turning Twitter (now X) into a Nazi propaganda mill is far more important. The money he has flooded reactionary politicians with almost equally so. His role in establishing the Paypal mafia and helping the likes of Peter Thiel rise to power is right up there as well. Perhaps the biggest problem is that almost every tech magnate and billionaire CEO in the United States is right there with him.
The parade of tech CEO's that followed Elon Musk to Donald Trump's inauguration made it very clear who's side they are on. Unless you have been invited to Epstein Island or today's equivalent (because you don't think they just stopped, do you?) it is not yours.
The big tech embrace of the Republican Party solidified the billionaire class's turn as a whole to reactionary politics. The business class will always choose fascism over any sort of egalitarian politics and with socialism on the rise in the United States that dynamic is particularly pronounced. These same oligarchs are building the systems which enable the reactionary take over of the federal government from massive spending on AI to the revamped surveillance and the way the two combine to ensure a sense of capitalist realism that can never be broken.
Meanwhile that very same federal government is creating the infrastructure for massive state repression. Most notably in the form of an ever present and expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) apparatus that rivals the military budgets and man power of most countries on Earth. As though that power was not enough they are also building massive detention centers which they have filled with almost exclusively non-criminal immigrants but the scope of the project makes it abundantly clear that they will not stop there.
All this was created at the behest of a reactionary political movement that perhaps finds its most powerful force in the ideology espoused by the millions of Americans who supported Donald Trump's rise, his eventual second term, and even the most egregious abuses of power we have seen since January 2025.
There are complicated reasons why so many Americans have given in to the siren song of fascism. Many liberals want to boil it down to essentially their own version of Hillary Clinton's infamous "basket of deplorables" comment, but to do so ignores the significant structural factors at play that lead people to authoritarianism in a moment of personal uncertainty and global instability.
The United States has a corporate news media increasingly under the control of the billionaire class who very much see fascism as in their best interest. They fan the flames of culture war and echo the sentiments of the regime all the while covering the broader information ecosystem with so much chaff that it is impossible to form a coherent world view that isn't just bouncing from meaningless outrage to the next depending on the news cycle.
Social media algorithms are even worse when it comes to this dynamic and are all controlled by a different set of billionaires with largely the same goals. The two feed each other and create information silos and echo chambers that encourage people to double down on their own world view and seek conflict with anyone who disagrees. There is almost no room for productive discourse or to actually find common ground with one's countrymen.
This universe of information then provides the puzzle pieces people use to form their broader worldviews in a time where the economy and foreign policy are increasingly precarious. COVID era inflation has continued to wreak havoc on working people, meanwhile the job market has slowed, unemployment is on the rise, a college education is very much not a pathway to upward mobility anymore, homes are impossible to buy for young people, consumer debt is at an all time high, as are student loan balances, and nobody has any real plan to fix any of this. The welfare state has been gutted since the Reagan-era and the brief glimpse at what government intervention might provide during COVID was destroyed to help fund the corporate greed most clearly exemplified by the aforementioned inflation.
The economy is in shambles for working people, they feel that, and are reacting to it. No amount of telling them their lived experience is wrong and the economy is actually doing quite well will convince anyone who has to make ends meet day after day in this economy. Record highs in the stock market make it clear as well that this really truly is a "K shaped" economy where things get worse and worse for working people while the wealthy see nothing but abundance.
As people struggle to survive they are bombarded by images of war torn countries such as Ukraine and Palestine all the while those in power beat the war drums domestically threatening a war time economy and all the sacrifices that must be made to sustain it. War in Iran polls at a record low 5% but the Trump administration seems poised to launch attacks any day now. American support for Israel is at an all time low yet the arms shipments and funding flows unabated. Looking to Ukraine and tensions with Russia, not to mention China, it doesn't seem hyperbolic to say that World War III is here and most people just don't realize it yet.
People feel like the country is coming apart at the seams, because it very much is. The ever brutal police state, giving steroids to the surveillance state, and whipping people up into a frenzy wherein they are able to justify violence against their neighbors and fellow Americans are all the building blocks of the fascism that threatens to take hold of the United States for potentially decades to come. History might not repeat itself, but as the oft misused phrase goes, it does often rhyme. The current reality in the United States very much echoes the weak institutions, sputtering economy, and global instability which breeds the desperate desire for the stability of a strongman which were the hallmark of Weimer Germany.
Anyone halfway acquainted with the World War II and the Nazis knows how that ended. However it seems not enough people know how it started. Unfortunately it appears we are all unlucky enough to live through it, or at least something very similar. So those not in the know will be acquainted soon enough.
Radical solidarity is the only antidote to the reactionary forces ascendant in the United States (and many parts of the globe). A true love for one's neighbors, even when it seems impossible, must be found. An understanding that we are all in this together and the true divide is top versus bottom not left versus right, must be found. A significant global push back to the current foreign policy status quo and the wars being waged and genocides committed, must be found. That starts with appreciating that an incredibly small group of people worked very hard to create this status quo and profit immensely from it. Those people are not on our team and they never will be.
I'm not going to pretend to have answers beyond the thoughts in the previous paragraph. But it's clear what we are doing isn't working and the road we are headed down leads to disaster. I refuse to give up on my neighbors and working people around the world. You shouldn't give up either. Hope is praxis and at the end of the day that and each other is all we got.
